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LECTURES

ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING,

DEUVERED AT EDINBURGH

NOVEMBER, 1853.

BY JOHN RUSKIN,
AUTHOR OP "THE STONES OP VENICE," "SEVEN LAMPS OP ARCHITECTURE,'
" MODERN PAINTERS,** ETC.

WITH TT.LTJBTRATIONS DBAWN BY THE AUTHOR,

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., 65. CORNHILL.
1855.

[The Author of this Work reserves lo himself tlie right of Translation.']

Tv.

X

London:
A. and G. A. Si'ottiswoode,
New-street- Square.

PREFACE.

The following Lectures are printed, as far as
possible, just as they were delivered. Here and
there a sentence which seemed obscure has been
mended, and the passages which had not been pre
viously written, have been, of course imperfectly,
supplied from memory. But I am weU assured that
nothing of any substantial importance which was
said in the Lecture-room, is either omitted, or altered
in its signification ; with the exception only of a few
sentences struck out from the notice of the works
of Turner, in consequence of the impossibility of
engraving the drawings by which they were illus
trated, except at a cost which would have too much
raised the price of the volume. Some elucidatory
remarks have, however, been added at the close of
the second and fourth Lectures, which I hope may
A 2

iv PREFACE.
be of more use than the passages which I was
obliged to omit.
The drawings by which the Lectures on Archi
tecture were illustrated have been carefully reduced,
and well transferred to wood by Mr. Thurston
Thompson. Those which were given in the course
of the notices of schools of painting could not be
so transferred, having been drawn in colour ; and I
have therefore merely had a few lines, absolutely
necessary to make the text intelligible, copied from
engravings. I forgot, in preparing the second Lecture for the
press, to quote a passage from Lord Lindsay's
" Christian Art," illustrative of what is said in that
Lecture (page 96.), respecting the energy of the
mediaeval republics. This passage, describing the
circumstances under which the Campanile of the
Duomo of Florence was built, is interesting also as
noticing the universality of talent which was
required of architects ; and which, as I have asserted
in the Addenda (p. 112.), always ought to be re
quired of them. I do not, however, now regret the
omission, as I cannot easily imagine a better preface

PREFACE. V
to an essay on civil architecture than this simple
statement. " In 1332, Giotto was chosen to erect it (the
Campanile) on the ground, avowedly, of the uni
versality of his talents, with the appointment of
Capo Maestro, or chief Architect (chief Master, I
should rather write), of the Cathedral and its
dependencies, a yearly salary of one hundred gold
florins, and the privilege of citizenship, under the
special understanding that he was not to quit
Florence. His designs being approved of, the re
public passed a decree in the spring of 1334, that
the Campanile should be built so as to exceed in
magnificence, height, and exceUence of workmanship
whatever in that kind had been achieved by the
Greeks and Romans in the time of their utmost
power and greatness. The first stone was laid, ac
cordingly, with great pomp, on the 18th of July
following, and the work prosecuted with vigour,
and with such costliness, and utter disregard of
expense, that a citizen of Verona, looking on, ex
claimed, that the republic was taxing her strength
too far, that the united resources of two great

. VI PREFACE.
monarchs would be insufficient to complete it; a
criticism which the Signoria resented by confining
him for two months in prison, and afterwards con
ducting him through the public treasury, to teach
him that the Florentines could build their whole
city of marble, and not one poor steeple only, were
they so inclined."
I see that " The Builder," vol. xi. p. 690., has
been endeavouring to inspire the citizens of Leeds
with some pride of this kind respecting their
town-hall. The pride would be well, but I sincerely
trust that the tower in question may not be built on
the design there proposed. I am sorry to have to
write a special criticism, but it must be remembered
that the best works, by the best men living, are in
this age abused without mercy by nameless critics ;
and it would be unjust to the public, if those who
have given their names as guarantee for their since
rity never had the courage to enter a protest against
the execution of designs which appear to them
unworthy. Denmark Hill, 16th April, 1854.

CONTENTS.

Page
Preface iii
Lecture I. - .... 1
Lecture n. - .... 63
Addenda to Lectures I. and II. - - 106
Lecture HX Turner and his Works - - 141
Lecture IV. Pre-Eaphaelitism - . - 189
Addenda to Lecture IV. - 233

ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. 3. and 5. Illustrative diagrams.
2. Window in Oakham Castle.
4. and 6. Spray of ash-tree, and improve
ment of the same on Greek principles.
7. Window in Dumblane Cathedral.
8. Mediaeval turret.
9. and 10. Lombardic towers.
11. and 12. Spires at Coutances and Rouen.
13. and 14. Illustrative diagrams.
15. Sculpture at Lyons.
16. Niche at Amiens.
XI. figs. 17. and 18. Tiger's head, and improvement
of the same on Greek principles.
XII. fig. 19. Garret window in H6tel de Bourg-
theroude.
XIII. figs. 20. and 21. Trees, as drawn in the 13th
century.
XIV. fig. 22. Rocks, as drawn by the school of
Leonardo da Vinci.
XV. „ 23. Boughs of trees, after Titian.

Plate I.

figs.

II.

fig-

III.

figs.

IV.

fig.

V.

•)•)

VI.

figs.

VII.

1?

vin.

•)•)

IX.

fig.

X.

¦)•}

LECTURES

ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING.

LECTURE I.
I think myself peculiarly happy in being permitted
to address the citizens of Edinburgh on the subject
of architecture, for it is one which, they cannot but
feel, interests them nearly. Of all the cities in the
British Islands, Edinburgh is the one which presents
most advantages for the display of a noble building ;
and which, on the other hand, sustains most injury
in the erection pf a commonplace or unworthy one.
You are all proud of your city : surely you must feel
it a duty in some sort to justify your pride ; that
is to say, to give yourselves a right to be proud
of it. That you were born under the shadow of its
B

2 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
two fantastic mountains, — that you live where from
your room windows you can trace the shores of its
glittering Firth, are no rightful subjects of pride.
You did not raise the mountains, nor shape the
shores; and the historical houses of your Canon-
gate, and the broad battlements of your castle, reflect
honour upon you only through your ancestors. Be
fore you boast of your city, before even you venture
to call it yours, ought you not scrupulously to weigh
the exact share you have had in adding to it or
adorning it, to calculate seriously the influence upon
its aspect which the work of your own hands has
exercised ? I do not say that, even when you regard
your city in this scrupulous and testing spirit, you
have not considerable ground for exultation. As far
as I am acquainted with modern architecture, I am
aware of no streets which, in simplicity and manliness
of style, or general breadth and brightness of effect,
equal those of the New Town of Edinburgh. But
yet- 1 am well persuaded that as you traverse those
streets, your feelings of pleasure and pride in
them are much complicated with those which are

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 3
excited entirely by the surrounding scenery. As
you walk up or down George Street, for instance,
do you not look eagerly for every opening to
the north and south, which lets in the lustre of
the Firth of Forth, or the rugged outline of the
Castle Bock ? Take away the sea-waves, and the
dark basalt, and I fear you would find little to
interest you in George Street by itself. Now I
remember a city, more nobly placed even than your
Edinburgh, which, instead of the valley that you
have now filled by lines of railroad, has a broad
and rushing river of blue water sweeping through
the heart of it ; which, for the dark and solitary rock
that bears your castle, has an amphitheatre of cliffs
crested with cypresses and olive; which, for the
two masses of Arthur's seat and the ranges of the
Pentlands, has a chain of blue mountains higher than
the haughtiest peaks of your Highlands ; and which,
for your far-away Ben Ledi and Ben More, has the
great central chain of the St. Gothard Alps : and
yet as you go out of the gates, and walk in the
suburban streets of that city — I mean Verona — the
B 2

4 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
eye never seeks to rest on that external scenery,
however gorgeous ; it does not look for the gaps
between the houses, as you do here : it may for a
few moments follow the broken line of the great
Alpine battlements ; but it is only where they form
a background for other battlements, built by the
hand of man. There is no necessity felt to dwell on
the blue river or the burning hills. The heart and
eye have enough to do in the streets of the city
itself; they are contented there ; nay, they sometimes
turn from the natural scenery, as if too savage and
solitary, to dwell with a deeper interest on the
palace walls that cast their shade upon the streets,
and the crowd of towers that rise out of that shadow
into the depth of the sky.
That, is a city to be proud of, indeed; and it is
this kind of architectural dignity which you should
aim at, in what you add to Edinburgh or rebuild
in it. For remember, you must either help your
scenery or destroy it ; whatever you do has an
effect of one kind or the other ; it is never indif
ferent. But, above all, remember that it is chiefly

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 5
by private, not by public, effort that your city
must be adorned. It does not matter how many
beautiful public buildings you possess, if they are
not supported by, and in harmony with, the private
houses of the town. Neither the mind nor the eye
will accept a new college, or a new hospital, or a
new institution, for a city. It is the Canongate, and
the Princes Street, and the High Street that are
Edinburgh. It is in your own private houses that
the real majesty of Edinburgh must consist ; and,
what is more, it must be by your own personal inte
rest that the style of the architecture which rises
around you must be principally guided. Do not
think that you can have good architecture merely by
paying for it. It is not by subscribing liberally for
a large building once in forty years that you can call
up architects and inspiration. It is only by active
and sympathetic attention to the domestic and every
day work which is done for each of you, that you can
educate either yourselves to the feeling, or your
builders to the doing, of what is truly great.
Well but, you will answer, you cannot feel in-
B 3

6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
terested in architecture: you do not care about it,
and cannot care about it. I know you cannot.
About such architecture as is built now-a-days,
no mortal ever did or could care. You do not
feel interested in hearing the same thing over and
over again ; — why do you suppose you can feel
interested in seeing the same thing over and over
again, were that thing even the best and most beau
tiful in the world? Now you all know the kind
of window which you usually build in Edinburgh :
here is an example of the head of one (Jig. 1. Plate I.),
a massy lintel of a single stone, laid across from side
to side, with bold square-cut jambs — in fact, the
simplest form it is possible to build. It is by no
means a bad form ; on the contrary, it is very manly
and vigorous, and has a certain dignity in its utter
refusal of ornament. But I cannot say it is enter
taining. How many windows precisely of this form
do you suppose there are in the New Town of
Edinburgh ? I have not counted them all through
the town, but I counted them this morning along
this very Queen Street, in which your Hall is ; and

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 1
on the one side of that street, there are of these
windows, absolutely similar to this example, and
altogether devoid of any relief by decoration, six
hundred and seventy-eight.* And your decorations
are just as monotonous as your simplicities. How
many Corinthian and Doric columns do you think
there are in your banks, and post-offices, institutions,
and I know not what else, one exactly like another ? —
and yet you expect to be interested ! Nay, but, you
will answer me again, we see sunrises and sunsets,
and violets and roses, over and over again, and we
do not tire of them. What! did you ever see one
sunrise like another? does not God vary his clouds
for you every morning and every night? though,
indeed, there is enough in the disappearing and ap
pearing of the great orb above the rolling of the
world, to interest all of us, one would think, for as
many times as we shall see it; and yet the aspect
of it is changed for us daily. You see violets and
roses often, and are not tired of them. True! but
* Including York Place, and Picardy Place, but not counting any
window which has mouldings. B 4

8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
you did not often see twp roses alike, or, if you did,
you took care not to put them beside each. other in
the same nosegay, for fear your nosegay should be
uninteresting; and yet you think you can put
150,000 square windows side by side in the same
streets, and still be interested by them. Why, if I
were to say the same thing over and over again, for
the single hour you are going to let me talk to you,
would you listen to me? and yet you let your archi
tects do the same thing over and over again for
three centuries, and expect to be interested by their
architecture; with a farther disadvantage on the
side of the builder, as compared with the speaker,
that my wasted words would cost you but little,
but his wasted stones have cost you no small part
of your incomes.
" Well, but," you still think within yourselves, " it
is not right that architecture should be interesting.
It is a very grand thing, this architecture, but
essentially unentertaining, It is its duty to be dull,
it is monotonous by law: it cannot be correct and
.yet amusing."

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 9
Believe me, it is not so. All things that are worth
doing in art, are interesting and attractive when they
are done. There is no law of right which consecrates
dulness. The proof of a thing's being right is, that
it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins
us, or helps us. I do not say that it has influence
over all, but it has over a large class, one kind of
art being fit for one class, and another for another ;
and there is no goodness in art which is inde
pendent of the power of pleasing, Yet, do not mis
take me ; I do not mean that there is no such thing
as neglect of the best art, or delight in the worst,
just as many men neglect nature, and feed upon
what is artificial and base ; but I mean that all good
art has the capacity of pleasing, if people will attend
to it; that there is no law against its pleasing;
but, on the contrary, something wrong either
in the spectator or the art, when it ceases to
please. Now, therefore, if you feel that your pre
sent school of architecture is unattractive to you,
I say there is something wrong, either in the archi
tecture or in you; and I trust you will not think I

10 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
mean to flatter you when I tell you, that the wrong is
not in you, but in the architecture. Look at this for
a moment (Jig. 2. Plate II.); it is a window actually
existing — a window of an English domestic build
ing* — a window built six hundred years ago. You
will not tell me you have no pleasure in looking at
this; or that you could not, by any possibility,
become interested in the art which produced it; or
that, if every window in your streets were of some
such form, with perpetual change in their ornaments,
you would pass up and down the street with as
much indifference as now, when your windows are
of this form (Jig. 1. Plate I.). Can you for an instant
suppose that the architect was a greater or wiser man
who built this, than he who built that? or that in
the arrangement of these dull and monotonous stones
there is more wit and sense than you can penetrate ?
Believe me, the wrong is not in you; you would all
like the best things best, if you only saw them.
* Oakham Castle. I have enlarged this illustration from Mr.
Hudson Turner's admirable work on the domestic architecture of
England.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. Il
What is wrong in you is your temper, not your
taste ; your patient and trustful temper, which lives
in houses whose architecture it takes for granted,
and subscribes to public edifices from which it de
rives no enjoyment.
" Well, but what are we to do ? " you will say to
me; we cannot make architects of ourselves. Pardon
me, you can — and you ought. Architecture is an
art for all men to learn, because all are concerned
with it; and it is so simple, that there is no excuse
for not being acquainted with its primary rules, any
more than for ignorance of grammar or of spelling,
which are both of them far more difficult sciences.
Far less trouble than is necessary to learn how to
play chess, or whist, orgoff, tolerably, — far less than
a schoolboy takes to win the meanest prize of the
passing year, would acquaint you with all the main
principles of the construction of a Gothic cathedral,
and I believe you would hardly find the study less
amusing. But be that as it may, there are one or
two broad principles which need only be stated to be
understood and accepted; and those I mean to lay

12 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
before you, with your permission, before you leave
this room.
You must all, of course, have observed that the
principal distinctions between existing styles of archi
tecture depend on their methods of roofing any space,
as a window or door for instance, or a space between
pillars ; that is to say, that the character of Greek
architecture, and of all that is derived from it, de
pends on its roofing a space with a single stone laid
from side to side; the character of Eoman archi
tecture, and of all derived from it, depends on its
roofing spaces with round arches; and the charac
ter of Gothic architecture depends on its roofing
spaces with pointed arches, or gables. I need not,
of course, in any way follow out for you the mode
in which the Greek system of architecture is
derived from the horizontal lintel; but I ought
perhaps to explain, that by Roman architecture I do
not mean that spurious condition of temple form
which was nothing more than a luscious imitation of
the Greek; but I mean that architecture in which
the Roman spirit truly manifested itself, the magni-

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 13
ficent vaultings of the aqueduct and the bath, and
the colossal heaping of the rough stones in the arches
of the amphitheatre ; an architecture full of expres
sion of gigantic power and strength of will, and from
which are directly derived all our most impressive
early buildings, called, as you know, by various anti
quaries, Saxon, Norman, or Romanesque. Now the
first point I wish to insist upon is, that the Greek
system, considered merely as a piece of construction,
is weak and barbarous compared with the two others.
For instance, in the case of a large window or door,
such as Jig. 1. Plate I., if you have at your disposal
a single large and long stone you may indeed roof it
in the Greek manner, as you have done here, with
comparative security ; but it is always expensive to
obtain ahd to raise to their place stones of this large
size, and in many places nearly impossible to obtain
them at all : and if you have not such stones, and
still insist upon roofing the space in the Greek way,
that is to say, upon having a square window, you
must do it by the miserably feeble adjustment of

1 4 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
bricks,^. 3. Plate I.* You are well aware, of
course, that this latter is the usual way in which such
windows are now built in England ; you are fortunate
enough here in the north to be able to obtain single
stones, and this circumstance alone gives a consider
able degree of grandeur to your buildings. But in
all cases, and however built, you cannot but see in a
moment that this cross bar is weak and imperfect.
It may be strong enough for all immediate intents
and purposes, but it is not so strong as it might
be : however well the house is built, it will still not
stand so long as if it had been better constructed;
and there is hardly a day passes but you may see
some rent or flaw in bad buildings of this kind. You
may see one whenever you choose, in one of your
most costly, and most ugly buildings, the great
church with the dome, at the end of George Street.
I think I never saw a building with a principal
entrance so utterly ghastly and oppressive ; and it is
as weak as it is ghastly. The huge horizontal lintel
above the door is already split right through. But
* On this subject, see " The Builder," vol xi. p. 709.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 15
you are not aware of a thousandth part of the evil :
the pieces of building that you see are all carefully
done ; it is in the parts that are to be concealed by
paint and plaster that the bad building of the day is
thoroughly committed. The main mischief lies in the
strange devices that are used to support the long hori
zontal cross beams of our larger apartments and shops,
and the framework of unseen walls ; girders and ties
of cast iron, and props and wedges, and laths nailed
and bolted together, on marvellously scientific prin
ciples; so scientific, that every now and then,
when some tender reparation is undertaken by the
unconscious householder, the whole house crashes
into a heap of ruin, so total, that the jury which
sits on the bodies of the inhabitants cannot tell
what has been the matter with it, and returns a
dim verdict of accidental death. Did you read the
account of the proceedings at the Crystal Palace
at Sydenham the other day ? Some dozen of men
crushed up among the splinters of the scaffolding
in an instant, nobody knew why. All the engineers
declare the scaffolding to have been erected on the best

16 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
principles,— that the fall of it is as much a mystery
as if it had fallen from heaven, and were all meteoric
stones. The jury go to Sydenham and look at the
heap of shattered bolts and girders, and come back
as wise as they went. Accidental death ! Yes
verily; the lives of all those dozen of men had
been hanging for months at the mercy of a flaw in an
inch or two of cast iron. Very accidental indeed !
Not the less pitiable. I grant it not to be an easy
thing to raise scaffolding to the height of the Crystal
Palace without incurring some danger, but that is
no reason why your houses should all be nothing but
scaffolding. The common system of support of walls
over shops is now nothing but permanent scaffold
ing ; part of iron, part of wood, part of brick ; in
its skeleton state awful to behold; the weight of
three or four stories of wall resting sometimes on
two or three pillars of the size of gas pipes, some
times on a single cross beam of wood, laid across
from party wall to party wall in the Greek manner.
I have a vivid recollection at this moment of a vast
heap of splinters in the Borough Road, close to

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 17
St. George's, Southwark, in the road between my
own house and London. I had passed it the day
before, a goodly shop front, and sufficient house
above, with a few repairs undertaken in the shop
before opening a new business. The master and
mistress had found it dusty that afternoon, and went
out to tea. When they came back in the evening,
they found their whole house in the form of a heap
of bricks blocking the roadway, with a party of men
digging out their cook. But I do not insist on
casualties like these, disgraceful to us as they are,
for it is, of course, perfectly possible to build a per
fectly secure house or a secure window in the Greek
manner ; but the simple fact is, that in order to obtain
in the cross lintel the same amount of strength which
you can obtain in a pointed arch, you must go to an
immensely greater cost in stone or in labour. Stone-
henge is strong enough, but it takes some trouble to
build in the manner of Stonehenge : and Stonehenge
itself is not so strong as an arch of the Colosseum.
You-could not raise a circle of four Stonehenges, one
over the other, with safety ; and as it is, more of
c

18 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
the cross-stones are fallen upon the plain of Sarum
than arches rent away, except by the hand of man,
from the mighty circle of Rome. But I waste
words ; — your own common sense must show you in
a moment that this is a weak form ; and there is not
at this instant a single street in London where some
house could not be pointed out with a flaw running
through its brickwork, and repairs rendered necessary
in consequence, merely owing to the adoption of this
bad form ; and that our builders know so well, that
in myriads of instances you find them actually
throwing concealed arches above the horizontal
lintels to take the weight off them ; and the gabled
decoration at the top of some Palladian windows, is
merely the ornamental form resulting from a bold
device of the old Roman builders to effect the same
purpose. But there is a farther reason for our adopting the
pointed arch than its being the strongest form; it is
also the most beautiful form in which a window or
door-head can be built. Not the most beautiful
because it is the strongest; but most beautiful, because

Lect. L] AND PAINTING. 19
its form is one of those which, as we know by its
frequent occurrence in the work of nature around us,
has been appointed by the Deity to be an everlast
ing source of pleasure to the human mind.
Gather a branch from any of the trees or flowers
to which the earth owes its principal beauty. You
will find that every one of its leaves is terminated,
more or less, in the form of the pointed arch ; and to
that form owes its grace and character. I will
take, for instance, a spray of the tree which so grace
fully adorns your Scottish glens and crags — there is
no lovelier in the world — the common ash. Here is
a sketch of the clusters of leaves which form the
extremity of one of its young shoots {fig. 4. Plate
III.) ; and, by the way, it will furnish us with an
interesting illustration of another error in modern
architectural systems. You know how fond modern
architects, like foolish modern politicians, are of their
equalities, and similarities ; how necessary they think
it that each part of a building should be Hke every
other part. Now Nature abhors equality, and simi
litude, just as much as foolish men love them. You
c 2

20 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
will find that the ends of the shoots of the ash are
composed of four* green stalks bearing leaves,
springing in the form of a cross, if seen from
above, as in jig. 5. Plate I., and at first you will
suppose the four arms of the cross are equal.
But look more closely, and you will find that two
opposite arms or stalks have only five leaves each,
and the other two have seven, or else, two have
seven, and the other two nine ; but always one pair
of stalks has two leaves more than the other pair.
Sometimes the tree gets a little puzzled, and forgets
which is to be the longest stalk, and begins with a
stem for seven leaves where it should have nine, and
then recollects itself at the last minute, and puts on
another leaf in a great hurry, and so produces a stalk
with eight leaves ; but all this care it takes merely
to keep itself out of equalities ; and all its grace and
power of pleasing are owing to its doing so, together
with the lovely curves in which its stalks, thus
arranged, spring from the main bough. Fig. 5.
" Sometimes of six ; that is to say, they spring in pairs ; only
the two uppermost pairs, sometimes the three uppermost, spring so
close together as to appear one cluster.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 21
Plate I. is a plan of their arrangement merely, but
fig. 4. Plate III. is the way in which you are most
likely to see them : and observe, they spring from the
stalk 'precisely as a Gothic vaulted roof springs, each
stalk representing a rib of the roof, and the leaves
its crossing stones ; and the beauty of each of those
leaves is altogether owing to its terminating in the
Gothic form, the pointed arch. Now do you think
you would have liked your ash trees as well, if
Nature had taught them Greek, and shown them
how to grow according to the received Attic archi
tectural rules of right ? I will try you. Here is a
cluster of ash leaves, which I have grown expressly
for you on Greek principles (Jig. 6. Plate III.).
How do you like it ?
Observe, I have played you no trick in this com
parison. It is perfectly fair in all respects. I have
merely substituted for the beautiful spring of the
Gothic vaulting in the ash bough, a cross lintel, and
then, in order to raise the leaves to the same height,
I introduce vertical columns, and I make the leaves
square-headed instead of pointed, and their lateral
c 3

22 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
ribs at right angles with the central rib, instead of
sloping from it. I have, indeed, only given you two
boughs instead of four; because the perspective of
the crossing ones could not have been given without
confusing the figure ; but I imagine you have quite
enough of them as it is.
Nay, but some of you instantly answer, if we
had been as long accustomed to square-leaved ash
trees as we have been to sharp-leaved ash trees, we
should like them just as well. Do not think
it. Are you not much more accustomed to grey
whinstone and brown sandstone than you are to
rubies or emeralds? and yet will you tell me you
think them as beautiful ? Are you not more accus
tomed to the ordinary voices of men than to the
perfect accents of sweet singing ? yet do you not in
stantly declare the song to be loveliest? Examine
well the channels of your admiration, and you will
find that they are, in verity, as unchangeable as the
channels of your heart's blood ; that just as by the
pressure of a bandage, or by unwholesome and per
petual action of some part of the body, that blood

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 23
may be wasted or arrested, and in its stagnancy
cease to nourish the frame, or in its disturbed flow
affect it with incurable disease, so also admira
tion itself may, by the bandages of fashion, bound
close over the eyes and the arteries of the soul, be
arrested in its natural pulse and healthy flow ; but
that wherever the artificial pressure is removed, it
will return into that bed which has been traced for it
by the finger of God.
Consider this subject well, and you will find that
custom has indeed no real influence upon our
feelings of the beautiful, except in dulling and
checking them ; that is to say, it will and does, as we
advance in years, deaden in some degree our enjoy
ment of all beauty, but it in no wise influences our
determination of what is beautiful and what is not.
You see the broad blue sky every day over your
heads ; but you do not for that reason determine
blue to be less or more beautiful than you did at
first ; you are unaccustomed to see stones as blue as
the sapphire, but you do not for that reason think
the sapphire less beautiful than other stones. The
c 4

24 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
blue colour is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to
be a source of delight ; and whether seen perpetually
over your head, or crystallised once in a thousand
years into a single and incomparable stone, your
acknowledgment of its beauty is equally natural,
simple, and instantaneous. Pardon me for engaging
you in a metaphysical discussion; for it is necessary to
the establishment of some of the greatest of all archi
tectural principles that I should fully convince you
of this great truth, and that I should quite do away
with the various objections to it, which I suppose
must arise in your minds. Of these there is one
more which I must briefly meet. You know how
much confusion has been introduced into the subject
of criticism, by reference to the power of Associa
tion over the human heart ; you know how often it
has been said that custom must have something to
do with our ideas of beauty, because it endears so
many objects to the affections. But, once for all,
observe that the powers of association and of
beauty are two entirely distinct powers, — as distinct,
for instance, as the forces of gravitation and elec-

\ Iect. I.] AND PAINTING. 25
tricity. These forces may act together, or may neu
tralise one another, but are not for that reason to be
supposed the same force ; and the charm of associa
tion will sometimes enhance, and sometimes entirely
overpower, that of beauty ; but you must not con
found the two together. You love many things
because you are accustomed to them, and are pained
by many things because they are strange to you ; but
that does not make the accustomed sight more beau
tiful, or the strange one less so. The well known
object may be dearer to you, or you may have dis
covered charms in it which others cannot; but the
charm was there before you discovered it, only need
ing time and love to perceive it. You love your
friends and relations more than all the world beside,
and may perceive beauties in their faces which others
cannot perceive; but you feel that you would be
ridiculous in allowing yourselves to think them the
most beautiful persons in the world : you acknow
ledge that the real beauty of the human countenance
depends on fixed laws of form and expression, and
not on the affection you bear to it, or the degree in

26 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
which you are familiarised with it : and so does the
beauty of all other existences.
Now, therefore, I think that, without the risk of
any farther serious objection occurring to you, I may
state what I believe to be the truth, — that beauty
has been appointed by the Deity to be one of the
elements by which the human soul is continually
sustained ; it is therefore to be found more or less in
all natural objects, but in order that we may not
satiate ourselves with it, and weary of it, it is rarely
granted to us in its utmost degrees. When we see
it in those utmost degrees, we are attracted to it
strongly, and remember it long, as in the case
of singularly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful
countenance. On the other hand, absolute ugliness
is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty ; but degrees
of it more or less distinct are associated with what
ever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty
is associated with what has the nature of virtue and
of life.
This being so, you see that when the relative
beauty of any particular forms has to be examined,

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 27
we may reason, from the forms of nature around us, in
this manner : — what nature does generally, is sure to
be more or less beautiful ; what she does rarely, will
either be very beautiful, or absolutely ugly ; and we
may again easily determine, if we are not willing in
such a case to trust our feelings, which of these is
indeed the case, by this simple rule, that if the rare
occurrence is the result of the complete fulfilment of
a natural law, it will be beautiful; if of the violation of
a natural law, it will be ugly. For instance, a sap
phire is the result of the complete and perfect fulfil
ment of the laws of aggregation in the earth of
alumina, and it is therefore beautiful ; more beau
tiful than clay, or any other of the conditions of that
earth. But a square leaf on any tree would be ugly,
being a violation of the laws of growth in trees*, and
we ought to feel it so.
Now then, I proceed to argue in this manner from
* I am at present aware only of one tree, the tulip tree, which
has an exceptional form, and which, I doubt not, every one will
admit, loses much beauty in consequence. All other leaves, as far
as I know, have the round or pointed arch in the form of the
extremities of their foils.

28 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
what we see in the woods and fields around us ; that
as they are evidently meant for our delight, and as
we always feel them to be beautiful, we may assume
that the forms into which their leaves are cast are
indeed types of beauty, not of extreme or perfect,
but average beauty. And finding that they invari
ably terminate more or less in pointed arches, and
are not square-headed, I assert the pointed arch to
be one of the forms most fitted for perpetual contem
plation by the human mind ; that it is one of those
which never weary, however often repeated; and
that therefore, being both the strongest in structure,
and a beautiful form (while the square head is both
weak in structure, and an ugly form), we are unwise
ever to build in any other.
Here, however, I must anticipate another objection.
It may be asked why we are to build only the tops
of the windows pointed, — why not follow the leaves,
and point them at the bottom also ?
For this simple reason, that, while in architecture
you are continually called upon to do what may be
unnecessary for the sake of beauty, you are never

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 29
called upon to do what is inconvenient for the sake
of beauty. You want the level window sill to lean
upon, or to allow the window to open on a bal
cony: the eye and the common sense of the
beholder require this necessity to be met before
any laws of beauty are thought of; and besides this,
there is in the sill no necessity for the pointed
arch as a bearing form; on the contrary, it would
give an idea of weak support for the sides of the
window, and therefore is at once rejected ; only I
beg of you particularly to observe that the level sill,
although useful, and therefore admitted, does not
therefore become beautiful ; the eye does not like it so
well as the top of the window, nor does the sculptor
like to attract the eye to it ; his richest mouldings,
traceries, and sculptures are all reserved for the top of
the window, they are sparingly granted to its hori
zontal base. And farther, observe, that when neither
the convenience of the sill, nor the support of the struc
ture, are any more of moment, as in small windows
and traceries, you instantly have the point given to
the bottom of the window. Do you recollect the

30 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
west window of your own Dumblane Abbey? If
you look in any common guide-book, you will find it
pointed out as peculiarly beautiful, — it is acknow
ledged to be beautiful by the most careless observer.
And why beautiful ? Look at it (Jig. 7. Plate IV.),
Simply because in its great contours it has the form
of a forest leaf, and because in its decoration it has
used nothing but forest leaves. The sharp and ex
pressive moulding which surrounds it is a very interr
esting example of one used to an enormous extent by
the builders of the early English Gothic, usually in
the form seen in fig. 2. Plate II. above, composed of
clusters of four sharp leaves each, originally produced
by sculpturing the sides of a four-sided pyramid, and
afterwards brought more or less into a true image of
leaves, but deriving all its beauty from the botanical
form. In the present instance only two leaves are
set in each cluster ; and the architect has been deter
mined that the naturalism should be perfect. For he
was no common man who designed that cathedral of
Dumblane. I know not anything so perfect in its
simplicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, in all

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 31
the Gothic with which I am acquainted. And just
in proportion to his power of mind, that man was
content to work under Nature's teaching ; and instead
of putting a merely formal dogtooth, as every body
else did at the time, he went down to the woody bank
of the sweet river beneath the rocks on which he was
building, and he took up a few of the fallen leaves
that lay by it, and he set them in his arch, side by
side, for ever. And, look, — that he might show you
he had done this, — he has made them all of different
sizes, just as they lay ; and that you might not by any
chance miss noticing the variety, he has put a great
broad one at the top, and then a little one turned the
wrong way, next to it, so that you must be blind
indeed if you do not understand his meaning. And
the healthy change and playfulness of this just does
in the stone-work what it does on the tree boughs,
and is a perpetual refreshment and invigoration ;
so that, however long you gaze at this simple orna
ment — and none can be simpler, a village mason could
carve it all round the window in a few hours — you
are never weary of it, it seems always new.

32 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I,
It is true that oval windows of this form are com
paratively rare in Gothic work, but, as you well know,
circular or wheel windows are used constantly, and in
most traceries the apertures are curved and pointed
as much at the bottom as the top. So that I believe
you will now allow me to proceed upon the assump
tion, that the pointed arch is indeed the best form
into which the head either of door or window can be
thrown, considered as a means of sustaining weight
above it. How these pointed arches ought to be
grouped and decorated, I shall endeavour to show
you in my next lecture. Meantime I must beg of
you to consider farther some of the general points
connected with the structure of the roof.
I am sure that all of you must readily acknow
ledge the charm which is imparted to any landscape
by the presence of cottages ; and you must over and
over again have paused at the wicket gate of some
cottage garden, delighted by the simple beauty of
the honeysuckle porch and latticed window. Has it
ever occurred to you to ask the question, what effect
the cottage would have upon your feelings if it had

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 33
no roof ? no visible roof, I mean ; — if instead of the
thatched slope, in which the little upper windows
are buried deep, as in a nest of straw — or the rough
shelter of its mountain shales — or warm colouring of
russet tiles — there were nothing but a flat leaden
top to it, making it look like a large packing-case
with windows in it? I don't think the rarity of
such a sight would make- you feel it to be beauti
ful ; on the contrary, if you think over the matter
you will find that you actually do owe, and ought
to owe, a great part of your pleasure in all cottage
scenery, and in all the inexhaustible imagery of
literature which is founded upon it, to the con-
spicuousness of the cottage roof — to the subordination
of the cottage itself to its covering, which leaves, in
nine cases out of ten, really more roof than any
thing else. It is, indeed, not so much the white
washed walls — nor the flowery garden — nor the rude
fragments of stones set for steps at the door — nor any
other picturesqueness of the building which interest
you, so much as the grey bank of its heavy eaves,
deep-cushioned with green moss and golden stonecrop.
D

34 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
And there is a profound, yet evident, reason for this
feeling. The very soul of the cottage — the essence
and meaning of it — are in its roof; it is that, mainly,
wherein consists its shelter; that, wherein it differs
most completely from a cleft in rocks or bower in
woods. It is in its thick impenetrable coverlid of
close thatch that its whole heart and hospitality are
concentrated. Consider the difference, in sound, of"
the expressions " beneath my roof" and " within my
Walls," — consider whether you would be best shel
tered, in a shed, with a stout roof sustained on corner
posts, or in an inclosure of four walls without a roof
at all, — and you will quickly see how important a
part of the cottage the roof must always be to the
mind as well as to the eye, and how, from seeing
it, the greatest part of our pleasure must continually
arise. Now, do you suppose that which is so all-im
portant in a cottage, can be of small importance in
your own dwelling-house ? Do you think that by any
splendour of architecture — any height of stories —
you can atone to the mind for the loss of the aspect

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 35
of the roof. It is vain to say you take the roof for
granted. You may as well say you take a man's
kindness for granted, though he neither looks nor
speaks kindly. You may know him to be kind in
reality, but you will not like him so well as if he
spoke and looked kindly also. And whatever ex
ternal splendour you may give your houses, you will
always feel there is something wanting, unless you
see their roofs plainly. And this especially in the
north. In southern architecture the roof is of far
less importance ; but here the soul of domestic build
ing is in the largeness and conspicuousness of the
protection against the ponderous snow and driving
sleet. You may make the facade of the square pile,
if the roof be not seen, as handsome as you please,
— you may cover it with decoration, — but there will
always be a heartlessness about it, which you will
not know how to conquer; above all, a perpetual
difficulty in finishing the wall at top, which will re
quire all kinds of strange inventions in parapets and
pinnacles for its decoration, and yet will never look
right. D 2

36 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
Now, I need not tell you that, as it is desirable,
for the sake of the effect upon the mind, that the
roof should be visible, so the best and most natural
form of roof in the north is that which will render it
most visible, namely, the steep gable: the best
and most natural, I say, because this form not only
throws off snow and rain most completely, and dries
fastest, but obtains the greatest interior space within
walls of a given height, removes the heat of the sun
most effectually from the upper rooms, and affords
most space for ventilation.
You have then, observe, two great principles,
as far as northern architecture is concerned; first,
that the pointed arch is to be the means by which
the weight of the wall or roof is to be sustained ;
secondly, that the steep gable is the form most
proper for the roof itself. And now observe this
most interesting fact, that all the loveliest Gothic
architecture in the world is based on the group of
lines composed of the pointed arch and the gable.
If you look at the beautiful apse of Amiens
Cathedral — a work justly celebrated over all Eu-

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 37
rope — you will find it formed merely of a series of
windows surmounted by pure gables of open work.
If you look at the transept porches of Rouen, or at
the great and celebrated porch of the cathedral of
Rheims, or at that of Strasbourg, Bayeux, Amiens,
or Peterborough, still you will see that these lovely
compositions are nothing more than richly decorated
forms of gable over pointed arch. But more than
this, you must be all well aware how fond our best
architectural artists are of the street effects of foreign
cities; and even those now present who have not
personally visited any of the continental towns must
remember, I should think, some of the many inter
esting drawings by Mr. Prout, Mr. Nash, and other
excellent draughtsmen, which have for many years
adorned our exhibitions. Now, the principal charm
of all those continental street effects is dependent on
the houses having high-pitched gable roofs. In the
Netherlands, and Northern France, where the mate
rial for building is brick or stone, the fronts of the
stone gables are raised above the roofs, and you have
magnificent and grotesque ranges of steps or curves
D 3

38 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
decorated with various ornaments, succeeding one
another in endless perspective along the streets of
Antwerp, Ghent, or Brussels. In Picardy and Nor
mandy, again, and many towns of Germany, where
the material for building is principally wood, the roof
is made to project over the gables, fringed with a
beautifully carved cornice, and casting a broad
shadow down the house front. This is principally
seen ai Abbeville, Rouen, Lisieux, and others of the
older towns of France. But, in all cases, the effect
of the whole street depends on the prominence of the
gables; nor only of the fronts towards the streets,
but of the sides also, set with small garret or dormer
windows, each of the most fantastic and beautiful
form, and crowned with a little spire or pinnacle.
Wherever there is a little winding stair, or projecting
bow window, or any other irregularity of form, the
steep ridges shoot into turrets and small spires, as in
fig. 8. Plate V.*, each in its turn crowned by a fan
tastic ornament, covered with curiously shaped slates
or shingles, or crested with long fringes of rich iron-
* This figure is copied from Prout.

Lect. 1.] AND PAINTING. 39
work, so that, seen from above and from a distance,
the intricate grouping of the roofs of a French city
is no less interesting than its actual streets ; and in
the streets themselves, the masses of broad shadow
which the roofs form against the sky, are a most
important background to the bright and sculptured
surfaces of the walls.
Finally. I need not remind you of the effect upon
the northern mind which has always been produced
by the heaven-pointing spire, nor of the theory which
has been founded upon it of the general meaning of
Gothic architecture as expressive of religious aspira
tion. In a few minutes, you may ascertain the exact
value of that theory, and the degree in which it is
true. The first tower of which we hear as built upon the
earth, was certainly built in a species of aspiration ;
but I do not suppose that any one here will think it
was a religious one. " Go to now. Let us build a
tower whose top may reach unto heaven." From
that day to this, whenever men have become skilful
architects at all, there has been a tendency in
D 4

40 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
them to build high ; not in any religious feeling, but
in mere exuberance of spirit and power — as they
dance or sing — with a certain mingling of vanity —
like the feeling in which a child builds a tower of
cards; and, in nobler instances, with also a strong
sense of, and delight in the majesty, height, and
strength of tiie building itself, such as we have in
that of a lofty tree or a peaked mountain. Add to
this instinct the frequent necessity of points of eleva
tion for watch-towers, or of points of offence, as in
towers built on the ramparts of cities, and, finally,
the need of elevations for the transmission of sound,
as in the Turkish minaret and Christian belfry, and
you have, I think, a sufficient explanation of the
tower-building of the world in general. Look
through your Bibles only, and collect the various
expressions with reference to tower-building there,
and you will have a very complete idea of the
spirit in which it is for the most part undertaken.
You begin with that of Babel ; then you remember
Gideon beating down the Tower of Penuel, in order
more completely to humble the pride of the men of
the city ; you remember the defence of the tower of

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 41
Shechem against Abimelech, and the death of
Abimelech by the casting of a stone from it by a
woman's hand ; you recollect the husbandman build
ing a tower in his vineyard, and the beautiful expres
sions in Solomon's Song, — " The tower of Lebanon,
which looketh towards Damascus ; " " I am a wall,
and my breasts like towers ; " — you recollect the
Psalmist's expressions of love and delight, " Go ye
round about Jerusalem ; tell the towers thereof:
mark ye well her bulwarks : consider her palaces,
that ye may tell it to the generation following."
You see in all these cases how completely the tower
is a subject of human pride, or delight, or defence,
not in anywise associated with religious sentiment;
the towers of Jerusalem being named in the same
sentence, not with her temple, but with her bulwarks
and palaces. And thus, when the tower is in reality
connected with a place of worship, it was generally
done to add to its magnificence, but not to add to
its rehgious expression. And over the whole of the
world, you have various species of elevated buildings,
the Egyptian pyramid, the Indian and Chinese
pagoda, the Turkish minaret, and the Christian

42 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
belfry, — all of them raised either to make a show
from a distance, or to cry from, or swing bells in, or
hang them round, or for some other very human rea
son. Thus, when the good people of Beauvais were
building their cathedral, that of Amiens, then just
completed, had excited the admiration of all France,
and the people of Beauvais, in their jealousy and
determination to beat the people of Amiens, set to
work to build a tower to their own cathedral as high
as they possibly could. They built it so high that
it tumbled down, and they were never able to finish
their cathedral at all — it stands a wreck to this day.
But you will not, I should think, imagine this to
have been done in heavenward aspiration. Mind,
however, I don't blame the people of Beauvais, except
for their bad building. I think their desire to beat
the citizens of Amiens a most amiable weakness,
and only wish I could see the citizens of Edinburgh
and Glasgow inflamed with the same emulation,
building Gothic towers * instead of manufactory
•* I did not, at the time of the delivery of these lectures, know
how many Gothic towers the worthy Glaswegians have lately built :
that of St. Peter's, in particular, being a most meritorious effort.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 43
chimneys; only do not confound a feeling which,
though healthy and right, may be nearly analogous
to that in which you play a cricket-match, with any
feeling allied to your hope of heaven.
Such being the state of the case with respect to
tower-building in general, let me follow for a few
minutes the changes which occur in the towers of
northern and southern architects.
Many of us are familiar with the ordinary form of
the Italian bell-tower or campanile. From the eighth
century to the thirteenth there was httle change in
that form * : four-square, rising high and without
tapering into the air, story above story, they stood
like giants in the quiet fields beside the piles of the
basilica or the Lombardic church, in this form (fig.
9. Plate VI.), tiled at the top in a flat gable, with
open arches below, and fewer and fewer arches on
each inferior story, down to the bottom. It is worth
while noting the difference in form between these and
the towers built for military service. The latter were
* There is a good abstract of the forms of the Italian campanile,
by Mr. Papworth, in the Journal of the Archaeological Institute,
March 1850.

44 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
built as in Jig. 10. Plate VI., projecting vigorously
at the top over a series of brackets or machicolations,
with very small windows, and no decoration below.
Such towers as these were attached to every impor
tant palace in the cities of Italy, and stood in great
circles — troops of towers — around their external
walls: their ruins still frown along the crests of every
promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far
away in the great Lombardic plain, from distances of
half-a-day's journey, dark against the amber sky of
the horizon. These are of course now built no more,
the changed methods of modern warfare having cast
them into entire disuse ; but the belfry or campanile
has had a very different influence on European
architecture. Its form in the plains of Italy and
South France being that just shown you, the
moment we enter the valleys of the Alps, where
there is snow to be sustained, we find its form of
roof altered by the substitution of a steep gable
for a flat one.* There are probably few in the
* The form establishes itself afterwards in the plains, in sympathy
with other Gothic conditions, as in the campanile of St. Mark's at
Venice.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 45
room who have not been in some parts of South
Switzerland, and who do not remember the beautiful
effect of the grey mountain churches, many of them
hardly changed since the tenth and eleventh cen
turies, whose pointed towers stand up through the
green level of the vines, or crown the jutting rocks
that border the valley. From this form to the true
spire, the change is slight, and consists in little more
than various decoration, generally in putting small
pinnacles at the angles, and piercing the central
pyramid with traceried windows, sometimes, as at
Fribourg and Burgos, throwing it into tracery,
altogether: but to do this is invariably the sign of a
vicious style, as it takes away from the spire its cha
racter of a true roof, and turns it nearly into an orna
mental excrescence. At Antwerp and Brussels, the
celebrated towers (one, observe, ecclesiastical, being
the tower of the cathedral, and the other secular,)
are formed by successions of diminishing towers, set
one above the other, and each supported by but
tresses thrown to the angles of the one beneath.
At the English cathedrals of Lichfield and Salisbury,

46 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
the spire is seen in great purity, only decorated by
sculpture; but I am aware of no example so striking
in its entire simplicity as that of the towers of
the cathedral of Coutances in Normandy. There is
a dispute between French and English antiquaries as
to the date of the building, the English being un
willing to admit its complete priority to all their
own Gothic. I have no doubt of this priority my
self; and I hope that the time will soon come when
men will cease to confound vanity with patriotism,
and will think the honour of their nation more
advanced by sincerity and courtesy, than by
claims, however learnedly contested, to the in
vention of pinnacles and arches. I believe the
French nation was, in the 12th and 13th centuries,
the greatest in the world; and that the French
not only invented Gothic architecture, but carried
it to a perfection which no other nation has ap
proached, then or since: but, however this may be,
there can be no doubt that the towers of Coutances,
if not the earliest, are among the very earliest, ex
amples of the fully developed spire. I have drawn

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 47
one of them carefully for you (Jig. 11. Plate VII.),
and you will see immediately that they are literally
domestic roofs, with garret windows, executed on a
large scale, and in stone. Their only ornament is a
kind of scaly mail, which is nothing more than the
copying in stone of the common wooden shingles of
the house-roof; and their security is provided for by
strong gabled dormer windows, of massy masonry,
which, though supported on detached shafts, have
weight enough completely to balance the lateral
thrusts of the spires. Nothing can surpass the bold
ness or the simplicity of the plan; and yet, in spite
of this simplicity, the clear detaching of the shafts
from the slope of the spire, and their great height,
strengthened by rude cross-bars of stone, carried
back to the wall behind, occasion so great a com
plexity and play of cast shadows, that I remember
no architectural composition of which the aspect is
so completely varied at different hours of the day.*
But the main thing I wish you to observe is, the
* The sketch was made about 10 o'clock on a September
morning.

48 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
complete domesticity of the work; the evident treat
ment of the church spire merely as a magnified
house-roof; and the proof herein of the great truth
of which I have been endeavouring to persuade you,
that all good architecture rises out of good and
simple domestic work; and that, therefore, before
you attempt to build great churches and palaces,
you must build good house doors and garret windows.
Nor is the spire the only ecclesiastical form deducible
from domestic architecture. The spires of France
and Germany are associated with other towers, even
simpler and more straightforward in confession of
their nature, in which, though the walls of the tower
are covered with sculpture, there is an ordinary
ridged gable roof on the top. The finest example
I know of this kind of tower, is that on the north
west angle of Rouen Cathedral {fig. 12. Plate VII.);
but they occur in multitudes in the older towns of
Germany ; and the backgrounds of Albert Durer are
full of them, and owe to them a great part of their
interest: all these great and magnificent masses of
architecture being repeated on a smaller scale by

Lect. 1.] AND PAINTING. 49
the little turret roofs and pinnacles of every house
in the town ; and the whole system of them being
expressive, not by any means of religious feeling*, but
* Among the various modes in which the architects, against
whose practice my writings are directed, have endeavoured to
oppose them, no charge has been made more frequently than that
of their self-contradiction ; the fact being, that there are few people
in the world who are capable of seeing the two sides of any subject,
or of conceiving how the statements of its opposite aspects can
possibly be reconcileable. Por instance, in a recent review, though
for the most part both fan: and intelligent, it is remarked, on this
very subject of the domestic origin of the northern Gothic, that
"Mr. Ruskin is evidently possessed by a fixed idea, that the
Venetian architects were devout men, and that their devotion was
expressed in their buildings ; while he will not allow our own
cathedrals to have been built by any but worldly men, who had no
thoughts of heaven, but only vague ideas of keeping out of hell, by
erecting costly places of worship." If this writer had compared
the two passages with the care which such a subject necessarily
demands, he would have found that I was not opposing Venetian
to Enghsh piety ; but that in the one case I was speaking of the
spirit manifested in the entire architecture of the nation, and in the
other of occasional efforts' of superstition as distinguished from
that spirit ; and, farther, that in the one case, I was speaking of
decorative features, which are ordinarily the results of feeling, in
the other of structural features, which are ordinarily the results of
necessity or convenience. Thus it is rational and just that we should
attribute the decoration of the arches of St. Mark's with scriptural
mosaics to a religious sentiment ; but it would be a strange absurdity
to regard as an effort of piety the invention of the form of the arch
itself, of which one of the earliest and most perfect instances is in
the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the case of spires and towers, it
is just to ascribe to the devotion of their designers that dignity
E

50 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
merely of joyfulness and exhilaration of spirit in the
inhabitants of such cities, leading them to throw
their roofs high into the sky, and therefore giving to
the style of architecture with which these grotesque
roofs are associated, a certain charm like that of
cheerfulness in a human face; besides a power of
interesting the beholder which is testified, not only
by the artist in his constant search after such forms
as the elements of his landscape, but by every phrase
of our language and literature bearing on such topics.
Have not these words, Pinnacle, Turret, Belfry,
Spire, Tower, a pleasant sound in all your ears ? I
do not speak of your scenery, I do not ask you how
much you feel that it owes to the grey battlements
that frown through the woods of Craig Millar, to
the pointed turrets that flank the front of Holyrood,
or to the massy keeps of your Crichtoun and
Borthwick and other border towers. But look merely
through your poetry and romances; take away out
which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic
buildings ; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of
religious feeling, or height of religious aspiration, to those who
furnished the funds for the erection of the loveliest tower in North
Prance, by paying for permission to eat butter in Lent.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 51
of your border ballads the word tower wherever it
occurs, and the ideas connected with it, and what
will become of the ballads? See how Sir Walter
Scott cannot even get through a description of
Highland scenery without help from the idea : —
" Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire."
Take away from Scott's romances the word and idea
turret, and see how much you would lose. Suppose,
for instance, when young Osbaldistone is leaving
Osbaldistone Hall, instead of saying " The old clock
struck two from a turret adjoining my bedchamber,"
he had said, " The old clock struck two from the
landing at the top of the stair," what would become
of the passage? And can you really suppose that
what has so much power over you in words has no
power over you in reality ? Do you think there is
any group of words which would thus interest you,
when the things expressed by them are uninterest
ing ? For instance, you know that, for an immense
time back, all your pubhc buildings have been built
with a row of pillars supporting a triangular thing
called a pediment. You see this form every day in
E 2

52 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
your banks and clubhouses, and churches and chapels ;
you are told that it is the perfection of architectural
beauty ; and yet suppose Sir Walter Scott, instead of
writing, " Each purple peak, each flinty spire," had
written, "Each purple peak, each flinty 'pediment.'"*
Would you have thought the poem improved ? And
if not, why would it be spoiled ? Simply because the
idea is no longer of any value to you; the thing spoken
of is a nonentity. These pediments, and stylobates, and
architraves never excited a single pleasurable feeling
in you — never will, to the end of time. They are
evermore dead, lifeless, and useless, in art as in
poetry, and though you built as many of them as
* It has been objected to this comparison that the form of the
pediment does not properly represent that of the rocks of the Tro-
sachs. The objection is utterly futile, for there is not a single spire
or pinnacle from one end of the Trosachs to the other. All their
rocks are heavily rounded, and the introduction of the word "spire"
is apiece of inaccuracy, in description, ventured merely for the sake of
the Gothic image. Parther: it has been said that if I had substituted
the word "gable," it would have spoiled the line just as much as
the word " pediment," though " gable " is a Gothic word. Of course
it would ; but why? Because "gable" is a term of vulgar domes
tic architecture, and therefore destructive of the tone of the heroic
description ; whereas " pediment " and " spire " are precisely corre
lative terms, being each the crowning feature in ecclesiastical
edifices, and the comparison of their effects in the verse is therefore
absolutely accurate, logical, and just.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 53
there are slates on your house-roofs, you will never
care for them. They will only remain to later ages as
monuments of the patience and pliability with which
the people of the 19th century sacrificed their feel
ings to fashions, and their intellects to forms. But on
the other hand, that strange and thrilling interest
with which such words strike you as are in any
wise connected with Gothic architecture — as for
instance, Vault, Arch, Spire, Pinnacle, Battlement,
Barbican, Porch, and myriads of such others, words
everlastingly poetical and powerful whenever they
occur, — is a most true and certain index that the
things themselves are dehghtful to you, and will
ever continue to be so. Believe me, you do indeed
love these things, so far as you care about art at all,
so far as you are not ashamed to confess what you
feel about them. In your public capacities, as bank
directors, and charity overseers, and administrators
of this and that other undertaking or institution,
you cannot express your feelings at all. You form
committees to decide upon the style of the new
building, and as you have never been in the habit of
E 3

54 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
trusting to your own taste in such matters, you
inquire who is the most celebrated, that is to say,
the most employed, architect of the day. And you
send for the great Mr. Blank, and the Great Blank
sends you a plan of a great long marble box with
half-a-dozen pillars at one end of it, and the same at
the other ; and you look at the Great Blank's great
plan in a grave manner, and you daresay it will be
very handsome ; and you ask the Great Blank what
sort of a blank cheque must be filled up before the
great plan can be realised ; and you subscribe in a
generous " burst of confidence " whatever is wanted ;
and when it is all done, and the great white marble
box is set up in your streets, you contemplate it, not
knowing what to make of it exactly, but hoping it is
all right ; and then there is a dinner given to the
Great Blank, and the morning Papers say that the
new and handsome building, erected by the great
Mr. Blank, is one of Mr. Blank's happiest efforts,
and reflects the greatest credit upon the intelligent
inhabitants of the city of so and so ; and the building
keeps the rain out as well as another, and you remain

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 55
in a placid state of impoverished satisfaction there
with ; but as for having any real pleasure out of it,
you never hoped for such a thing. If you really
make up a party of pleasure, and get rid of the forms
and fashion of public propriety for an hour or two,
where do you go for it ? Where do you go to eat
strawberries and cream ? To Roslin Chapel, I be
lieve ; not to the portico of the last-built institution.
What do you see your children doing, obeying their
own natural and true instincts ? What are your
daughters drawing upon their card-board screens as
soon as they can use a pencil? Not Parthenon fronts
I think, but the ruins of Melrose Abbey, or Linlith
gow Palace, or Lochleven Castle, their own pure
Scotch hearts leading them straight to the right
things, in spite of all that they are told to the
contrary. You perhaps call this romantic, and
youthful, and foolish. I am pressed for time now,
and I cannot ask you to consider the meaning
of the word "Romance." I will do that, if you
please, in next lecture, for it is a word of greater
weight and authority than we commonly believe. In
E 4

56 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
the meantime, I will endeavour, lastly, to show you,
not the romantic, but the plain and practical
conclusions which should follow from the facts I
have laid before you.
I have endeavoured briefly to point out to you the
propriety and naturalness of the two great Gothic
forms, the pointed arch and gable roof. I wish now
to tell you in what way they ought to be introduced
into modern domestic architecture.
You will all admit that there is neither romance
nor comfort in waiting at your own or at any one
else's door on a windy and rainy day, till the servant
comes from the end pf the house to open it. You
all know the critical nature of that opening- — the
drift of wind into the passage, the impossibility, of
putting down the umbrella at the proper moment
without getting a cupful of water dropped down
the back of your neck from the top of the doorway ;
and you know how little these inconveniences are
abated by the common Greek portico at the top of
the steps. You know how the east winds blow
through those unlucky couples of pillars, which are

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 57
all that your architects find consistent with due
observance of the Doric order. Then, away with
these absurdities; and the next house you build,
insist upon having the pure old Gothic porch, walled
in on both sides, with its pointed arch entrance and
gable roof above. Under that, you can put down
your umbrella at your leisure, and, if you will, stop a
moment to talk with your friend as you give him
the parting shake of the hand. And if now and then
a wayfarer found a moment's rest on a stone seat on
each side of it, I believe you would find the insides
of your houses not one whit the less comfortable ; and,
if you answer me, that were such refuges built in
the open streets, they would become mere nests of
filthy vagrants, I reply that I do not despair of such a
change in the administration of the poor laws of this
country, as shall no longer leave any of our fellow-
creatures in a state in which they would pollute the
steps of our houses by resting upon them for a night.
But if not, the command to all of us is strict and
straight, "When, thou seest the naked, that thou
cover him, and that thou bring the poor that are cast

58 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
out to thy house." * Not to the workhouse, observe,
but to thy house : and I say it would be better a
thousand-fold, that our doors should be beset by the
poor day by day, than that it should be written of any
one of us, "They reap every one his corn in the
field, and they gather the vintage of the wicked.
They cause the naked to lodge without shelter, that
they have no covering in the cold. They are wet
with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the
rock, for want of a shelter." f
This, then, is the first use to which your pointed
arches and gable roofs are to be put. The second is
of more personal pleasureableness. You surely must
all of you feel and admit the delightfulness of a bow
window ; I can hardly fancy a room can be perfect
without one. Now you have nothing to do but to
resolve that every one of your principal rooms shall
have a bow window, either large or small. Sustain the
projection of it on a bracket, crown it above with a
little peaked roof, and give a massy piece of stone
sculpture to the pointed arch in each of its casements,
* Isai. lviii. 7. f Job, xxiv. 6—8.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 59
and you will have as inexhaustible a source of quaint
richness in your street architecture, as of additional
comfort and delight in the interiors of your rooms.
Thirdly ; as respects windows which do not pro
ject. You will find that the proposal to build them
with pointed arches is met by an objection on the
part of your architects, that you cannot fit them with
comfortable sashes. I beg leave to tell you that such
an objection is utterly futile and ridiculous. I have
lived for months in Gothic palaces, with pointed
windows of the most complicated forms, fitted with
modern sashes ; and with the most perfect comfort.
But granting that the objection were a true one — and
I suppose it is true to just this extent, that it may
cost some few shillings more per window in the first
instance to set the fittings to a pointed arch than to a
square one — there is not the smallest necessity for the
aperture of the window being of the pointed shape.
Make the uppermost or bearing arch pointed only,
and make the top of the window square, filling
the interval with a stone shield, and you may have a
perfect school of architecture, not only consistent

60 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
with, but eminently conducive to, every comfort of
your daily life. The window in Oakham Castle
(Jig. 2. Plate II.) is an example of such a form as
actually employed in the 13th century; and I shall
have to notice another in the course of next lecture.
Meanwhile, I have but one word to say in conclu
sion. Whatever has been advanced in the course of
this evening, has rested on the assumption that all
architecture was to be of brick and stone; and
may meet with some hesitation in its acceptance,
on account of the probable use of iron, glass, and
such other materials in our future edifices. I cannot
now enter into any statement of the possible uses
of iron or glass, but I will give you one reason,
which I think will weigh strongly with most here,
why it is not likely that they will ever become
important elements in architectural effect. I know
that I am speaking to a company of philosophers,
but you are not philosophers of the kind who suppose
that the Bible is a superannuated book ; neither are
you of those who think the Bible is dishonoured by
being referred to for judgment in small matters. The

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 61
very divinity of the Book seems to me, on the con
trary, to justify us in referring every thing to it,
with respect to which any conclusion can be gathered
from its pages. Assuming then that the Bible is
neither superannuated now, nor ever likely to be so,
it will follow that the illustrations which the Bible
employs are likely to be clear and intelligible illustra
tions to the end of time. I do not mean that every
thing spoken of in the Bible histories must continue
to endure for all time, but that the things which the
Bible uses for illustration of eternal truths are
likely to remain eternally intelligible illustrations.
Now, I find that iron architecture is indeed spoken
of in the Bible. You know how it is said to
Jeremiah, "Behold, I have made thee this day a
defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls,
against the whole land." But I do not find that
iron building is ever alluded to as likely to be
come familiar to the minds of men; but, on' the
contrary, that an architecture of earved stone is
continually employed as a source of the most import
ant illustrations. A simple instance must occur to

62 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
all of you at once. The force of the image of the
Corner Stone, as used throughout Scripture, would
completely be lost, if the Christian and civilised
world were ever extensively to employ any other
material than earth and rock in their domestic
buildings : I firmly believe that they never will ;
but that as the laws of beauty are more perfectly
established, we shall be content still to build as our
forefathers built, and still to receive the same great
lessons which such building is calculated to convey ;
of which one is indeed never to be forgotten,
Among the questions respecting towers which were
laid before you to-night, one has been omitted:
" What man is there of you intending to build a
tower, that sitteth not down first and counteth the
cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?" I
have pressed upon you, this evening, the building
of domestic towers. You may think it right to
dismiss the subject at once from your thoughts ;
but let us not do so, without considering, each of
us, how far that tower has been built, and how
truly its cost has been counted.

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 63

LECTURE II.
Before proceeding to the principal subject of this
evening, I wish to anticipate one or two objections
which may arise in your minds to what I must lay
before you. It may perhaps have been felt by you
last evening, that some things I proposed to you
were either romantic or Utopian. Let us think for
a few moments what romance and Utopianism mean.
First, romance. In consequence of the many
absurd fictions which long formed the elements of
romance writing, the word romance is sometimes
taken as synonymous with falsehood. Thus the
French talk of Des Romans, and thus the Enghsh
use the word Romancing.
But in this sense we had much better use the
word falsehood at once. It is far plainer and clearer.
And if in this sense I put anything romantic before
you, pray pay no attention to it, or to me.

64 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
In the second place. Because young people are
particularly apt to induge in reverie, and imagi
native pleasures, and to neglect their plain and
practical duties, the word romantic has come to
signify weak, foolish, speculative, unpractical, un
principled. In all these cases it would be much
better to say weak, foolish, unpractical, unprincipled.
The words are clearer. If in this sense, also, I put
anything romantic before you, pray pay no attention
to me.
But in the third and last place. The real and
proper use of the word romantic is simply to cha
racterise an improbable or unaccustomed degree of
beauty, sublimity, or virtue. For instance, in
matters of history, is not the Retreat of the Ten
Thousand romantic ? Is not the death of Leonidas ?
of the Horatii ? On the oth'er hand, you find nothing
romantic, though much that is monstrous, in the
excesses of Tiberius or Commodus. So again, the
battle of Agincourt is romantic, and of Bannock-
burn, simply because there was an extraordinary
display of human virtue in both those battles.

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 65
But there is no romance in the battles of the last
ItaHan campaign, in which mere feebleness and
distrust were on one side, mere physical force on
the other. And even in fiction, the opponents of
virtue, in order to be romantic, must have sub
limity mingled with their vice. It is not the knave,
not the ruffian, that are romantic, but the giant
and the dragon; and these, not because they are
false, but because they are majestic. So again as
to beauty. You feel that armour is romantic, be
cause it is a beautiful dress, and you are not used
to it. You do not feel there is anything romantic
in the paint and shells of a Sandwich Islander,
for these are not beautiful.
So, then, observe, this feeling which you are ac
customed to despise — this secret and poetical enthu
siasm in all your hearts, which, as practical men, you
try to restrain — is indeed one of the holiest parts of
your being. It is the instinctive dehght in, and
admiration for, sublimity, beauty, and virtue, un
usually manifested. And so far from being a dan
gerous guide, it is the truest part of your being.
F

66 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IL
It is even truer than you consciences. A man's
conscience may be utterly perverted and led astray;
but so long as the feelings of romance endure within
us, they are unerring, — they are as true to what is
right and lovely as the needle to the north ; and all
that you have to do is to add to the enthusiastic sen
timent, the majestic judgment — to mingle prudence
and foresight with imagination and admiration, and
you have the perfect human soul. But the great
evil of these days is that we try to destroy the
romantic feeling, instead of bridling and directing it.
Mark what Young says of the men of the world.
" They, who think nought so strong of the romance,
So rank knight-errant, aB a real friend."
And they are right. True friendship is romantic,
to the men of the world — true affection is romantic
— true religion is romantic; and if you were to
ask me who of all powerful and popular writers
in the cause of error have wrought most harm to
their race, I should hesitate in reply whether to
name Voltaire, or Byron, or the last most ingenious
and most venomous of the degraded philosophers of

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 67
Germany, or rather Cervantes, for he cast scorn
upon the holiest principles of humanity — he, of all
men, most helped forward the terrible change in the
soldiers of Europe, from the spirit of Bayard to the
spirit of Bonaparte*, helped to change loyalty into
license, protection into plunder, truth into treachery,
chivalry into selfishness ;. and, since his time, the
purest impulses and the noblest purposes have per
haps been oftener stayed by the devil, under the
name of Quixotism, than under any other base name
or false allegation.
Quixotism, or Utopianism : that is another of the
devil's pet words. I believe the quiet admission
which we are all of us so ready to make, that, because
things have long been wrong, it is impossible they
should ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources
of misery and crime from which this world suffers.
Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from
attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection
* I mean no scandal against the present emperor of the French,
whose truth has, I believe, been as conspicuous in the late political
negotiations, as his decision and prudence have been throughout the
whole course of his government. p 2

68 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
is " Utopian," beware of that man. Cast the word
out of your dictionary altogether. There is no need
for it. Things are either possible or impossible —
you can easily determine which, in any given state of ¦
human science. If the thing is impossible, you need
not trouble yourselves about it ; if possible, try for it.
It is very Utopian to hope for the entire doing away
with drunkenness and misery out of the Canongate ;
but the Utopianism is not our business — the work
is. It is Utopian to hope to give every child in this
kingdom the knowledge of God from its youth ; but
the Utopianism is not our business — the work is.
I have delayed you by the consideration of these
two words, only in the fear that they might be inac
curately apphed to the plans I am going to lay before
you; for though they were Utopian, and though
they were romantic, they might be none the worse
for that. ¦ But they are neither. Utopian they are
not ; for they are merely a proposal to do again what
has been done for hundreds of years by people whose
wealth and power were as nothing compared to ours;
— and romantic they are not, in the sense of self-

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 69
sacrificing or eminently virtuous, for they are merely
*he proposal to each of you that he should live in a
handsomer house than he does' at present, by sub
stituting a cheap .mode of ornamentation for a costly
one. You perhaps fancied that architectural beauty
was a very costly thing. Far from it. It is archi
tectural ugliness that is costly. In the modern
system of architecture, decoration is immoderately
expensive, because it is both wrongly placed and
wrongly finished. I say first, wrongly placed. Modern
architects decorate the tops of their buildings. Me
diaeval ones decorated the bottom.* That makes all
the difference between seeing the ornament and not
seeing it. If you bought some pictures to decorate
such a room as this, where would you put them?
On a level with the eye, I suppose, or nearly so ?
Not on a level with the chandelier ? If you were
determined to put them up there, round the cornice, it
would be better for you not to buy them at all. You
would merely throw your money away. And the
* For farther confirmation of this statement, see the Addenda at
the end of this Lecture. F 3

70 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
fact is, that your, money is being -thrown away con
tinually, by wholesale ; and while you are dissuaded,
on the ground of expense, from building beautiful
windows and beautiful doors, you are continually
made to pay for ornaments at the tops of your houses,
which, for all the use they are of, might as well be in
the moon. For instance, there is not, on the whole, a
more studied piece of domestic architecture in Edin
burgh than the street in which so many of your ex
cellent physicians live — Rutland Street. I do not
know if you have observed its architecture ; but if
you will look at it to-morrow, you will see that a
heavy and close balustrade is put all along the eaves
of the houses. Your physicians are not, I suppose,
in the habit of taking academic and meditative walks
on the roofs of their houses ; and, if not, this balus
trade is altogether useless, — nor merely useless, for
you will find it runs directly in front of all the garret
windows, thus interfering with their light, and block
ing out their view of the street. All that the
parapet is meant to do, is to give some finish to the
facades, and the inhabitants have thus been made to
pay a large sum for a piece of mere decoration.

Lect. IL] AND PAINTING. 71
Whether it does finish the facades satisfactorily, or
whether the physicians resident in the street, or their
patients, are in anywise edified by the succession of
pear-shaped knobs of stone on their house-tops, I
leave them to tell you, only do not fancy that the
design, whatever its success, is an economical one.
But this is a . very slight waste of money, com
pared to the constant habit of putting careful sculp
ture at the tops of houses. A temple of luxury has
just been built in London, for the army and navy club.
It cost 40,000/., exclusive of purchase of ground.
It has upon it an enormous quantity of sculpture,
representing the gentlemen of the navy as little
boys riding upon dolphins, and the gentlemen of
the army — I couldn't see as what — nor can any
body; for all this sculpture is put up at the top
of the house, where the gutter should be, under
the cornice. I know that this was a Greek way of
doing things. I can't help it : that does not make it
a wise one. Greeks might be willing to pay for
what they couldn't see, but Scotchmen and English
men shouldn't. F 4

72 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
Not that the Greeks threw their work away as
we do. As far as I know Greek buildings, their
ornamentation, though often bad, is always bold
enough and large enough to be visible in its
place. It is not putting ornament high that is
wrong; but it is cutting it too fine to be seen,
wherever it is. This is the great modern mistake :
you are actually at twice the cost which would pro
duce an impressive ornament, to produce a con
temptible one; you increase the price of your
buildings by one-half, in order to mince their deco
ration into invisibility. Walk through your streets,
and try to make out the ornaments on the upper
parts of your fine buildings — (there are none at
the bottoms of them.) Don't do it long, or you will
all come home with inflamed eyes, but you will soon
discover that you can see nothing but confusion in
ornaments that have cost you ten or twelve shiUings
a foot. Now the Gothic builders placed their decoration
on a precisely contrary principle, and on the only
rational principle. All their best and most delicate

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 73
work they put on the foundation of the building, close
to the spectator, and on the upper parts of the
walls they put ornaments large, bold, and capable
of being plainly seen at the necessary distance. A
single example will enable you to understand this
method of adaptation perfectly. The lower part of
the facade of the cathedral of Lyons, built either
late in the 13th or early in the 14th century, is
decorated with a series of niches, filled by statues
of considerable size, which are supported upon
pedestals within about eight feet of the ground.
In general, pedestals of this kind are supported on
some projecting portion of the basement; but at
Lyons, owing to other arrangements of the architec
ture into which I have no time to enter, they are
merely projecting tablets, or flat-bottomed brackets
of stone, projecting from the wall. Each bracket
is about a foot and a half square, and is shaped
thus (Jig. 13. Plate VIII.), showing to the spectator,
as he walks beneath, the flat bottom of each bracket,
quite in the shade, but within a couple of feet of the
eye, and lighted by the reflected light from the

74 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
pavement. The whole of the surface of the wall
round the great entrance is covered with bas-
relief, as a matter of course; but the architect
appears to have been jealous of the smallest space
which was well within the range of sight; and
the bottom of every bracket is decorated also — nor
that slightly, but decorated with no fewer than six
figures each, besides a Jlower border, in a space, as
I said, not quite a foot and a half square. The
shape of the field to be decorated being a kind of
quatrefoil, as shown in Jig. 13. Plate VIII., four
small figures are placed, one in each foil, and two
larger ones in the centre. I had only time, in pass
ing through the town, to make a drawing of one of
the angles of these pedestals ; that sketch I have
enlarged, in order that you may have some idea of
the character of the sculpture. Here is the enlarge
ment of it (fig. 15. Plate IX.). Now observe, this
is one of the angles of the bottom of a pedestal, not
two feet broad, on the outside of a Gothic building ;
it contains only one of the four little figures which
form those angles ; and it shows you the head only

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 75
of one of the larger figures in the centre. Yet
just observe how much design, how much wonderful
composition, there is in this mere fragment of a
building of the great times ; a fragment, literally no
larger than a school-boy could strike off in wanton
ness with a stick: and yet I cannot tell you how
much care has been spent, — not so much on the
execution, for it does not take much trouble to ex
ecute well on so small a scale — but on the design,
of this minute fragment. You see it is composed of
a branch of wild roses, which switches round at the
angle, embracing the minute figure of the bishop,
and terminates in a spray reaching nearly to the
head of the large figure. You will observe how
beautifully that figure is thus pointed to by the spray
of rose, and how all the leaves around it in the
same manner are subservient to the grace of its
action. Look, if I hide one line, or one rosebud,
how the whole is injured, and how much there is to
study in the detail of it. Look at this little dia
mond crown, with a lock of the hair escaping from
beneath it ; and at the beautiful way in which

76 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE. [Lect. II.
the tiny leaf at a, is set in the angle to prevent its
harshness; and having examined this well, consider
what a treasure of thought there is in a cathedral
front, a hundred feet wide, every inch of which is
wrought with sculpture like this ! And every front
of our thirteenth century cathedrals is inwrought
with sculpture of this quality ! And yet you quietly
allow yourselves to be told that the men who thus
wrought were barbarians, and that your architects
are wiser and better in covering your walls with
sculptures of this kind (Jig. 14. Plate VIII.).
Walk round your Edinburgh buildings, and look
at the height of your eye, what you will get from
them. Nothing but square-cut stone — square-cut
stone — a wilderness of square-cut stone for ever and
for ever; so that your houses look like prisons,
and truly are so; for the worst feature of Greek
architecture is, indeed, not its costliness, but its
tyranny. These square stones are not prisons of
the body, but graves of the soul ; for the very men
who could do sculpture like this of Lyons for you
are here ! still here, in your despised workmen : the

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 77
race has not degenerated, it is you who have bound
them down, and buried them beneath your Greek
stones. There would be a resurrection of them,
as of renewed souls, if you would only lift the
weight of these weary walls from off their hearts.*
But I am leaving the point immediately in ques
tion, which, you will remember, was the proper
adaptation of ornament to its distance from the eye.
I have given you one example of Gothic ornament,
meant to be seen close ; now let me give you one of
Gothic ornament intended to be seen far off. Here
(fig. 16. Plate X.) is a sketch of a niche at Amiens
Cathedral, some fifty or sixty feet high on the facade,
and seven or eight feet wide. Now observe, in the
ornament close to the eye, you have six figures and
a whole wreath of roses in the space of a foot and
a half square ; but in the ornament sixty feet from
the eye, you have now only ten or twelve large
leaves in a space of eight feet square! and note also
that now there is no attempt whatsoever at the re-
* This subject is farther pursued in the Addenda at the end of
this Lecture.

78 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE. [Lect. H,
finement of line and finish of edge which there
was in the other example. The sculptor knew,
that at the height of this niche, people would not
attend to the delicate lines, and that the broad
shadows would catch the eye instead. He has there
fore left, as you see, rude square edges to his niche,
and carved his leaves as massively and broadly
as possible; and yet, observe how dexterously
he has given you a sense of delicacy and minute
ness in the work, by mingling these small leaves
among the large ones. I made this sketch from
a photograph, and the spot in which these leaves
occurred was obscure ; I have, therefore, used those
of the Oxalis acetosella, of which the quaint form
is always interesting.
And you see by this example also what I meant
just now by saying, that our own ornament was not
only wrongly placed, but wrongly finished. The
very qualities which fit this leaf-decoration for due
effect upon the eye, are those which would conduce
to economy in its execution. A more expensive or
nament would be less effective; and it is the very

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 79
price we pay for finishing our decorations which
spoils our architecture. And the curious thing is, that
while you all appreciate, and that far too highly,
what is called " the bold style " in painting, you
cannot appreciate it in sculpture. You like a
hurried, broad, dashing manner of execution in a
watercolour drawing, though that may be seen as
near as you choose, and yet you refuse to admit the
nobleness of a bold, simple, and dashing stroke of
the chisel in work which is to be seen forty fathoms
off. Be assured that " handling " is as great a thing
in marble as in paint, and that the power of pro
ducing a masterly effect with few touches is as
essential in an architect as in a draughtsman, though
indeed that power is never perfectly attained except
by those who possess the power of giving the highest
finish when there is occasion.
But there is yet another and a weighter charge to
be brought against our Modern Pseudo-Greek orna
mentation. It is, first, wrongly placed ; secondly,
wrongly finished; and, thirdly, utterly without mean
ing. Observe in these two Gothic ornaments, and

80 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE. [Lect. II.
in every other ornament that ever was carved in the
great Gothic times, there is a definite aim at the
representation of some natural object. In Jig. 15.
Plate IX. you have an exquisite group of rose-stems,
with the flowers and buds; in Jig. 16. Plate X.,
various wild weeds, especially the Geranium pra-
tense; in every case you have an approximation to a
natural form, and an unceasing variety of suggestion.
But how much of nature have you in your Greek
buildings ? I will show you, taking for an example
the best you have lately built ; and, in doing so, I
trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have
any personal purpose, and that the architect of the
building in question will forgive me ; for it is just
because it is a good example of the style that I think
it more fair to use it for an example. If the building
were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair
instance ; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of
the institution on the mound, just in progress, I
shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment
to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault
that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 81
Now, according to the orthodox practice in modern
architecture, the most dehcate and minute pieces of
sculpture on that building are at the very top of it,
iust under its gutter. You cannot see them in a
dark day, and perhaps may never, to this hour, have
noticed them at all. But there they are : sixty-six
finished heads of lions, all exactly the same; and,
therefore, I suppose, executed on some noble Greek
type, too noble to allow any modest Modern to think
of improving upon it. But whether executed on a
Greek type or no, it is to be presumed that, as there
are sixty-six of them alike, and on so important a
building as that which is to contain your school of
design, and which is the principal example of the
Athenian style in modern Athens, there must be
something especially admirable in them, and deserv
ing your most attentive comtemplation. In order,
therefore, that you might have a fair opportunity of
estimating their beauty, I was desirous of getting a
sketch of a real lion's head to compare with them,
and Mr. Millais drew both the one and the other for
me. You have not, however, at present, a lion in
G

82 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
your zoological collection ; and it being, as you are
probably aware, the first principle of Pfe-Raphael-
itism, as well as essential to my object in the present
instance, that no drawing should be made except
from nature itself, I was obliged to be content with a
tiger's head ; which, however, will answer my purpose
just as well, in enabhng you to compare a piece of
true, faithful, and natural work with modern archi
tectural sculpture. Here, in the first place, is Mr.
Millais' drawing from the living beast (Jig. 17.
Frontispiece). I have not the least fear but that
you will at once acknowledge its truth and feel its
power. Prepare yourselves next for the Grecian
sublimity of the ideal beast, from the cornice of your
schools of design. Behold it (fig. 18. Frontispiece).
Now we call ourselves civilized and refined in
matters of art, but I assure you it is seldom that,
in the very basest and coarsest grotesques of the
inferior Gothic workmen, anything so contemptible
as this head can be ever found. They only sink into
such a failure accidentally, and in a single instance ;
and we, in our civilization, repeat this noble

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 83
piece of work threescore and six times over, as not
being able to invent anything else so good ! Do
not think Mr. Millais has caricatured it. It is drawn
with the strictest fidelity; photograph one of the
heads to-morrow, and you will find the photograph
tell you the same tale. Neither imagine that this is
an unusual example of modern work. Your banks
and public offices are covered with ideal lions' heads
in every direction, and you will find them all just as
bad as this. And, farther, note that the admission
of such barbarous types of sculpture is not merely
ridiculous ; it is seriously harmful to your powers of
perceiving truth or beauty of any kind or at any
time. Imagine the effect on the minds of your
children of having such representations of a lion's
head as this thrust upon them perpetually ; and con
sider what a different effect might be produced upon
them if, instead of this barren and insipid absurdity,
every boss on your buildings were, according to the
workman's best ability, a faithful rendering of the
form of some existing animal, so that all their walls
were so many pages of natural history. And, finally,
G 2

84 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
consider the difference, with respect of the mind of
the workman himself, between being kept all his
life carving, by sixties, and forties, and thirties, repe
titions of one false and futile model, — and being sent,
for every piece of work he had to execute, to make
a stern and faithful study from some living creature
of God.
And this last consideration enables me to press
this subject on you on far higher grounds than I
have done yet.
I have hitherto appealed only to your national
pride, or to your common sense ; but surely I should
treat a Scottish audience with indignity if I appealed
not finally to something higher than either of them,
— to their religious principles.
You know how often it is difficult to be wisely
charitable, to do good without multiplying the sources
of evil. You know that to give alms is nothing
unless you give thought also; and that therefore
it is written, not "blessed is he that feedeth the
poor," but, "blessed is he that considereth the
poor." And you know that a little thought and

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 85
a little kindness are often worth more than a g*eat
deal of money.
Now this charity of thought is not merely to be
exercised towards the poor; it is to be exercised
towards all men. There is assuredly no action of
our social Hfe, however unimportant, which, by
kindly thought may not be made to have a beneficial
influence upon others ; and it is impossible to spend
the smallest sum of money, for any not absolutely
necessary purpose, without a grave responsibility
attaching to the manner of spending it. The object
we ourselves covet may, indeed, be desirable and
harmless, so far as we are concerned, but the pro
viding us with it may, perhaps, be a very prejudicial
occupation to some one else. And then it becomes
instantly a moral question, whether we are to indulge
ourselves or not. Whatever we wish to buy, we
ought first to consider not only if the thing be fit
for us, but if the manufacture of it be a wholesome
and happy one ; and if, on the whole, the sum we
are going to spend will do as much good spent in
this way as it would if spent in any other way.
g 3

86 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
It may be said that we have not time to con
sider all this before we make a purchase. But no
time could be spent in a more important duty ; and
God never imposes a duty without giving the time to
do it. Let us, however, only acknowledge the prin
ciple ; — once make up your mind to allow the con
sideration of the effect oi your purchases to regulate
the kind of your purchase, and you will soon easily
find grounds enough to decide upon. The plea of
ignorance will never take away our responsibilities.
It is written, " If thou sayest, Behold we knew it
not ; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider
it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he
know it ? "
I could press this on you at length, but I hasten to
apply the principle to the subject of art. I will do
so broadly at first, and then come to architecture.
Enormous sums are spent annually by this country
in what is called patronage of art, but in what is for
the ihost part merely buying what strikes our
fancies. True and judicious patronage there is
indeed ; many a work of art is bought by those who

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 87
do not care for its possession, to assist the struggling
artist, or reheve the unsuccessful one. But for the
most part, I fear we are too much in the habit of
buying simply what we hke best, wholly irrespective
of any good to be done, either to the artist or to the
schools of the country. Now let us remember, that
every farthing we spend on objects of art has
influence over men's minds and spirits, far more than
over their bodies. By the purchase of every print
which hangs on your walls, of every cup out of
which you drink, and every table off which you eat
your bread, you are educating a mass of men in
one way or another. You are either employ
ing them healthily or unwholesomely ; you are
making them lead happy or unhappy lives ; you are
leading them to look at nature and to love her — to
think, to feel, to enjoy, — or you are blinding them
to nature, and keeping them bound, hke beasts of
burden, in mechanical and monotonous employments.
We shall all be asked one day, why we did not think
more of this.
Well but, you will say, how can we decide what
G 4

88 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
we ought to buy, but by our likings ? You would
not have us buy what we don't like ? No, but I
would have you thoroughly sure that there is an
absolute right and wrong in all art, and try to find
out the right, and Hke that; and, secondly, some
times to sacrifice a careless preference or fancy, to
what you know is for the goodof your fellow-creatures.
For instance, when you spend a guinea upon an
engraving, what have you done ? You have paid a
man for a certain number of hours to sit at a dirty
table, in a dirty room, inhahng the fumes of nitric
acid, stooping over a steel plate, on which, by the
help of a magnifying glass, he is, one by one,
laboriously cutting out certain notches and scratches,
of which the effect is to be the copy of another man's
work. You cannot suppose you have done a very
charitable thing in this ! On the other hand, when
ever you buy a small watercolour drawing, you have
employed a man happily and healthily, working in a
clean room (if he likes), or more probably still,
out in the pure country and fresh air, thinking
about something, and learning something every

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 89
moment; not straining his eyesight, nor breaking
his back, but working in ease and happiness.
Therefore if you can like a modest watercolour
better than an elaborate engraving, do. There may
indeed be engravings which are worth the suffering
it costs to produce them; but at all events, en
gravings of public dinners and laying of foundation
stones, and such things, might be dispensed with.
The engraving ought to be a first-rate picture of a
first-rate subject to be worth buying. Farther, I
know that many conscientious persons are desirous of
encouraging art, but feel at the same time that their
judgment is not certain enough to secure their choice
of the best kind of art. To such persons I would
now especially address myself, fully admitting the
greatness of their difficulty. It is not an easy thing
to acquire a knowledge of painting ; and it is by no
means a desirable thing to encourage bad painting.
One bad painter makes another, and one bad painting
will often spoil a great many healthy judgments. I
could name popular painters now living, who have
retarded the taste of their generation by twenty

90 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
years. Unless, therefore, we are certain not merely
that we like a painting, but that we are right in
liking it, we should never buy it. For there is one
way of spending money which is perfectly safe, and
in which we may be absolutely sure of doing good.
I mean, by paying for simple sculpture of natural
objects, chiefly flowers and animals. You are aware
that the possibilities of error in sculpture are much
less than in painting ; it is altogether an easier and
simpler art, invariably attaining perfection long
before painting, in the progress of a national mind. It
may indeed be corrupted by false taste, or thrown into
erroneous forms ; but for the most part, the feebleness
of a sculptor is shown in imperfection and rudeness,
rather than in definite error. He does not reach the
fineness of the forms of nature ; but he approaches
them truly up to a certain point, or, if not so, at all
events an honest effort will continually improve him :
so that if we set a simple natural form before him,
and tell him to copy it, we are sure we have given
him a wholesome and useful piece of education ; but
if we told him to paint it, he might, with all the

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 91
honesty in the world, paint it wrongly and falsely, to
the end of his days.
So much for the workman. But the workman is
not the only person concerned. Observe farther, that
When you buy a print, the enjoyment of it is confined
to yourself and to your friends. But if you carve a
piece of stone, and put it on the outside of your
house, it will give pleasure to every person who
passes along the street — to an innumerable multi
tude, instead of a few.
Nay but, you say, we ourselves shall not be bene
fited by the sculpture on the outsides of our houses.
Yes, you will, and in an extraordinary degree ; for,
observe farther, the architecture differs from paint
ing peculiarly in being an art of accumulation. The
prints bought by your friends, and hung up in their
houses, have no collateral effect with' yours : they
must be separately examined, and if ever they were
hung side by side, they would rather injure than
assist each other's effect. But the sculpture on your
friend's house unites in effect with that on your own.
The two houses form one grand mass — far grander

92 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
than either separately ; much more if a third be
added — and a fourth ; much more if the whole street
— if the whole city — join in the solemn harmony of
sculpture. Your separate possessions of pictures and
prints are to you as if you sang pieces of music with
your single voices in your own houses. But your
architecture would be as if you all sang together in
one mighty choir. In the separate picture, it is rare
that there exists any very high source of sublime
emotion ; but the great concerted music of the streets
of the city, when turret rises over turret, and case
ment frowns beyond casement, and tower succeeds to
tower along the farthest ridges of the inhabited hills,
— this is a sublimity of which you can at present
form no conception ; and capable, I believe, of ex
citing almost the deepest emotion, that art can ever
strike from the bosoms of men.
And justly the deepest : for it is a law of God and
of nature, that your pleasures — as your virtues —
shall be enhanced by mutual aid. As, by joining
hand in hand, you can sustain each other best, so,
hand in hand, you can dehght each other best. And

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 93
there is indeed a charm and sacredness in street
architecture which must be wanting even to that of
the temple : it is a little thing for men to unite in
the forms of a rehgious service, but it is much for
them to unite, like true brethren, in the arts and
offices of their daily lives.
And now, I can conceive only of one objection as
likely still to arise in your minds, which I must
briefly meet. Your pictures, and other smaller
works of art, you can carry with you, wherever
you hve; your house must be left behind. In
deed, I believe that the wandering habits which
have now become almost necessary to our exist
ence, lie more at the root of our bad architecture
than any other character of modern times. We
always look upon our houses as mere temporary
lodgings. We are always hoping to get larger and
finer ones, or are forced, in some way or other,
to hve where we do not choose, and in continual
expectation of changing our place of abode. In the
present state of society, this is in a great measure
unavoidable; but let us remember it is an evil; and

94 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
that so far as it is avoidable, it becomes' our duty
to check the impulse. It is not for me to lead
you at present into any consideration of a matter
so closely touching your private interests and
feelings ; but it surely is a subject for serious
thought, whether it might not be better for many of
us, if, on attaining a certain position in life, we de
termined, with God's permission, to choose a home
in which to live and die, — a home not to be in-
creased by adding stone to stone and field to field,
but which, being enough for all our wishes at that
period, we should resolve to be satisfied with for
ever. Consider this; and also, whether we ought
not to be more in the habit of seeking honour from
our descendants than our ancestors ; thinking it
better to be nobly remembered than nobly born ;
and striving so to live, that our sons, and our sons'
sons, for ages to come, might still lead their children
reverently to the doors out of which we had been
carried to the grave, saying, "Look: This was his
house : This was his chamber."'
I believe that you can bring forward no other

Lect. IL] AND PAINTING. 95
serious objection to the principles for which I am
pleading. They are so simple, and, it seems to
me, so incontrovertible, that I trust you will not
leave this room without determining, as you have
opportunity, to do something to advance this long-
neglected art of domestic architecture. The reasons
I have laid before you would have weight, even were
I to ask you to go to some considerable expen
diture beyond what you at present are accustomed to
devote to such purposes ; but nothing more would be
needed than the diversion of expenditures, at present
scattered and unconsidered, into a single and effective
channel. Nay, the mere interest of the money
which we are accustomed to keep dormant by us in
the form of plate and jeweUery, would alone be
enough to sustain a school of magnificent architec
ture. And although, in highly wrought plate, and
in finely designed jeweUery, noble art may occa
sionaUy exist, yet in general both jewels and services
of sUver are matters of ostentation, much more than
sources of inteUectual pleasure. There are also
many evils connected with them — they are a care to

96 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
their possessors, a temptation to the dishonest, and
a trouble and bitterness to the poor. So that I
cannot but think that part of the wealth which now
lies buried in these doubtful luxuries, might most
wisely and kindly be thrown into a form which would
give perpetual pleasure, not to its possessor only, but
to thousands besides, and neither tempt the unprin
cipled, nor inflame the envious, nor mortify the poor ;
whue, supposing that your own dignity was dear to
you, this, you may rely upon it, would be more
impressed upon others by the nobleness of your
house-walls than by the glistening of your side
boards. And even supposing that some additional expendi
ture were required for this purpose, are we indeed so
much poorer than our ancestors, that we cannot now,
in all the power of Britain, afford to do what was
done by every small republic, by every independent
city, in the middle ages, throughout France, Italy,
and Germany? I am not aware of a vestige of
domestic architecture, belonging to the great
medieval periods, which, according to its material

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 97
and character, is not richly decorated. But look
here (Jig. 19. Plate XII.), look to what an extent
decoration has been carried in the domestic edifices
of a city, I suppose not much superior in importance,
commerciaUy speaking, to Manchester, Liverpool, or
Birmingham — namely, Rouen, in Normandy. This
is a garret window, stiU existing there, — a garret
window built by WiUiam de Bourgtheroude in the
early part of the 16th century. I show it you, first,
as a proof of what may be made of the features of
domestic buUdings we are apt to disdain ; and
secondly, as another example of a beautiful use of
the pointed arch, fined by the sohd shield of stone,
and enclosing a square casement. It is indeed,, a pe
culiarly rich and beautiful instance, but it is a type
of which many examples still exist in France, and of
which many once existed in your own Scotland, of
ruder work indeed, but admirable always in effect
upon the outline of the building.*

* One of the most beautiful instances I know of this kind of
window is in the ancient house of the Maxwells, on the estate of
Sir John Maxwell of Polloc. I had not seen it when I gave this

98 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
I do not, however, hope that you wiU often be able
to go as far as this in decoration; in fact I would
rather recommend a simpler style to you, founded on
earlier examples ; but, if possible, aided by colour, in
troduced in various kinds of naturaUy coloured stones.
I have observed that your Scottish lapidaries have
admirable taste and skill in the disposition of the
pebbles of your brooches and other ornaments of
dress ; and I have not the least doubt that the genius
of your country would, if directed to this particular
style of architecture, produce works as beautiful as
they would be thoroughly national. The Gothic
of Florence, which owes at least the half of its
beauty to the art of inlaying, would furnish you
with exquisite examples ; its sculpture is indeed the
most perfect which was ever produced by the Gothic
schools ; but, besides this rich sculpture, aU its flat
surfaces are inlaid with coloured stones, much
being done with a green serpentine, which forms
the greater part of the coast of Genoa. You have,
lecture, or I should have preferred it, as an example, to that of
Rouen, with reference to modern possibilities of imitation.

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 99
I believe, large beds of this rock in Scotland, and
other stones besides, peculiarly Scottish, calculated
to form as noble a school of colour as ever existed.*
And, now, I have but two things more to say to
you in conclusion.
Most of the lecturers whom you aUow to address
you, lay before you views of the sciences they pro
fess, which are either generaUy received, or incontro
vertible. I come before you at a disadvantage ; for
I cannot conscientiously teU you anything about
architecture but what is at variance with aU com
monly received views upon the subject. I come
before you, professedly to speak of things forgotten or
things disputed ; and I lay before you, not accepted
principles, but questions at issue. Of those ques
tions you are to be the judges, and to you I appeal.
You must not, when you leave this room, if you feel
doubtful of the truth of what I have said, refer your
selves to some architect of estabhshed reputation, and
* A series of four examples of designs for windows was ex
hibited at this point of the lecture, but I have not engraved them,
as they were hastily made for the purposes of momentary illus
tration, and are not such as I choose to publish or perpetuate.
H 2

100 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
ask him whether I am right or not. You might as
weU, had you lived in the 16th century, have asked
a Roman Cathohc archbishop his opinion of the first
reformer. I deny his jurisdiction ; I refuse his deci
sion. I caU upon you to be Bereans in architecture,
as you are in religion, and to search into these things
for yourselves. Remember that, however candid a
man may be, it is too much to expect of him, when
his career in hfe has been successful, to turn sud*
denly on the highway, and to declare that all he has
learned has been false, and all he has done, worthless ;
yet nothing less than such a declaration as this must
be made by nearly every existing architect, before he
admitted the truth of one word that I have said to
you this evening. You must be prepared, therefore,
to hear my opinions attacked with all the virulence
of established interest, and aU the pertinacity of con
firmed prejudice ; you wUl hear them made the sub
jects of every species of satire and invective ; but
one kind of opposition to them you will never hear ;
you wiU never hear them met by quiet, steady, ra
tional argument; for that is the one way in which

Lect. II. ] AND PAINTING. 101
they cannot be met. You will constantly hear me
accused — you yourselves may be the first to accuse
me — of presumption in speaking thus confidently
against the established authority of ages. Presump
tion ! Yes, if I had spoken on my own authority ;
but I have appealed to two incontrovertible and
irrefragable witnesses, — to the nature that is around
you — to the reason that is within you. And if
you are willing -in this matter to take the voice of
authority against that of nature and of reason, take
it in other things also. Take it in religion, as you
do in architecture. It is not by a Scottish audience,
— not by the descendants of the Reformer and the
Covenanter — that I expected to be met with
a refusal to believe that the world might possibly
have been wrong for three hundred years, in its
ways of carving stones and setting up of piUars,
when they know that it was wrong for twelve
hundred years, in its marking how the roads di
vided, that led to HeU and Heaven.
You must expect at first that there wiU be diffi
culties and inconsistencies in carrying out the new
H 3

102 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
style ; but they will soon be conquered if you
attempt not too much at once. Do not be afraid of
incongruities, — do not think of unities of effect. In
troduce your Gothic line by line and stone by stone :
never mind mixing it with your present architec
ture; your existing houses wiU be none the worse
for having little bits of better work fitted to them ;
build a porch, or point a window, if you can do
nothing else ; and remember that it is the glory of
Gothic architecture that it can do anything. What
ever you really and seriously want, Gothic will
do for you; but it must be an earnest want. It
is its pride to accommodate itself to your needs;
and the one general law under which it acts is
simply this, — find out what wUl make you com
fortable, build that in the strongest and boldest way,
and then set your fancy free in the decoration of it.
Don't do anything to imitate this cathedral or that,
however beautiful. Do what is convenient ; and if
the form be a new one, so much the better ; then set
your mason's wits to work, to find out some new way
of treating it. Only be steadily determined that,

Lect. II.] AND PAINTING. 103
even if you cannot get the best Gothic, at least you
wiU have no Greek ; and in a few years' time, — in
less time than you could learn a new science or a
new language thoroughly, — the whole art of your
native country wiU be reanimated.
And, now, lastly. When this shall be accom
plished, do not think it will make little difference to
you, and that you wUl be little the happier, or little
the better for it. You have at present no concep
tion, and can have none, how much you would enjoy
a truly beautiful architecture ; but I can give you
a proof of it which none of you will be able to
deny. You wiU all assuredly admit this princi
ple, — that whatever temporal things are spoken
of in the Bible as emblems of the highest spiritual
blessings, must be good things in themselves. You
would aUow that bread, for instance, would not have
been used as an emblem of the word of life, un
less it had been good, and necessary for man ; nor
water used as the emblem of sanctification, unless
it also had been good and necessary for man. You
will aUow that oU, and honey, and balm are
H 4

104 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II.
good, when David says, "Let the righteous re
prove me ; it shaU be an exceUent oil ; " or, " How
sweet are thy words unto my taste ; yea, sweeter
than honey to my mouth ; " or, when Jeremiah cries
out in his weeping, " Is there no balm in GUead ? is
there no physician there ? " You would admit at once
that the man who said there was no taste in the
literal honey, and no healing in the literal balm,
must be of distorted judgment, since God had used
them as emblems of spiritual sweetness and healing.
And how, then, wiU you evade the conclusion, that
there must.be joy, and comfort, and instruction in
the literal beauty of architecture, when God, de
scending in his utmost love to the distressed Jeru
salem, and addressing to her his most precious and
solemn promises, speaks to her in such words as
these : " Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and
not comforted," — What shaU be done to her ? — What
brightest emblem of blessing will God set before
her ? " Behold, I wUl lay thy stones with fair
colours, and thy foundations with sapphires ; and I
will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of

Lect. IL] AND PAINTING. 105
carbuncles, and all thy borders pf pleasant stones."
Nor is this merely an emblem of spiritual blessing :
for that blessing is added in the concluding words,
" And aU thy children shaU be taught of the Lord,
and great shaU be the peace of thy chUdren."

106 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.

ADDENDA

LECTURES I. AND II.

The delivery of the foregoing lectures excited, as
it may be imagined, considerable indignation among
the architects who happened to hear them, and
elicited various attempts at reply. As it seemed to
have been expected by the writers of these replies,
that in two lectures, each of them lasting not much
more than an hour, I should have been able com
pletely to discuss the phuosophy and history of the
architecture of the world, besides meeting every
objection, and reconciling every apparent contradic
tion, which might suggest itself to the minds of
hearers with whom, probably, from first to last, I had
not a single exactly correspondent idea, relating to

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 107
the matters under discussion, it seems unnecessary
to notice any of them in particular. But as this
volume may perhaps faU into the hands of readers
who have not time to refer to the works in which
my views have been expressed more at large, and
as I shall now not be able to write or to say any
thing more about architecture for some time to
come, it may be useful to state here, and explain in
the shortest possible compass, the main gist of the
propositions which I desire to maintain respecting
that art; and also to note and answer, once for all,
such arguments as are ordinarily used by the archi
tects of the modern school to controvert these pro
positions. They may be reduced under six heads.
1. That Gothic or Romanesque construction is
nobler than Greek construction.
2. That ornamentation is the principal part of
architecture. 3. That ornamentation should be visible.
4. That ornamentation should be natural.
5. That ornamentation should be thoughtful.
6. And that therefore Gothic ornamentation is

108 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
nobler than Greek ornamentation, and Gothic archi
tecture the only architecture which should now be
built. Proposition 1st. — Gothic or Romanesque con
struction is nobler than Greek construction* That
is to say, building an arch, vault, or dome, is a nobler
and more ingenious work than laying a flat stone or
beam over the space to be covered. It is, for instance,
a nobler and more ingenious thing to build an arched
bridge over a stream, than to lay two pine-trunks
across from bank to bank ; and, in like manner, it is
a nobler and more ingenious thing to build an arch
* The constructive value of Gothic architecture is, however, far
greater than that of Romanesque, as the pointed arch is not only
susceptible of an infinite variety of forms and applications to the
weight to be sustained, but it possesses, in tbe outline given to
its masonry at its perfect periods, the means of self-sustainment
to a far greater degree than the round arch. I pointed out, for,
I believe, the first time, the meaning and constructive value of
the Gothic cusp, in page 129 of the first volume of the " Stones
of Venice." That statement was first denied, and then taken
advantange of, by modern architects ; and, considering how often
it has been alleged that I have no practical knowledge of archi
tecture, it cannot but be matter of some triumph to me, to find
the " Builder," of the 21st January 1854, describing, as a new in
vention, the successful application to a church in Carlow of the
principle which I laid down in the year 1851.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 109
over a window, door, or room, than to lay a single
flat stone over the same space.
No architects have ever attempted seriously to con
trovert this proposition. Sometimes, however, they
say that " of two ways of doing a thing, the best and
most perfect is not always to be adopted, for Jhere
may be particular reasons for employing an inferior
one." This I am perfectly ready to grant, only let
them show their reasons in each particular case.
Sometimes also they say, that there is a charm in
the simple construction which is lost in the scientific
one. This I am also perfectly ready to grant.
There is a charm in Stonehenge which there is not
in Amiens Cathedral, and a charm in an Alpine
pine bridge which there is not in the Ponte della
Trinita at Florence, and, in general, a charm in
savageness which there is not in science. But do
not let it be said, therefore, that savageness is
science. Proposition 2nd. — Ornamentation is the principal
part of architecture. That is to say, the highest
nobility of a buUding does not consist in its being

110 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
well bmlt, but in its being nobly sculptured or
painted. This is always, and at the first hearing of it, very
naturally, considered one of my most heretical propo
sitions. It is also one of the most important I have
to maintain ; and it must be permitted me to explain
it at some length. The first thing to be required
of a building — not, observe, the highest thing, but the
first thing — is that it shall answer its purposes
completely, permanently, and at the smaUest expense.
If it is a house, it should be just of the size con
venient for its owner, containing exactly the kind
and number of rooms that he wants, with exactly the
number of windows he wants, put in the places
that he wants. If it is a church, it should be just
large enough for its congregation, and of such shape
and disposition as shall make them comfortable in
it and let them hear well in it. If it be a public
office, it should be so disposed as is most convenient
for the clerks in their daily avocations ; and so on ;
aU this being utterly irrespective of external appear
ance or aesthetic considerations of any kind, and

Addenda.] AND PAINTJNG. Ill
aU being done solidly, securely, and at the smallest
necessary cost.
The sacrifice of any of these first requirements to
external appearance is a futUity and absurdity.
Rooms must not be darkened to make the ranges of
windows symmetrical. Useless wings must not be
added on one side, to balance useful wings on the
other, but the house built with one wing, if the
owner has no need of two ; and so on.
But observe, in doing aU this, there is no High, or
as it is commonly caUed, Fine Art, required at aU.
There may be much science, together with the
lower form of art, or "handicraft," but there is as
yet no Fine Art. House-building, on these terms, is
no higher thing than ship-building. It indeed will
generaUy be found that the edifice designed with
this masculine reference to utUity, wiU have a charm
about it, otherwise unattainable, just as a ship, con
structed with simple reference to its service against
powers of wind and wave, turns out one of
the loveliest things that human hands produce.
Still, we do not, and properly do not, hold ship-

112 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
building to be a fine art, nor preserve in our
memories the names of immortal ship-builders ;
neither, so long as the mere utility and constructive
merit of the buUding are regarded, is architecture to
be held a fine art, or are the names of architects to
be remembered immortaUy. For any one may at
any time be taught to build the ship, or (thus far)
the house, and there is nothing deserving of immor
tality in doing what any one may be taught to do.
But when the house, or church, or other building
is thus far designed, and the forms of its dead walls
and dead roofs are up to this point determined,
comes the divine part of the work — namely, to turn
these dead walls into living ones. Only Deity, that
is to say, those who are taught by Deity, can do
that. And that is to be done by painting and sculpture,
that is to say, by ornamentation. Ornamentation, is
therefore the principal part of architecture, con
sidered as a subject of fine art.
Now observe. It wUl at once follow from this
principle, that a great architect must be a great
sculptor or painter.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 113
This is a universal law. No person who is not
a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If
he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a
builder. The three greatest architects hitherto known in
v the world were Phidias, Giotto, and Michael An
gelo ; with aU of whom, architecture was only their
play, sculpture and painting their work. All
great works of architecture in existence are either
the work of single sculptors or painters, or of socie
ties of sculptors and painters, acting coUectively for
a series of years. A Gothic cathedral is properly
to be defined as a piece of the most magnificent
associative sculpture, arranged on the noblest
principles of buUding, for the service and dehght
of multitudes; and the proper definition of archi
tecture, as distinguished from sculpture, is merely
"the art of designing sculpture for a particular
place, and placing it there on the best principles of
buUding." Hence it clearly foUows, that in modern days
we have no architects. The term " architecture "
I

114 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
is not so much as understood by us. I am very
sorry to be compelled to the discourtesy of stating
this fact, but a fact it is, and a fact which it is
necessary to state strongly.
Hence also it wUl follow, that the first thing
necessary to the possession of a school of architecture
is the formation of a school of able sculptors, and
that till we have that, nothing we do can be called
architecture at all.
This, then, being my second proposition, the
so-caUed " architects " of the day, as the reader wiU
imagine, are not wUling to admit it, or to admit
any statement which at all involves it; and every
statement, tending in this direction, which I have
hitherto made, has of course been met by eager
opposition; opposition which perhaps would have
been still more energetic, but that architects have not,
I think, till lately, been quite aware of the lengths to
which I was prepared to carry the principle.
The arguments, or assertions, which they generally
employ against this second proposition and its conse
quences, are the following.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 115
First. That the true nobility of architecture con
sists, not in decoration (or sculpture), but in the
" disposition of masses," and that architecture is, in
fact, the " art of proportion."
It is difficult to overstate the enormity of the
ignorance which this popular statement implies.
For the fact is, that all art, and all nature, depend
on the " disposition of masses." Painting, sculpture,
music, and poetry, depend all equally on the " pro
portion," whether of colours, stones, notes, or words.
Proportion is a principle, not of architecture, but of
existence. It is by the laws of proportion that
stars shine, that mountains stand, and rivers flow.
Man can hardly perform any act of his life, can
hardly utter two words of innocent speech, or move
his hand in accordance with those words, without
involving some reference, whether taught or instinc
tive, to the laws of proportion. And in the fine arts,
it is impossible to move a single step, or to execute the
smallest and simplest piece of work, without involving
aU those laws of proportion in their full complexity.
To arrange (by invention) the folds of a piece of
I 2

116 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
drapery, or dispose the locks of hair on the head of a
statue, requires as much sense and knowledge of the
laws of proportion, as to dispose the masses of a
cathedral. The one are indeed smaUer than the
other, but the relations between 1, 2, 4, and 8, are
precisely the same as the relations between 6, 12, 24,
and 48. So that the assertion that " architecture is
par excellence the art of proportion," could never be
made except by persons who know nothing of art
in general; and, in fact, never is made except by
those architects, who, not being artists, fancy that
the one poor aesthetic principle of which they are
cognizant is the whole of art. They find that the
" disposition of masses " is the only thing of im
portance in the art with which they are acquainted,
and fancy therefore that it is peculiar to that art ;
whereas the fact is, that aU great art begins exactly
where theirs ends, with the " disposition of masses."
The assertion that Greek architecture, as opposed to
Gothic architecture, is the " architecture of propor
tion," is another of the results of the same broad
ignorance. First, it is a calumny of the old Greek

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 117
style itself, which, like every other good architecture
that ever existed, depends more on its grand figure
sculpture, than on its proportions of parts ; so that to
copy the form of the Parthenon without its friezes
and frontal statuary, is hke copying the figure of a
human being without its eyes and mouth; and, in
the second place, so far as modern pseudo-Greek
work does depend on its proportions more than
Gothic work, it does so, not because it is better
proportioned, but because it has nothing but propor
tion to depend upon. Gesture is in like manner of
more importance to a pantomime actor than to a
tragedian, not because his gesture is more refined,
but because he has no tongue. And the proportions
of our common Greek work are important to it
undoubtedly, but not because they are or ever can
be more subtle than Gothic proportion, but because
that work has no sculpture, nor colour, nor imagina
tion, nor sacredness, nor any other quality whatsoever
in it, but ratios of measures. And it is difficult to
express with sufficient force the absurdity of the
supposition that there is more room for refinements
I 3

118 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
of proportion in the relations of seven or eight
equal pillars, with the triangular end of a roof above
them, than between the shafts, and buttresses, and
porches, and pinnacles, and vaultings, and towers,
and all other doubly and trebly multiphed magni
ficences of membership which form the framework
of a Gothic temple.
Second Reply. — It is often said, with some
appearance of plausibility, that I dwell in all my
writings on little things and contemptible details;
and not on essential and large things. Now, in the
first place, as soon as our architects become capable
of doing and managing little and contemptible
things, it will be time to talk about larger ones ; at
present I do not see that they can design so much
as a niche or a bracket, and therefore they need not
as yet think about anything larger. For although,
as both just now, and always, I have said, there is
as much science of arrangement needed in the de
signing of a small group of parts as of a large one,
yet assuredly designing the larger one is not the
easier work of the two. For the eye and mind can

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 119
embrace the smaller object more completely, and if
the powers of conception are feeble, they get em
barrassed by the inferior members which fall within
the divisions of the larger design.* So that, of
course, the best way is to begin with the smaller
features ; for most assuredly, those who cannot design
smaU things cannot design large ones ; and yet, on
the other hand, whoever can design small things
perfectly, can design whatever he chooses. The man
who, without copying, and by his own true and
original power, can arrange a cluster of rose-leaves
nobly, can design anything. He may fail from want
of taste or feeling, but not from want of power.
And the real reason why architects are so eager in
protesting against my close examination of details, is
simply that they know they dare not meet me on that
ground. Being, as I have said, in reality not archi-
* Thus, in speaking of Pugin's designs, I said, "Expect no
cathedrals of him ; but no one, at present, can design a better
finial, though he will never design even a finial perfectly." But
even this I said less with reference to powers of arrangement, than
to materials of fancy ; for many men have store enough to last them
through a boss or a bracket, but not to last them through a church
front. I 4

120 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
tects, but bmlders, they can indeed raise a large
buUding, with copied ornaments, which, being huge
and white, they hope the public may pronounce
" handsome." But they cannot design a cluster of
oak-leaves — no, nor a single human figure — no,
nor so much as a beast, or a bird, or a bird's nest!
Let them first learn to invent as much as will fiU a
quatrefoU, or point a pinnacle, and then it will be
time enough to reason with them on the principles of
the subhme.
But farther. The things that I have dwelt upon
in examining buUdings, though often their least
parts, are always in reality their principal parts.
That is the principal part of a buUding in which its
mind is contained, and that, as I have just shown, is
its sculpture and painting. I do with a buUding
as I do with a man, watch the eye and the hps :
when they are bright and - eloquent, the form of the
body is of httle consequence.
Whatever other objections have been made to
this second proposition, arise, as far as I remember,
merely from a confusion of the idea of essentialness

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 121
or primariness with the idea of nobleness. The
essential thing in a building, — its first virtue, — is
that it be strongly built, and fit for its uses. The
noblest thing in a buUding, and its highest virtue, is
that it be nobly sculptured or painted.*
One or two important corollaries yet remain
to be stated. It has just been said that to sacri
fice the convenience of a buUding to its external ap
pearance is a futility and absurdity, and that conve
nience and stability are to be attained at the smallest
cost. But when that convenience has been attained,
the adding the noble characters of life by painting
and sculpture, is a work in which all possible cost
may be wisely admitted. There is great difficulty
in fully explaining the various bearings of this pro
position, so as to do away with the chances of its
being erroneously understood and apphed. For
although, in the first designing of the building,
nothing is to be admitted but what is wanted, and
no useless wings are to be added to balance useful

* Of course I use the term painting as including every mode of
applying colour.

122 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
ones, yet in its ultimate designing, when its sculpture
and colour become precious, it may be that actual
room is wanted to display them, or richer symmetry
wanted to deserve them ; and in such cases even a
useless wall may be built to bear the sculpture, as at
San Michele of Lucca, or a useless portion added to
complete the cadences, as at St. Mark's of Venice,
or useless height admitted in order to increase the
impressiveness, as in nearly every noble buUding in
the world. But the right to do this is dependent
upon the actual purpose of the building becoming no
longer one of utility merely ; as the purpose of a
cathedral is not so much to shelter the congregation
as to awe them. In such cases even some sacrifice
of convenience may occasionally be admitted, as in
the case of certain forms of pUlared churches. But
for the most part, the great law is, convenience first,
and then the noblest decoration possible ; and this is
peculiarly the case in domestic buUdings, and such
public ones as are constantly to be used for practical
purposes. Proposition 3rd. — Ornamentation should be visible.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 123
The reader may imagine this to be an indis
putable position ; but, practically, it is one of the
last which modern architects are likely to admit ;
for it involves much more than appears at first
sight. To render ornamentation, with all its qualities,
clearly and entirely visible in its appointed place
on the building, requires a knowledge of effect and
a power of design which few even of the best artists
possess,- and which modern architects, so far from
possessing, do not so much as comprehend the ex
istence of. But without dwelling on this highest
manner of rendering ornament "visible," I desire
only at present to convince the reader thoroughly
of the main fact asserted in the text, that while
modern buUders decorate the tops of buUdings, me
diaeval buUders decorated the bottom. So singular
is the ignorance yet prevaUing of the first principles
of Gothic architecture, that I saw this assertion
marked with notes of interrogation in several of
the reports of these Lectures; although, at Edin
burgh, it was only necessary for those who doubted
it to have walked to Holyrood Chapel, in order to

124 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
convince themselves of the truth of it, so far as
their own city was concerned ; and although, most
assuredly, the cathedrals of Europe have now been
drawn often enough to establish the very simple
fact that their best sculpture is in their porches,
not in their steeples. However, as this great
Gothic principle seems yet unacknowledged, let me
state it here, once for all, namely, that the whole
building is decorated, in all pure and fine examples,
with the most exactly studied respect to the powers
of the eye ; the richest and most dehcate sculpture
being put on the waUs of the porches, or on the
fagade of the buUding, just high enough above
the ground to secure it from accidental (not from
wanton*) injury. The decoration, as it rises,
becomes always bolder, and in the buildings of
the greatest times, generally simpler. Thus at San
Zeno, and the duomo of Verona, the only delicate
* Nothing is more notable in good Gothic than the confidence
of its builders in the respect of the people for their work. A great
school of architecture cannot exist when this respect cannot be
calculated upon, as it would be vain to put fine sculpture within
the reach of a population whose only pleasure would be in de
facing it.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 125
decorations are on the porches and lower waUs of
the fagades, the rest of the buildings being left
comparatively plain ; in the ducal palace of Ve
nice the only very careful work is in the lowest
capitals; and so also the richness of the work
diminishes upwards in the transepts of Rouen, and
facades of Bayeux, Rheims, Amiens, AbbeviUe*,
Lyons, and Notre Dame of Paris. But in the
middle and later Gothic the tendency is to produce
an equal richness of effect over the whole buUding,
or even to increase the richness towards the top :
but this is done so skilfully that no fine work is
wasted; and when the spectator ascends to the
higher points of the buUding, which he thought were
of the most consummate delicacy, he finds them
Herculean in strength, and rough-hewn in style,
the reaUy dehcate work being aU put at the base.
The general treatment of Romanesque work is to
increase the number of arches at the top, which at
once enriches and hghtens the mass, and to put the
* The church at Abbeville is late flamboyant, but well deserves,
for the exquisite beauty of its porches, to be named even with the
great works of the thirteenth century.

126 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
finest sculpture of the arches at the bottom. In towers
of aU kinds and periods the effective enrichment is
towards the top, and most rightly, since their
dignity is in their height ; but they are never made
the recipients of fine sculpture, with, as far as I
know, the single exception of Giotto's campanUe,
which indeed has fine sculpture, but it is at the
bottom. The facade of Wells Cathedral seems to be an
exception to the general rule, in having its principal
decoration at the top ; but it is on a scale of perfect
power and effectiveness; whUe in the base modern
Gothic of Milan Cathedral the statues are cut de
licately everywhere, and the builders think it a merit
that the visitor must climb to the roof before he can
see them ; and our modern Greek and Italian archi
tecture reaches the utmost pitch of absurdity by
placing its fine work at the top only. So that the
general condition of the thing may be stated boldly,
as in the text: the principal ornaments of Gothic
buUdings being in their porches, and of modern
buildings, in their parapets.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 127
Proposition 4th. — Ornamentation should be na
tural, — that is to say, should in sonde degree express
or adopt the beauty of natural objects. This law,
together with its ultimate reason, is expressed in
the statement given in the " Stones of Venice,"
vol. i. p. 213. : " All noble ornament is the expres
sion of man's dehght in God's work."
Observe, it does not hence foUow that it should
be an exact imitation of, or endeavour in anywise
to supersede, God's work. It may consist only in
a partial adoption of, and compliance with, the
usual forms of natural things, without at aU going
to the point of imitation ; and it is possible that
the point of imitation may be closely reached by
ornaments, which nevertheless are entirely unfit for
their place, and are the signs only of a degraded
ambition and an ignorant dexterity. Bad decorators
err as easUy on the side of imitating nature, as of
forgetting her ; and the question of the exact degree
in which imitation should be attempted under given
circumstances, is one of the most subtle and difficult
in the whole range of criticism. I have elsewhere

128 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
examined it at some length, and have yet much to
say about it ; but here I can only state briefly that
the modes in which ornamentation ought to fall short
of pure representation or imitation are in the main
three, namely, —
A. Conventionalism by cause of colour.
B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority.
C. Conventionalism by cause of means.
A. Conventionalism by cause of colour. — Abstract
colour is not an imitation of nature, but is nature
itself; that is to say, the pleasure taken in blue or
red, as such, considered as hues merely, is the same,
so long as the brilliancy of the hue is equal, whether
it be produced by the chemistry of man, or the
chemistry of flowers, or the chemistry of skies. We
deal with colour as with sound — so far ruling the
power of the light, as we rule the power of the air,
producing beauty not necessarUy imitative, but
sufficient in itself, so that, wherever colour is intro
duced, ornamentation may cease to represent natural
objects, and may consist in mere spots, or bands, or
flamings, or any other condition of arrangement
favourable to the colour.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 129
B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority. — In
general, ornamentation is set upon certain services,
subjected to certain systems, and confined within
certain limits; so that its. forms require to be
lowered or limited in accordance with the required
relations. It cannot be aUowed to assume the free
outhnes, or to rise to the perfection of imitation.
Whole banks of flowers, for instance, cannot be
carved on cathedral fronts, but only narrow mould
ings, having some of the characters of banks of
flowers. Also, some ornaments require to be sub
dued in value, that they may not interfere with the
effect of others ; and aU these necessary inferiorities
are attained by means of departing from natural
forms — it being an established law of human ad
miration that what is most representative of nature
shaU, cceteris paribus, be most attractive.
AU the various kinds of ornamentation, consisting
of spots, points, twisted bands, abstract curves, and
other such, owe their pecuhar character to this con
ventionalism " by cause of inferiority."
C. Conventionalism by cause of means. — In every
K

130 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
branch of art, only so much imitation of nature is to
be admitted as is consistent with the ease of the
workman and the capabUities of the material. What
ever shortcomings are appointed (for they are more
than permitted, they are in such cases appointed,
and meritorious) on account of the untractableness of
the material, come under the head of " conven-r
tionalism by cause of means."
These conventionahties, then, being duly under
stood and accepted, in modification of the general
law, that law wUl be, that the glory of all ornament
ation consists in the adoption or imitation of the
beauties of natural objects, and that no work can be
of high value, which is not fuU of this beauty. To
this fourth proposition, modern architects have not
ventured to make any serious resistance. On the
contrary, they seem to be, little by little, gliding
into an obscure perception of the fact, that archi
tecture, in most periods of the world, had sculpture
upon it, and that the said sculpture generally did
represent something intelligible. For instance, we
find Mr. Huggins, of Liverpool, lately lecturing

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 131
upon architecture " in its relations to nature and
the inteUect,"* and gravely informing his hearers,
that " in the middle ages, angels were human
figures ; " that " some of the richest ornaments of
Solomon's temple were imitated from the palm and
pomegranate," and that " the Greeks followed the
example of the Egyptians in selecting their orna
ments from the plants of their own country." It is
to be presumed that the lecturer has never been in
the Elgin or Egyptian room of the British Museum,
or it might have occurred to him that the Egyptians
and Greeks sometimes also selected their ornaments
from the men of their own country. But we must
not expect too much Ulumination at once; and as
we are told that, in conclusion, Mr. Huggins glanced
at " the error of architects in neglecting the fountain
of wisdom thus open to them in nature," we may
expect in due time large results from the discovery
of a source of wisdom so unimagined,
Proposition 5th. — Ornamentation should be thought
ful. That is to say, whenever you put a chisel or
* See "The Builder," for January 12, 1854.
K 2

132 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
a pencU into a man's hand for the purpose of
enabhng him to produce beauty, you are to expect
of him that he wUl think about what he is doing, and
feel something about it, and that the expression of
this thought or feeling wUl be the most noble quality
in what he produces with his chisel or brush, inas
much as the power of thinking and feeling is the
most noble thing in the man. It will hence follow
that as men do not commonly think the same
thoughts twice, you are not to require of them that
they shall do the same thing twice. You are to
expect another and a different thought of them, as
soon as one thought has been weU expressed.
Hence, therefore, it foUows also that all noble or
namentation is perpetually varied ornamentation,
and that the moment you find ornamentation un
changing, you may know that it is of a degraded
kind or degraded school. To this law, the only ex
ceptions arise out of the uses of monotony, as a con
trast to change. Many subordinate architectural
mouldings are severely alike in their various parts
(though never unless they are thoroughly subordi-

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 133
nate, for monotony is always deathful according to
the degree of it), in order to setoff change in others;
and a certain monotony or simUarity must be intro
duced among the most changeful ornaments in order
to enhance and exhibit their own changes.
The truth of this proposition is self-evident ; for
no art can be noble which is incapable of expressing
thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought
which does not change. To require of an artist that
he should always reproduce the same picture, would
be not one whit more base than to require of a
carver that he should always reproduce the same
sculpture. The principle is perfectly clear and altogether in
controvertible. Apply it to modern Greek archi
tecture, and that architecture must cease to exist;
for it depends absolutely on copyism.
The sixth proposition above stated, that Gothic
ornamentation is nobler than Greek ornamentation,
&c, is therefore sufficiently proved by the accept
ance of this one principle, no less important than
unassaUable. Of all that I have to bring forward
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134 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
respecting architecture, this is the one I have most
at heart ; for on the acceptance of this depends the
determination whether the workman shaU be a living,
progressive, and happy human being, or whether
he shaU be a mere machine, with its valves smoothed
by heart's blood instead of oil, — the most pitiable
form of slave.
And it is with especial reference to the denial of
this principle in modern and renaissance architec
ture, that I speak of that architecture with a bitter
ness which appears to many readers extreme, while in
reality, so far from exaggerating, I have not grasp
enough of thought to embrace, the evUs which have
resulted among all the orders of European society
from the introduction of the renaissance schools of
building, in turning away the eyes of the beholder
from natural beauty, and reducing the workman to
the level of a machine. In the Gothic times, writing,
painting, carving, casting, — it mattered not what, —
were aU works done by thoughtful and happy men ;
and the illumination of the volume, and the carving
and casting of wall and gate, employed, not thousands,

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 135
but millions, of true and noble artists over aU Chris
tian lands. Men in the same position are now left
utterly without inteUectual power or pursuit, and,
being unhappy in their work, they rebel against it :
hence one of the worst forms of Unchristian So
cialism. So again, there being now no nature or
variety in architecture, the multitude are not inte
rested in it ; therefore-, for the present, they have
lost their taste for art altogether, so that you can no
longer trust sculpture within their reach. Consider
the innumerable forms of evil involved in the temper
and taste of the existing populace of London or
Paris, as compared with the temper of the populace
of Florence, when the quarter of Santa Maria
Novella received its title of " Joyful Quarter," from
the rejoicings of the multitude at getting a new
picture into their church, better than the old ones ;
— aU this difference being exclusively chargeable on
the renaissance architecture. And then, farther, if
we remember, not only the revolutionary ravage
of sacred architecture, but the immeasurably greater
destruction effected by the renaissance buUders and
K 4

136 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
their satellites, wherever they came, — destruction
so wide-spread that there is not a town in France
or Italy but it has to deplore the deliberate over
throw of more than half its noblest monuments,
in order to put up Greek porticoes or palaces
in their stead ; adding also all the blame of the
ignorance of the meaner kind of men, operating in
thousands of miserable abuses upon the frescoes,
books, and pictures, as the architects' hammers did
on the carved work, of the Middle Ages * ; and,
finaUy, if we examine the influence which the luxury,
and, stiU more, the heathenism, joined with the
* Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the re
morseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the pre
sent day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation
be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy.
Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones,
I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of
the following very simple argument. You allow it is wrong to waste
time, that is, your own time ; but then it must be still more wrong
to waste other people's ; for you have some right to your own time,
but none to theirs. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the
time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of
the dead ; for the living can redeem their time, the dead cannot.
But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy
the works they have left you ; for to those works they gave the
best of their time, intending them for immortality.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 137
essential dulness of these schools, have had on the
upper classes of society, it wiU ultimately be found
that no expressions are energetic enough to describe,
nor broad enough to embrace, the enormous moral
evUs which have risen from them.
I omitted, in preparing the preceding lecture for
the press, a passage referring to this subject, because
it appeared to me, in its place, hardly explained by
preceding statements. But I give it here unaltered,
as being, in sober earnest, but too weak to charac
terise the tendencies of tne " accursed " architecture
of which it speaks.
" Accursed, I call it, with deliberate purpose. It
needed but the gathering up of a Babylonish garment
to trouble Israel ; — these marble garments of the
ancient idols of the GentUes, how many have they
troubled ! Gathered out of their ruins by the second
Babylon, — gathered by the Papal Church in the
extremity of her sin; — raised up by her, not when
she was sending forth her champions to preach in the
highway, and pine in the desert, and perish in the
fire, but in the very scarlet fruitage and fulness of her

138 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
guilt, when her priests vested themselves not with
purple only, but with blood, and bade the cups
of their feasting foam not with wine only, but
with hemlock; — raised by the hands of the Leos and
the Borgias, raised first into that mighty temple
where the seven hills slope to the Tiber, that marks
by its massy dome the central spot, where Rome has
reversed the words of Christ, and, as He vivified the
stone to the apostleship, she petrifies the apostleship
into the stumbling stone ; — exalted there first as if
to mark what work it had to do, it went forth to
paralyse or to pollute, and wherever it came, the
lustre faded from the streets of our cities, the grey
towers and glorious arches of our abbeys fell by the
river sides, the love of nature was uprooted from
the hearts of men, base luxuries and cruel formalisms
were festered and frozen into them from their youth;
and at last, where, from his fair Gothic chapel
beside the Seine, the king St. Louis had gone forth,
followed by his thousands in the cause of Christ,
another king was dragged forth from the gates of
his Renaissance palace, to die, by the hands of the

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 139
thousands of his people gathered in another cru
sade ; or what shall that be called — whose sign was
not the cross, but the guillotine ? " *
I have not space here to pursue the subject
farther, nor shah I be able to write anything more
respecting architecture for some time to come. But
in the meanwhile, I would most earnestly desire
to leave with the reader this one subject of thought
— " The Life of the Workman." For it is singular,
and far more than singular, that among aU the
writers who have attempted to examine the princi
ples stated in the " Stones of Venice,"* not one
* The character of Renaissance architecture, and the spirit which
dictated its adoption, may be remembered as having been centred
and symbolized in the palace of Versailles ; whose site was chosen
by Louis the Fourteenth, in order that from thence he might not
see St. Denis, the burial-place of his family. The cost of the
palace in 27 years is stated in the "Builder " for March 18th 1854,
to have been 3,246,000?. money of that period, equal to about seven
millions now (900,000?. having been expended in the year 1686
alone). The building is thus notably illustrative of the two feelings
which were stated in the " Stones of Venice," to be peculiarly charac
teristic of the Renaissance spirit, the Pride of State and Pear of
Death. Compare the horror of Louis the Fourteenth at the sight of
the tower of St. Denis, with the feeling which prompted the Scali-
geri at Verona to set their tombs within fifteen feet of their palace
walls.

140 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
has as yet made a single comment on what was pre
cisely and accurately the most important chapter in
the whole book ; namely, the description of the nature
of Gothic architecture, as involving the liberty of the
workman (vol. ii. ch. vi.).* I had hoped that what
ever might be the prejudices of modern architects,
there would have been found some among them
quicksighted enough to see the bearings of this
principle, and generous enough to support it. There
has hitherto stood forward not one.
But my purpose must at last be accomplished for
all this. The labourer among the gravestones of
our modern architecture must yet be raised up,
and become a living soul. Before he can be thus
raised, the whole system of Greek architecture, as
practised in the present day, must be annihilated;
but it will be annihUated, and that speedily. For
truth and judgment are its declared opposites,
and against these nothing ever finaUy prevaUed,
or shall prevail.
* An article in Frazer's Magazine, which has appeared since these
sheets were sent to press, forms a solitary exception.

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 141

LECTURE III.
TURNER, AND HIS WORKS.
Mt object this evening is not so much to give you
any account of the works or the genius of the great
painter whom we have so lately lost (which it would
require rather a year than an hour to do), as to give
you some idea of the position which his works hold
with respect to the landscape of other periods, and of
the general condition and prospects of the landscape
art of the present day. I will not lose time in
prefatory remarks, as I have httle enough at any
rate, but wiU enter abruptly on my subject.
You are aU of you well aware that landscape
seems hardly to have exercised any strong influence,
as such, on any pagan nation, or pagan artist. I
have no time to enter into any details on this, of
course, most intricate and difficult subject; but I
wiU only ask you to observe, that wherever natural
scenery is alluded to by the ancients, it is either

142 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
agriculturally, with the kind of feeling that a good
Scotch farmer has; sensually, in the enjoyment of
sun or shade, cool winds or sweet scents; fear
fully, in a mere vulgar dread of rocks and de
solate places, as compared with the comfort of
cities ; or, finally, superstitiously, in the personifi
cation or deification of natural powers, generaUy
with much degradation of their impressiveness, as
in the paltry fables of Ulysses receiving the winds
in bags from .ZEolus, and of the Cyclops hammering
lightning sharp at the ends, on an anvil.* Of
course you wiU here and there find feeble evi
dences of a higher sensibility, chiefly, I think, in
Plato, JEschylus, Aristophanes, and Virgil. Homer,
though in the epithets he applies to landscape
always thoroughly graphic, uses the same epithet

* Of course I do not mean by calling these fables " paltry," to
dispute their neatness, ingenuity, or moral depth ; but only their
want of apprehension of the extent and awfulness of the phenomena
introduced. So also, in denying Homer's interest in nature, I do
not mean to deny his accuracy of observation, or his power of
seizing on the main points of landscape, but I deny the power of
landscape over his heart, unless when closely associated with, and
altogether subordinate to, some human interest.

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 143
for rocks, seas, and trees, from one end of his
poem to the other, evidently without the smallest
interest in anything of the kind ; and in the
mass of heathen writers, the absence of sensation
on these subjects is singularly painful. For
instance, in that, to my mind, most disgusting of
aU so-caUed poems, the journey to Brundusium,
you remember that Horace takes exactly as much
interest in the scenery he is 'passing through, as
Sancho Panza would have done.
You wiU find, on the other hand, that the lan
guage of the Bible is specificaUy distinguished from
all other early literature, by its delight in natural
imagery ; and that the dealings of God with his
people are calculated peculiarly to awaken this
sensibihty within them. Out of the monotonous
vaUey of Egypt they are instantly taken into the
midst of the mightiest mountain scenery in the
peninsula of Arabia ; and that scenery is associated
in their minds with the immediate manifestation and
presence of the Divine Power; so that mountains
for ever afterwards become invested with a peculiar

144 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
sacredness in their minds ; while their descendants
being placed in what was then one of the loveliest
districts upon the earth, full of glorious vegetation,
bounded on one side by the sea, on the north by
" that goodly mountain " Lebanon, on the south and
east by deserts, whose barrenness enhanced by their
contrast the sense of the perfection of beauty in
their own land, they became, by these means, and
by the touch of God's own hand upon their hearts,
sensible to the appeal of natural scenery in a way
in which no other people were at the time; and
their literature is full of expressions, not only testi
fying a vivid sense of the power of nature over man,
but showing that sympathy with natural things them
selves, as if they had human souls, which is the
especial characteristic of true love of the works of
God. I intended to have insisted on this sympathy
at greater length, but I found, only two or three
days ago, much of what I had to say to you antici
pated in a little book, unpretending, but fuU of
interest, " The Lamp and the Lantern," by Dr.
James Hamilton ; and I will therefore only ask you

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 145
to consider such expressions as that tender and
glorious verse in Isaiah, speaking of the cedars on
the mountains as rejoicing over the faU of the king
of Assyria : " Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and
the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art gone
down to the grave, no feUer is come up against us."
See what sympathy there is here, as if with the very
hearts of the trees themselves. So also in the words
of Christ, in his personification of the lilies : " They
toil not, neither do they spin." Consider such ex
pressions as, " The sea saw it, and fled. Jordan
was driven back. The mountains skipped like
rams ; and the httle hUls hke lambs." Try to find
any thing in profane writing like this; and note
farther that the whole book of Job appears to have
been chiefly written and placed in the inspired
volume in order to show the value of natural history,
and its power on the human heart. I cannot pass
by it without pointing out the evidences of the
beauty of the country that Job inhabited. * Observe,
* This passage, respecting the book of Job, was omitted in the
delivery of the Lecture, for want of time.
L

146 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
first, it was an arable country. "The oxen were
ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them." It
was a pastoral country: his substance, besides camels
and asses, was 7000 sheep. It was a mountain
country, fed by streams descending from the high
snows. "My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a
brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away ;
which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein
the snow is hid: What time they wax warm they
vanish: when it is hot they are consumed out of
their place." Again : " If I wash myself with snow
water, and make my hands never so clean." Again:
" Drought and heat consume the snow waters." It
was a roeky country, with forests and verdure rooted
in the rocks. " His branch shooteth forth in his
garden ; his roots are wrapped about the heap, and
seeth the place of stones." Again : " Thou shalt be
in league with the stones of the field." It was a
place visited, like the vaUeys of Switzerland, by
convulsions and faUs of mountains. " Surely the
mountain faUing cometh to nought, and the rock is
removed out of his place." " The waters wear the

Lect. IH.] AND PAINTING. 147
stones: thou washest away the things which grow
out of the dust of the earth." " He removeth the
mountains and they know not : he overturneth them
in his anger." "He putteth forth his hand upon
the rock: he overturneth the mountains by the
roots : he cutteth out rivers among the rocks." I
have not time to go farther into this ; but you see
Job's country was one like your own, fuU of plea
sant brooks and rivers, rushing among the rocks, and
of aU other sweet and noble elements of landscape.
The magnificent aUusions to natural scenery through
out the book are therefore calculated to touch the
heart to the end of time.
Then at the central point of Jewish prosperity,
you have the first great naturalist the world ever
saw, Solomon ; not permitted, indeed, to anticipate,
in writing, the discoveries of modern times, but so
gifted as to show us that heavenly wisdom is mani
fested as much in the knowledge of the hyssop that
springeth out of the waU as in pohtical and phUo-
sophical speculation.
The books of the Old Testament, as distinguished
L 2

148 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
from aU other early writings, are thus prepared for
an everlasting influence over humanity ; and, finally,
Christ himself, setting the concluding example to the
conduct and thoughts of men, spends nearly his
whole hfe in the fields, the mountains, or the
smaU country vUlages of Judea; and in the very
closing scenes of his life, wUl not so much as sleep
within the waUs of Jerusalem, but rests at the httle
viUage of Bethphage, walking in the morning, and
returning in the evening, through the peaceful
avenues of the mount of Olives, to and from his work
of teaching in the temple.
It would thus naturaUy foUow, both from the ge
neral tone and teaching of the scriptures, and from
the example of our Lord himself, that wherever
Christianity was preached and accepted, there would
be an immediate interest awakened in the works of
God, as seen in the natural world ; and, accordingly,
this is the second universal and distinctive character
of Christian art, as distinguished from aU pagan
work, the first being a pecuhar spirituality in its
conception of the human form, preferring holiness of

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 149
expression and strength of character to beauty of
features or of body, and the second, as I say, its in
tense fondness for natural objects — animals, leaves,
and flowers, — inducing an immediate transformation
of the cold and lifeless pagan ornamentation into
vivid imagery of nature. Of course this manifest
ation of feeling was at first checked by the circum
stances under which the Christian religion was
disseminated. The art of the first three centuries is
entirely subordinate, — restrained partly by perse
cution, partly by a high spirituality, which cared
much more about preaching than painting ; and then
when, under Constantine, Christianity became the
religion of the Roman empire, myriads of persons
gave the aid of their wealth and of their art to the
new religion, who were Christians in nothing but,
the name, and who decorated a Christian temple
just as they would have decorated a pagan one,
merely because the new religion had become Im
perial. Then, just as the new art was beginning to
assume a distinctive form, down came the northern
barbarians upon it ; and aU their superstitions had to
L 3

150 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
be leavened with it, and aU their hard hands and
hearts softened by it, before their art could appear
in anything like a characteristic form. The warfare
in which Europe was perpetuaUy plunged retarded
this development for ages ; but it steadily and
gradually prevaUed, working from the 8th tothe 11th
century like a seed in the ground, showing little
signs of life, but still, if carefully examined, changing
essentiaUy every day and every hour : at last, in the
12th century, the blade appears above the black
earth; in the 13th, the plant is in full leaf.
I begin, then, with the 13th century, and must
now make to you a general assertion, which, if you
will note down and examine at your leisure, you will
find true and useful, though I have not time at pre
sent to give you full demonstration of it.
I say, then, that the art of the 13th century is the
foundation of aU art, — nor merely the foundation,
but the root of it ; that is to say, succeeding art is
not merely built upon it, but was all comprehended
in it, and is developed out of it. Passing this great
century, we find three successive branches deve-

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 151
loped from it, in each of the three foUowing centu
ries. The 14th century is pre-eminently the age of
Thought, the 15th the age of Drawing, and the 16th
the age of Painting.
Observe, first, the 14th century is pre-eminently
the age of thought. It begins with the first words
of the poem of Dante ; and aU the great pictorial
poems — the mighty series of works in which every
thing is done to relate, but nothing to imitate —
belong to this century. I should only confuse you
by giving you the names of marvellous artists,
most of them little familiar to British ears, who
adorned this century in Italy ; but you wUl easily
remember it as the age of Dante and Giotto, —
the age of Thought.
The men of the succeeding century (the 15th) felt
that they could not rival their predecessors in inven
tion, but might excel them in execution. Original
thoughts belonging to this century are comparatively
rare ; even Raphael and Michael Angelo themselves
borrowed all their principal ideas and plans of
pictures from their predecessors ; but they executed
I. 4

152 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
them with a precision up to that time unseen. You
must understand by the word " drawing," the
perfect rendering of forms, whether in sculpture or
painting; and then remember the 15th century as
the age "of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo
Ghiberti, and Raphael,' — pre-eminently the age of
Drawing. The 16th century produced the four greatest
Painters, that is to say, managers of colour, whom
the world has seen ; namely, Tintoret, Paul
Veronese, Titian, and Correggio. I need not say
more to justify my calhng it the age of Painting.
This, then, being the state of things respecting
art in general, let us next trace the career of land
scape through these centuries.
It was only towards the close of the 13 th century
that figure painting began to assume so perfect
a condition as to require some elaborate suggestion
of landscape background. Up to that time, if any
natural object had to be represented, it was done in
an entirely conventional way, as you see it upon
Greek vases, or in a Chinese porcelain pattern ; an

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 153
independent tree or flower being set upon the white
ground, or ground of any colour, wherever there
was a vacant space for it, without the smallest
attempt to imitate the real colours and relations of
the earth and sky about it. But at the close of the
13th century, Giotto, and in the course of the 14th,
Orcagna, sought, for the first time, to give some re
semblance to nature in their backgrounds, and intro
duced behind their figures pieces of true landscape,
formal enough stiU, but complete in intention,
having foregrounds and distances, sky and water,
forests and mountains, carefuUy dehneated, not ex
actly in their true colour, but yet in colour approxi
mating to the truth. The system which they intro
duced (for though in many points enriched above
the work of earher ages, the Orcagna and Giotto
landscape was a very complete piece of recipe) was
observed for a long period by their pupils, and may
be thus briefly described : — The sky is always pure
blue, paler at the horizon, and with a few streaky
white clouds in it ; the ground is green even to the
extreme distance, with brown rocks projecting from

154 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
it; water is blue streaked with white. The trees
are nearly always composed of clusters of their
proper leaves relieved on a black or dark ground,
thus (fig. 20. Plate XIII.).* And observe carefully,
with respect to the complete drawing of the leaves
on this tree, and the smallness of their number, the
real distinction between noble conventionalism and
false conventionalism. You will often hear modern
architects defending their monstrous ornamentation
on the ground that it is " conventional," and that
architectural ornament ought to be conventionalised.
Remember when you hear this, that noble conven
tionalism is not an agreement between the artist and
spectator that the one shall misrepresent nature sixty
times over, and the other believe the misrepresenta
tion sixty times over, but it is an agreement that
certain means and limitations being prescribed, only
that kind of truth is to be expected which is consist-:
* Having no memoranda of my own, taken from Giotto's land
scape, I had this tree copied from an engraving ; but I imagine the
rude termination of the stems to be a misrepresention. Fig. 21.
Plate XHI. is accurately copied from a MS., certainly executed
between 1250 and 1270, and is more truly characteristic of the
early manner.

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 155
'ent with those means. For instance, if Sir Joshua
Reynolds had been talking to a friend about the
character of a face, and there had been nothing in
the room but a deal table and an inkbottle — and no
pens — Sir Joshua would have dipped his finger in
the ink, and painted a portrait on the table with his
finger, — and a noble portrait too, certainly not deli
cate in outhne, nor representing any of the quahties
of the face dependent on fine outline, but getting as
much of the face as in that manner was attain
able. That is noble conventionalism, and Egyptian
work on granite, or iUuminator's work in glass, is all
conventional in the same sense, but not convention-
aUy false. The two noblest and truest carved hons
I have ever seen, are the two granite ones in the
Egyptian room of the British Museum, and yet
in them, the lions' manes and beards are represented
by rings of sohd rock, as smooth as a mirror !
There are indeed one or two other conditions of
noble conventionalism, noticed more fuUy in the
Addenda to this Lecture ; but you wUl find that
they always consist in stopping short of nature, not

156 ' LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
in falsifying nature ; and thus in Giotto's foliage,
he stops short of the quantity of leaves on the real
tree, but he gives you the form of the leaves repre
sented with perfect truth. His foreground also is
nearly always occupied by flowers and herbage,
carefully and individually painted from nature;
while, although thus simple in plan, the arrangements
of line in these landscapes of course show the in
fluence of the master-mind, and sometimes, where
the story "requires it, we find the usual formulas
overleaped, and Giotto at Avignon painting the
breakers of the sea on a steep shore with great care,
whUe Orcagna, in his Triumph of Death, has painted
a thicket of brambles mixed with teazles, in a
manner worthy of the best days of landscape art.
Now from the landscape of these two men to the
landscape of Raphael, Leonardo, and Perugino, the
advance consists principaUy in two great steps : the
first, that distant objects were more or less invested
with a blue colour, — the second, that trees were no
longer painted with a black ground, but with a rich
dark brown, or deep green. From Giotto's old

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 157
age, to the youth of Raphael, the advance in, and
knowledge of, landscape, consisted of no more than
these two simple steps; but the execution of land
scape became infinitely more perfect and elaborate.
All the flowers and leaves in the foreground were
worked out with the same perfection as the features
of the figures; in the middle distance the brown
trees were most delicately defined against the sky ;
the blue mountains in the extreme distance were
exquisitely thrown into aerial gradations, and the sky
and clouds were perfect in transparency and softness.
But stiU there is no real advance in knowledge of
natural objects. The leaves and flowers are, indeed,
admirably painted, and thrown into various intricate
groupings, such as Giotto could not have attempted,
but the rocks and water are stiU as conventional and
imperfect as ever, except only in colour : the forms
of rock in Leonardo's celebrated "Vierge aux
Rochers" are literaUy no better than those on a
china plate. Fig. 22. Plate XIV. shows a portion of
them in mere outhne, with one cluster of the leaves
above, and the distant " ideal " mountains. On the

158 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
whole, the most satisfactory work of the period is
that which most resembles missal painting, that is to
say, which is fuUest of beautiful flowers and animals
scattered among the landscape, in the old indepen
dent way, like the birds upon a screen. The land
scape of Benozzo Gozzoli is exquisitely rich in
incident of this kind.
The first man who entirely broke through the
conventionality of his time, and painted pure land
scape, was Masaccio, but he died too young to
effect the revolution of which his genius was capable.
It was left for other men to accomplish, namely, for
Correggio and Titian. These two painters were the
first who relieved the foregrounds of their landscape
from the grotesque, quaint, and crowded formalism
of the early painters; and gave a, close approxima
tion to the forms of nature in all things ; retaining,
¦however, thus much of the old system, that the
distances were for the most part painted in deep
ultramarine blue, the foregrounds in rich green
and brown; there were no effects of sunshine and
shadow, but a generally quiet glow over the whole

Lect. Ill,] AND PAINTING. 159
scene ; ~ and the clouds, though now roUing in ir
regular masses, and sometimes richly involved among
the hiUs, were never varied in conception, or studied
from nature. There were no changes of weather in
them, no rain clouds or fair-weather clouds, nothing
but various shapes of the cumulus or cirrus, intro
duced for the sake of light on the deep blue sky.
Tintoret and Bonifazio introduced more natural
effects into this monotonous landscape : in their
works we meet with showers of rain, with rainbows,
sunsets, bright reflections in water, and so on ; but
stiU very subordinate, and carelessly worked out, so
as not to justify us in considering their landscape as
forming a class by itself.
Fig. 23. Plate XV., which is a branch of a tree
from the background of Titian's " St Jerome," at
MUan, compared with Jig. 20. Plate XIII., wiU
give you a distinct idea of the kind of change which
took place from the time of Giotto to that of Titian,
and you wUl find that this whole range of landscape
may be conveniently classed in three divisions,
namely, Gioliesque, Leonardesque, and Titianesque;

160 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
the Giottesque embracing nearly aU the work of the
14th, the Leonardesque that of the 15th, and the
Titianesque that of the 16th century. Now you see
there remained a fourth step to be taken, — the
doing away with conventionalism altogether, so as to
create the perfect art of landscape painting. The
course of the mind of Europe was to do this;
but at the very moment when it ought to have
been done, the art of all civilised nations was
paralysed at once by the operation of the poisonous
elements of infidelity and classical learning to
gether, as I have endeavoured to show elsewhere.
In this paralysis, hke a soldier shot" as he is just
gaining an eminence, the art of the 17th century
struggled forward, and sank upon the spot it had
been endeavouring to attain. The step which should
have freed landscape from conventionalism was
actually, taken by Claude and Salvator Rosa, but
taken in a state of palsy, — taken so as to lose far
more than was gained. For up to this time, no
painter ever had thought of drawing anything,
pebble or blade of grass, or tree or mountain, but

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 161
as well and distinctly as he could; and if he could
not, draw it completely, he drew it at least in a
way which should thoroughly show his knowledge
and feeling of it. For instance, you saw in the
oak tree of the Giottesque period, that the main
points of the tree, the true shape of leaf and acorn,
were all there, perfectly and carefuUy articulated,
and so they continued to be down to the time
of Tintoret; both he and Titian working out the
separate leaves of their foliage with the most exqui
site botanical care. But now observe: as Chris
tianity had brought this love of nature into Paganism,
the return of Paganism in the shape of classical
learning at once destroyed this love of nature ; and
at the moment when Claude and Salvator made
the final effort to paint the effects of nature faith
fuUy, the objects of nature had ceased to be regarded
with affection; so that, while people were amused
and interested by the new effects of sunsets over
green seas, and of tempests bursting on rocky moun
tains, which were introduced by the rising school,
they entirely ceased to require on the one side, or
M

162 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
bestow on the other, that care and thought by which
alone the beauty of nature can be understood. The
older painting had resembled a careful and deeply
studied diagram, Ulustrative of the most important
facts; it was not to be understood or relished
without application of serious thought ; on the con
trary, it developed and addressed the highest powers
of mind belonging to the human race; while the
Claude and Salvator painting was like a scene in a
theatre, viciously and falsely painted throughout,
and presenting a deceptive appearance of truth to
nature ; understood, as far as it went, in a moment,
but conveying no accurate knowledge of anything,
and, in aU its operations on the mind, unhealthy,
hopeless, and profitless.
It was, however, received with avidity ; for this
main reason, that the architecture, domestic life, and
manners of the period were gradually getting more
and more artificial; as I showed you last evening,
all natural beauty had ceased to be permitted in
architectural decoration, while the habits of society
led them more and more to live, if possible, in cities ;

Lect. HI.] AND PAINTING. 163
and the dress, language, and manners of men in
general were approximating to that horrible and life
less condition in which you find them just before the
outbreak of the French Revolution.
Now, observe: exactly as hoops, and starch, and
false hair, and all that in mind and heart these
things typify and betray, as these, I say, gained
upon men, there was a necessary reaction in favour
of the natural. Men had never hved so utterly in
defiance of the laws of nature before ; but they
could not do this without feeling a strange charm in
that which they defied; and, accordingly, we find
this reactionary sentiment expressing itself in a base
school of what was called pastoral poetry ; that is to
say, poetry written in praise of the country, by men
who hved in coffee-houses and on the MaU. The
essence of pastoral poetry is the sense of strange
delightfulness in grass, which is occasionaUy felt by
a man who has seldom set his foot on it ; it is essen
tiaUy the poetry of the cockney, and for the most
part corresponds in its aim and rank, as compared
with other literature, to the porcelain shepherds and
M 2

164 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IIL
shepherdesses on a chimney-piece, as compared with
great works of sculpture.
Of course all good poetry, descriptive of rural life,
is essentially pastoral, or has the effect of the pas
toral on the minds of men living in cities ; but the
class of poetry which I mean, and which you pro
bably understand, by the term pastoral, is that in
which a farmer's girl is spoken of as a " nymph,"
and a farmer's boy as a "swain," and in which,
throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement
is supposed to exist in rural life, merely because the
poet himself has neither had the courage to endure
its hardships, nor the wit to conceive its realities.
If you examine the literature of the 17 th and 18th
centuries, you wiU find that nearly all its expressions,
having reference to the country, show something
of this kind ; either a foolish sentimentality, or a
morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most
curious ignorance. You wUl find aU its descriptive
expressions at once vague and monotonous. Brooks
are always "purling;" birds always "warbling;"
mountains always " lift their horrid peaks above the

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 165
clouds;" vales always "are lost in the shadow of
gloomy woods;" a few more distinct ideas about
haymaking and curds and cream, acquired in
the neighbourhood of Richmond Bridge, serving
to give an occasional appearance of freshness to
the catalogue of the sublime and beautiful which
descended from poet to poet; while a few true
pieces of pastoral, like the " Vicar of Wakefield,"
and Walton's " Angler," relieved the general waste
of dulness. Even in these better productions,
nothing is more remarkable than the general con
ception of the country merely as a series of green
fields, and the combined ignorance and dread of
more sublime scenery; of which the mysteries
and dangers were enhanced by the difficulties of
traveUing at the period. Thus in Walton's " Angler,"
you have a meeting of two friends, one a Derbyshire
man, the other a lowland traveller, who is as much
alarmed, and uses nearly as many expressions of
astonishment, at having to go down a steep hill and
ford a brook, as a traveUer uses now at crossing the
glacier of the Col de Geant. I am not sure whether
M 3

166 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. Ill,
the difficulties which, untU late years, have lain in
the way of peaceful and convenient travelling, ought
not to have great weight assigned to them among
the other causes of the temper of the century ; but
be that as it may, if you will examine the whole
range of its literature — -keeping this point in view
— I am well persuaded that you will be struck most
forcibly by the strange deadness to the highei?
sources of landscape sublimity which is mingled
with the morbid pastoralism. The love of fresh air
and green grass forced itself upon the animal natures
of men ; but that of the sublimer features of scenery
had no place in minds whose chief powers had been
repressed by the formalisms of the age. And al
though in the second-rate writers continuaUy, and
in the first-rate ones occasionally, you find an affec
tation of interest in mountains, clouds, and forests,
yet whenever they write from their heart, you will
find an utter absence of feeling respecting anything
beyond gardens and grass. Examine, for instance,
the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the
comedies of Moli&re, and the writings of Johnson and

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 167
Addison, and I do not think you will find a sin
gle expression of true delight in sublime nature in
any one of them. Perhaps Sterne's " Sentimental
Journey," in its total absence of sentiment on any
subject but humanity, and its entire want of notice
of anything at Geneva which might not as well have
been seen at Coxwold, is the most striking instance
I could give you; and if you compare with this
negation of feeling on one side, the interludes of
Moliere, in which shepherds and shepherdesses are
introduced in court dress, you wiU have a very ac
curate conception of the general spirit of the age.
It was in such a state of society that the landscape
of Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa at
tained its reputation. It is the complete expres
sion on canvass of the spirit of the time. Claude
embodies the foohsh pastoralism, Salvator the ig
norant terror, and Gaspar the dull and affected
erudition. It was, however, altogether impossible that this
state of things could long continue. The age which
had buried itself in formalism grew weary at last of
M 4

168 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
the restraint; and the approach of a new sera was
marked by the appearance, and the enthusiastic
reception, of writers who took true delight in those
wUd scenes of nature which had so long been
despised. I think the first two writers in whom the symp
toms of a change are strongly manifested are Mrs.
Radcliffe and Rousseau ; in both of whom the love
of natural scenery, though mingled in the one case
with what was merely dramatic, and in the other
with much that was pitifully morbid or vicious, was
¦still itself genuine and intense, differing altogether
in character from any sentiments previously trace
able in literature. And then rapidly followed a
group of writers, who expressed, in various ways,
the more powerful or more pure feeling which had
now become one of the strongest instincts of ' the
age. Of these, the principal is your own Walter
Scott. Many writers, indeed, describe nature more
minutely and more profoundly; but none show in
higher intensity the peculiar passion for what is ma
jestic or lovely in toild nature, to which I am now
referring. The whole of the poem of the " Lady of

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 169
the Lake " is written with almost a boyish enthu
siasm for rocks, and lakes, and cataracts ; the early
novels show the same instinct in equal strength
wherever he approaches Highland scenery ; and the
feeling is mingled, observe, with a most touching and
affectionate appreciation of the Gothic architecture,
in which alone he found the elements of natural
beauty seized by art ; so that, to this day, his de
scriptions of Melrose and Holy Island Cathedral, in
the " Lay of the Last Minstrel " and " Marmion,"
as well as of the ideal abbeys in the " Monastery "
and " Antiquary," together with those of Caer-
laverock and Lochleven Castles in " Guy Manner-
ing" and "The Abbot," remain the staple posses
sions and text-books of all traveUers, not so much
for their beauty or accuracy, as for their exactly
expressing that degree of feeling with which most men
in this century can sympathise.
Together with Scott appeared the group of poets,
— Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and, finaUy,
Tennyson, — differing widely in moral principles and
spiritual temper, but all agreeing more or less in this
love for natural scenery.

170 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
Now, you wUl ask me — and you wUl ask me
most reasonably — how this love of nature in modern
days can be connected with Christianity, seeing
it is as strong in the infidel Shelley as in the
sacred Wordsworth. Yes, and it is found in far
worse men than SheUey. Shelley was an honest'
unbeliever, and a man of warm affections; but
this new love of nature is found in the most
reckless and unprincipled of the French novelists,
— in Eugene Sue, in Dumas, in George Sand, —
and that intensely. How is this ? Simply because
the feeling is reactionary ; and, in this phase of
it, common to the diseased mind as well as to the
healthy one. A man dying in the fever of intem
perance wUl cry out for water, and that with a
bitterer thirst than a man whose healthy frame natu
rally delights in the mountain spring more than in
the wine cup. The water is not dishonoured by
that thirst of the diseased, nor is nature dishonoured
by the love of the unworthy. That love is, perhaps,
the only saving element in their minds ; and it still
remains an indisputable truth that the love of nature

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 171
is a characteristic of the Christian heart, just as the
hunger for healthy food is characteristic of the
healthy frame.
In order to meet this new feeling for nature, there
necessarily arose a new school of landscape-painting.
That school, like the literature to which it corre
sponded, had many weak and vicious elements mixed
with its noble ones ; it had its Mrs. Radcliffes and
Rousseaus, as weU as its Wordsworths ; but, on the
whole, the feeling with which Robson drew moun
tains, and Prout architecture, with which Fielding
draws moors, and Stanfield sea, is altogether pure,
true, and precious, as compared with that which
suggested the landscape of the 17th century.
Now observe how simple the whole subject be
comes. You have, first, your great ancient landscape
divided into its three periods — Giottesque, Leonard
esque, Titianesque. Then you have a great gap,
full of nonentities and abortions ; a gulf of foolish
ness, into the bottom of which you may throw
Claude and Salvator, neither of them deserving to
give a name to anything. Call it "pastoral" land-

172 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
scape, " guarda e passa," and then you have, lastly,
the pure, wholesome, simple, modern landscape.
You want a name for that : I will give you one
in a moment; for the whole character and power
of that landscape is originally based on the work of
one man.
Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in
Maiden Lane, London, about eighty years ago. The
register of his birth was burned, and his age at his
death could only be arrived at by conjecture. He
was the son of a barber ; and his father intended
him, very properly, for his own profession. The
bent of the boy was, however, soon manifested, as is
always the case in children of extraordinary genius,
too strongly to be resisted, and a sketch of a coat of
arms on a silver salver, made while his father was
shaving a customer, obtained for him, in reluctant
compliance with the admiring customer's advice, the
permission to follow'art as a profession.
He had, of course, the usual difficulties of young
artists to encounter, and they were then far greater
than they are now. But Turner differed from

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 173
most men in this, — that he was always willing to
take anything to do that came in his way. He did
not shut himself up in a garret to produce unsaleable
works of " high art," and starve, or lose his senses.
He hired himself out every evening to wash in skies
in Indian ink, on other people's drawings, as many
as he could, at half-a-crown a night, getting his
supper into the bargain. " What could I have done
better ? " he said afterwards : " it was first-rate
practice." Then he took to Ulustrating guide-books
and almanacks, and anything that wanted cheap
frontispieces. The Oxford Almanack, published on
a single she^t, with a copper-plate at the top of it,
consisting of a " View; " — you perhaps, some of you,
know the kind of print characteristic of the last
century, under which the word " View " is always
printed in large letters, with ¦ a dedication, obse
quious to the very dust, to the Grand Signior of the
neighbourhood; — weU, this Almanack had always
such a view of some Oxford College at the top of it,
dedicated, I think, always to the head of the
CoUege ; and it owed this, its principal decoration,

174 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
to Turner for many years. I have myself two care
ful drawings of some old seals, made by him for a
local book on the antiquities of Whalley Abbey.
And there was hardly a gentleman's seat of any
importance in England, towards the close of the
last century, of which you will not find some rude
engraving in the local publications of the time, in
scribed with the simple name " W. Turner."
There was another great difference between Turner
and other men. In doing these drawings for the
commonest publications of the day, and for a remu
neration altogether contemptible, he never did his
work badly because he thought it beneath him, or
because he was ill-paid. There does not exist such a
thing as a slovenly drawing by Turner. With what
people were wilhng to give him for his work he was
content ; but he considered that work in its relation
to himself, not in its relation to the purchaser. He
took a poor price, that he might live ; but he made
noble drawings, that he might learn. Of course
some are slighter than others, and they vary in their
materials ; those executed with pencil and Indian ink

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 175
being never finished to the degree of those which are
executed in colour. But he is never careless. Ac
cording to the time and means at his disposal, he
always did his best. He never let a drawing leave
his hands without having made a step in advance,
and having done better in it than he had ever done
before ; and there is no important drawing of the
period which is not executed with a total disregard
.of time and price, and which was not, even then,
worth four or five times what Turner received for it,
Even without genius, a man who thus felt and
thus laboured was sure to do great things ; though it
is seldom that, without great genius, men either
thus feel or thus labour. Turner was as far beyond
aU other men in inteUect as in industry ; and his
advance in power and grasp of thought was as steady
as the increasing light of sunrise.
His reputation was soon so far estabhshed that he
was able to devote himself to more consistent study.
He never appears literaUy to have copied any pic
ture; but whenever any master interested him, or
was of so estabhshed a reputation that he thought it

176 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
necessary to study him, he painted pictures of his
own subjects in the style of that master, until he
felt himself able to rival his excellencies, whatever
they were. There are thus multitudes of. pictures
by Turner which are direct imitations of other
masters ; especially of Claude, Wilson, Loutherbourg,
Gaspar Poussin, Vandevelde, Cuyp, and Rembrandt.
It has been argued by Mr. Leslie that, because
Turner thus in his early years imitated many of the
old masters, therefore he must to the end of his life
have considered them greater than himself. The
non-sequitur is obvious. I trust there are few men
so unhappy as never to have learned anything from
their inferiors ; and I fear there are few men so wise
as never to have imitated anything but what was
deserving of imitation. The young Turner, indeed,
would have been more than mortal if, in a period
utterly devoid of all healthy examples of landscape
art, he had been able at once to see his way to the
attainment of his ultimate ends ; or if, seeing it, he
had felt himself at once strong enough to defy the
authority of every painter and connoisseur whose

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 177
style had formed the taste of the pubhc, or whose
dicta directed their patronage.
But the period when he both felt and resolved to
assert his own superiority was indicated with per
fect clearness, by his publishing a series of engrav
ings, which were nothing else than direct challenges
to Claude — then the landscape painter supposed to
be the greatest in the world — upon his own ground
and his own terms. You are probably aU aware that
the studies made by Claude for his pictures, and
kept by him under the name of the " Liber Veri-
tatis," were for the most part made with pen and
ink, washed over with a brown tint ; and that these
drawings have been carefuUy fac-simUed and pub
lished in the form of mezzotint engravings, long
supposed to be models of taste in landscape compo
sition. In order to provoke comparison between
Claude and himself, Turner published a series of
engravings, called the " Liber Studiorum," executed
in exactly the same manner as these drawings of
Claude, — an etching representing what was done
with the pen, while mezzotint stood for colour. You
N

178 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
see the notable publicity of this challenge. Had he
confined himself to pictures in his trial of skill with
Claude, it would only have been in the gaUery or
the palace that the comparison could have been
instituted ; but now it is in the power of aU who are
interested in the matter to make it at their ease.f
* * # # #
Now, what Turner did in contest with Claude.
he did with every other then-known master of
landscape, each in his turn. He challenged and
vanquished, each in his own peculiar field, Vande-
velde on the sea, Salvator among rocks, and Cuyp
on Lowland rivers ; and, having done this, set him
self to paint the natural scenery of skies, moun
tains, and lakes, which, until his time, had never
been so much as attempted.
f When this Lecture was delivered, an enlarged copy of a
portion of one of these studies by Claude was set beside a similarly
magnified portion of one by Turner. It was impossible, without
much increasing the cost of the publication, to prepare two mezzo
tint engravings with the care requisite for this purpose ; and the
portion of the Lecture relating to these examples is therefore
omitted. It is however in the power of every reader to procure one
or more plates of each series ; and to judge for himself whether
the conclusion of Turner's superiority, which is assumed in the
next sentence of the text, be a just one or not.

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 179
He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed
even Titian, and Leonardo, the great men of the
earher schools. In their foreground work neither
Titian nor Leonardo could be exceUed ; but Titian
and Leonardo were thoroughly conventional in all
but their foregrounds. Turner was equally great in
aU the elements of landscape, and it is on him, and
on his daring additions to the received schemes of
landscape art, that all modern landscape has been
founded. You will never meet any truly great
living landscape painter who wUl not at once frankly
confess his obligations to Turner, not, observe, as
having copied him, but as having been led by Turner
to look in nature for what he would otherwise either
not have discerned, or discerning, not have dared
to represent.
Turner, therefore, was the first man who pre
sented us with the type of perfect landscape art :
and the richness of that art, with which you are at
present surrounded, and which enables you to open
your walls as it ' were into so many windows,
through which you can see whatever has charmed
N 2

180 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
you in the fairest scenery of your country, you wUl
do weU to remember as Turneresque.
So then you have these five periods to recollect —
you wiU have no difficulty, I trust, in doing so, —
the periods of Giotto, Leonardo, Titian, pastoralism,
and Turner.
But Turner's work is yet only begun. His
greatness is, as yet, altogether denied by many ;
and to the full, felt by very few. But every day
that he hes in his grave will bring some new ac
knowledgment of his power; and through those
eyes, now filled with dust, generations yet unborn
will learn to behold the light of nature.
You have some ground to-night to accuse me of
dogmatism. I can bring no proof before you of
what I so boldly assert. But I would not have
accepted your invitation to address you, unless I had
felt that I had a right to be, in this matter, dog
matic. I did not come here to teU you of my
beliefs or my conjectures ; I came to tell you the
truth which I have given fifteen years of my life
to ascertain, that this man, this Turner, of whom

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 181
you have known so little whUe he was living among
you, will one day take his place beside Shak
speare and Verulam, in the annals of the hght of
England. Yes : beside Shakspeare and Verulam, a third
star in that central consteUation, round which, in
the astronomy of inteUect, all other stars make their
circuit. By Shakspeare, humanity was unsealed to
you ; by Verulam the principles of nature ; and by
Turner, her aspect. AU these were sent to unlock
one of the gates of light, and to unlock it for the
first time. But of aU the three, though not the
greatest, Turner was the most unprecedented in his
work. Bacon did what Aristotle had attempted ;
Shakspeare did perfectly what JEschylus did par-
tiaUy ; but none before Turner had lifted the veU
from the face of nature ; the majesty of the hills
and forests had received no interpretation, and the
clouds passed unrecorded from the face of the heaven
which they adorned, and of the earth to which they
ministered. And now let me tell you something of his personal
N 3

182 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IIL
character. You have heard him spoken of as ill-
natured, and jealous of his brother artists. I will
tell you how jealous he was. I knew him for ten
years, and during that time had much familiar in
tercourse with him. I never once heard him say an
unkind thing of a brother artist, and I never once
heard him find a fault with another man's work. I
could say this of no other artist whom I have ever
known. But I will add a piece of evidence on this matter
of peculiar force. Probably many here have read a
book which has been lately published, to my mind
one of extreme interest and value, the life of the
unhappy artist, Benjamin Haydon. Whatever may
have been his faults, I believe no person can read
his journal without coming to the conclusion that
his heart was honest, and that he does not wilfully
misrepresent any. fact, or any person. Even sup
posing otherwise, the expression I am going to quote
to you would have- all the more force, because, as
you know, Haydon passed his whole hfe in war with
the Royal Academy, of which Turner was one of

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 183
the most influential members. Yet in the midst of
one of his most violent expressions of exultation at
one of his victories over the Academy, he draws
back suddenly with these words : — " But Turner
behaved weU, and did me justice."
I wUl give you however besides, two plain facts
Ulustrative of Turner's "jealousy."
You have, perhaps not many of you, heard of a
painter of the name of Bird : I do not myself know
his works, but Turner saw some merit in them :
and when Bird first sent a picture to the Academy,
for exhibition, Turner was on the hanging com
mittee. Bird's picture had great merit; but no
place for it could be found. Turner pleaded hard
for it. No, the thing was impossible. Turner sat
down and looked at Bird's picture a long time ; then
insisted that a place must be found for it. He was
still met by the assertion of impracticability. He
said no more, but took down one of his own pic
tures, sent it out of the Academy, and hung Bird's
in its place.
Match that, if you can, among the annals of
N 4

184 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
hangmg committees. But he could do nobler things
than this.
When Turner's picture of Cologne was exhibited
in the year 1826, it was hung between two portraits,
by Sir Thomas Lawrence, of Lady Wallscourt, and
Lady Robert Manners.
The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly
bright, and it had a most injurious effect on the
colour of the two portraits. Lawrence naturaUy
felt mortified, and complained openly of the position
of his pictures. You are aware that artists were at
that time permitted to retouch their pictures on the
walls of the Academy. On the morning of the
opening of the exhibition, at the private view, a
friend of Turner's who had seen the Cologne in aU
its splendour, led a group of expectant critics up to
the picture. He started back from it in consterna
tion. The golden sky had changed to a dun colour.
He ran up to Turner, who was in another part
of the room. " Turner, what have you been doing
to your picture?" "Oh," muttered Turner, in alow
voice, " poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It's only

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 185
lamp-black. It'll all wash off after the exhibition ! "
He had actually passed a wash of lamp-black in
water colour over the whole sky, and utterly spoiled
his picture for the time, and so left it through the
exhibition, lest it should hurt Lawrence's.
You may easUy find instances of self-sacrifice
where men have strong motives, and where large
benefits are to be conferred by the effort, or general
admiration obtained by it; but of pure, unselfish,
and perfect generosity, showing itself in a matter of
minor interest, and when few could be aware of the
sacrifice made, you wiU not easily find such another
example as this.
Thus much for his jealousy of hia brother-artists.
You have also heard much of his niggardliness in
money transactions. A great part of what you have
heard is perfectly true, aUowing for the exaggeration
which always takes place in the accounts of an
eccentric character. But there are other parts of
Turner's conduct of which you have never heard;
and which, if truly reported, would set his niggard
liness in a very different hght. Every person from

186 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
whom Turner exacted a due shilhng, proclaimed the
exaction far and wide ; but the persons to whom
Turner gave hundreds of pounds were prevented,
by their " delicacy," from reporting the kindness of
their benefactor. I may, however, perhaps, be per
mitted to acquaint you with one circumstance of this
nature, creditable alike to both parties concerned.
At the death of a poor drawing-master, Mr.
Wells*, whom Turner had long known, he was
deeply affected, and lent money to the widow
until a large sum had accumulated. She was both
honest and grateful, and after a long period was
happy enough to be able to return to her benefac
tor the whole sum she had received from him. She
waited on him with it ; but Turner kept his hands
in his pockets. " Keep it," he said, " and send your
chUdren to school, and to church." He said this
in bitterness ; he had himself been sent to neither.
* Not the Mr. Wells who taught drawing at Addiscombe. It
appears that Turner knew two persons of the same name, and in
the same profession. I am not permitted to name my authority for
the anecdote, various egotistic " delicacies,'7 even in this case, pre
venting useful truth from being clearly assured to the public.

Lect. III.] AND PAINTING. 187
WeU, but you will answer to me, we have heard
Turner aU our lives stigmatised as brutal, and un
charitable, and selfish, and miserly. How are we to
understand these opposing statements ?
Easily. I have told you truly what Turner
was. You have often heard what to most people
he appeared to be. Imagine what it was for a man
to live seventy years in this hard world, with the
kindest heart, and the noblest intellect of his time,
and never to meet with a single word or ray of
sympathy, untU he felt himself sinking into the
grave. From the time he knew his true greatness
aU the world was turned against him: he held his
own; but it could not be without roughness of
bearing, and hardening of the temper, if not of the
heart. No one understood him, no one trusted him,
and every one cried out against him. Imagine, any
of you, the effect upon your own minds, if every
voice that you heard from the human beings around
you were raised, year after year, through aU your
lives, only in condemnation of your efforts, and
denial of your success. This may be borne, and

188 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. III.
borne easUy, by men who have fixed rehgious prin
ciples, or supporting domestic ties. But Turner had
no one to teach him in his youth, and no one to love
liim in his old age. Respect and affection, if they
came at aU, came unbelieved, or came too late.
Naturally irritable, though kind, — naturally sus
picious, though generous,^- the gold gradually be
came dim, and the most fine gold changed, or, if not
t
changed, overcast and clouded. The deep heart was
still beating, but it was beneath a dark and melan
choly mail, between whose joints, however, some
times the slightest arrows found entrance, and power
of giving pain. He received no consolation in his
last years, nor in his death. Cut off in great part
from all society, — first, by labour, and at last by
sickness, — hunted to his grave by the malignities
of small critics, and the jealousies of hopeless ri
valry, he died in the house of a stranger, — one com
panion of his life, and one only, staying with him to
the last. The window of his death chamber was
turned towards the west, and the sun shone upon his
face in its setting, and rested there, as he expired.

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 189

LECTURE IV.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM.
The subject on which I would desire to engage
your attention this evening, is the nature and pro
bable result of a certain schism which took place
a few years ago among our British artists.
This schism, or rather the heresy which led to it,
as you are probably aware, was introduced by a small
number of very young men ; and consists mainly in
the assertion that the principles on which art has
been taught for these three hundred years back are
essentiaUy wrong, and that the principles which
ought to guide us are those which prevailed before
the time of Raphael; in adopting which, therefore,
as their guides, these young men, as a sort of bond
of unity among themselves, took the unfortunate
and somewhat ludicrous name of " Pre-Raphaelite
Brethren."

190 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
You must also be aware that this heresy has been
opposed with aU the influence and all the bitterness
of art and criticism ; but that in spite of these the
heresy has gained ground, and the pictures painted
on these new principles have obtained a most exten
sive popularity. These circumstances are sufficiently
singular, but their importance is greater even than
their singularity ; and your time will certainly not be
wasted in devoting an hour to an inquiry into the
true nature of this movement.
I shall first, therefore, endeavour to state to you
what the real difference is between the principles
of art before and after Raphael's time, and then
to ascertain, with you, how far these young men
truly have understood the difference, and what
may be hoped or feared from the effort they are
making. First, then, What is the real difference between
the principles on which art has been pursued before
and since Raphael ? You must be aware, that the
principal ground on which the Pre-Raphaelites have
been attacked, is the charge that they wish to bring

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 191
us back to a time of darkness and ignorance, when
the principles of drawing, and of art in general,
were comparatively unknown ; and this attack, there
fore, is entirely founded on the assumption that,
although for some unaccountable reason we cannot at
present produce artists altogether equal to Raphael,
yet that we are on the whole in a state of greater
iUumination than, at aU events, any artists who pre
ceded Raphael; so that we consider ourselves en
titled to look down upon them, and to say that, all
things considered, they did some wonderful things
for their time ; but that, as for comparing the art of
Giotto to that of Wilkie or Edwin Landseer, it
would be perfectly ridiculous, — the one being a
mere infant in his profession, and the others accom
plished workmen.
Now, that this progress has in some things taken
place is perfectly true ; but it is true also that this
progress is by no means the main thing to be noticed
respecting ancient and modern art; that there are
other circumstances, connected with the change from
one to the other, immeasurably more important, and

192 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
which, until very lately, have been altogether lost
sight of.
The fact is, that modern art. is not so much dis
tinguished from old art by greater skUl, as by a
radical change in temper. The art of this day is not
merely a more knowing art than that of the 13 th
century, — it is altogether another artr Between the
two there is a great gulph, a distinction for ever
ineffaceable. The change from one to the other was
not that of the child into the man, as we usuaUy con
sider it ; it was that of the chrysalis into the butter
fly. There was an entire change in the habits, food,
method of existence, and heart of the whole creature.
That we know more than 13th-century people is
perfectly true ; but that is not the essential difference
between us and them. We are different kind of
creatures from them, — as different as moths are dif
ferent from caterpiUars; and different in a certain
broad and vast sense, which I shall try this evening
to explain and prove to you; — different not merely
in this or that result of minor circumstances, — not as
you are different from people who never saw a loco-

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 193
motive engine, or a Highlander of this century from
a Highlander of 1745; — different in afar broader
and mightier sense than that; in a sense so great
and clear, that we are enabled to separate all the
Christian nations and tongues of the early time from
those of the latter time, and speak of them in one
group as the kingdoms of the Middle Ages. There
is an infinite significance in that term, which I want
you to dweU upon and work out ; it is a term which
we use in a dim consciousness of the truth, but
without fuUy penetrating into that of which we are
conscious. I want to deepen and make clear to you
this consciousness that the world has had essen
tiaUy a Trinity of ages — the Classical Age, the
Middle Age, the Modern Age ; each of these em
bracing races and individuals of apparently enor
mous separation in kind, but united in the spirit of
their age, — the Classical Age having its Egyptians
and Ninevites, Greeks and Romans, — the Middle
Age having its Goths and Franks, Lombards and
Italians, — the Modern Age having its French and
English, Spaniards and Germans; but aU these

194 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
distinctions, being in each case subordinate to the
mightier and broader distinction, between Classi-
calism, Medievalism, and Modernism.
Now our object to-night is indeed only to inquire
into a matter of art ; but we cannot do so properly
untU we consider this art in its relation to the inner
spirit of the age in which it exists ; and by doing so
we shall not only arrive at the most just conclusions
respecting our present subject, but we shall obtain
the means of arriving at just conclusions respecting
many other things.
Now the division of time which the Pre-Raphael-
ites have adopted, in choosing Raphael as the man
whose works mark the separation between Medi
evalism and Modernism, is perfectly accurate. It
has been accepted as such by all their opponents.
You have, then, the three periods : Classicahsm,
extending to the faU of the Roman empire ; Medi
evalism, extending from that faU to the close of the
15th century; and Modernism, thenceforward to
our days.
And in examining into the spirit of these three

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 195
epochs, observe, I dont mean to compare their bad
men, — I don't mean to take Tiberius as a type of
Classicahsm, nor Ezzehn as a type of Medievalism,
nor Robespierre as a type of Modernism. Bad men
are hke each other in aU epochs ; and in the Roman,
the Paduan, or the Parisian, sensuality and cruelty
admit of httle distinction in the manners of their
manifestation. But among men comparatively vir
tuous, it is important to study the phases of cha
racter ; and it is into these only that it is necessary
for us to inquire. Consider therefore, first, the es
sential difference in character between three of the
most devoted nulitary heroes whom the three great
epochs of the world have produced, — all three de
voted to the service of their country, — all of them
dying therein. I mean, Leonidas in the Classical
period, St. Louis in the Medieval period, and Lord
Nelson in the Modern period.
Leonidas had the most rigid sense of duty, and
died with the most perfect faith in the gods of his
country, fulfiUing the accepted prophecy of his death.
St. Louis had the most rigid sense of duty, and the
o 2

196 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
most perfect faith in Christ. Nelson had the most
rigid sense of duty, and 
You must supply my pause with your charity.
Now you do not suppose that the main difference-
between Leonidas and Nelson lay in the modern
inventions at the command of the one, as com
pared with the imperfect military instruments
possessed by the other. They were not essentially
different, in that the one fought with lances and
the other with guns. But they were essentiaUy
different in the whole tone of their rehgious
behef. By this instance you may be partially prepared
for the bold statement I am going to make to
you, as to the change which constitutes Modernism.
I said just now that it was hke that of the worm
to the butterfly. But the changes which God
causes in his lower creatures are almost always
from worse to better, whUe the changes which God
aUows man to make in himself are very often quite
the other way ; like Adam's new arrangement of
his nature. And in saying that this last change was

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 197
like that of a chrysalis, I meant only in the com
pleteness of it, not in the tendency of it. Instead of
from the worm to the butterfly, it is very possible it
may have been from the butterfly to the worm.
Have patience with me for a moment after I tell
you what I believe it to have been, and give me a
little time to justify my words.
I say that Classicalism began, wherever civilisa
tion began, with Pagan Faith. Medievahsm began
and continued, wherever civilisation began and con
tinued to confess Christ. And, lastly, Modernism
began and continues, wherever civUisation began
and continues to deny Christ.
You are startled, but give me a moment to
explain. What, you would say to me, do you
mean to teU us that we deny Christ? we who are
essentially modern in every one of our principles and
feelings, and yet aU of us professing believers in
Christ, and we trust most of us true ones ? I answer,
So far as we are behevers indeed, we are one with
the faithful of aU times, — one with the classical
believer of Athens and Ephesus, and one with the
o 3

198 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
medieval believer of the banks of the Rhone and the
vaUeys of the Monte Viso. But so far as, in
various strange ways, some in great and some in
small things, we deny this belief, in so far we are
essentially infected with this spirit, which I call
Modernism. For observe, the change of which I speak has
nothing whatever to do with the Reformation, or
with any of its effects. It is a far broader thing
than the Reformation. It is a change which has
taken place, not only in reformed England, and
reformed Scotland; but in unreformed France, in
unreformed Italy, in unreformed Austria, I class
honest Protestants and honest Roman Catholics
for the present together, under the general term
Christians : if you object to their being so classed
together, I pray your pardon, but aUow me to do
so at present, for the sake of perspicuity, if for
nothing else; and so classing them, I say that a
change took place, about the time of Raphael, in the
spirit of Roman Catholics and Protestants both ; and
that change consisted in the denial of their rehgious

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 199
behef, at least in the external and trivial affairs of
life, and often in far more serious things.
For instance, hear this direction to an upholsterer
of the early 13th century. Under the commands of
the sheriff of Wiltshire, he is thus ordered to make
some alterations in a room for Henry the Third.
He is to "wainscot the King's lower chamber, and
to paint that wainscot of a green colour, and to put
a border to it, and to cause the heads of kings and
queens to be painted on the borders ; and to paint
on the waUs of the King's upper chamber the story
of St Margaret Virgin, and the four Evangelists,
and to paint the wainscot of the same chamber of a
green colour, spotted with gold." *
Again, the sheriff of WUtshire is ordered to " put
two smaU glass windows in the chamber of Edward
the King's son ; and put a glass window in the
chamber of our Queen at Clarendon; and in the
same window cause to be painted a Mary with her

* Liberate Rolls, preserved in the Tower of London, and quoted
by Mr. Turner in his History of the Domestic Architecture of
England. o 4

200 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
Child, and at the feet of the said Mary, a queen
with clasped hands."
Again, the sheriff of Southampton is ordered to
" paint the tablet beside the King's bed, with the
figures of the guards of the bed of Solomon, and to
glaze with white glass the windows in the King's
great Hall at Northampton, and cause the history of
Lazarus and Dives to be painted in the same."
And so on ; I need not multiply instances. You
see that in all these cases, the furniture of the
King's house is made to confess his Christianity. It
may be imperfect and impure Christianity, but such
as it might be, it was all that men had then to live
and die by ; and you see there was not a pane of
glass in their windows nor a paUet by their bedside
that did not confess and proclaim it. Now, when
you go home to your own rooms, supposing them to
be richly decorated at all, examine what that deco
ration consists of. You will find Cupids, Graces,
Floras, Dianas, Jupiters, Junos. But you will not
find, except in the form of an engraving, bought
principally for its artistic beauty, either Christ,

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 201
or the Virgin, or Lazarus and Dives. And if a
thousand years hence, any curious investigator were
to dig up the ruins of Edinburgh, and not know
your history, he would think you had aU been born
heathens. Now that, so far as it goes, is denying
Christ ; it is pure Modernism.
" No," you wUl answer me, " you misunderstand
and calumniate us. We do not, indeed, choose to
have Dives and Lazarus on our windows ; but that
is not because we are moderns, but because we
are Protestants, and do not hke rehgious imagery."
Pardon me : that is not the reason. Go into
any fashionable lady's boudoir in Paris, and see if
you wiU find Dives and Lazarus there. You wUl
find, indeed, either that she has her private chapel,
or that she has a crucifix in her dressing-room ; but
for the general decoration of the house, it is all
composed of ApoUos and Muses, just as it is here.
Again. What do you suppose was the substance
of good education, the education of a knight, in the
Middle Ages? What was taught to a boy as
soon as he was able to learn anything? First, to

202 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
keep under his body, and bring it into subjection
and perfect strength; then to take Christ for his
captain, to live as always in his presence; and, finaUy,
to do his devoir — mark the word — to aU men.
Now, consider, first, the difference in their influence
over the armies of France, between the ancient
word "devoir," and modern word "gloire." And,
again, ask yourselves what you expect your own
chUdren to be taught at your great schools and
universities. Is it Christian history, or the histories
of Pan and SUenus? Your present education, to
all intents and purposes, denies Christ, and that is
intensely and peculiarly Modernism.
Or, again, what do you suppose was the pro
claimed and understood principle of aU Christian
governments in the Middle Ages ? I do not say it was
a principle acted up to, or that the cunning and
violence of wicked men had not too often their full
sway then, as now; but on what principles were
that cunning and violence, so far as was possible,
restrained? By the confessed fear of God, and
confessed authority of his law. You wiU find that

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 203
aU treaties, laws, transactions whatsoever, in the
Middle Ages, are based on a confession of Chris
tianity as the leading rule of life ; that a text of
Scripture is held, in aU pubhc assembhes, strong
enough to be set against an appearance of expe
diency ; and although, in the end, the expe
diency might triumph, yet it was never without a
distinct allowance of Christian principle, as an effi
cient element in the consultation. Whatever error
might be committed, at least Christ was openly
confessed. Now what is the custom of your British
Parliament in these days ? You know that nothing
would excite greater manifestations of contempt and
disgust than the shghtest attempt to introduce the
authority of Scripture in a political consultation.
That is denying Christ. It is intensely and pecu
liarly Modernism.
It would be easy to go on showing you this same
thing in many more instances ; but my business to
night is to show you its fuU effect in one thing only,
namely, in art, and I must come straightway to
that, as I have little enough time. This, then, is

204 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
the great and broad fact which distinguishes modern
art from old art ; that all ancient art was religious,
and aU modern art is profane. Once more, your
patience for an instant. I say, all ancient art was
religious ; that is to say, religion was its first object ;
private luxury or pleasure its second. I say, all
modern art is profane; that is, private luxury or
pleasure is its first object ; religion its. second. Now
you all know, that -anything which makes religion
its second object, makes religion no object. God
will put up with a great many things in the human
heart, but there is one thing he wUl not put up with
in it — a second place. He who offers God a second
place, offers him no place. And there is another
mighty truth which you all know, that he who
makes religion his first object, makes it his whole
object: he has no other work in the world than
God's work. Therefore I do not say that ancient
art was more religious than modern art. There
is no question of degree^ in this matter. Ancient
art was religious art; modern art is profane art;
and between the two the distinction is as firm as
between light and darkness.

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 205
Now, do not let what I say be encumbered in
your minds with the objection, that you think art
ought not to be brought into the service of religion.
That is not the question at present — do not agitate
it. The simple fact is, that old art was brought
into that service, and received therein a peculiar
form ; that modern art is not brought into that
service, and has received in consequence another
form ; that this is the great distinction between me
dieval and modern art; and from that are clearly
deducible all other essential differences between
them. That is the point I wish to show you, and of
that there can be no dispute. Whether or not
Christianity be the purer for lacking the service of
art, is disputable — and I do not mean now to begin
the dispute ; but that art is the impurer for not
being in the service of Christianity, is indisputable,
and that is the main point I have now to do with.
Perhaps there are some of you here who would
not allow that the religion of the 13th century was
Christianity. Be it so, still is the statement true,
which is all that is necessary for me now to prove,

206 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
that art was great because it was devoted to such
religion as then existed. Grant that Roman Ca
tholicism was not Christianity — grant it, if you
wUl, to be the same thing as old heathenism, —
and still I say to you, whatever it was, men
lived and died by it, the ruling thought of all their
thoughts; and just as classical art was greatest in
building to its gods, so medieval art was great in
building to its gods, and modern art is not great,
because it builds to no God. You have for instance,
in your Edinburgh Library, a Bible of the 13th
century, the Latin Bible, commonly known as the
Vulgate. It contains the Old and New Testaments
complete, besides the books of Maccabees, the
Wisdom of Solomon, the books of Judith, Baruch,
and Tobit. The whole is written in the most
beautiful black-letter hand, and each book begins
with an Uluminated letter, containing three or four
figures, iUustrative of the book which it begins.
Now, whether this were done in the service of true
Christianity or not, the simple fact is, that here is
a man's lifetime taken up in writing and ornament-

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 207
ing a Bible, as the sole end of his art ; and that
doing this, either in a book or on a wall, was the
common artist's hfe at the time ; that the constant
Bible reading and Bible thinking which this work
involved, made a man serious and thoughtful, and a
good workman, because he was always expressing
those feehngs which, whether right or wrong, were
the groundwork of his whole being. Now, about
the year 1500, this entire system was changed. In
stead of the life of Christ, men had, for the most
part, to paint the lives of Bacchus and Venus ; and
if you walk through any pubhc gaUery of pictures
by the "great masters," as they are called, you will
indeed find here and there what is caUed a Holy
Family, painted for the sake of drawing pretty
chUdren, or a pretty woman ; but for the most
part you will find nothing but Floras, Pomonas,
Satyrs, Graces, Bacchanals, and Banditti. Now
you will not declare — you cannot believe — that
Angelico painting the life of Christ, Benozzo
painting the life of Abraham, Ghirlandajo painting
the life of the Virgin, Giotto painting the life of St.

208 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
Francis, were worse employed, or likely to produce
a less healthy art, than Titian painting the loves of
Venus and Adonis, than Correggio painting the
naked Antiope, than Salvator painting the slaughters
of the thirty years' war. If you wUl not let me
call the one kind of labour Christian, and the other
unchristian, at least you wUl let me call the one
moral, and the other immoral, and that is all I ask
you to admit.
Now observe, hitherto I have been telling you
what you may feel inclined to doubt or dispute;
and I must leave you to consider the subject
at your leisure. But henceforward I tell you
plain facts, which admit neither of doubt nor
dispute by any one who will take the pains to
acquaint himself with their subject-matter.
When the entire purpose of art was moral
teaching, it naturaUy took truth for its first object,
and beauty, and the pleasure resulting from
beauty, only for its second. But when it lost aU
purpose of moral teaching, it as naturaUy took
beauty for its first object, and truth for its second.

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 209
That is to say, in all they did, the old artists
endeavoured, in one way or another, to express the
real facts of the subject or event, this being their
chief business : and the question they first asked
themselves was always, how would this thing, or
that, actually have occurred? what would this per
son, or that, have done under the circumstances?
and then having formed their conception, they work
it out with only a secondary regard to grace, or
beauty, whUe a modern painter invariably thinks of
the grace and beauty of his work first, and unites
afterwards as much truth as he can with its con
ventional graces. I will give you a single strong
instance to make my meaning plainer. In Orcagna's
great fresco of the Triumph of Death, one of the
incidents is that three kings, when out hunting,
are met by a spirit, which, desiring them to follow
it, leads them to a churchyard, and points out to
them, in open coffins, three bodies of kings such as
themselves, in the last stages of corruption.* Now a
* This incident is not of Orcagna's invention, it is variously
represented in much earlier art. There is a curious and graphic
drawing of it, circa 1300, in the MS. Arundel 83. Brit. Mus. in

210 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
modern artist, representing this, would have endea
voured dimly and faintly to suggest the appear-*
ance of the dead bodies, and would have made,
or attempted to make, the countenances of the
three kings variously and solemnly expressive of
thought. This would be in his, or our, view, a
poetical and tasteful treatment of the subject.
But Orcagna disdains both poetry and taste ; he
wants the facts only; he wishes to give the
spectator the same lesson that the kings had; and
therefore, instead of concealing the dead bodies, he
paints them with the most fearful detail. And then,
he does not consider what the three kings might
which the three dead persons are walking, aud are met by three
queens; who severally utter the sentences : —
" Ich am aferd."
"Lo, whet ichse?"
" Me thinketh hit beth develes thre."
To which the dead bodies answer: —
"Ich wes wel fair.''
" Such schelt ou be."
" For Godes love, be wer by me."
It is curious, that though the dresses of the living persons, and
the " I was well fair " of the first dead speaker, seem to mark them
distinctly to be women, some longer legends below are headed
" primus rex mortuus," &c.

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 211
most gracefully do. He considers only what they
actuaUy in aU probability would have done. He
makes them looking at the coffins with a startled
stare, and one holding his nose. This is an extreme
instance ; but you are not to suppose it is because
Orcagna had naturaUy a coarse or prosaic mind.
Where he felt that thoughtfulness and beauty could
properly be introduced, as in his circles of saints
and prophets, no painter of the middle ages is so
grand. I can give you no better proof of this
than the one fact that Michael Angelo borrowed
from him openly, — borrowed from him in the
principal work which he ever executed, the Last
Judgment, and borrowed from him the principal
figure in that work. But it is just because Orcagna
was so firmly and unscrupulously true, that he had
the power of being so great when he chose. His
arrow went straight to the mark. It was not that he
did not love beauty, but he loved truth first.
So it was with aU the men of that time. No
painters ever had more power of conceiving graceful
form, or more profound devotion to the beautiful ;
p 2

212 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. lV.
but all these gifts and affections are kept sternly
subordinate to their moral purpose ; and, so far as
their powers and knowledge went, they either
painted from nature things as they were, or from
imagination things as they must have been.
I do not mean that they reached any imitative
resemblance to nature. They had neither skiU to
do it, nor care to do it. Their art was conventional
and imperfect, but they considered it only as a lan
guage wherein to convey the knowledge of certain
facts ; it was perfect enough for that ; and though
always reaching on to greater attainments, they
never suffered their imperfections to disturb and
check them in their immediate purposes. And this
mode of treating all subjects was persisted in by the
greatest men untU the close of the 15th century.
Now so justly have the Pre-Raphaehtes chosen
their time and name, that the great change which
clouds the career of medieval art was effected, not
only in Raphael's time, but by Raphael's own prac
tice, and by his practice in the very centre of his
available life.

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 213
You remember, doubtless, what high ground we
have for placing the beginning of human inteUectual
strength at about the age of twelve years.* As
sume, therefore, this period for the beginning of
Raphael's strength. He died at thirty-seven. And
in his twenty-fifth year, one half-year only past the
precise centre of his avaUable life, he was sent for to
Rome, to decorate the Vatican for Pope Julius IL,
and having untU that time worked exclusively in the
ancient and stern medieval manner, he, in the first
chamber which he decorated uvthat palace, wrote
upon its walls the Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, of the
Arts of Christianity.
And he wrote it thus: On one waU of that
chamber he placed a picture of the World or
Kingdom of Theology, presided over by Christ.
And on the side wall of that same chamber he
placed the World or Kingdom of Poetry, presided
over by Apollo. And from that spot, and from that
hour, the inteUect and the art of Italy date their
degradation. * Luke, ii. 42. 49.
P 3

214 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
Observe, however, the significance of this fact is
not in the mere use of the figure of the heathen god
to indicate the domain of poetry. Such a symbo
lical use had been made of the figures of heathen
deities in the best times of Christian art. But it is
in the fact, that being called to Rome especially to
adorn the palace of the so-caUed head of the church,
and caUed as the chief representative of the Christian
artists of his time, Raphael had neither religion nor
originality enough to trace the spirit of poetry and
the spirit of phUospphy to the inspiration of the
true God, as weU as that of theology ; but that, on
the contrary, he elevated the creations of fancy on
the one wall to the same rank as tKe objects of faith
upon the other ; that in deliberate, balanced, opposi
tion to the Rock of the Mount Zion, he reared the
rock of Parnassus, and the roek of the Acropolis;
that, among the masters of poetry we find him
enthroning Petrarch and Pindar, but not Isaiah
nor David, and for lords over the domain of phi
losophy we find the masters of the school of
Athens, but neither of those greater masters by the

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 215
last of whom that school was rebuked, — those
who received their wisdom from heaven itself, in the
vision of Gibeon*, and the lightning of Damascus.
The doom of the arts of Europe went forth from
that chamber, and it was brought about in great part
by the very exceUencies of the man who had thus
marked the commencement of decline. The perfec
tion of execution and the beauty of feature which
were attained in his works, and in those of his great
contemporaries, rendered finish of execution and
beauty of form the chief objects of all artists ;
and tiftnceforward execution was looked for rather
than thought, and beauty rather than veracity.
And as I told you, these are the two secondary
causes of the decline of art ; the first being the loss
of moral purpose. Pray note them clearly. In
medieval art, thought is the first thing, execution
the second; in modern art execution is the first
thing, and thought the second. And again, in me
dieval art, truth is first, beauty second ; in modern
art, beauty is first, truth second. The medieval
* 1 Kings, iii. 5.
P4

216 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
principles led up to Raphael, and the modern prin
ciples lead down from him.
Now, first, let me give you a familiar illus
tration of the difference with respect to execution.
Suppose you have to teach two children drawing,
one thoroughly clever and active-minded, the other
dull and slow; and you put before them Jullien's
chalk studies of heads — etudes a deux crayons —
and desire them to be copied. The duU chUd wUl
slowly do your bidding, blacken his paper and rub
it white again, and patiently and painfully, in the
course of three or four years, attain to the perform
ance of a chalk head, not much worse than his
original, but stiU of less value than the paper it is
drawn upon. But the clever chUd wUl not, or wiU
only by force, consent to this discipline. He finds
other means of expressing himself with his pencU
somehow or another; and presently you find his
paper covered with sketches of his grandfather and
grandmother, and uncles and cousins, — sketches of
the room and the house, and the cat and the dog,
and the country outside, and everything in the world

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 217
he can set his eyes on ; and he gets on, and even his
chUd's work has a value in it — a truth which makes
it worth keeping; no one knows how precious,
perhaps, that portrait of his grandfather may be, if
any one has but the sense to keep it till the time
when the old man can be seen no more up the
lawn, nor by the wood. That chUd is working in
the middle-age spirit — the other in the modern
spirit. But there is something stiU more striking in the
evils which have resulted from the modern regard-
lessness of truth. Consider, for instance, its effect
on what is caUed historical painting. What do you
at present mean by historical painting ? Now-a-days,
it means the endeavouring, by the power of imagina
tion, to portray some historical event of past days.
But in the middle ages, it meant representing the
acts of their own days; and that is the only his
torical painting worth a straw. Of all the wastes
of time and sense which Modernism has invented —
and they are many — none are so ridiculous as this
endeavour to represent past history. What do you

218 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
suppose our descendants will care for our imagina
tions of the events of former days? Suppose the
Greeks, instead of representing their own warriors
as they fought at Marathon, had left us nothing but
their imaginations of Egyptian battles ; and suppose
the Italians, in like manner^ instead of portraits of
Can Grande and Dante, or of Leo the Tenth and
Raphael, had left us nothing but imaginary portraits
of Pericles and Miltiades? What fools we should
have thought them! how bitterly we should have
been provoked with their folly ! And that is precisely
what our descendants will feel towards us, so far as
our grand historical and classical schools are con
cerned. What do we care, they wUl say, what those
19th century people fancied about Greek and Roman
history I If they had left us a few plain and rational
sculptures and pictures of their own battles, and their
own men, in their everyday dress, we should have
thanked them. WeU, b'ut^ you wUl say, we have
left them portraits of our great men, and paintings
of our great battles. Yes, you have indeed, and
that is the only historical painting that, you eithef

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 219
have, or can have ; but you don't call that historical
painting. You don't thank the men who do it ; you
look down upon them and dissuade them from it,
and tell them they don't belong to the grand schools.
And yet they are the only true historical painters,
and the only men who wUl produce any effect on
their own generation, or on any other. Wilkie was
a historical painter, Chantrey a historical sculp
tor, because they painted, or carved, the veritable
things and men they saw, not men and things as
they believed they might have been, or should have
been. But no one teUs such men they are historical
painters, and they are discontented with what they
do ; and poor Wilkie must needs travel to see the
grand school, and imitate the grand school, and ruin
himself. And you have had multitudes of other
painters ruined, from the beginning, by that grand
school. There was Etty, naturaUy as good a painter
as ever hved, but no one told him what to paint, and
he studied the antique, and the grand schools, and
painted dances of nymphs in red and yeUow shawls
to the end of his days, Much good may they do

220 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
you ! He is gone to the grave* a lost mind. There
was Flaxman, another naturally great man, with as
true an eye for nature as Raphael, — he stumbles
over the blocks of the antique statues — wanders in
the dark valley of their ruins to the end of.his days.
He has left you a few outlines of muscular men
straddling and frowning behind round shields. Much
good may they do you ! Another lost mind. And
of those who are lost namelessly, who have not
strength enough even to make themselves known,
the poor pale students who lie buried for ever in
the abysses of the great schools, no account can be
rendered ; they are numberless.
And the wonderful thing is, that of all these men
whom you now have come to call the great masters,
there was not one who confessedly did not paint his
own present world, plainly and truly. Homer sang
of what he saw; Phidias carved what he saw;
Raphael painted the men of his own time in their
own caps and mantles; and every man who has
arisen to eminence in modern times has done so alto
gether by his working in their way, and doing the

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 221
things he saw. How did Reynolds rise ? Not by
painting Greek women, but by painting the glorious
httle hving Ladies this, and Ladies that, of his own
time. How did Hogarth rise? Not by painting
Athenian follies, but London follies. Who are the
men who have made an impression upon you your
selves, — upon your own age? I suppose the most
popular painter of the day is Landseer. Do you
suppose he studied dogs and eagles out of the Elgin
Marbles ? And yet in the very face of these plain,
incontrovertible, aU-visible facts, we go on from year
to year with the base system of Academy teaching,
in spite of which every one of these men have risen :
I say in spite of the entire method and aim of our
art-teaching. It destroys the greater number of
its pupUs altogether; it hinders and paralyses the
greatest. There is not a hving painter whose emi
nence is not in spite of everything he has been taught
from his youth upwards, and who, whatever his
eminence may be, has not suffered much injury in
the course of his victory. For observe : this love of
what is called ideality or beauty in preference to

222 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
truth, operates not only in making us choose the
past rather than the present for our subjects, but it
makes us falsify the present when we do take it for
our subject. I said just now that portrait-painters
were historical painters ; — so they are ; but not good
ones, because not faithful ones. The beginning and
end of modern portraiture is adulation. The painters
cannot live but by flattery ; we should desert them
if they spoke honestly. And therefore we can have
no good portraiture; for in the striving after that
which is not in their model, they lose the inner and
deeper nobleness which is in their model. I saw not
long ago, for the first time, the portrait of a man
whom I knew well, — a young man, but a rehgious
man, — and one who had suffered much from sick
ness. The whole dignity of his features and person
depended upon the expression of serene, yet solemn,
purpose sustaining a feeble frame ; and the painter, '
by way of flattering him, strengthened him, and
made him athletic in body, gay in countenance,
idle in gesture; and the whole power and being
of the man himself were lost. And this is still

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 223
more the case with our public portraits. You
have a portrait, for instance, of the Duke of Wel
lington at the end of the North Bridge, — one of the
thousand equestrian statues of Modernism, — studied
from the show-riders of the amphitheatre, with their
horses on their hind-legs in the sawdust.* Do you
* I intended this last sentence of course to apply to the thousand
statues, not definitely to the one in immediate question, which,
though tainted with the modern affectation, and the nearest
example of it to which I could refer an Edinburgh audience, is
the work of a most promising sculptor j and was indeed so far
executed on the principles asserted in the text, that the Duke gave
Mr. Steele a sitting on horseback, in order that his mode of riding
might be accurately represented. This, however, does not render
the following remarks in the text nugatory, as it may easily be
imagined that the action of the Duke, exhibiting his riding in his
own grounds, would be different from his action, or inaction, when
watching the course of a battle.
I must also make a most definite exception in favour of
Marochetti, who seems to me a thoroughly great sculptor ; and
whose statue of Cceur de Lion, though, according to the principle
just stated, not to be considered a historical work, is an ideal work
of the highest beauty and value. Its erection in front of ¦West
minster Hall will tend more to educate the public eye and mind
with respect to art, than anything we have done in London for
centuries. *****
April 21st, 1854. — I stop the press in order to insert the follow
ing paragraph from to-day's Times: — "The Statue of Ccetjr
de Lion.  Yesterday morning a number of workmen were engaged in
putting down the cast which was placed in New Palace Yard of the

224 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
suppose that was the way the Duke sat when your
destinies depended on him? when the foam hung
from the lips of his tired horse, and its wet limbs
were dashed with the bloody slime of the battle
field, and he himself sat anxious in his quietness,
grieved in his fearlessness, as he watched, scythe-
stroke by scythe-stroke, the gathering in of the
harvest of death ? You would have done something
had you thus left his image in the enduring iron,
but nothing now.
But the time has at last come for all this to be
put an end to ; and nothing can well be more extra
ordinary than the way in which the men have risen
who are to do it. Pupils in the same schools,
receiving precisely the same instruction which for so
long a time has paralysed every one of our painters,
— these boys agree in disliking to copy the antique
statues set before them. They copy them as they
colossal equestrian statue of Richard Cceur de Lion. Sir C. Barry
was, we believe, opposed to the cast remaining there any longer, and to
the putting up of the statue itself on the same site, because it did not
harmonise with the building. During the day the horse and figure
were removed, and before night the pedestal was demolished and taken

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 225
are bid, and they copy, them better than any one
else ; they carry off prize after prize, and yet they
hate their work. At last they are admitted to
study from the hfe ; they find the life very different
from the antique, and say so. Their teachers teU
them the antique is the best, and they mustn't copy
the life. They agree among themselves that they
hke the life, and that copy it they will. They do
copy it faithfully, and their masters forthwith de
clare them to be lost men. Their fellow-students
hiss them whenever they enter the room. They
can't help it ; they join hands and tacitly resist both
the hissing and the instruction. AccidentaUy, a few
prints of the works of Giotto, a few casts from
those of Ghiberti, fall into their hands, and they see
in these something they never saw before — some
thing intensely and everlastingly true. They ex
amine farther into the matter; they discover for
themselves the greater part of what I have laid
before you to-night ; they form themselves into a
body, and enter upon that crusade which has
hitherto been victorious. And which wUl be abso-
Q

226 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
lutely and triumphantly victorious. The great
mistake which has hitherto prevented the pubhc
mind from fully going with them must soon be cor
rected. That mistake was the supposition that,
instead of wishing to recur to the principles of the
early ages, these men wished to bring back the
ignorance of the early ages. This notion, grounded
first on some hardness in their earlier works, which
resulted — as it must always result — from the
downright and earnest effort to paint nature as in a
looking-glass, was fostered partly by the jealousy of
their beaten competitors, and partly by the pure,
perverse, and hopeless ignorance of the whole body
of art-critics, so caUed, connected with the press.
No notion was ever more baseless or more ridiculous.
It was asserted that the Pre-Raphaelites did not
draw weU, in the face of the fact that the principal
member of their body, from the time he entered the
schools of the Academy, had literaUy encumbered
himself with the medals given as prizes for drawing.
It was asserted that they did not draw in perspec
tive, by men who themselves knew no more of per-

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 227
spective than they did of astrology ; it was asserted
that they sinned against the appearances of nature,
by men who had never drawn so much as a leaf or a
blossom from nature in their lives. And, lastly,
when all these calumnies or absurdities would teU no
more, and it began to be forced upon men's unwiU-
ing behef that the style of the Pre-Raphaelites was
true and was according to nature, the last forgery
invented respecting them is, that they copy photo
graphs. You observe how completely this last piece
of malice defeats aU the rest. It admits they are true
to nature, though only that it may deprive them of
aU merit in being so. But it may itself be at once
refuted by the bold chaUenge to their opponents to
produce a Pre-Raphaelite picture, or anything like
one, by themselves copying a photograph.
Let me at once clear your minds from aU these
doubts, and at once contradict aU these calum
nies. Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of
absolute uncompromising truth in aU that it does,
obtained by working everything, down to the most
« 2

228 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
minute detaU, from nature, and from nature only.*
Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is
painted to the last touch, in the open air, from the
thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however
studied in expression, is a true portrait of some hving
person. Every minute accessory is painted in the
same manner. And one of the chief reasons for the
violent opposition with which the school has been
attacked by other artists, is the enormous cost of
care and labour which such a system demands from
those who adopt it, in contradistinction to the present
slovenly and imperfect style.
This is the main Pre-Raphaelite principle. But
the battle which its supporters have to fight is a
hard one ; and for that battle they have been fitted
by a very peculiar character.
You perceive that the principal resistance they
» Or, where imagination is necessarily trusted to, by always
endeavouring to conceive a fact as it really was likely to have
happened, rather than as it most prettily might have happened.
The various members of the school are not all equally severe in
carrying out its principles, some of them trusting their memory
or fancy very far ; only all agreeing in the effort to make their
memories so accurate as to seem like portraiture, and their fancy
so probable as to seem like memory.

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 229
have to make is to that spurious beauty, whose
attractiveness had tempted men to forget, or to
despise, the more noble quality of sincerity : and in
order at once to put them beyond the power of
temptation from this beauty, they are, as a body,
characterised by a total absence of sensibility to the
ordinary and popular forms of artistic gracefulness ;
while, to all that still lower kind of prettiness, which
regulates the disposition of our scenes upon the
stage, and which appears in our lower art, as in our
annuals, our common-place portraits, and statuary,
the Pre-Raphaelites are not only dead, but they re
gard it with a contempt and aversion approaching to
disgust. This character is absolutely necessary to
them in the present time ; but it, of course, occa
sionally renders their work comparatively unpleasing.
As the school becomes less aggressive, and more
authoritative, — which it wUl do, — they wiU enhst
into their ranks men who wUl work, mainly, upon
their principles, and yet embrace more of those
characteristics which are generaUy attractive, and
this great ground of offence wiU be removed.
a 3

230 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
Again: you observe that, as landscape-painters,
the principles of that division of them who do not
trust to imagination, must, in great part, confine them
to mere foreground work ; and singularly enough,
that they may not be tempted away from this work,
they have been born with comparatively little en
joyment of those evanescent effects and distant sub
limities which nothing but the memory can arrest,
and nothing but a daring conventionalism portray.
I But for this work they are not now needed. Turner,
; the first and greatest of the Pre-Raphaelites, has done
'it already ; he, though his capacity embraced every
thing, and though he would sometimes in his fore
grounds paint the spots upon a dead trout and the
dyes upon a butterfly's wing, yet for the most part
delighted to begin at that very point where the other
branches of Pre-Raphaelitism become powerless.
Lastly. The habit of constantly carrying every
thing up to the utmost point of completion, deadens
the Pre-Raphaelites in general to the merits of men
who, with an equal love of truth up to a certain
point, yet express' themselves habitually with speed
and power, rather than with finish, and give abs-

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 231
tracts of truth rather than total truth. Pro
bably to the end of time artists wUl more or less
be divided into these classes, and it wiU be impos
sible to make men hke MUlais understand the merits
of men hke Tintoret; but this is the more to be
regretted because the Pre-Raphaelites have enor
mous powers of imagination, as weU as of realisa
tion, and do not yet themselves know of how much
they would be capable, if they sometimes worked on
a larger scale, and with a less laborious finish.
With aU their faults, their pictures are, since
Turner's death, the best — incomparably the best —
on the waUs of the Royal Academy! and such
works as Mr. Hunt's Claudio and Isabella have
never been rivaUed, in some respects never ap
proached, at any other period of art.
This I beheve to be a most candid statement of
aU their faults and aU their deficiencies; not such,
you perceive, as are likely to arrest their progress.
The "magna est Veritas " was never more sure of
accomphshment than by these men. Their adver
saries have no chance with them. They wUl gra
ft 4

232 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
duaUy unite their influence with whatever is true or
powerful in the reactionary art of other countries;
and on their works such a school wiU be founded
as shah justify the third age of the world's civilisa
tion, and render it as great in creation as it has been
in discovery.
And now let me remind you but of one thing
more. As you examine into the career of historical
painting, you will be more and more struck with the
fact I have this evening, stated to you, — that none
was ever truly great but that which represented the
living forms and daUy deeds of the people among
whom it arose; — that aU precious historical work
records, not the past, but the present. Remember,
therefore, that it is not so much in buying pictures,
as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble
school. The best patronage of art is not that which
seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague
ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image ;
but that which educates your children into living
heroes, and binds down the flights and the fond
nesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful
devotion.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 233

ADDENDA

THE FOURTH LECTURE.

I could not enter, in a popular lecture, upon one
intricate and difficult question, closely connected
with the subject of Pre-Raphaelitism — namely, the
relation of invention to observation ; and composition
to imitation. It is stUl less a question to be dis
cussed in the compass of a note ; and I must defer
all careful examination of it to a future opportunity.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to leave altogether
unanswered the first objection which is now most
commonly made to the Pre-Raphaelite work,
namely, that the principle of it seems adverse to all
exertion of imaginative power. Indeed, such an

234 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
objection sounds strangely on the lips of a pubhc who
have been in the habit of purchasing, for hundreds of
pounds, smaU squares of Dutch canvass, containing
only servUe imitations of the coarsest nature. It is
strange that an imitation of a cow's head by Paul
Potter, or of an old woman's by Ostade, or of a
scene of tavern debauchery by Teniers, should be
purchased and proclaimed for high art, whUe the
rendering of the most noble expressions of human
feehng in Hunt's Isabella, or of the loveliest English
landscape, haunted by sorrow, in MUlais' Ophelia,
should be declared " puerile." But, strange though
the utterance of it be, there is some weight in
the objection. It is true that so long as the Pre-
Raphaelites only paint from nature, however care-
fuUy selected and grouped, their pictures can never
have the characters of the highest class of com
positions. But, on the other hand, the shaUow and
conventional arrangements commonly called " com
positions " by the artists of the present day, are in
finitely farther from great art than the most patient

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 235
work of the Pre-Raphaelites. That work is, even
in its humblest form, a secure foundation, capable
of infinite superstructure — a reality of true value, as
far as it reaches ; whUe the common artistical effects
and groupings are a vain effort at superstructure
without foundation — utter negation and faUacyfrom
beginning to end. But more than this, the very
faithfulness of the Pre-Raphaelites arises from the
redundance of their imaginative power. Not only
can aU the members of the school compose a thou
sand times better than the men who pretend to look
down upon them, but I question whether even the
greatest men of old times possessed more exhaustless
invention than either MiUais or Rossetti ; and it is
partly the very ease with which they invent which
leads them to despise invention. Men who have no
imagination, but have learned merely to produce a
spurious resemblance of its results by the recipes of
composition, are apt to value themselves mightily on
their, concoctive science ; but the man whose mind a
thousand living imaginations haunt, every hour, is

236 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
apt to care too little for them ; and to long for the
perfect truth, which he finds is not to be come at so
easUy. And though I may perhaps hesitatingly admit
that it is possible to love this truth of reality too
intensely, yet I have no hesitation in declaring that
there is no hope for those who despise it, and that
the painter, whoever he be, who despises the pictures
already produced by the Pre-Raphaelites, has himself
no capacity of becoming a great painter of any kind.
Paul Veronese and Tintoret themselves, without
desiring to imitate the Pre-Raphaelite work, would
have looked upon it with deep respect, as John
Bellini looked on that of Albert Durer ; none but
the ignorant could be unconscious of its truth, and
none but the insincere regardless of it. How far it
is possible for men educated on the severest Pre-
Raphaelite principles to advance from their present
style into that of the great schools of composition, I
do not care to inquire, for at this period such an
advance is certainly not desirable. Of great compo
sitions we have enough, and more than enough, and

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 237
it would be weU for the world if it were wiUing to
take some care of those it has. Of pure and manly
truth, of stern statement of the things done and seen
around us daUy, we have hitherto had nothing.
And in art, as in aU other things, besides the
literature of which it speaks, that sentence of Carlyle
is inevitably and irreversibly true : — " Day after
day, looking at the high destinies which yet await
literature, which literature .wiU ere long address
herself with more decisiveness than ever to fulfil, it
grows clearer to us that the proper task of literature
lies in the domain of Belief, within which, poetic
fiction, as it is charitably named, wUl have to take
a quite new figure, if aUowed a settlement there.
Whereby were it not reasonable to prophesy that
this exceeding great multitude of novel writers
and such like, must, in a new generation, graduaUy
do one of two things, either retire into nurseries,
and work for chUdren, minors, and semifatuous
persons of both sexes, or else, what were far
better, sweep their novel-fabric into the dust-cart,

238 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
and betake them, with such faculty as they have,
to understand and record what is true, of which
surely there is and for ever wiU be a whole in
finitude unknown to us, of infinite importance to
us ? Poetry wUl more and more come to be under
stood as nothing but higher knowledge, and the
only genuine Romance for grown persons, Real-
ity." As I was copying this sentence, a pamphlet was
put into my hand, written by a clergyman, de
nouncing " Woe, woe, woe ! to exceedingly young
men of stubborn instincts, calling themselves Pre-
Raphaelites." *
I thank God that the Pre-Raphaelites are young,
and that strength is stiU with them, and life, with
aU the war of it, still in front of them. Yet Everett
MiUais is this year of the exact age at which
Raphael painted the Disputa, his greatest work;
* Art, its Constitution and Capacities, &c, by the Rev. Edward
Young, M.A. The phrase " exceedingly young men, of stubborn
instincts," being twice quoted (carefully excluding the context)
from my pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 239
Rossetti and Hunt are both of them older stiU, —
nor is there one member of the body so young as
Giotto, when he was chosen from among the painters
of Italy to decorate the Vatican. But Italy, in her
great period, knew her great men, and did not
" despise their youth." It is reserved for England
to insult the strength of her noblest children — to
wither their warm enthusiasm early into the bitter
ness of patient battle, and leave to those whom she
should have cherished and aided, no hope but in
resolution, no refuge but in disdain.
Indeed it is woeful, when the young usurp the
place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged; and
among the many dark signs of these times, the diso
bedience and insolence of youth are among the
darkest. But with whom is the fault ? Youth
never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost its
honour ; nor did cluldhood ever refuse its reverence,
except where age had forgotten correction. The
cry, " Go up, thou bald head," wUl never be heard
in the land which remembers the precept, " See

240 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE. [Addenda.
that ye despise not one of these httle ones ; " and
although indeed youth may become despicable, when
its eager hope is changed into presumption, and its
progressive power into arrested pride, there is some
thing more despicable stUl, in the old age which has
learned neither judgment nor gentleness, which is
weak without charity, and cold without discretion.

THE END.

London :
A. and G. A. Spottiswoode,
New-street-Square.

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