Gbc mew TOnivergaj iLibratg 
 
 LECTURES ON 
 
 ARCHITECTURE AND 
 
 PAINTING
 
 THE UNIVERSAL EDITION OF 
 JOHN RUSKIN'S WORKS 
 
 Modern Painters, 5 vols. With 3 1 5 Illustrations 
 and Plates and 1 Coloured Plate. 
 
 The Stones of Venice, 3 vols. With 173 Illustra- 
 tions and Plates and 7 Coloured Plates. 
 
 The Seven Lamps of Architecture. With 14 
 Plates. 
 
 Lectures on Architecture and Painting. With 23 
 Illustrations. 
 
 Elements of Drawing. With 48 Illustrations. 
 
 ' Unto this Last.' 
 
 The Two Paths : On Decoration and Manu- 
 facture. With 2 Plates. 
 
 'The Political Economy of Art, subsequently- 
 called A Joy for Ever. 
 
 Selections from His Writings. 
 
 The Illustrations and Plates are throughout 
 printed on Art Paper. 
 
 The other Works to follow in course.
 
 I'ic. .7 
 
 L.O.A.] 
 
 Fig. 10 
 1'i.aii- \l ( Figs. 17, 18) 
 
 [front.
 
 LECTURES ON 
 
 ARCHITECTURE AND 
 
 PAINTING 
 
 By 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 WITH 23 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS Limited 
 
 New York: R. P. DUTTON & CO
 
 oc /34-o4-o^ 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The followingLectures 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 previously written, have been, 
 of course imperfectly, supplied from memory. 
 But I am well 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 illustrated, except at a 
 cost which would have too much raised the 
 price of the volume. Some elucidatory re- 
 marks have, however, been added at the 
 close of the second and fourth Lectures, 
 which I hope may be of more use than the 
 passages which I was obliged to omit. 
 
 The drawings by which the Lectures on 
 Architecture were illustrated have been care- 
 fully reduced, and well transferred to wood
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 by Mr. Thurston Thompson. Those which 
 were given in the course of the notices of 
 schools of painting could not be so trans- 
 ferred, having been drawn in colour ; and I 
 have therefore merely had a few lines, abso- 
 lutely 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 (p. 77) respecting the 
 energy of the mediaeval republics. This 
 passage, describing the circumstances under 
 which the Campanile of the Duomo of Flor- 
 ence 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. 90), always ought to 
 be required of them. I do not, however, 
 now regret the omission, as I cannot easily 
 imagine a better preface 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 universality of his talents, with the 
 appointment of Capo Maestro, or chief Archi- 
 tect (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 republic passed a decree in the spring of
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 1334, that the Campanile should be built so 
 as to exceed in magnificence, height, and ex- 
 cellence 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, 
 accordingly, 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, exclaimed, that the republic 
 was taxing her strength too far, that the 
 united resources of two great monarchs 
 would be insufficient to complete it ; a criti- 
 cism which the Signoria resented by confining 
 him for two months in prison, and after- 
 wards conducting 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 in- 
 clined.' 
 
 I see that The Builder (vol. xi, page 690) 
 has been endeavouring to inspire the citizens 
 of Leeds with some pride of this kind respect- 
 ing 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 remem- 
 bered 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
 
 viii PRE FA CE 
 
 names as guarantee for their sincerity never 
 had the courage to enter a protest against 
 the execution of designs which appear to 
 them unworthy. 
 
 Denmark Hill, 16th April, 1854.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Preface 
 
 I .... 
 
 II .... 
 
 Addenda to I and II . 
 
 III : Turner and his Works 
 
 IV : Pre-Raphaelitism . 
 Addenda to IV . 
 Index 
 
 PAGE 
 V 
 
 I 
 51 
 
 85 
 "3 
 
 151 
 187 
 
 193 
 
 IX
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Face p. 
 Plate I, figs, i, 3, and 5 : Illustrative 
 
 diagrams . • . S 
 
 II, fig. 2 : Window in Oakham Castle 8 
 
 III, figs. 4 and 6 : Spray of ash-tree, and 
 improvement of the same 
 on Greek principles . . 15 
 
 IV, fig. 7 : Window in Dumblane 
 
 Cathedral . . 24 
 
 V, ,, 8 : Mediaeval turret . . 30 
 
 VI, figs. 9 and 10 : Lombardic towers 34 
 VII, ,, 11 and 12: Spires at Cou- 
 
 tances and Rouen . . 38 
 
 VIII, ,, 13 and 14: Illustrative dia- 
 grams . . . .58 
 IX, fig. 15 : Sculpture at Lyons . 60 
 X, ,, 16 : Niche at Amiens . 62 
 XI, figs. 17 and 18 : Tiger's head, and 
 improvement of the same 
 on Greek principles Frontispiece 
 XII, fig. 19 : Garret window in Hotel de 
 
 Bourgtheroude . . . 78 
 
 XIII, figs. 20 and 21 : Trees, as drawn in 
 
 the 13th century . . 122 
 
 XIV, fig. 22 : Rocks, as drawn by the 
 
 school of Leonardo da Vinci 126 
 XV, ,, 23 : Boughs of trees, after 
 
 Titian . . . .128
 
 LECTURES ON 
 
 ARCHITECTURE AND 
 
 PAINTING 
 
 I think myself peculiarly happy in being 
 permitted to address the citizens of Edin- 
 burgh 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 pre- 
 sents most advantages for the display of a 
 noble building ; and which, on the other 
 hand, sustains most injury in the erection 
 of 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 two fantastic moun- 
 tains — 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 
 
 1 B
 
 2 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 houses of your Canongate, 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 I am well 
 persuaded that as you traverse those streets, 
 your feelings of pleasure and pride in them 
 are much complicated with those which are 
 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 Rock ? 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
 
 i] AXD PA IX TING 3 
 
 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 eye never seeks 
 to rest on that external scenery, however 
 gorgeous ; it does not look for the gaps be- 
 tween 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. 
 
 Thai is a city to be proud of, indeed ; 
 and it is this kind of architectural dignity
 
 4 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 indifferent. 
 But, above all, remember that it is chiefly 
 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 Canon- 
 gate, 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 interest 
 that the style of the architecture which rises 
 around you must be principally guided. Do 
 not think that you can have good architec- 
 ture 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 onl} T 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 
 interested in architecture : you do not care
 
 Fig. i 
 
 pMffi| 
 
 ii.- 
 
 i 
 
 ^J — «£- 
 
 &^ 
 
 Fig. 5 
 
 Plate 1 (Figs, i, i) 
 
 L.o.A. 
 
 [/ace p. 5
 
 i] AND PAINTING 5 
 
 about it, and cannot care about it. I know 
 you cannot. About such architecture as is 
 built nowadays, 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 
 beautiful 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 (fig. i, 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 orna- 
 ment. But I cannot say it is entertaining. 
 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 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 1 . And your 
 decorations are just as monotonous as your 
 
 1 Including York Place, and Picardy Place, but 
 not counting any window which has mouldings.
 
 6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 an- 
 other ?— and yet you expect to be inter- 
 ested ! 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 appearing 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 you did not often see two roses 
 alike, or, if you did, you took care not to 
 put them beside each other in the same nose- 
 gay, for fear your nosegay should be un- 
 interesting ; 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 architects do 
 the same thing over and over again for three 
 centuries, and expect to be interested by 
 their architecture ; with a farther disadvan- 
 tage on the side of the builder, as compared
 
 i] AND PAINTING 7 
 
 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 your- 
 selves, ' it is not right that architecture 
 should be interesting. It is a very grand 
 thing, this architecture, but essentially un- 
 entertaining. It is its duty to be dull, it 
 is monotonous by law : it cannot be correct 
 and yet amusing.' 
 
 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 independent of 
 the power of pleasing. Yet, do not mistake 
 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 present
 
 8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 school of architecture is unattractive to you, 
 I say there is something wrong, either in the 
 architecture or in you ; and I trust you will 
 not think 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 
 {fig. 2, plate II) ; it is a window actually 
 existing — a window of an English domestic 
 building 1 — 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 inter- 
 ested 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 (fig. i, 
 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. What is wrong in vou is your tem- 
 per, not your taste ; your patient and trust- 
 ful temper, which lives in houses whose 
 architecture it takes for granted, and sub- 
 
 1 Oakham Castle. I have enlarged this illustra- 
 tion from Mr Hudson Turner's admirable work on 
 the domestic architecture of England.
 
 I ig. a) 
 
 L.o. I iy«c /•. 8
 
 i] AND PAINTING 9 
 
 scribes to public edifices from which it derives 
 no enjoyment. 
 
 ' Well, but what are we to do ? ' you will 
 sav 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 gram- 
 mar 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, or goff, 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 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 architecture 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, depends on its roofing 
 a space with a single stone laid from side to 
 
 C
 
 io LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [I 
 
 side ; the character of Roman architecture, 
 and of all derived from it, depends on its 
 roofing spaces with round arches ; and the 
 character 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 archi- 
 tecture I do not mean that spurious con- 
 dition 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 
 magnificent vaultings of the aqueduct and 
 the bath, and the colossal heaping of the 
 rough stones in the arches of the amphi- 
 theatre ; an architecture full of expression, 
 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 antiquaries, 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 com- 
 pared with the two others. For instance, 
 in the case of a large window or door, such 
 as fig. i, 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
 
 i] AND PAINTING U 
 
 it is always expensive to obtain and 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 miser- 
 ably feeble adjustment of bricks (fig. 3, plate 
 I) 1 . 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 circum- 
 stance alone gives a considerable 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 
 
 1 On this subject, see The Builder, vol. xi, p. 709.
 
 12 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 split right through. But 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 con- 
 cealed 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 horizontal 
 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 principles ; 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 
 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
 
 i] AND PAINTING 13 
 
 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 piti- 
 able. 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 scaffolding ; 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 some- 
 times on two or three pillars of the size of 
 gas pipes, sometimes 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 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, per-
 
 14 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 fectly possible to build a perfectly 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 im- 
 mensely greater cost in stone or in labour. 
 Stonehenge 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 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 conse- 
 quence, 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 lintel to take 
 the weight off them ; and the gabled decora- 
 tion 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.
 
 Fig. 4 
 
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 111 
 
 L.o.A. 
 
 Fig. 6 
 
 l'i 1 1 1 111(1- igs. 4, 6) 
 
 \Jact />■ 1 5
 
 i] AND PAINTING 15 
 
 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 beauti- 
 ful, because 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 everlasting 
 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 
 gracefully 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 
 like every other part. Xow Nature abhors 
 equality, and similitude, just as much as 
 foolish men love them. You will find that
 
 16 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 the ends of the shoots of the ash are com- 
 posed of four x green stalks bearing leaves, 
 springing in the form of a cross, if seen from 
 above, as in fig. 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, 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 repre- 
 senting a rib of the roof, and the leaves its 
 
 1 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.
 
 x] AND PAINTING 17 
 
 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 
 architectural rules of right ? I will try you. 
 Here is a cluster of ash leaves, which I have 
 grown expressly for you on Greek principles 
 {fig. 6, plate III). How do you like it ? 
 
 Observe, I have played you no trick in 
 this comparison. 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 ribs at right 
 angles with the central rib, instead of slop- 
 ing 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 
 
 D
 
 1 8 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 accustomed to the ordinary voices of 
 men than to the perfect accents of sweet 
 singing ? yet do you not instantly 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 bv the pressure of a 
 bandage, or by unwholesome and perpetual 
 action of some part of the body, that blood 
 may be wasted or arrested, and in its stag- 
 nancy cease to nourish the frame, or in its 
 disturbed flow affect it with incurable 
 disease, so also admiration 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 pres- 
 sure 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 enjoyment of all 
 beauty, but it in no wise influences our 
 determination of what is beautiful and 
 what is not. You sec the broad blue sky
 
 i] AND PAINTING 19 
 
 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 blue colour is everlastingly 
 appointed by the Deity to be a source of 
 delight ; and whether seen perpetually over 
 your head, or crystallized once in a thousand 
 years into a single and incomparable stone, 
 your acknowledgement of its beauty is 
 equally natural, simple, and instantaneous. 
 Pardon me for engaging you in a meta- 
 physical discussion ; for it is necessary to the 
 establishment of some of the greatest of all 
 architectural 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 vour 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 association 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 associa- 
 tion and of beauty are two entirely distinct 
 powers — as distinct, for instance, as the 
 forces of gravitation and electricity. These
 
 20 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 forces may act together, or may neutralize 
 one another, but are not for that reason to be 
 supposed the same force ; and the charm of 
 association will sometimes enhance, and 
 sometimes entirely overpower, that of 
 beauty ; but you must not confound 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 accus- 
 tomed sight more beautiful, 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 dis- 
 covered it, only needing 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 acknowledge 
 that the real beauty of the human coun- 
 tenance depends on fixed laws of form and 
 expression, and not on the affection you 
 bear to it, or the degree in which you are 
 familiarized with it : and so does the beauty 
 of all other existences. i 
 
 Now, therefore, I think that, without the 
 risk of any farther serious objection occur- 
 ring to you, I may state what I believe to be 
 the truth — that beauty has been appointed
 
 i] . AND PAINTING 21 
 
 by the Deity to be one of the elements by 
 which the human soul is continually sus- 
 tained ; 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 whatever 
 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, 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 occur- 
 rence 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 sapphire is the result of the 
 complete and perfect fulfilment of the laws
 
 22 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 of aggregation in the earth of alumina, and 
 it is therefore beautiful ; more beautiful 
 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 l , and we ought to feel it so. 
 
 Now then, I proceed to argue in this 
 manner from 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 invariably 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 contempla- 
 tion 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 
 
 1 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.
 
 i] AND PAINTING 23. 
 
 ■ — why not follow the leaves, and point them 
 at the bottom also ? 
 
 For this simple reason, that, while in archi- 
 tecture you are continually called upon to 
 do what may be unnecessary for the sake 
 of beauty, you are never 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 balcony : 
 the eye and the common sense of the be- 
 holder 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 horizontal base. And farther, observe, 
 that when neither the convenience of the 
 sill, nor the support of the structure, 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 west window of your own 
 Dumblane Abbey ? If you look in any
 
 24 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 beemtiful ? Look at 
 it (fig. 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 
 expressive moulding which surrounds it is 
 a very interesting 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 pro- 
 duced 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 
 determined 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 sim- 
 plicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, 
 in all 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 everybody 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
 
 
 WrWwIPii'y - '• «„„■„ 
 
 Plate LV (Fig. 7) 
 
 
 LAiffc- />. -'4
 
 I] AND PAIXTIXG 25 
 
 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 ornament — 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. 
 It is true that oval windows of this form 
 are comparatively 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 assumption, 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 en- 
 deavour to show you in my next lecture. 
 Meantime I must beg of you to consider 
 
 E
 
 26 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 farther some of the general points connected 
 with the structure of the roof. 
 
 I am sure that all of you must readily 
 acknowledge 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 ques- 
 tion, what effect the cottage would have up- 
 on your fee'ings if it had 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 fiat 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 conspicuousness 
 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 anything else. It is, indeed, not 
 so much the white-washed walls — -nor the 
 flowery garden — nor the rude fragments of
 
 i] AND PAINTING 27 
 
 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. And there is 
 a profound, yet evident, reason for this feel- 
 ing. 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 com- 
 pletely from a cleft in rocks or bower in 
 woods. It is in its thick impenetrable cover- 
 lid of close thatch that its whole heart and 
 hospitality are concentrated. Consider the 
 difference, in sound, of the expressions ' be- 
 neath 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. 
 
 Xow, do you suppose that which is so all- 
 important in a cottage can be of small 
 importance in your own dwelling-house ? 
 Do you think that by any splendour of archi- 
 tecture — any height of stories — you can 
 atone to the mind for the loss of the aspect 
 of the roof. It is vain to say you take the 
 roof for granted ? You may as well say
 
 28 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 want- 
 ing, unless you see their roofs plainly. And 
 this especially in the north. In southern 
 architecture the roof is of far less import- 
 ance ; but here the soul of domestic building 
 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 require all kinds of strange 
 inventions in parapets and pinnacles for 
 its decoration, and yet will never look right. 
 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
 
 i] AND PAINTING 29 
 
 removes the heat of the sun most effectually 
 from the upper rooms, and affords most 
 space for ventilation. 
 
 You have then, observe, two great prin- 
 ciples, as far as northern architecture is con- 
 cerned ; 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 Europe — you will find it 
 formed merely of a series of windows sur- 
 mounted 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 Stras- 
 bourg, Bayeux, Amiens, or Peterborough, 
 still you will see that these lovely compo- 
 sitions are nothing more than richly decor- 
 ated 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 person- 
 ally visited any of the continental towns 
 must remember, I should think, some of the 
 many interesting drawings by Mr Prout, 
 Mr Nash, and other excellent draughtsmen.
 
 SO LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 which have for many years adorned our 
 exhibitions. Now, the principal charm of 
 all those continental street effects is de- 
 pendent on the houses having high-pitched 
 gable roofs. In the Netherlands, and 
 Northern France, where the material 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 decorated with various 
 ornaments, succeeding one another in end- 
 less 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 
 at 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 ; not 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 l , each in its turn crowned 
 1 This figure is copied from Prout.
 
 P KV<Kig ) 
 
 L.„.A.\ 
 
 [face /. 30
 
 i] AND PAINTING 31 
 
 by a fantastic ornament, covered with 
 curiously shaped slates or shingles, or crested 
 with long fringes of rich ironwork, 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-point- 
 ing spire, nor of the theory which has been 
 founded upon it of the general meaning of 
 Gothic architecture as expressive of religious 
 aspiration. 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 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
 
 32 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 cards ; and, in nobler instances, with also a 
 strong sense of, and delight in, the majesty, 
 height, and strength of the 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 elevation 
 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 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 
 expressions in Solomon's Song : — ■' The tower 
 of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damas- 
 cus ' ; 'I am a wall, and my breasts like 
 towers ' ; you recollect the Psalmist's ex- 
 pressions of love and delight : ' Go ye round 
 about Jerusalem ; tell the towers thereof :
 
 i] AND PAINTING 33 
 
 mark ve 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 religious 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 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 reason. Thus, when the good 
 people of Beauvais were building their cathe- 
 dral, 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 heaven-
 
 34 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 ward 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 x instead of manufactory 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 re- 
 spect 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 8th century to the 13th there 
 was little change in that form 2 : 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 
 
 1 1 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. 
 
 2 There is a good abstract of the forms of the Italian 
 campanile, by Mr Papworth, in the Journal of the 
 Archaeological Institute, March, 1S50.
 
 I ig. i 
 
 Fig. 9 
 
 I'i.ai I VI (I'igs. 9, 10) 
 
 L.o.A.] 
 
 I face />. 34
 
 i] AND PAINTING 35 
 
 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 built as in fig. 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 
 important 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 cam- 
 panile has had a very different influence on 
 European architecture. Its form in the 
 piains 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 l . There are probably few in the 
 room who have not been in some parts of 
 
 1 The form establishes itself afterwards in the 
 plains, in sympathy with other Gothic conditions, as 
 in the campanile of St .Mark's at Venice.
 
 J 
 
 6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 South Switzerland, and who do not remem- 
 ber the beautiful effect of the grey mountain 
 churches, many of them hardly changed 
 since the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
 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 de- 
 coration, 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 invari- 
 ably the sign of a vicious style, as it takes 
 away from the spire its character of a true 
 roof, and turns it nearly into an ornamental 
 excrescence. At Antwerp and Brussels, 
 the celebrated towers (one, observe, ecclesias- 
 tical, being the tower of the cathedral, and 
 the other secular) are formal by successions 
 of diminishing towers, set one above the 
 other, and each supported by buttresses 
 thrown to the angles of the one beneath. 
 At the English cathedrals of Lichfield and 
 Salisbury 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 cathe- 
 dral of Coutances in Normandy. There is 
 a dispute between French and English 
 antiquaries as to the date of the building, the 
 English being unwilling to admit its com-
 
 i] AND PAINTING 37 
 
 plete priority to all their own Gothic. I 
 have no doubt of this priority myself ; 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 their own 
 sincerity and courtesy, than by claims, 
 however learnedly contested, to the inven- 
 tion 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 approached, 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, examples of the fully developed 
 spire. I have drawn one of them carefully 
 for you (fig. 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 orna- 
 ment is a kind of scaly mail, which is nothing 
 more than the copying in stone of the com- 
 mon 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 boldness or the simplicity 
 of the plan ; and yet, in spite of this sim-
 
 3 3 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 plicity, the clear detaching of the shafts 
 from the slope of the spires, and their great 
 height, strengthened by rude cross-bars of 
 stone, carried back to the wall behind, 
 occasions so great a complexity and play of 
 cast shadows, that I remember no architec- 
 tural composition of which the aspect is so 
 completely varied at different hours of the 
 day l . But the main thing I wish you to 
 observe is, the complete domesticity of the 
 work ; the evident treatment 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 
 Prance and Germany are associated with 
 other towers, even simpler and more straight- 
 forward 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 
 
 1 The sketch was made about 10 o'clock on a Sep- 
 tember morning.
 
 Fig. 
 
 I 
 
 Plate VII (Figs, u, 12) 
 
 
 \Jact A 38
 
 i] AND PAINTING 39 
 
 in multitudes in the older towns of Germany ; 
 and the backgrounds of Albert Diirer are 
 full of them, and owe to them a great part 
 of their interest : all these great and magni- 
 ficent masses of architecture being repeated 
 on a smaller scale by the little turret roofs 
 and pinnacles of every house in the town ; 
 and the whole system of them being ex- 
 pressive, not by any means of religious feel- 
 ing l , but merely of joy fulness and exhilara- 
 
 1 Among the various modes in which the archi- 
 tects, against whose practice my writings are directed, 
 have endeavoured to oppose them, no charge has been 
 made more frequently than that of their self-contra- 
 diction : 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. 
 For instance, in a recent review, though for the most 
 part both fair 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 keep- 
 ing 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 English piety ; but that in the one case I was speak- 
 ing 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 decor- 
 ative 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 scrip-
 
 4Q LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 tion 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 ; be- 
 sides 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 battle- 
 ments 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 
 of your border ballads the word tower where- 
 
 tural 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 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 France, by paying for 
 permission to eat butter in Lent.
 
 i] AND PAINTING 41 
 
 ever 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 the idea turret, and see how much you 
 would lose. Suppose, for instance, when 
 voung 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 stairs', what 
 would become of the passage ? And can 
 vou 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 uninteresting ? For instance, you know 
 that, for an immense time back, all your 
 public buildings have been built with a row 
 of pillars supporting a triangular thing called 
 a pediment. You see this form every day 
 in 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 
 
 G
 
 42 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 pediment 1 '. Would you i 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 
 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 feelings 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 
 
 1 It has been objected to this comparison that the 
 form of the pediment does not properlv represent that 
 of the rocks of the Trosachs. 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 a piece of inaccuracy in description, 
 ventured merely for the sake of the Gothic image. Far- 
 ther : 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 ? Be- 
 cause ' gable ' is a term of vulgar domestic architec- 
 ture, and therefore destructive of the tone of the 
 heroic description ; whereas ' pediment ' and ' spire ' 
 are precisely correlative terms, being each the crown- 
 ing feature in ecclesiastical edifices, and the com- 
 parison of their effects in the verse is therefore abso- 
 lutely accurate, logical and just.
 
 i] AND PAINTING 43 
 
 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 delightful to 
 you, and will ever continue to be so. Be- 
 lieve 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 com- 
 mittees to decide upon the style of the new 
 building, and as you have never been in the 
 habit of trusting to your own taste in such 
 matters, you inquire who is the most cele- 
 brated, 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 handsone ; 
 and you ask the Great Blank what sort of a 
 blank cheque must be filled up before the 
 great plan can be realized ; and you sub- 
 scribe, 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
 
 44 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 inhabi- 
 tants of the city of so and so ; and the build- 
 ing keeps the rain out as well as another, and 
 you remain in a placid state of impoverished 
 satisfaction therewith ; 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 fashions 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 believe ; 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 ' Ro-
 
 i] AND PAINTING 45 
 
 mance '. I will do that, if you please, in 
 the next lecture, for it is a word of greater 
 weight and authority than we commonly 
 believe. In 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 of 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, 
 winch are all that your architects find con- 
 sistent with due observance of the Doric 
 order. Then, away with these absurdities ; 
 and the next house you build, insist upon
 
 46 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 out to thy house.' x Not 
 to the workhouse, observe, but to thy house : 
 and I sav 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 
 
 1 Isa. Iviii, 7.
 
 i] AND PAINTING 47 
 
 the showers of the mountains, and embrace 
 the rock for want of a shelter.' 1 
 
 This, then, is the first use to which your 
 pointed arches and gable roofs are to be put. 
 The second is of more personal pleasure- 
 ableness. 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, and you will 
 have as inexhaustible a source of quaint 
 richness in your street architecture, as of 
 additional comfort and delight in the inter- 
 iors of your rooms. 
 
 Thirdly, as respects windows which do 
 not project. You will find that the proposal 
 to build them with pointed arches is met b/ 
 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 compli- 
 cated forms, fitted with modern sashes ; and 
 with the most perfect comfort. But grant- 
 ing that the objection were a true one — and 
 1 Job xxiv, 6-8.
 
 48 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 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 
 with, but eminently conducive to, every 
 comfort of your daily life. The window in 
 Oakham Castle (fig. 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. Mean- 
 while, I have but one word to say in con- 
 clusion. 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 
 weight strongly with most here, why it is 
 not likely that they will ever become im- 
 portant elements in architectural effort. I 
 know that I am speaking to a company 
 of philosophers, but you are not philosophers
 
 I] AND PAINTING 49 
 
 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 very divinity of the Book 
 seems to me, on the contrary, 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 illustrations 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 de- 
 fenced 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 become familiar to the minds 
 of men ; but, on the contrary, that an 
 architecture of carved stone is continually 
 employed as a source of the most important 
 illustrations. A simple instance must occur 
 to all of you at once. The force of the 
 image of the Corner Stone, as used through- 
 out Scripture, would completely be lost, if 
 
 H
 
 50 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i 
 
 the Christian and civilized world were ever 
 extensively to employ any other material 
 than earth and rock in their domestic build- 
 ings : 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, with- 
 out considering, each of us, how far that 
 tower has been built, and how truly its cost 
 has been counted.
 
 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 English 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 any- 
 thing romantic before you, pray pay no 
 attention to it, or to me. 
 
 In the second place. Because young 
 people are particularly apt to indulge in 
 reverie and imaginative pleasures, and to 
 neglect their plain and practical duties, the 
 
 51
 
 52 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 word romantic has come to signify weak, 
 foolish, speculative, unpractical, unprinci- 
 pled. 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 characterize an improbable or 
 unaccustomed degree of beauty, sublimity, 
 or virtue. For instance, in matters of his- 
 tory, is not the Retreat of the Ten Thousand 
 romantic ? Is not the death of Leonidas ? 
 of the Horatii ? On the other hand, you 
 find nothing romantic, though much that is 
 monstrous, in the excesses of Tiberius or 
 Commodus. So again, the battle of Agin- 
 court is romantic, and of Bannockburn, 
 simply because there was an extraordinary 
 display of human virtue in both those 
 battles. But there is no romance in the 
 battles of the last Italian 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 sublimity 
 mingled with their vice. It is not the knave, 
 not the ruffian, that are romantic, but the 
 giant and the dragon ; and these, not be- 
 cause they are false, but because they are 
 majestic. So again as to beauty. You feel 
 that armour is romantic, because it is a
 
 ii] AND PAINTING 53 
 
 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 accustomed to despise — this secret and 
 poetical enthusiasm 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 delight in, and 
 admiration for, sublimity, beauty, and 
 virtue, unusually manifested. And so far 
 from being a dangerous guide, it is the truest 
 part of vour being. It is even truer than 
 your consciences. A man's conscience may 
 be utterlv 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 sentiment 
 the majestic judgment — to mingle prudence 
 and foresight with imagination and admira- 
 tion, 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, as a real friend. 
 
 And they are right. True friendship is 
 romantic to the men of the world — true
 
 54 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 affection is romantic — true religion is roman- 
 tic ; and if you were to ask me who of all 
 powerful and popular writers in the cause of 
 error had 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 philoso- 
 phers of 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 selfish- 
 ness ; and, since his time, the purest im- 
 pulses 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 dis- 
 suading you from attempting to do well, on 
 
 1 I mean no scandal against the present emperor of 
 the French, whose truth has, I believe, been as con- 
 spicuous in the late political negotiations, as his 
 decision and prudence have been throughout the 
 whole course of his government.
 
 ii] AND PAINTING 55 
 
 the ground that perfection 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 inaccurately applied 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- 
 sacrificing or eminently virtuous, for they 
 are merely the proposal to each of you that 
 he should live in a handsomer house than 
 he does at present, by substituting a cheap 
 mode of ornamentation for a costly one.
 
 56 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 You perhaps fancied that architectural 
 beauty was a very costly thing. Far from 
 it. It is architectural ugliness that is costly. 
 In the modern system of architecture, 
 decoration is immoderately expensive, be- 
 cause it is both wrongly placed and wrongly 
 finished. I say, first wrongly placed. 
 Modern architects decorate the tops of their 
 buildings. Mediaeval ones decorated the 
 bottom K 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 fact is, that your money is 
 being thrown away continually, by whole- 
 sale ; and while you are dissuaded, on the 
 ground of expense, from building beautiful 
 windows and beautiful doors, you are con- 
 tinually 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 Edinburgh than the street in which so 
 many of your excellent physicians live — 
 
 1 For farther confirmation of this statement, see 
 the Addenda at the end of this Lecture.
 
 II] AND PAINTING $7 
 
 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 balustrade 
 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 blocking 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. 
 Whether it does finish the facades satisfac- 
 torily, 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, 
 compared to the constant habit of putting 
 careful sculpture 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, 
 
 I
 
 58 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 and the gentlemen of the army — I couldn't 
 see as what — nor can anybody ; for all this 
 sculpture is put up at the top of the house, 
 where the gutter should be, under the cor- 
 nice. 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 Englishmen shouldn't. 
 
 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 
 contemptible one ; you increase the price 
 of your buildings by one-half, in order to 
 mince their decoration 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 bottcms 
 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 shillings a foot. 
 
 Now the Gothic builders placed their 
 decoration on a precisely contrary principle, 
 and on the only rational principle. All their
 
 Fig. i ; 
 
 I'l.Al i. VIII ( I igs. . . ■ ii 
 L.O.A.
 
 ii] AXD PAINTING 59 
 
 best and most delicate work they put on the 
 foundation of the building, close to the spec- 
 tator, 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 under- 
 stand 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 consider- 
 able 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 architecture 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 (fig. 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 pave- 
 ment. The whole of the surface of the wall 
 ro 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 
 brackc is decorated also — nor that slightly,
 
 60 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 but decorated with no fewer than six figures 
 each, besides a flower 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 fig. 13, plate 
 VIII, four small figures are placed, one in 
 each foil, and two larger ones in the centre. 
 I had only time, in passing through the town, 
 to make a drawing of one of the angles of 
 these pedestals ; that sketch I have en- 
 larged, in order that you may have some 
 idea of the character of the sculpture. Here 
 is the enlargement 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 
 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 wantonness 
 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 execute 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
 
 
 Plate IX (Fig. 15) 
 
 \face p. 60
 
 ii] AND PAINTING 61 
 
 the head of the large figure. You will ob- 
 serve 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 
 diamond crown, with a lock of the hair 
 escaping from beneath it ; and at the 
 beautiful way in which 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 sculp- 
 ture 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 cover- 
 ing your walls with sculpture of this kind 
 (fig. 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
 
 62 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 not prisons of the body, but graves of the 
 soul ; for the very men who could do sculp- 
 ture like this of Lyons for you are here ! 
 still here, in your despised workmen : the 
 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 1 . 
 
 But I am leaving the point immediately 
 in question, 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 orna- 
 ment close to the eye, you had 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 refinement 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 
 
 1 This subject is farther pursued in the Addenda at 
 the end of this Lecture.
 
 L.O.AA 
 
 Plate X (Fig. 16) 
 
 l/.K I />■ 62
 
 II] AND PAINTING 63 
 
 attend to the delicate lines, and that the 
 broad shadows would catch the eye instead. 
 He has therefore 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 minuteness 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, there- 
 fore, 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 orna- 
 ment would be less effective ; and it is the 
 very price we pay for finishing our decora- 
 tions 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 execu- 
 tion 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 
 \\( rk which is to be seen forty fathoms
 
 64 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 off. Be assured that ' handling ' is as great 
 a thing in marble as in paint, and that the 
 power of producing a masterly effect with 
 few touches as is 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 weightier 
 charge to be brought against our Modern 
 Pseudo-Greek ornamentation. It is first, 
 wrongly placed ; secondly, wrongly fin- 
 ished ; and thirdly, utterly without meaning. 
 Observe in these two Gothic ornaments, 
 and 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 fig. 15, plate IX, you 
 have an exquisite group of rose-stems, with 
 the flowers and buds ; in fig. 16, plate X, 
 various wild weeds, especially the Geranium 
 pratense ; in every case you have an ap- 
 proximation to a natural form, and an un- 
 ceasing 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 pur- 
 pose, 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.
 
 n] AND PAINTING 65 
 
 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. 
 
 Now, according to the orthodox practice 
 in modern architecture, the most delicate 
 and minute pieces of sculpture on that 
 building are at the very top of it, just 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 exe- 
 cuted on a Greek type or no, it is to be pre- 
 sumed 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 admir- 
 able in them, and deserving your most 
 attentive contemplation. In order, there- 
 fore, 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 my friend Mr Mil- 
 
 K
 
 66 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 lais kindly offered to draw both the one and 
 the other for me. You have not, however, 
 at present, a lion in your zoological collec- 
 tion ; and it being, as you are probably 
 aware, the first principle of Pre-Raphaelit- 
 ism, 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 enabling you to compare a piece of 
 true, faithful, and natural work with modern 
 architectural sculpture. Here, in the first 
 place, is Mr Millais' drawing from the living 
 beast (fig. 17, plate XI). 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. iS, 
 plate XI). 
 
 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 
 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
 
 II] 
 
 AND PAINTING 67 
 
 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 ad- 
 mission 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 
 consider 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, consider the differ- 
 ence, with respect to the mind of the work- 
 man himself, between being kept all his life 
 carving, by sixties, and forties, and thirties,, 
 repetitions 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 the last consideration enables me to 
 press this subject on you on far higher 
 grounds than I have done yet.
 
 68 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 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 a little kindness are often 
 worth more than a great 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 life, how- 
 ever 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 our- 
 selves covet may, indeed, be desirable and 
 harmless, so far as we are concerned, but 
 the providing 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 our-
 
 ii] AND PAINTING 69 
 
 selves 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. It may 
 be said that we have not time to consider 
 all this before we make a purchase. But no 
 time could be spent in a more important 
 duty ; and God never imposes a duty with- 
 out giving the time to do it. Let us, how- 
 ever, only acknowledge the principle ; — 
 once make up your mind to allow the con- 
 sideration of the effect of 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 most part merely buying what strikes 
 our fancies. True and judicious patronage 
 there is indeed ; many a work of art is bought 
 by those who do not care for its possession,
 
 ■jo LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 to assist the struggling artist, or relieve the 
 unsuccessful one. But for the most part, 
 I fear we are too much in the habit of buying 
 simply what we like 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 employing them healthily or un- 
 wholesomely ; 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, 
 like 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 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 
 like that ; and, secondly, sometimes to 
 sacrifice a careless preference or fancy to 
 what you know is for the good of your fellow-
 
 ii] AND PAINTING 71 
 
 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, inhaling 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, whenever 
 you buy a small water-colour 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 moment ; not 
 straining his eyesight, nor breaking his back, 
 but working in ease and happiness. There- 
 fore 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, engravings 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
 
 -2 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 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 know- 
 ledge of painting ; and it is by no means a de- 
 sirable 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 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
 
 ii] AND PAINTING 73 
 
 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 honesty in the world, 
 paint it wrongly and falsely, to the end of 
 his days. 
 
 So much for the workman. But the work- 
 man 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 multitude, instead of a few. 
 
 Nay but, you say, we ourselves shall not 
 be benefited by the sculpture on the outsides 
 of our houses. Yes, you will, and in an 
 extraordinary degree ; for, observe farther, 
 that architecture differs from painting 
 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 
 — far grander than cither separately ; 
 much more if a third be added — and a 
 fourth ; much more if the whole street — if 
 
 L
 
 74 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [ir 
 
 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 con- 
 certed music of the streets of the city, when 
 turret rises over turret, and casement frowns 
 beyond casement, and tower succeeds to 
 tower along the farthest ridges of the in- 
 habited hills — this is a sublimity of which 
 you can at present form no conception ; and 
 capable, I believe, of exciting 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 delight each other best. And 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 religious ser- 
 vice, 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 j r our minds,
 
 n] AND PAINTING 75 
 
 which I must briefly meet. Your pictures, 
 and other smaller works of art, you can 
 carry with you, wherever you live : your 
 house must be left behind. Indeed, I believe 
 that the wandering habits which have now 
 become almost necessary to our existence, 
 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 live 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 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, 
 wc determined, with God's permission, to 
 choose a home in which to live and die — a 
 home not to be increased 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 ;
 
 76 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 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 : T 4 his was his house : This was his 
 chamber.' 
 
 I believe that you can bring forward no 
 other 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 oppor- 
 tunity, 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 expenditure 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 
 jewellery, would alone be enough to sustain a 
 school of magnificent architecture. And 
 although, in highly wrought plate, and in 
 finely designed jewellery, noble art may 
 occasionally exist, yet in general both jewels 
 and services of silver are matters of ostenta- 
 tion, much more than sources of intellectual
 
 ii] AND PA I XT I XG 77 
 
 pleasure. There are also many evils con- 
 nected with them — they are a care to 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 doubt- 
 ful luxuries, might most wisely and kindly be 
 thrown into a form which would give per- 
 petual pleasure, not to its possessor only, but 
 to thousands besides, and neither tempt the 
 unprincipled, nor inflame the envious, nor 
 mortify the poor ; while, 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 
 expenditure 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 medi- 
 aeval periods, which, according to its ma- 
 terial and character, is not richly decorated. 
 But look here (fig. 19, plate XII), look to 
 what an extent decoration has been carried 
 in the domestic edifices of a city, I suppose 
 not mucli superior in importance, commer-
 
 jS LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 cially speaking, to Manchester, Liverpool, 
 or Birmingham — namely, Rouen, in Nor- 
 mandy. This is a garret window, still 
 existing there — a garret window built by 
 William de Bourgtheroude in the early part 
 of the 1 6th century. I show it you, first, 
 as a proof of what may be made of the 
 features of domestic buildings we are apt 
 to disdain ; and secondly, as another ex- 
 ample of a beautiful use of the pointed 
 arch, filled by the solid shield of stone, and 
 enclosing a square casement. It is indeed 
 a peculiarly 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 x . 
 
 I do not, however, hope that you will 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, introduced 
 in various kinds of naturally coloured stones. 
 I have observed that your Scottish lapi- 
 daries have admirable taste and skill in the 
 disposition of the pebbles of your brooches 
 and other ornaments of dress ; and I have 
 
 1 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 Lecture, or I should 
 have preferred it, as an example, to that of Rouen, 
 with reference to modern possibilities of imitation.
 
 I-i.aii \M (Fig. iq) 
 
 I..o.A.\ 
 
 I fat t />■ 7 8
 
 ii] AND PAIXTIXG 79 
 
 not the least doubt that the genius of your 
 country would, if directed to this particular 
 stvle of architecture, produce works as beau- 
 tiful 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, 
 all its flat surfaces are inlaid with coloured 
 stones, much being done with a green ser- 
 pentine, which forms the greater part of the 
 coast of Genoa. You have, I believe, large 
 beds of this rock in Scotland, and other 
 stones besides, peculiarly Scottish, calcu- 
 lated 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 allow to 
 address you, lay before you views cf the 
 sciences they profess, which are either 
 generally received, or incontrovertible. I 
 come before you at a disadvantage ; for 
 I cannot conscientiously tell you anything 
 about architecture but what is at variance 
 with all commonly received views upon the 
 subject. I come before you, professedly 
 
 1 A series of four examples of designs for windows 
 was exhibited at this point of the lecture, but I have 
 not engraved them, as they were hastily made for the 
 purposes <>i momentary illustration, and are not such 
 as 1 choose to publish or perpetuate.
 
 80 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 to speak of things forgotten or things dis- 
 puted ; and I lay before you, not accepted 
 principles, but questions at issue. Of those 
 questions 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 yourselves to 
 some architect of established reputation, 
 and ask him whether I am right or not. 
 You might as well, had you lived in the 
 1 6th century, have asked a Roman Catholic 
 archbishop his opinion of the first reformer. 
 I deny his jurisdiction ; I refuse his decision. 
 I call 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 life has been successful, to turn suddenly 
 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 all the pertinacity of confirmed pre- 
 judice ; you will 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 will never hear them met
 
 ii] AND PAINTING 81 
 
 by quiet, steady, rational argument ; for 
 that is the one way in which 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. Presumption ! Yes, if I had 
 spoken on my own authority ; but I have 
 appealed to two incontrovertible and irre- 
 fragable 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 archi- 
 tecture. 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 their ways of carving 
 stones and setting up of pillars, when they 
 know that they were wrong for twelve hun- 
 dred years, in their marking how the roads 
 divided, that led to Hell and Heaven. 
 
 You must expect at first that there will 
 be difficulties and inconsistencies in carrying 
 out the new 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. Introduce 
 your Gothic line by line and stone by stone ; 
 never mind mixing it with your present 
 
 M
 
 82 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 architecture ; your existing houses will 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 archi- 
 tecture that it can do anything. Whatever 
 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 will 
 make you comfortable, 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, even if 
 you cannot get the best Gothic, at least you 
 will 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 will 
 be reanimated. 
 
 And, now, lastly. When this shall be 
 accomplished, do not think it will make 
 little difference to you, and that you will be 
 little the happier, or little the better for it. 
 You have at present no conception, and can 
 have none, how much you would enjoy a 
 truly beautiful architecture ; but I can give
 
 ii] AND PAINTING S3 
 
 vou a proDf of it which none of you will be 
 able to deny. You will all assuredly admit 
 this principle — 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 allow that 
 bread, for instance, would not have been 
 used as an emblem of the word of life, unless 
 it had been good, and necessary for man ; 
 nor water used as the emblem of sanctifica- 
 tion, unless it also had been good and neces- 
 sary for man. You will allow that oil, and 
 honey, and balm are good, when David says, 
 ' Let the righteous reprove me ; it shall be 
 an excellent oil ' ; or, ' How sweet are tin- 
 words unto my taste ; yea, sweeter than 
 honey to my mouth ' ; or, when Jeremiah 
 cries out in his weeping, ' Is there no balm 
 in Gilead ? 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, will you evade 
 the conclusion, that there must be joy, and 
 comfort, and instruction in the literal beauty 
 of architecture, when God, descending in 
 His utmost love to the distressed Jerusalem, 
 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 shall
 
 84 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n 
 
 be done to her ? — What brightest emblem 
 of blessing will God set before her ? ' Behold, 
 I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy 
 foundations with sapphires ; and I will 
 make thy windows of agates, and thy gates 
 of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant 
 stones '. Nor is this merely an emblem of 
 spiritual blessing ; for that blessing is added 
 in the concluding words, ' And all thy chil- 
 dren shall be taught of the Lord, and great 
 shall be the peace of thy children '.
 
 ADDENDA TO I AND II 
 
 The delivery of the foregoing lectures ex- 
 cited, as it may be imagined, considerable 
 indignation among the architects who hap- 
 pened 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 completely to discuss the philo- 
 sophy and history of the architecture of the 
 world, besides meeting every objection, and 
 reconciling every apparent contradiction, 
 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 the matters under discus- 
 sion, it seems unnecessary to notice any of 
 them in particular. But as this volume 
 may perhaps fall 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 anything more about archi- 
 tecture for some time to come, it may be 
 
 65
 
 86 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE p, n 
 
 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 architects of the 
 modern school to controvert these propo- 
 sitions. They may be reduced under six 
 heads. 
 
 i. That Gothic or Romanesque construc- 
 tion 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 thought- 
 ful. 
 
 6. And that therefore Gothic ornamenta- 
 tion is nobler than Greek ornamentation, 
 and Gothic architecture the only architecture 
 which should now be built. 
 
 Proposition 1st. — Gothic or Romanesque 
 construction is nobler than Greek construction 1 . 
 
 1 The constructive value of Gothic architecture is, 
 however, far greater than that of Romanesque, as 
 the pointed arch i; not only susceptible of an infinite 
 variety of forms and applications to the weight to be 
 sustained, but it possesses, in the 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 the first volume of the Stones of Venice. 
 That statement was first denied, and then taken 
 advantage of, by modern architects ; and, consider- 
 ing how often it has been alleged that I have no
 
 Addenda] AXD PAIXTIXG 87 
 
 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 over a win- 
 dow, door/, or room, than to lay a single flat 
 stone over the same space. 
 
 No architects have ever attempted seri- 
 ously to controvert this proposition. Some- 
 times, however, they say that ' of two ways 
 of doing a thing, the best and most perfect 
 is not always adopted, for there may 
 be particular reasons for employing an 
 inferior one'. This I am perfectly ready to 
 grant, only let them show their reasons in 
 each particuar case. Sometimes also they 
 say, that there is a charm in the simple con- 
 struction 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 
 
 practical knowledge of architecture, it cannot but be 
 iter 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 
 low of the principle which I laid down in the year 
 1851.
 
 88 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 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 building does not 
 cons st in its being well built, 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 propositions. It is also one of the 
 most important I have to maintain ; and it 
 must be permitted me to explain it at seme 
 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 smallest expense. If it is a house, it 
 should be just of the size convenient 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 congrega- 
 tion, 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 ; all this being utterly irrespective of 
 external appearance or aesthetic considera- 
 tions of any kind, and all being done solidly, 
 securely, and at the smallest necessary cost. 
 The sacrifice of any of these first require-
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 89 
 
 merits to external appearance is a futility 
 and absurdity. Rooms must not be dark- 
 ened to make the ranges of windows sym- 
 metrical. 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 all this, there is no 
 High, or as it is commonly called, Fine Art, 
 required at all. There may be much science, 
 together with the lower form of art, or ' handi- 
 craft ' , but there is as yet no Fine Art. 
 House-building, on these terms, is no higher 
 thing than ship-building. It indeed will 
 generally be found that the edifice designed 
 with this masculine reference to utility, will 
 have a charm about it, otherwise unattain- 
 able, just as a ship, constructed with simple 
 reference to its service against powers of 
 wind and wave, turns out one of the love- 
 liest things that human hands produce. Still, 
 we do not, and properly do not, hold ship- 
 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 building are 
 regarded, is architecture to be held a fine 
 art, or are the names of architects to be 
 remembered immortally. For any one may 
 at any time be taught to build a ship, or 
 (thus far) the house, and there is nothing 
 deserving of immortality in doing what any 
 one may be taught to do. 
 
 N
 
 90 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 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, considered as a subject 
 of fine art. 
 
 Now observe. It will at once follow from 
 this principle, that a great architect must be a 
 great sculptor or painter. 
 
 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 the world were Phidias, Giotto, 
 and Michael Angelo ; with all 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 
 societies of sculptors and painters, acting 
 collectively for a series of years. A Gothic 
 cathedral is properly to be defined as a piece 
 of the most magnificent associative sculp- 
 ture, arranged on the noblest principles of 
 building, for the service and delight of
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 91 
 
 multitudes ; and the proper definition of 
 architecture, as distinguished from sculp- 
 ture, is merely ' the art of designing sculpture 
 for a particular place, and placing it there on 
 the best principles of building '. 
 
 Hence it clearly follows, that in modern 
 days we have no architects. The term ' archi- 
 tecture ' is not so much as understood by us. 
 I am very sorry to be compelled to the dis- 
 courtesy of stating this fact, but a fact it is, 
 and a fact which it is necessary to state 
 strongly. 
 
 Hence also it will 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-called ' architects ' of the day, as the 
 reader will imagine, are not willing 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 propo- 
 sition and its consequences, are the follow- 
 ing :—
 
 92 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 First. That the true nobility of architec- 
 ture consists, not in decoration (or sculpture), 
 but in the ' disposition of masses ', and that 
 architecture is, in fact, the ' art of propor- 
 tion '. 
 
 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 mas- 
 ses '. Painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, 
 depend all equally on the ' proportion " 
 whether of colours, stones, notes, or words. 
 Proportion is a principle, not of architecture, 
 but of existence. It is by the laws of pro- 
 portion that stars shine, that mountains 
 stand, and rivers flow. Man can hardly 
 perform any act of his life, can hardly utter 
 two word's of innocent speech, or move his 
 hand in accordance with those words, with- 
 out involving some reference, whether 
 taught or instinctive, to the laws of propor- 
 tion. 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 all these laws of proportion in their 
 full complexitv. To arrange (by invention) 
 the folds of a piece of 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 smaller than 
 the other, but the relations between i, 2, 4, 
 and 8, are precisely the same as the relations
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 93 
 
 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 ' disposi- 
 tion of masses ' is the only thing of import- 
 ance in the art with which they are ac- 
 quainted, and fancy therefore that it is 
 peculiar to that art ; whereas the fact is, 
 that all 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 proportion ', is another of the results of 
 the same broad ignorance. First, it is a 
 calumny of the old Greek 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 
 like 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 docs so, not because it 
 is better proportioned, but because it has 
 nothing bid proportion to depend upon. 
 Gesture is in like manner of more importance
 
 94 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 to a pantomime actor than to a tragedian, 
 not because his gesture is more refined, but 
 because he has no tongue. And the propor- 
 tions of our common Greek work are im- 
 portant 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 imagination, 
 nor sacredness, nor any other quality what- 
 soever 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 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 
 multiplied magnificences 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 con- 
 temptible 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
 
 Addenda] AXD PAIXTIXG 95 
 
 always, I have said, there is as much science 
 of arrangement needed in the designing 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 embrace the smaller object more 
 completely, and if the powers of concep- 
 tion are feeble, they get embarrassed by 
 the inferior members which fall within the 
 divisions of the larger design 1 . So that, 
 of course, the best way is to begin with the 
 smaller features ; for most assuredly, those 
 who cannot design small things cannot 
 design large ones ; and yet, on the other 
 hand, whoever can design small things per- 
 fectly, 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 any- 
 thing. 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 examin- 
 ation of details, is simply that they know 
 they dare not meet me on that ground. 
 Being, as I have said, in reality not archi- 
 
 1 Thus, in speaking of Pugin's designs, I said 
 ect no cathedrals of him ; but no one, at present, 
 can design a better finial, though he will never design 
 even a final, perfectly.' But even this I said less 
 with reference to powers of arrangement, than to 
 materials of fancy ; for many men have stone enough 
 to last them through a boss or a bracket, but not to 
 last them through a church front.
 
 96 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 tects, but builders, they can indeed raise a 
 large building, 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 
 nuch as a beast, or a bird, or a bird's nest ! 
 Let them first learn to invent as much as 
 will fill a quatrefoil, or point a pinnacle, and 
 then it will be time enough to reason with 
 them on the principles of the sublime. 
 
 But farther. The things that I have 
 dwelt upon in examining buildings, though 
 often their least parts, are always in reality 
 their principal parts. That is the principal 
 part of a building in which its mind is con- 
 tained, and that, as I have just shown, is its 
 sculpture and painting. I do with a build- 
 ing as I do with a man, watch the eye and 
 the lips : when they are bright and eloquent, 
 the form of the body is of little 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 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 building, and its highest 
 virtue, is that it be nobly sculptured or 
 painted \ 
 
 1 Of course I use the term painting as including 
 every mode of applying colour.
 
 Addenda] AXD PAIXTIXG 97 
 
 One or two important corollaries yet re- 
 main to be stated. It has just been said 
 that to sacrifice the convenience of a build- 
 ing to its external appearance is a futility 
 and absurdity, and that convenience 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 ad- 
 mitted. 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 
 applied. 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 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 building 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 
 
 O
 
 98 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 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 pillared churches. But 
 for the most part, the great law is, conveni- 
 ence first, and then the noblest decoration 
 possible ; and this is peculiarly the case in 
 domestic buildngs, and such public ones 
 as are constantly to be used for practical 
 purposes. 
 
 Proposition 3rd. — Ornamentation should 
 be visible. 
 
 The reader may imagine this to be an 
 indisputable 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 existence 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 builders decorate 
 the tops of buildings, mediaeval builders 
 decorate the bottom. So singular is the 
 ignorance yet prevailing of the first prin- 
 ciples of Gothic architecture, that I saw this
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 99 
 
 assertion marked with notes of interrogation 
 in several of the reports of these Lectures ; 
 although, at Edinburgh, it was only neces- 
 sarv for those who doubted it to have walked 
 to Holyrood Chapel, in order to 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 delicate sculpture being put on 
 the walls of the porches, or on the facade of 
 the building, 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 decorations are 
 on the porches and lower walls of the facades, 
 
 1 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 defacing it.
 
 ioo LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 the rest of the buildings being left compara- 
 tively plain ; in the ducal palace of Venice 
 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, Abbeville \ 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 building, 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 building, which 
 he thought were of the most consummate 
 delicacy, he finds them Herculean in strength 
 and rough-hewn in style, the really delicate 
 work being all put at the base. The general 
 treatment of Romanesque work is to in- 
 crease the number of arches at the top, which 
 at once enriches and lightens the mass, and 
 to put the finest sculpture of the arches at 
 the bottom. In towers of all 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 
 campanile, which indeed has fine sculpture, 
 hut it is at the bottom. 
 
 1 The church at Abbeville is late flamboyant, but 
 well deserves, for the exquisite beauty of its porchi-., 
 to be named even with the great works of the thir- 
 teenth century.
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 101 
 
 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 effective- 
 ness ; while in the base modern Gothic of 
 Milan Cathedral the statues are cut delicately 
 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 architecture 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 bolcly 
 as in the text : the principal ornaments of 
 Gothic buildings being in their porches, and 
 of modern buildings, in their parapets. 
 
 Proposition 4th. — Ornamentation should 
 be natural, — that is to say, should in some 
 degree express or adopt the beauty of 
 natural objects. This law, together with 
 its ultimate reason, is expressed in the state- 
 ment given in the Stones of Venice, vol. i, 
 p. 213 : ' All noble ornament is the expres- 
 sion of man's delight in God's work.' 
 
 Observe, it does not hence follow 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 all going to the 
 point of imitation ; and it is possible that 
 the point of imitation may be closely reached 
 by ornaments, which nevertheless arc en-
 
 102 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 tirely unfit for their place, and are the signs 
 only of a degraded ambition and an ignorant 
 dexterity. Bad decorators err as easily 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 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 inferi- 
 ority. 
 
 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 plea- 
 sure 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 necessarily imitative, but sufficient in 
 itself, so that, wherever colour is introduced, 
 ornamentation may cease to represent 
 natural objects, and may consist in mere
 
 Addenda] AXD PAIXTIXG 103 
 
 spots, or bands, or fiamings, or any other con- 
 dition of arrangement favourable to the 
 colour. 
 
 B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority. 
 — In general, ornamentation is set upon cer- 
 tain 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 allowed to assume the free out- 
 lines, or to rise to the perfection of imitation. 
 Whole banks of flowers, for instance, cannot 
 be carved on cathedral fronts, but only nar- 
 row mouldings, having some of the characters 
 of banks of flowers. Also, some ornaments 
 require to be subdued in value, that they 
 may not interfere with the effect of others ; 
 and all these necessary inferiorities are at- 
 tained by means of departing from natural 
 forms — it being an established law of human 
 admiration that what is most representative 
 of nature shall, cceteris paribus, be most 
 attractive. 
 
 All the various kinds of ornamentation, 
 consisting of spots, points, twisted bands, 
 abstract curves, and other such, owe their 
 peculiar character to this conventionalism 
 ' by cause of inferiority '. 
 
 C. Conventionalism by cause of means. — 
 In every branch of art, only so much imita- 
 tion of nature is to be admitted as is con- 
 sistent with the ease of the workman and the 
 capacities of the material. Whatever short-
 
 104 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 comings are appointed (for they are more 
 than permitted, they are in such cases ap- 
 pointed, and meritorious) on account of the 
 untractableness of the material, come under 
 the head of ' conventionalism by cause of 
 means '. 
 
 These conventionalities, then, being duly 
 understood and accepted, in modification 
 of the general law, that law will be, that the 
 glory of all ornamentation consists in the 
 adoption or imitation of the beauties of 
 natural objects, and that no work can be of 
 high value which is not full of this beauty. 
 To this fourth proposition, modern architects 
 have not ventured to make any serious resist- 
 ance. On the contrary, they seem to be, 
 little by little, gliding into an obscure per- 
 ception of the fact, that architecture, in most 
 periods of the world, had sculpture upon it, 
 and that the said sculpture generally did 
 represent something intelligible. For in- 
 stance, we find Mr Huggins, of Liverpool, 
 lately lecturing upon architecture ' in its 
 relations to nature and the intellect ' \ 
 and gravely informing his hearers, that ' in 
 the middle ages, angels were human figures ' ; 
 that ' some of the richest ornaments of Solo- 
 mon's temple were imitated from the palm 
 and pomegranate ', and that ' the Greeks 
 followed the example of the Egyptians in 
 selecting their ornaments from the plants of 
 
 1 See The Builder for January 12, 1854.
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 105 
 
 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 
 illumination 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 wis- 
 dom so unimagined. 
 
 Proposition 5 th. — Ornamentation should 
 be thoughtful. That is to say, whenever you 
 put a chisel or a pencil into a man's hand for 
 the purpose of enabling him to produce 
 beauty, you are to expect of him that he will 
 think about what he is doing, and feel some- 
 thing about it, and that the expression of 
 this thought or feeling will be the most noble 
 quality in what he produces with his chisel 
 or brush, inasmuch 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 well 
 expressed. 
 
 Hence, therefore, it follows also that all 
 
 P
 
 io6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 noble ornamentation is perpetually varied 
 ornamentation, and that the moment you 
 find ornamentation unchanging, you may 
 know that it is of a degraded kind or degraded 
 school. To this law, the only exceptions 
 arise out of the uses of monotony, as a con- 
 trast to change. Many subordinate archi- 
 tectural mouldings are severely alike in their 
 various parts (though never unless they are 
 thoroughly subordinate, for monotony is 
 always deathful according to the degree of 
 it), in order to set off change in others ; and 
 a certain monotony or similarity must be 
 introduced among the most changeful orna- 
 ments 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 alto- 
 gether incontrovertible. Apply it to modern 
 Greek architecture, and that architecture 
 must cease to exist ; for it depends abso- 
 lutely on copyism. 
 
 The sixth proposition above stated, that 
 Gothic ornamentation is nobler than Greek 
 ornamentation, etc., is therefore sufficiently
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 107 
 
 proved by the acceptance of this one prin- 
 ciple, no less important than unassailable. 
 Of all that I have to bring forward respecting 
 architecture, this is the one I have most at 
 heart ; for on the acceptance of this depends 
 the determination whether the workman 
 shall be a living, progressive, and happy 
 human being, or whether he shall 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 re- 
 naissance architecture, that I speak of that 
 architecture with a bitterness which appears 
 to many readers extreme, while in reality, 
 so far from exaggerating, I have not grasp 
 enough of thought to embrace the evils 
 which have resulted among all the orders of 
 European society from the introduction of 
 the renaissance schools of building, in turn- 
 ing 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 all 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, but millions, of true and noble 
 artists over all Christian lands. Men in the 
 same position are now left utterly without 
 intellectual power or pursuit, and, being un-
 
 io8 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 happy in. their work, they rebel against it : 
 hence one of the worst forms of Unchristian 
 Socialism. So again, there being now no 
 nature or variety in architecture, the multi- 
 tude are not interested 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 re- 
 joicings of the multitude at getting a new 
 picture into their church, better than the 
 old ones ; — all this difference being exclu- 
 sively chargeable on the renaissance archi- 
 tecture. And then, farther, if we remem- 
 ber, not only the revolutionary ravage of 
 sacred architecture, but the immeasurably 
 greater destruction effected by the renais- 
 sance builders and their satellites, where- 
 ever 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 monu- 
 ments, 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
 
 Addenda] AND PA I XT I XG 109 
 
 work, of the Middle Ages x ; and, finally, 
 if we examine the influence which the luxury 
 and, still more, the heathenism, joined with 
 the essential dulness of these schools, 
 have had on the upper classes of society, it 
 will ultimately be found that no expressions 
 are energetic enough to describe, nor broad 
 enough to embrace, the enormous moral evils 
 which have risen from them. 
 
 I omitted, in preparing the preceding lec- 
 ture for the press, a passage referring to this 
 subject, because it appeared to me, in its 
 place, hardly explained by preceding state- 
 ments. But I give it here unaltered, as 
 being, in sober earnest, but too weak to char- 
 acterize the tendencies of the ' accursed ' 
 architecture of which it speaks. 
 
 ' Accursed, I call it, with deliberate pur- 
 pose. It needed but the gathering up of a 
 
 1 Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, 
 than the remorseless way in which the educated ignor- 
 ance, even of the present day, will sweep away an 
 ancient monument, if its preservation be not abso- 
 lutely consistent with immediate convenience or 
 economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considera- 
 tions, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would 
 only consider the steps, and the weight of the follow- 
 ing 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 i- 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. Hut you waste the best of the time of 
 the dead wh.-n y<m destroy the works they have left 
 you ; for to those works they gave the best of their 
 time, intending them for immortality.
 
 no LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n 
 
 Babylonish garment to trouble Israel ; — 
 these marble garments of the ancient idols of 
 the Gentiles, 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 
 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 thou-
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING in 
 
 sands in the cause of Christ, another king 
 was dragged forth from the gates of his 
 Renaissance palace, to die, by the hands of 
 the thousands of his people gathered in an- 
 other crusade ; or what shall that be called 
 — whose sign was not the cross, but the 
 guillotine ? ' x 
 
 I have not space here to pursue the sub- 
 ject farther, nor shall I be able to write any- 
 thing 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 all 
 the writers who have attempted to examine 
 the principles stated in the Stones of Venice, 
 not one has as yet made a single comment 
 on what was precisely and accurately the 
 
 1 The character of Renaissance architecture, and 
 the spirit which dictated its adoption, may be re- 
 membered 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 18, 1854, to have been 3,246,000/, 
 money of that period equal, to about seven millions 
 now (000 000/. having been expended in the year 1686 
 alone). The building is thus notably illustrative of 
 the two fei lings which were stated in the Stones of 
 Venice, to be peculiarly characteristic of the Renais- 
 sance spirit, the Pride of State and Fear of Death. 
 Compare the horror of Louis the Fourteenth at the 
 sight of the tower of St Denis, with the feeling which 
 prompted the Scaligeri at Verona to set their tombs 
 within fifteen feet of their palace walls.
 
 H2 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE 
 
 most important chapter in the whole book ; 
 namely, the description of the nature of 
 Gothic architecture, as involving the liberty 
 of the workman (vol. n. ch. vi.) 1 . I had 
 hoped that whatever 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 accom- 
 plished 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 prac- 
 tised in the present day, must be annihi- 
 lated ; but it will be annihilated, and that 
 speedily. For truth and judgment are its 
 declared opposites, and against these no- 
 thing ever finally prevailed, or shall prevail. 
 
 1 An article in Preiser's Magazine, which has ap- 
 peared since these sheets were sent to press, forms a 
 solitary exception.
 
 Ill 
 
 TURNER AND HIS WORKS 
 
 My 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 little enough at any rate, but will 
 enter abruptly on my subject. 
 
 You are all of you well aware that land- 
 scape 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 will 
 only ask you to observe, that wherever 
 natural scenery is alluded to by the ancient, 
 it is either agriculturally, with the kind of 
 feeling that a good Scotch farmer has ; sensu- 
 ally, in the enjoyment of sun or shade, cool 
 winds or sweet scents ; fearfully, in a mere 
 
 113 Q
 
 ii4 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 vulgar dread of rocks and desolate places, 
 as compared with the comfort of cities ; or, 
 finally, superstitiously, in the personifica- 
 tion or deification of natural powers, gener- 
 ally with much degradation of their impres- 
 siveness, as in the paltry fables of Ulysses 
 receiving the winds in bags from iEolus, and 
 of the Cyclops hammering lightning sharp 
 at the ends, on an anvil \ Of course you 
 will here and there find feeble evidences of 
 a higher sensibility, chiefly, I think, in Plato, 
 iEschylus, Aristophanes, and Virgil. Homer, 
 though in the epithets he applies to land- 
 scape always thoroughly graphic, uses the 
 same epithet for rocks, seas, and trees, from 
 one end of his poems 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 all so-called 
 poems, the journey to Brundusium, you re- 
 member that Horace takes exactly as much 
 interest in the scenery he is passing through, 
 as Sancho Panza would have done. 
 
 1 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 intro- 
 duced. So also in denying Homer's interest in 
 nature, I do not mean to deny his accuracy of obser- 
 vation, or his power of seizing on the mam 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.
 
 in] AND PAINTING 115 
 
 You will find, on the other hand, that the 
 language of the Bible is specifically distin- 
 guished 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 sensibility within 
 them. Out of the monotonous valley 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 immedi- 
 ate manifestation and presence of the Divine 
 Power ; so that mountains for ever after- 
 wards become invested with a peculiar sacred- 
 ness in their minds ; while their descendants 
 being placed in what was then one of the love- 
 liest 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 testifying a vivid 
 sense of the power of nature over man, 
 but showing that sympathy with natural 
 things themselves, as if they had human souls, 
 which is the especial characteristic of true 
 love for the works of God. I intended to
 
 *i6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 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 full 
 •of interest, The Lamp and the Lantern, by 
 Dr James Hamilton ; and I will therefore 
 only ask you to consider such expressions as 
 that tender and glorious verse in Isaiah, 
 speaking of the cedars on the mountains as 
 rejoicing over the fall 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 feller 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 expressions as, ' The sea saw that, and 
 fled. Jordan was driven back. The moun- 
 tains skipped like rams ; and the little 
 hills like lambs.' Try to find anything 
 in profane writing like this ; and note farther 
 that the whole book of Job appears to have 
 been chiefly written and placed in the in- 
 spired 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 coun- 
 try that Job inhabited 1 . Observe, first, it 
 
 1 This passage, respecting the book of Job, was 
 omitted in the delivery of the Lecture, for want of 
 time.
 
 in] AND PAINTING 117 
 
 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 7,000 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 consumethe snow waters '. 
 It was a rocky 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 valleys of 
 Switzerland, by convulsions and falls of 
 mountains. ' Surely the mountain falling 
 cometh to nought, and the rock is removed 
 out of his place.' 'The waters wear the 
 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 cuttcth out rivers among the rocks.' I
 
 u8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 have not time to go farther into this ; but 
 you see Job's country was one like your own, 
 full of pleasant brooks and rivers, rushing 
 among the rocks, and of all other sweet and 
 noble elements of landscape. The magnifi- 
 cent allusions to natural scenery throughout 
 the book are therefore calculated to touch 
 the heart to the end of time. 
 
 Then at the central point of Jewish pros- 
 perity, you have the first great naturalist 
 the world ever saw, Solomon ; not permitted, 
 indeed, to anticipate, in writing, the dis- 
 coveries of modern times, but so gifted as 
 to show us that heavenly wisdom is mani- 
 fested as much in the knowledge of the hys- 
 sop that springeth out of the wall as in 
 political and philosophical speculation. 
 
 The books of the Old Testament, as distin- 
 guished from all other early writings, are 
 thus prepared for an everlasting influence 
 over humanity ; and, finally, Christ Himself, 
 setting the concluding example to the con- 
 duct and thoughts of men, spends nearly 
 His whole life in the fields, the mountains, 
 or the small country villages of Judea ; and 
 in the very closing scenes of His life, will 
 not so much as sleep within the walls of 
 Jerusalem, but rests at the little village of 
 Bethphage, walking in the morning, and 
 returning in the evening, through the peace- 
 ful avenues of the mount of Olives, to and 
 from His work of teaching in the temple. 
 
 It would thus naturallv follow, both from
 
 in] AND PAINTING 119 
 
 the general tone and teaching of the Scrip- 
 tures, 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 all pagan work, the 
 first being a peculiar spirituality in its 
 conception of the human form, preferring 
 holiness of expression and strength of char- 
 acter, to beauty of features or of body, and 
 the second, as I say, its intense fondness 
 for natural objects — animals, leaves and 
 flowers — inducing an immediate transforma- 
 tion of the cold and lifeless pagan ornament- 
 ation into vivid imagery of nature. Of 
 course this manifestation of feeling was 
 at first checked by the circumstances under 
 which the Christian religion was dissemin- 
 ated. The art of the first three centuries 
 is entirely subordinate — restrained partly 
 by persecution, partly by a high spirituality, 
 which cared much more about preaching 
 than painting ; and then when, under Con- 
 stantine, 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
 
 i2o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [m 
 
 new religion had become Imperial. Then, 
 just as the new art was beginning to assume 
 a distinctive form, down came the northern 
 barbarians upon it ; and all their super- 
 stitions had to be leavened with it, and all 
 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 perpetually plunged 
 retarded this development for ages ; but it 
 steadily and gradually prevailed, working 
 from the 8th to the 1 1 th century like a seed 
 in the ground, showing little signs of life, but 
 still, if carefully examined, changing essen- 
 tially every day and every hour : at last, in 
 the 1 2th century, the blade appears above 
 the black earth ; in the 1 3th, 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 present to give you 
 full demonstration of it. 
 
 I say, then, that the art of the 1 3th century 
 is the foundation of all 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 
 developed from it, in each of the three follow- 
 ing centuries. The 14th century is pre-
 
 in] AND PAINTING 121 
 
 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 all the great pictorial poems — the mighty 
 series of works in which everything is done 
 to relate, but nothing to imitate — belong 
 to this century. I should only confuse 
 you by giving you the names of marvel- 
 lous artists, most of them little familiar 
 to British ears, who adorned this century 
 in Italy ; but you will easily remember 
 it as the age of Dante and Giotto — the age 
 of Thought. 
 
 The men of the succeeding century (the 
 15 th) felt that they could not rival their 
 predecessors in invention, but might excel 
 them in execution. Original thoughts be- 
 longing to this century are comparatively 
 rare ; even Raphael and Michael Angelo 
 themselves borrowed all their principal 
 ideas and plans of pictures from their pre- 
 decessors ; but they executed 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 1 6th century produced the four great- 
 
 R
 
 122 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 est Painters, that is to say, managers of 
 colour, whom the world has seen ; namely, 
 Tintoret, Paul Veronese, Titian, and Cor- 
 reggio. I need not say more to justify my 
 calling it the age of Painting. 
 
 This, then, being the state of things re- 
 specting art in general, let us next trace the 
 career of landscape through these centuries. 
 
 It was only towards the close of the 13th 
 century that figure painting began to assume 
 so perfect a condition as to require some 
 elaborate suggestion of landscape back- 
 ground. 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 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 resemblance to 
 nature in their backgrounds, and introduced 
 behind their figures pieces of true landscape, 
 formal enough still, but complete in intention, 
 having foregrounds and distances, sky and 
 water, forests and mountains, carefully 
 delineated, not exactly in their true colour, 
 but yet in colour approximating to the truth. 
 The system which they introduced (for
 
 
 
 
 y N -y 
 
 Plati XIII (Fi .i 
 
 /..«.. 1.1 
 
 ',/ . /. I-'.:
 
 in] AND PAINTING 123 
 
 though in many points enriched above the 
 work of earlier ages, the Orcagna and Giottol 
 landscape was a very complete piece of 
 recipe) was observed for a long period by 
 their pupils, and may be thus briefly de- 
 scribed : — 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 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) 1 . And observe care- 
 fully, 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 conven- 
 tionalism. You will often hear modern 
 architects defending their monstrous orna- 
 mentation on the ground that it is ' conven- 
 tional ', and that architectural ornament 
 ought to be conventionalized. Remember 
 when you hear this, that noble convention- 
 alism is not an agreement between the artist 
 and spectator that the one shall misrepresent 
 nature sixty times over, and the other believe 
 
 1 Having no memoranda of my own, taken from 
 Giotto's landscape, I had this tree copied from an 
 engraving ; but I imagine the rude termination of 
 the stems to be a misrepresentation. Fi '. 21, plate 
 XIII, is accurately copied from a MS., certainly 
 executed between 1250 and 1270, and is more truly 
 characteristic of the early manner.
 
 124 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 the misrepresentation 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 con- 
 sistent 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 delicate in outline, nor repre- 
 senting any of the qualities of the face de- 
 pendent on rich 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 illuminator's 
 work in glass, is all conventional in the 
 same sense, but not conventionally false. 
 The two noblest and truest carved lions 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 solid 
 rock, as smooth as a mirror ! 
 
 There are indeed one or two other con- 
 ditions of noble conventionalism, noticed 
 more fully in the Addenda to this Lecture ; 
 but you will find that they always consist 
 in stopping short of nature, not in falsifying 
 nature ; and thus in Giotto's foliage, he 
 stops short of the quantity of leaves on the
 
 in] AND PAIXTIXG 125 
 
 real tree, but he gives you the form of the 
 leaves represented with perfect truth. His 
 foreground also is nearly always occupied 
 bv flowers and herbage, carefully and individ- 
 ually 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 formula? overleaped, and Giotto at 
 Avignon painting the breakers of the sea 
 on a steep shore with great care, while 
 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 principally 
 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 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 landscape 
 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
 
 126 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 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 still 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 still 
 as conventional and imperfect as ever, 
 except only in colour : the forms of rock 
 in Leonardo's celebrated ' Vierge aux 
 Rochers ' are literally no better than those 
 on a china plate. Fig. 22, plate XIV shows 
 a portion of them in mere outline, with 
 one cluster of the leaves above, and the 
 distant ' ideal ' mountains. On the whole, 
 the most satisfactory work of the period 
 is that which most resembles missal paint- 
 ing, that is to say, which is fullest of beau- 
 tiful flowers and animals scattered among 
 the landscape, in the old independent way, 
 like the birds upon a screen. The landscape 
 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 landscape, 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
 
 
 
 Plate X.1V (Kij I 
 
 [/ace /<■ i it
 
 in] AND PAINTING 127 
 
 first who relieved the foregrounds of their 
 landscape from the grotesque, quaint, and 
 crowded formalism of the early painters ; 
 and gave a close approximation to the forms 
 of nature in all things ; retaining, however, 
 thus much of the old system, that the dis- 
 tances 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 scene ; and the 
 clouds, though now rolling in irregular 
 masses, and sometimes richly involved among 
 the hills, 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, introduced 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 still very subordin- 
 ate, 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 Milan, compared with fig. 20, 
 plate XIII, will give you a distinct idea of 
 the kind of change which took place from 
 the time of Giotto to that of Titian, and
 
 128 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 you will find that this whole range of land- 
 scape may be conveniently classed in three 
 divisions, namely Giottesque, Leonardesque, 
 and Titianesque ; the Giottesque embracing 
 nearly all the work of the 14th, the Leonard- 
 esque 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 alto- 
 gether, 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 civilized nations was paralysed 
 at once by the operation of the poisonous 
 elements of infidelity and classical learning 
 together, as I have endeavoured to show 
 elsewhere. In this paralysis, like 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 endeav- 
 ouring to attain. The step which should 
 have freed landscape from conventionalism 
 was actually taken by Claude and Salvator 
 Roso, 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 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,
 
 I'UII \\ (fig 1 ;) 
 
 L.o.A.\ 
 
 I foci p. 128
 
 in] AND PAINTING 129 
 
 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 carefully 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 exquisite botanical care. But now 
 observe : as Christianity 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 Salva- 
 tor made the final effort to paint the effects 
 of nature faithfully, the objects of nature had 
 ceased to be regarded with affection ; so 
 that, while people were amused and inter- 
 ested by the new effects of sunsets over green 
 seas, and of tempests bursting on rocky 
 mountains, which were introduced by the 
 rising school, they entirely ceased to require 
 on the one side, or 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, illustrative of the most 
 important facts ; it was not to be understood 
 or relished without application of serious 
 thought ; on the contrary, it developed and 
 addressed the highest powers of mind belong- 
 ing to the human race ; while the Claude 
 and Salvator painting was like a scene in a 
 theatre, viciously and falsely painted through- 
 
 S
 
 130 LETTERS ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 out, and presenting a deceptive appearance 
 of truth to nature ; understood, as far as it 
 went, in a moment, but conveying no accur- 
 ate knowledge of anything, and, in all 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 archi- 
 tectural decoration, while the habits of 
 society led them more and more to live, 
 if possible, in cities ; and the dress, language, 
 and manners of men in general were approx- 
 imating to that horrible and lifeless condi- 
 tion 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 lived 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 lived in coffee-houses
 
 in] AND PAINTING 131 
 
 and on the Mall. The essence of pastoral 
 poetry is the sense of strange delightfulness 
 in grass, which is occasionally felt by a 
 man who has seldom set his foot on it ; 
 it is essentially 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 
 shepherdesses on a chimney-piece as com- 
 pared with great works of sculpture. 
 
 Of course all good poetry, descriptive 
 of rural life, is essentially pastoral, or has 
 the effect of the pastoral on the minds 
 of men living in cities ; but the class of 
 poetry which I mean, and which you prob- 
 ably 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 ridicu- 
 lous and unnatural refinement is supposed 
 to exist in rural life, merely because the poet 
 himself has neither had the courage to en- 
 dure its hardships, nor the wit to conceive 
 its realities. If you examine the literature 
 of the 17th and 18th centuries, you will find 
 that nearly all its expressions, having refer- 
 ence 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 will find 
 all its descriptive expressions at once vague 
 and monotonous. Brooks are always ' pur- 
 ling ' ; birds always ' warbling ' ; mountains
 
 132 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 always ' lift their horrid peaks above the 
 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 occa- 
 sional appearance of freshness to the cata- 
 logue of the sublime and beautiful which de- 
 scended 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 conception 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 travelling 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 traveller uses now at crossing 
 the glacier of the Col de Geant. I am not 
 sure whether the difficulties which, until 
 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
 
 in] AND PAINTING 133 
 
 point in view — I am well persuaded that you 
 will be struck most forcibly by the strange 
 deadness to the higher 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 although in the second-rate 
 writers continually, and in the first-rate ones 
 occasionally, you find an affectation 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 Moliere, and the writings of 
 Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you 
 will find a single expression of true delight 
 in sublime nature in any one of them. Per- 
 haps 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 will have a very accurate 
 conception of the general spirit of the age.
 
 134 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 It was in such a state of society that the 
 landscape of Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and 
 Salvator Rosa attained its reputation. It 
 is the complete expression on canvas of the 
 spirit of the time. Claude embodies the 
 foolish pastoralism, Salvator the ignorant 
 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 the restraint ; and the 
 approach of a new era was marked by the 
 appearance, and the enthusiastic reception, 
 of writers who took true delight in those 
 wild scenes of nature which had so long been 
 despised. 
 
 I think the first two writers in whom the 
 symptoms of a change are strongly mani- 
 fested 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 al- 
 together in character from any sentiments 
 previously traceable in literature. And 
 then rapidly followed a group of writers, who 
 expressed, in various ways, the more power- 
 ful or more pure feeling which had now be- 
 come one of the strongest instincts of the age. 
 Of these, the principal is your own Walter 
 Scott. Many writers, indeed, describe nature
 
 in] AXD PA I XT I XG 135 
 
 more minutely and more profoundly ; but 
 none show in higher intensity the peculiar 
 passion for what is majestic or lovely in wild 
 nature, to which I am now referring. The 
 whole of the poem of the Lady of the Lake is 
 written with almost a boyish enthusiasm 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 descriptions 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 Caerlaverock and Lochleven 
 Castles in Guy Mannering and The Abbot, 
 remain the staple possessions and text-books 
 of all travellers, 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 sympathize. 
 
 Together with Scott appeared the group of 
 poets, — Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, 
 and, finally, Tennyson — differing widely in 
 moral principles and spiritual temper, but 
 all agreeing more or less in this love for 
 natural scenery. 
 
 Now, you will ask me — and you will ask 
 me most reasonably — how this love of nature
 
 136 LECTURES OX ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 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 
 Shelley. 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 novel- 
 ists — 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 intemperance 
 will cry out for water, and that with a 
 bitterer thirst than a man whose healthy 
 frame naturally 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 is a character- 
 istic 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 corresponded, had 
 many weak and vicious elements mixed with 
 its noble ones : it had its Mrs Radcliffes and
 
 in] AND PAINTING 137 
 
 Rousseaus, as well as its Wordsworths ; but, 
 on the whole, the feeling with which Robson 
 drew mountains, 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 sub- 
 ject becomes. You have, first, your great 
 ancient landscape divided into its three 
 periods — Giottesque, Leonardesque, Titian- 
 esque. Then you have a great gap, full of 
 nonentities and abortions ; a gulph of 
 foolishness, into the bottom of which you 
 may throw Claude and Salvator, neither of 
 them deserving to give a name to anything. 
 Call it ' pastoral ' landscape, ' 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 genuis, too strongly to be 
 
 T
 
 138 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 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 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 un- 
 saleable 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 
 illustrating guide-books and almanacks, 
 and anything that wanted cheap frontis- 
 pieces. The Oxford Almanack, published 
 on a single sheet, 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, 
 obsequious to the very dust, to the Grand 
 Signior of the neighbourhood ; — well, this 
 Almanack had always such a view of some
 
 in] AND PAINTING 139 
 
 Oxford College at the top of it, dedicated, I 
 think, always to the head of the College ; 
 and it owed this, its principal decoration, 
 to Turner for many years. I have myself 
 two careful drawings of some old seals, 
 made by him for a local book on the an- 
 tiquities 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, inscribed with the simple name ' W. 
 Turner.' 
 
 There was another great difference be- 
 tween Turner and other men. In doing 
 these drawings for the commonest publi- 
 cations of the day, and for a remuneration al- 
 together 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 willing 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 
 being never finished to the degree of those 
 which are executed in colour. But he is 
 never careless. According to the time and
 
 I4o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 means at his disposal, he always did his best. 
 He never let a drawing leave his hands with- 
 out 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 all other 
 men in intellect 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 established 
 that he was able to devote himself to more 
 consistent study. He never appears 
 literally to have copied any picture ; but 
 whenever any master interested him, or was 
 of so established a reputation that he thought 
 it 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
 
 in] AND PA I NT I NG 141 
 
 years imitated many of the old masters, 
 therefore he must to the end of his life 
 have considered them greater than himself. 
 The nonscquitur 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 deserv- 
 ing 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 style had formed the taste of the public, 
 or whose dicta directed their patronage. 
 
 But the period when he both felt and 
 resolved to assert his own superiority was 
 indicated with perfect clearness, by his 
 publishing a series of engravings, 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 pro- 
 bably all aware that the studies made by 
 Claude for his pictures, and kept by him 
 under the name of the ' Liber Veritatis \ 
 were for the most part made with pen and 
 ink, washed over with a brown tint ; and 
 that these drawings have been carefully 
 facsimiled and published in the form of
 
 142 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 mezzotint engravings, long supposed to be 
 
 models of taste in landscape composition. 
 
 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 
 
 see the notable publicity of this challenge. 
 
 Had he confined himself to pictures in his 
 
 trial of skill with Claude, it would have only 
 
 been in the gallery or the palace that the 
 
 comparison could have been instituted ; but 
 
 now it is in the power of all who are interested 
 
 in the matter to make it at their ease. 1 
 * * * 
 
 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, Vandevelde on the sea, Salva- 
 tor among rocks, and Cuyp on Lowland 
 rivers ; and, having done this, set himself 
 
 1 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 mezzotint 
 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.
 
 in] AND PAINTING 143 
 
 to paint the natural scenery of skies, moun- 
 tains, and lakes, which, until his time, had 
 never been so much as attempted. 
 
 He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far 
 surpassed even Titian and Leonardo, the 
 great men of the earlier schools. In their 
 foreground work neither Titian nor Leonardo 
 could be excelled ; but Titian and Leonardo 
 were thoroughly conventional in all but 
 their foregrounds. Turner was equally 
 great in all 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 land- 
 scape painter who will not at once frankly 
 confess his obligations to Turner, not, ob- 
 serve, 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 
 presented us with the type of perfect land- 
 scape 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 
 you in the fairest scenery of your country, 
 you will do well to remember as Turneresque. 
 
 So then you have these five periods to 
 recollect — you will have no difficulty, I
 
 144 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 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 lies in his grave will 
 bring some new acknowledgment 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, dogmatic. I 
 did not come here to tell 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 you have known so little while 
 he was living among you, will one day take 
 his place beside Shakspeare and Verulam, 
 in the annals of the light of England. 
 
 Yes : beside Shakspeare and Verulam, 
 a third star in that central constellation, 
 round which, in the astronomy of intellect, 
 all other stars make their circuit. By 
 Shakspeare, humanity was unsealed to you ; 
 by Verulam the principles of nature ; and 
 by Turner, her aspect. All these were sent 
 to unlock one of the gates of light, and 
 to unlock it for the first time. But of all
 
 in] AND PAINTING 145 
 
 the three, though not the greatest, Turner 
 was the most unprecedented in his work. 
 Bacon did what Aristotle had attempted ; 
 Shakspeare did perfectly what iEschylus 
 did partially ; but none before Turner had 
 lifted the veil 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 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 inter- 
 course with him. I never once heard him 
 say an unkind thing of a brother artist, and 
 / 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 supposing other- 
 
 U
 
 146 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [m 
 
 wise, the expression I am going to quote 
 to you would have all the more force, be- 
 cause, as you know, Haydon passed his 
 whole life in war with the Royal Academy, 
 of which Turner was one of the most in- 
 fluential members. Yet in the midst of 
 one of his most violent expressions of exulta- 
 tion at one of his victories over the Academy, 
 he draws back suddenly with these words : 
 ' But Turner behaved well, and did me 
 justice.' 
 
 I will give you however besides, two plain 
 facts illustrative 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 pictures, sent it out of the Academy, 
 and hung Bird's in its place. 
 
 Match that, if you can, among the annals 
 of hanging committees. But he could do 
 nobler things than this. 
 
 When Turner's picture of Cologne was
 
 in] AND PAINTING 147 
 
 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 exceed- 
 ingly bright, and it had a most injurious 
 effect on the colour of the two portraits. 
 Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and com- 
 plained 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 all its splendour, led a group 
 of expectant critics up to the picture. He 
 started back from it in consternation. 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 a low voice, ' poor 
 Lawrence was so unhappy. It's only 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 easily 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
 
 148 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 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 will not easily 
 find such another example as this. 
 
 Thus much for his jealousy of his brother 
 artists. You have also heard much of his 
 niggardliness in money transactions. A 
 great part of what you have heard is per- 
 fectly true, allowing 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 niggardliness in a very different 
 light. Every person from whom Turner 
 exacted a due shilling, 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 permitted 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 l , whom Turner had long known, 
 
 1 Not the Mr Wells who taught drawing at Addis- 
 combe. It appears that Turner knew two persons of 
 the same name, and in the same profession. I am 
 not permitted to name mv authority for the anec- 
 dote, various egotistic ' delicacies ', even in this case, 
 preventing useful truth from being clearly assured to 
 the public.
 
 in] AND PAINTING 149 
 
 he was deeply affected, and lent money to 
 the widow until a large sum had accumu- 
 lated She was both honest and grateful, 
 and after a long period was happy enough to 
 be able to return to her benefactor the 
 whole sum she had received from him. She 
 waited on him with it ; but Turner kept 
 his hands in his pocket. ' Keep it ', he said, 
 ' and send your children to school, and to 
 church.' He said this in bitterness ; he 
 had himself been sent to neither. 
 
 Well, but you will answer to me, we have 
 heard Turner all our lives stigmatized as 
 brutal, and uncharitable, 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, until he felt himself sinking into 
 the grave. From the time he knew his true 
 greatness all the world was turned against 
 him ; he held his own : but it could not be 
 without roughness of bearing, and harden- 
 ing 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
 
 T5o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in 
 
 from the human beings around you were 
 raised, year after year, through all your 
 lives, only in condemnation of your efforts, 
 and denial of your success. This may be 
 borne, and borne easily, by men who have 
 fixed religious principles, or supporting 
 domestic ties. But Turner had no one to 
 teach him in his youth, and no one to love 
 him in his old age. Respect and affection, 
 if they came at all, came unbelieved, or came 
 too late. Naturally irritable, though kind 
 — naturally suspicious, though generous 
 — the gold gradually became dim, and the 
 most fine gold changed, or. if not changed, 
 overcast and clouded. The deep heart 
 was still beating, but it was beneath a dark 
 and melancholy mail, between whose joints, 
 however, sometimes 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 jeal- 
 ousies of hopeless rivalry, he died in the 
 house of a stranger, — one companion of his 
 life, and one only, staying with hirii 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.
 
 IV 
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM 
 
 The subject on which I would desire to 
 engage your attention this evening, is the 
 nature and probable 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 essentially 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'. 
 
 You must also be aware that this heresy 
 has been opposed with all the influence and 
 all the bitterness of art and criticism ; but 
 that in spite of these the heresy has gained 
 
 151
 
 152 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 be- 
 tween the principles on which art has been 
 pursued before and since Raphael ? You 
 must be aware, that the principal ground 
 on which the Pre-Raphaelities have been 
 attacked, is the charge that they wish to 
 bring 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, therefore, 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 illumination than, 
 at all events, any artists who preceded 
 Raphael ; so that we consider ourselves 
 entitled to look down upon them, and to say
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 153 
 
 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 
 accomplished 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, immeasureably more 
 important, and which, until very lately, have 
 been altogether lost sight of. 
 
 The fact is, that modern art is not so 
 much distinguished from old art by greater 
 skill, as by a radical change in temper. The 
 art of this day is not merely a more knowing 
 art than that of the 13th century, — it is 
 altogether another art. 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 usually consider it ; it was that of the 
 chrysalis into the butterfly. There was 
 an entire change in the habits, food, method 
 of existence, and heart of the whole creature. 
 That we know more than 1 3th century people 
 is perfectly true ; but that is not the essen- 
 tial difference between us and them. We 
 arc different kind of creatures from them, as 
 
 X
 
 154 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 different as moths are different from cater- 
 pillars ; 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 cir- 
 cumstances, not as you are different from 
 people who never saw a locomotive engine, 
 or a Highlander of this century from a High- 
 lander of 1745 ; different in a far 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 dwell upon and work out ; it is 
 a term which we use in a dim consciousness 
 of the truth, but without fully penetrating 
 into that of which we are conscious. I 
 want to deepen and make clear to you this 
 consciouness that the world has had essen- 
 tially a Trinity of ages — the Classical Age, 
 the Middle Age, the Modern Age ; each of 
 these embracing races and individuals of 
 apparently enormous 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 Ger- 
 mans ; but all these distinctions being in
 
 iv] AND PAINTING i$5 
 
 each case subordinate to the mightier and 
 broader distinction, between Classicalism, 
 Medievalism, and Modernism. 
 
 Now our object to-night is indeed only 
 to inquire into a matter of art ; but we 
 cannot do so properly until 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 con- 
 clusions 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- 
 Raphaelites have adopted, in choosing 
 Raphael as the man whose works mark the 
 separation between Medisevalism and Moder- 
 nism, is perfectly accurate. It has been 
 accepted as such by all their opponents. 
 
 You have, then, the three periods : Classi- 
 calism, extending to the fall of the Roman 
 empire ; Medievalism, extending from that 
 fall to the close of the 15 th century ; and 
 Modernism, thenceforward to our days. 
 
 And in examining into the spirit of these 
 three epochs, observe, I don't mean to 
 compan ; licirbadmen — I don't mean to take 
 Tiberius as a type of Classicalism, nor 
 Ezzelin as a type of Mediaevalism, nor 
 Robespierre as a type of Modernism. Bad 
 men are like each other in all epochs ; and 
 in the Roman, the Paduan, or the Parisian, 
 sensuality and cruelty admit of little dis-
 
 156 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 tinction in the manners of their manifesta- 
 tion. But among men comparatively vir- 
 tuous, it is important to study the phases 
 of character ; and it is into these only that 
 it is necessary for us to inquire. Consider 
 therefore, first, the essential difference in 
 character between three of the most devoted 
 military 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 Mediae- 
 val 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, fulfilling the accepted 
 prophecy of his death. St Louis had the 
 most rigid sense of duty, and the most per- 
 fect 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 compared 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 essentially 
 different in the whole tone of their religious 
 belief.
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 157 
 
 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 like that of the worm to the 
 butterfly. But the changes which God 
 causes in His lower creatures are almost 
 always from worse to better, while the changes 
 which God allows 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 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 
 civilization began, with Pagan Faith. Medi- 
 aevalism began, and continued, wherever 
 civilization began and continued to confess 
 Christ. And, lastly, Modernism began and 
 continues, wherever civilization 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 tell us that we deny Christ ? 
 we who are essentially modern in every one 
 of our principles and feelings, and yet all of
 
 158 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 us professing believers in Christ, and we 
 trust most of us true ones ? I answer, So 
 far as we are believers indeed, we are one 
 with the faithful of all times — one with the 
 classical believer of Athens and Ephesus, 
 and one with the mediaeval believer of the 
 banks of the Rhone and the valleys 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 Reforma- 
 tion, 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 unrcformed 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 
 allow me to do so at present, for the sake of 
 perspicuity, if for nothing else ; and so class- 
 ing 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 religious belief, at least in the external 
 and trivial affairs of life, and often in far 
 more serious things.
 
 iv] AND PAIXTIXG 159 
 
 For instance, hear this direction to an 
 upholsterer of the early 13th century. 
 Under the commands of the sheriff of Wilt- 
 shire, he is thus ordered to make some 
 alterations in a room for Henry the Third. 
 He is to ' wainscot the King's lower cham- 
 ber, 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 
 walls of the King's upper chamber the story 
 of St Margaret, Virgin, and the four Evange- 
 lists, and to paint the wainscot of the same 
 chamber of a green colour, spotted with 
 gold. 1 ' 
 
 Again, the sheriff of Wiltshire is ordered 
 to ' put two small 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 
 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 Xorthampton, and cause the history of 
 Lazarus and Dives to be painted in the 
 same.' 
 
 1 Liberate Rolls, preserved in the Tower of 
 London, and quoted by Mr Turner in his History of 
 the Domestic Architecture of England.
 
 160 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 im- 
 pure 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 pallet 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 decoration 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, or the Virgin, or Lazarus and Dives. 
 And if a thousand years hence, any curious 
 investigator were to dig up the ruins of Edin- 
 burgh, and not know your history, he would 
 think you had all been born heathens. Now 
 that, so far as it goes, is denying Christ ; it 
 is pure Modernism. 
 
 No, you will answer me, ' you misunder- 
 stand and calumniate us. We do not, in- 
 deed, 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 like religious imagery.' Pardon 
 me : that is not the reason. Go into any 
 fashionable lady's boudoir in Paris, and see 
 if you will find Dives and Lazarus there. 
 You will find, indeed, either that she has
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 161 
 
 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 
 Apollos 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 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, finally, to do His devoir — mark the 
 word — to all 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 children to be taught at your great 
 schools and universities. Is it Christian 
 history, or the histories of Pan and Silenus ? 
 Your present education, to all intents and 
 puqx>ses, denies Christ, and that is intensely 
 and peculiarly Modernism. 
 
 Or, again, what do you suppose was the 
 proclaimed and understood principle of all 
 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, 
 
 Y
 
 162 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 and confessed authority of His law. You 
 will find that all treaties, laws, transactions 
 whatsoever, in the Middle Ages, are based 
 on a confession of Christianity as the leading 
 rule of life ; that a text of Scripture is held, 
 in all public assemblies, strong enough to be 
 set against an appearance of expediency ; 
 and although, in the end, the expediency 
 might triumph, yet it was never without a 
 distinct allowance of Christian principle, as 
 an efficient element in the consultation. 
 Whatever error might be committed, at 
 least Christ was openly confessed. Now 
 what is the custom of your British Parlia- 
 ment in these days ? You know that 
 nothing would excite greater manifestations 
 of contempt and disgust than the slightest 
 attempt to introduce the authority of Scrip- 
 ture 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 
 full effect in one thing only, namely, in art, 
 and I must come straightway to that, as I 
 have little enough time. This, then, is the 
 great and broad fact which distinguishes 
 modern art from old art ; that all ancient 
 art was religions, and all modern art is pro- 
 fane. Once more, your patience for an 
 instant. I say, all ancient art was religious ; 
 that is to say, religion was its first object ;
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 163 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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 will 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. 
 
 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 consequent <■ 
 another form ; that this is the great distinc- 
 tion between mediaeval and modern art : 
 and from that are clearly dcducible all other
 
 1 64 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 1 3th 
 century was Christianity. Be it so, still is 
 the statement true, which is all that is neces- 
 sary for me now to prove, that art was great 
 because it was devoted to such religion as 
 then existed. Grant that Roman Catholi- 
 cism was not Christianity — grant it, if you 
 will, 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 mediaeval art was great in building to 
 its gods, and modern art is not great, be- 
 cause it builds to no God. You have for 
 instance, in your Edinburgh Library, a Bible 
 of the 13th century, the Latin Bible, com- 
 monly 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
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 165 
 
 begins with an illuminated letter, containing 
 three or four figures, illustrative of the book 
 which it begins. Xow, 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- 
 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 life 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 feelings which, whether right or wrong, 
 were the groundwork of his whole being. 
 Now, about the year 1500, this entire system 
 was changed. Instead 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 public gallery of pictures 
 by the ' great masters ', as they are called, 
 you will indeed find here and there what is 
 called a Holy Family, painted for the sake 
 of drawing pretty children, 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 An- 
 gelico painting the life of Christ, Benozzo 
 painting the life of Abraham, Ghirlandajo 
 painting the life of the Virgin, Giotto paint- 
 ing the life of St Francis, were worse em- 
 ployed, or likely to produce a less healthy
 
 1 66 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 
 will not let me call the one kind of labour 
 Christian, and the other unchristian, at least 
 you will 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 hence- 
 forward 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 naturally took truth for its first 
 object, and beauty, and the pleasure result- 
 ing from beauty, only for its second. But 
 when it lost all purpose of moral teaching, 
 it as naturally took beauty for its first object, 
 and truth for its second. 
 
 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 
 person, or that, have done under the circum- 
 stances ? and then, having formed their
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 167 
 
 conception, they work it out with only a 
 secondary regard to grace, or beauty, while 
 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 conventional 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 1 . Now a modern artist, repre- 
 senting this, would have endeavoured dimly 
 and faintly to suggest the appearance of the 
 
 1 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 which the three dead 
 persons are walking, and are met by three queens, 
 who severally utter the sentences : 
 
 ' Ich am aferd.' 
 
 ' Lo, whet ich se ? ' 
 
 ' 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 istinctly to be women, 
 sonn- longer legends below are headed 'primus rex 
 mortuus ', etc.
 
 i68 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 dead bodies, and would have made, or 
 attempted to make, the countenances of the 
 three kings variously and solemnly expres- 
 sive 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 most gracefully do. He 
 considers only what they actually in all 
 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 sup- 
 pose it is because Orcagna had naturally 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, — bor- 
 rowed 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.
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 169 
 
 It was not that he did not love beauty, but 
 he loved truth first. 
 
 So it was with all the men of that time. 
 No painters ever had more power of con- 
 ceiving graceful form, or more profound 
 devotion to the beautiful ; but all these 
 gifts and affections are kept sternly sub- 
 ordinate 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 skill to do it, nor care to do it. Their 
 art was conventional and imperfect, but 
 they considered it only as a language 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 
 until the close of the 15th century. 
 
 Now so justly have the Pre-Raphaelites 
 chosen their time and name, that the great 
 change which clouds the career of mediaeval 
 art was effected, not only in Raphael's time, 
 but by Raphael's own practice, and by his 
 practice in the very centre of his available 
 life. 
 
 You remember, doubtless, what high 
 
 z
 
 170 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 ground we have for placing the beginning 
 of human intellectual strength at about the 
 age of twelve years 1 . Assume, 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 available life, 
 he was sent for to Rome, to decorate the 
 Vatican for Pope Julius II, and having until 
 that time worked exclusively in the ancient 
 and stern mediaeval manner, he, in the first 
 chamber which he decorated in that palace, 
 wrote upon its walls the Mene, Tekel, Uphar- 
 sin, of the Arts of Christianity. 
 
 And he wrote it thus : On one wall 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 intellect and the art of Italy date their 
 degradation. 
 
 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 symbolical 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-called head 
 
 1 Luke, ii, 42, 49.
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 171 
 
 of the church, and called as the chief repre- 
 sentative of the Christian artists of his time, 
 Raphael had neither religion nor originality- 
 enough to trace the spirit of poetry and the 
 spirit of philosophy to the inspiration of the 
 true God, as well as -that of theology ; but 
 that, on the contrary, he elevated the creations 
 of fancy on the one wall, to the same rank as 
 the objects of faith upon the other ; that in 
 deliberate, balanced, opposition to the 
 Rock of the Mount Zion, he reared the rock 
 of Parnassus, and the rock 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 philosophy we find the masters 
 of the school of Athens, but neither of those 
 greater masters by the last of whom that 
 school was rebuked, — those who receive 
 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 excellencies 
 of the man who had thus marked the com- 
 mencement of decline. The perfection 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 thenceforward 
 
 1 1 Kings iii, 5.
 
 172 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 mediaeval art, thought 
 is the first thing, execution the second ; in 
 modern art execution is the first thing, and 
 thought the second. And again, in mediae- 
 val art, truth is first, beauty second ; in 
 modern art, beauty is first, truth second. 
 The mediaeval principles led up to Raphael, 
 and the modern principles 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 dull child 
 will 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 performance of a chalk 
 head, not much worse than his original, but 
 still of less value than the paper it is drawn 
 upon. But the clever child will not, or will 
 only by force, consent to this discipline. 
 He finds other means of expressing himself 
 with his pencil somehow or another ; and 
 presently you find his paper covered with
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 17 3 
 
 sketches of his grandfather and grand- 
 mother, and uncles, and cousins, — sketches 
 of the room, and the house, and the cat, and 
 the dog, and the country outside, and every- 
 thing in the world he can set his eyes on ; 
 and he gets on, and even his child'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 child is working in the middle-age 
 spirit — the other in the modern spirit. 
 
 But there is something still more striking 
 in the evils which have resulted from the 
 modern regardlessness of truth. Consider, 
 for instance, its effect on what is called his- 
 torical painting. What do you at present 
 mean by historical painting ? Nowadays, 
 it means the endeavouring, by the power of 
 imagination, 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 historical paint- 
 ing 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 suppose our descendants will 
 care for our imaginations of the events of 
 former days ? Suppose the Greeks, instead 
 of representing their own warriors as they
 
 174 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 no- 
 thing 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 concerned. What do 
 we care, they will say, what those 19th-cen- 
 tury people fancied about Greek and Roman 
 history ! If they had left us a few plain and 
 rational sculptures and pictures of their own 
 battles, and their own men, in their every- 
 day dress, we should have thanked them. 
 Well, but, you will 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 either 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 
 will produce any effect on their own gener- 
 ation, or on any other. Wilkie was a histori- 
 cal painter, Chantrey a historical sculptor, 
 because they painted, or carved, the verit-
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 175 
 
 able things and men they saw, not men and 
 things as they believed thev might have 
 been, or should have been. But no one tells 
 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 multi- 
 tudes of other painters ruined, from the be- 
 ginning, by that grand school. There was 
 Etty, naturally as good a painter as ever 
 lived, 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 yellow shawls to the end of his days. 
 Much good may they do you ! He is gone 
 to the grave, a lost mind. There was Flax- 
 man, 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 strad- 
 dling and frowning behind round shields. 
 Much good may they do you ! Another 
 lost mind. And of those who are lost name- 
 lessly, 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
 
 176 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 mantels ; and every 
 man who has arisen to eminence in modern 
 times has done so altogether by his working 
 in their way, and doing the things he saw. 
 How did Reynolds rise ? Not by painting 
 Greek women, but by painting the glorious 
 little living 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 yourselves — 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, all- 
 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 pupils altogether ; 
 it hinders and paralyses the greatest. There 
 is not a living painter whose eminence is not 
 in spite of everything he had been taught 
 from his youth upwards, and who, what- 
 ever his eminence may be, has not suffered 
 much injury in the course of his victory. For
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 177 
 
 observe : this love of what is called ideality 
 or beauty in preference to 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 por- 
 traiture ; 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 religious man, — and one 
 who had suffered much from sickness. The 
 whole dignity of his features and person de- 
 pended 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 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 Modern- 
 ism — studied from the show-riders of the 
 
 A A
 
 178 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 amphitheatre, with their horses on their 
 hind legs in the sawdust x . Do you sup- 
 pose 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 
 
 1 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 ; 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, ex- 
 hibiting his riding in his own grounds, would be differ- 
 ent 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 
 Westminster Hall will tend more to educate the 
 public eye and mind with respect to art than any- 
 thing we have done in London for centuries. 
 * * * 
 
 April 21, 1854. — I stop the press in order to insert 
 the following paragraph from to-day's Times : ' The 
 Statue of Cceur De Lion. Yesterday morning a 
 number of workmen were engaged in pulling down the 
 cast which was placed in New Palace Yard of the 
 colossal equestrian statue of Richard Cceur de Lion. 
 Sir C. Barry was, we believe, opposed to the cast re- 
 maining there any longer, and to the putting up of the 
 statue itself on the same site, because it did not har- 
 monise with the building. During the day the horse 
 and figure were removed, and before night the pedestal 
 was demolished and taken away.''
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 179 
 
 bloody slime of the battlefield, and he him- 
 self 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 extraordinary 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 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 life ; 
 they find the life very different from the 
 antique, and say so. Their teachers tell 
 them the antique is the best, and they 
 mustn't copy the life. They agree among 
 themselves that they like the life, and that 
 copy it they will. They do copy it faith- 
 fully, and their masters forthwith declare 
 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 in- 
 struction. Accidentally, a few prints of the 
 works of Giotto, a few casts from those of
 
 180 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 Ghiberti, fall into their hands, and they see 
 in these something they never saw before — 
 something intensely and everlastingly true. 
 They examine 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 victori- 
 ous. And which will be absolutely and 
 triumphantly victorious. The great mis- 
 take which has hitherto prevented the 
 public mind from fully going with them 
 must soon be corrected. 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 com- 
 petitors, and partly by the pure, perverse, 
 and hopeless ignorance of the whole body 
 of art-critics, so called, connected with the 
 press. No notion was ever more baseless 
 or more ridiculous. It was asserted that 
 the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well, in 
 the face of the fact, that the principal mem- 
 ber of their body, from the time he entered the 
 schools of the Academy, had literally en- 
 cumbered himself with the medals, given as 
 prizes for drawing. It was asserted that
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 181 
 
 they did not draw in perspective, by men 
 who themselves knew no more of perspective 
 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 tell no more, 
 and it began to be forced upon men's un- 
 willing belief that the style of the Pre- 
 Raphaelites was true and was according to 
 nature, the last forgery invented respecting 
 them is, that they copy photographs. You 
 observe how completely this last piece of 
 malice defeats all the rest. It admits they 
 are true to nature, though only that it 
 may deprive them of all merit in being so. 
 But it may itself be at once refuted by the 
 bold challenge 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 all 
 these doubts, and at once contradict all these 
 calumnies. 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, 
 that of absolute, uncompromising truth in 
 all that it does, obtained by working every- 
 thing, down to the most minute detail, from 
 nature, and from nature only x . Every 
 
 1 Or, where imagination is necessarily trusted to, 
 by always endeavouring to conceive a fact as it really 
 
 l« likely to have happened, rather than as it most 
 prettily might have happened. The various members
 
 182 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 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 living 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 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, characterized 
 by a total absence of sensibility to the ordin- 
 ary and popular forms of artistic graceful- 
 ness ; while, to all that still lower kind of 
 prettiness, which regulates the disposition of 
 
 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 por- 
 traiture, and their fancy so probable as to seem 
 like memory.
 
 iv] AXD PAIXTIXG 183 
 
 our scenes upon the stage, and which ap- 
 pears in our lower art, as in our annuals, our 
 common-place portraits, and statuary, the 
 Pre-Raphaelites are not only dead, but they 
 regard it with a contempt and aversion ap- 
 proaching to disgust. This character is 
 absolutely necessary to them in the present 
 time ; but it, of course, occasionally renders 
 their work comparatively unpleasing. As 
 the school becomes less aggressive, and 
 more authoritative — which it will do — they 
 will enlist into their ranks men who will 
 work, mainly, upon their principles, and yet 
 embrace more of those characters which are 
 generally attractive, and this great ground 
 of offence will be removed. 
 
 Again : you observe that, as landscape 
 painters, their principles 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 enjoy- 
 ment of those evanescent effects and dis- 
 tant sublimities which nothing but the 
 memory can arrest, and nothing but a daring 
 conventionalism portray. 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 everything, and though he would 
 sometimes in his foregrounds paint the spots 
 upon a dead trout and the dyes upon a but- 
 terfly's wing, yet for the most part delighted
 
 184 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 to begin at that very point where Pre- 
 Raphaelitism becomes powerless. 
 
 Lastly. The habit of constantly carrying 
 everything up to the utmost point of com- 
 pletion 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 
 abstracts of truth rather than total truth. 
 Probably to the end of time artists will more 
 or less be divided into these classes, and it 
 will be impossible to make men like Millais 
 understand the merits of men like Tintoret ; 
 but this is the more to be regretted, because 
 the Pre-Raphaelites have enormous powers 
 of imagination, as well as of realization, 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 all their faults, their pictures are, 
 since Turner's death, the best — incompar- 
 ably the best — on the walls of the Royal 
 Academy ! and such works as Mr Hunt's 
 Claudio and Isabella have never been rivalled, 
 in some respects never approached, at any 
 other period of art. 
 
 This I believe to be a most candid state- 
 ment of all their faults and all their defici- 
 encies ; not such, you perceive, as are 
 likely to arrest their progress. The ' magna 
 est Veritas ' was never more sure of accom-
 
 
 iv] AND PAINTING 185 
 
 plishmcnt than by these men. Their adver- 
 saries have no chance with them. They 
 will gradually unite their influence with 
 whatever is true or powerful in the reaction- 
 ary art of other countries ; and on their 
 works such a school will be founded as shall 
 justify the third age of the world's civili- 
 zation, 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 even- 
 ing stated to you, — that none was ever truly 
 great but that which represented the living 
 forms and daily deeds of the people among 
 whom it arose ; that all 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 idealitv, 
 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 fondnesses of the heart into prac- 
 tical duty and faithful devotion. 
 
 B B
 
 ADDENDA TO IV 
 
 I could not enter, in a popular lecture, 
 upon one intricate and difficult ques- 
 tion, closely connected with the subject of 
 Pre-Raphaelitism — namely, the relation of 
 invention to observation ; and composition 
 to imitation. It is still less a question to be 
 discussed 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 com- 
 monly made to the Pre-Raphaelite work, 
 namely, that the principle of it seems adverse 
 to all exertion of imaginative power. Indeed, 
 such an objection sounds strangely on the 
 lips of a public who have been in the habit 
 of purchasing, for hundreds of pounds, small 
 squares of Dutch canvas, containing only 
 servile 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 pro- 
 claimed for high art, while the rendering of 
 the most noble expressions of human feeling
 
 188 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 in Hunt's Isabella, or of the loveliest English 
 landscape, haunted by sorrow, in Millais' 
 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 carefully selected 
 and grouped, their pictures can never have 
 the characters of the highest class of com- 
 positions. But on the other hand, the 
 shallow and conventional arrangements 
 commonly called ' compositions ' by the 
 artists of the present day, are infinitely 
 farther from great art than the most patient 
 work of the Pre-Raphaelites. That work 
 is, even in its humblest form, a secure found- 
 ation, capable of infinite superstructure — 
 a reality of true value, as far as it reaches, 
 while the common artistical effects and 
 groupings are a vain effort at superstructure 
 without foundation — utter negation and 
 fallacy from 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 all 
 the members of the school compose a thou- 
 sand times better than the men who pre- 
 tend to look down upon them, but I ques- 
 tion whether even the greatest men of old 
 times possessed more exhaustless invention 
 than either Millais or Rossetti ; and it is 
 partly the very ease with which they invent 
 which leads them to despise invention. Men
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 189 
 
 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 apt to care too little for them ; 
 and to long for the perfect truth which he 
 finds is not to be come at so easily. And 
 though I may perhaps hesitatingly admit 
 that it is possible to love this truth of reality 
 too intensely, vet 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 pro- 
 duced by the Pre-Raphaelites, has himself 
 no capacity of becoming a great painter of 
 any kind. Paul Veronese and Tintorct 
 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 Diirer ; 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 
 compositions we have enough, and more 
 than enough, and it would be well for the 
 world if it were willing to take some care of
 
 190 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 those it has. Of pure and manly truth, of 
 stern statement of the things done and seen 
 around us daily, we have hitherto had no- 
 thing. And in art, as in all 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 litera- 
 ture, which literature will 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 Be- 
 lief, within which, poetic fiction, as it is 
 charitably named, will have to take a quite 
 new figure, if allowed 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 gener- 
 ation, gradually do one of two things, either 
 retire into nurseries, and work for children, 
 minors, and semifatuous persons of both 
 sexes, or else, what were far better, sweep 
 their novel-fabric into the dust cart, and 
 betake them, with such faculty as they have, 
 to understand and record what is true, of 
 which surely there is and for ever will be a 
 whole infinitude unknown to us, of infinite 
 importance to us. Poetry will more and 
 more come to be understood as nothing but 
 higher knowledge, and the only genuine 
 Romance for grown persons, Reality.' 
 
 As I was copying this sentence, a pam- 
 phlet was put into my hand, written by a
 
 Addenda] AND PAINTING 191 
 
 clergyman, denouncing ' Woe, woe, woe ! 
 to exceedingly young men of stubborn in- 
 stincts, calling themselves Pre-Raphaelites ' 1 . 
 I thank God that the Pre-Raphaelites are 
 young, and that strength is still with them, 
 and life, with all the war of it, still in front 
 of them. Yet Everett Millais is this year of 
 the exact age at which Raphael painted the 
 Disputa, his greatest work ; Rossetti and 
 Hunt are both of them older still, — 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 bitterness 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 disobedience and insolence of 
 youth are among the darkest. But with 
 whom is the fault ? Youth never yet lost 
 its modestv where age had not lost its hon- 
 our ; nor did childhood ever refuse its rever- 
 
 1 Art, its Constitution and Capacities, etc., by the 
 Rev. Edward Young, M.A. The prhase ' exceedingly 
 young men, "f Stubborn instincts', being twice 
 quoted (carefully excluding the context) from my 
 pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism.
 
 192 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv 
 
 ence, except where age had forgotten cor- 
 rection. The cry ' Go up thou bald head ' 
 will never be heard in the land which re- 
 members the precept, ' See that ye despise 
 not one of these little 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 something more despicable 
 still, in the old age which has learned neither 
 judgment nor gentleness, which is weak 
 without charity, and cold without discretion. 
 
 THE END 
 
 TANNER 
 
 SEL W3»L> printing 
 works FROMF
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbeville, 30, 100 (and 
 n.) 
 
 Abbot, The, 135 
 
 Acropolis, 171 
 
 Addison, 133 
 
 Aeschylus, 114, 145 
 
 Agincourt, B; it lie of, 52 
 
 Alius, The giving 1 >f , 
 notL without 
 
 thought, 68 
 
 Alps, Valleys of the, 35 
 lens, 100 ; cathedral 
 29. 33. 87 ; apse of, 29 
 
 Angulico, 165 
 
 Antiquary, The, 135 
 
 Antwerp, 30, 36 
 
 Apennines, 35 
 
 Arabia, 115 
 
 Arch. Pointed, 23-6, 29 
 
 Architecture, Study of, 
 eas 
 
 Arist' 1 114 
 
 Aristotle, 145 
 
 Army and Navy Club, 
 ! of, 57 
 
 Art, < tood, has the capa- 
 city 1 1 -:, 7 ; 
 principles of, before 
 and afti c Raphael's 
 time, 152 ; difference 
 between modern and 
 old, 1 ", ; : Aim ient, was 
 religious art, 1O3 
 
 Arthur's seat, 3 
 Ash leaf, 15, 17 
 Athens, 158 ; modern, 
 
 65 
 Austria, 158 
 
 Babel, Tower of, 3T, 32 
 Babylon, no 
 Bannockburn, Battle of, 
 
 52 
 Basilica, 34 
 Bayeux, 100; cathedral 
 
 29 
 Bellini, John, 189 
 Ben Ledi, 3 
 Ben More, 3 
 Benozzo, 165 
 Bible, The, 49 
 Bird, Turner's kindness 
 
 to, 146 
 Birmingham, 78 
 l '•• mifazio, 127 
 Borough Road, London, 
 
 13 
 Bourgtheroudc, William 
 
 de, 78 
 Britain, 77 
 
 British Museum, The, 124 
 Brussels, jo, 36 
 Burgos, |6 
 Byron, Lord, 54, 135 
 
 1<J3 C C
 
 194 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Caerlaverock Castle, 135 
 Campanile, The, 34 (and 
 
 n.) 
 Canongate, 2, 4, 55 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 190 
 Castle Rock, 2 
 Cervantes, 54 
 Chantrey, 174 
 Chinese pagoda, 33 
 Christ, 118, 157, 162 
 Christianity, 160, 164 ; 
 brought love of Na- 
 ture into paganism, 
 129 
 Classical, middle, and 
 
 modern age, 154 
 Classicalism began with 
 
 pagan faith, 157 
 Claude, 128, 129, 134, 
 137, 140, 141. 142. U3 
 Col de Geant, Glacier of 
 
 the, 132 
 Colosseum, 14 
 Commodus, 52 
 Conventionalism by 
 
 cause of colour, 102-3 ; 
 by cause of inferiority, 
 105 ; by cause of 
 means, 103-4 
 Correggio, 122, 126, 166 
 Cottages, 26-7 
 Coutances in Normandy, 
 
 Cathedral of, 36 
 Cox wold, 133 
 Crichtoun and Borth- 
 wick, Massy keeps of, 
 40 
 Crystal Palace, The, 12 
 Custom has no real influ- 
 ence upon our feelings 
 of the beautiful, 18-20 
 Cuyp, 140, 142 
 
 Dante, 121, 174 
 Doric order, 45 
 Dumas, 136 
 
 Dumblane'Abbey, 23, 24 
 Diirer, Albert, 39, 189 
 
 Edinburgh, 1-5, 34, 99 ; 
 buildings, 61 
 
 Egypt, 115 
 
 Egyptian pyramid, 33 
 
 Elgin marbles, 176 
 
 England, 158 
 
 English gothic, Early, 24 
 
 Engravings and water- 
 colours, comparison 
 between production 
 
 of, 71 
 Ephesus, 158 
 Etty, 175 
 Ezzelin, 155 
 
 Fielding, Copley, 137 
 Fielding, Henry, 133 
 Firth of Forth, 1, 2 
 Flaxman, 175 
 Florence, 108 ; Ponte 
 
 della Trinita at, 87 
 France, 38, 77, 78, 158 ; 
 
 South, 35 
 Fribourg, 36 
 French Revolution, 130 
 
 Gable, 29 
 
 Geneva, 133 
 
 Genoa, 79 
 
 George Street, Edin- 
 burgh, 2, 1 
 
 Germany, 38, 39, 77 
 
 Ghent, 30 
 
 Ghiberti, Lorenzo,"i2i 
 
 Ghirlandajo, 165 .• 
 
 Giotto, 90, i2i, 122, 
 123 (and n.), 125, 126, 
 127, 153, 165, 179, 191 
 
 Glasgow, 34 (and n.) 
 
 Gothic, 16-7]; vaulting 
 of ash leaf, 17 ; forms
 
 IXDEX 
 
 195 
 
 of pointed arch and 
 gable roof, 45-8 ; 
 architecture, 31, 4.:, 
 93 ; can do anything, 
 82 ; porch, 40 ; of 
 Florence, 79 ; orna- 
 mentation, 62, 64 ; is 
 nobler than Greek or- 
 namentation, 106-7; or 
 Romanesque construc- 
 tion is U'>bler than 
 Greek construction, 
 86-8 
 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 126 
 Greek buildings, 58 ; 
 architecture, 9, 10, 11, 
 61, 93 
 Guy Manner ing, 135 
 
 Hamilton, Dr. James, 116 
 Haydon, Benjamin, 145, 
 
 146 
 
 irth, 176 
 Holyrood Chapel, 40, 99 
 Homer, 114; sang of 
 
 what he saw, i;i, 
 Honour to be sought 
 
 from descendants 
 
 rather than ancestors, 
 
 75 
 Horace, 114 
 
 ins, Mr., 104, 105 
 Hunt, Holm. ui. i<,i ; his 
 
 ' Claudioand Isabella,' 
 
 184, 
 
 Indian pagoda, 33 
 
 Iron and g l ass unlikely 
 t" become important 
 elements in architec- 
 tural effort, 48 
 
 Italy, Han,- of, 35, 77, 
 I5« 
 
 Jeremiah, 49, 83 
 
 Jerusalem, 83, 118 ; 
 
 tower of, 33 
 Job, 116 
 Johnson, Dr., 133 
 
 Keats, John, 135 
 
 Lady of the Lake, The,i$5 
 
 Lay of the La^t Minstrel, 
 The, 135 
 
 Landscape, small influ- 
 ence of, on pagan 
 nations or artists, 113; 
 background starts 
 towards end of thir- 
 teenth century, 122 ; 
 the three divisions of, 
 Giottesque, Leonard- 
 esque, Titianesque, 
 128, 137 ; painting, 
 five periods of, 143-4 
 
 Landseer, Edwin, 153, 
 176 
 
 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 
 Turner's kindness to, 
 147 
 
 Leaves, 22-6 
 
 Lebanon, 115, 116 ; 
 t<>wer of, 32 
 
 Leo X. Pope, 174 
 
 Leonardo, 12 r, 125, 143 
 
 I. 'iiidas, 52, 156 
 
 Leslie, Mr., 140 
 
 / iber Studiontin. 142 
 
 Lichfield Cathedral, 36 
 
 Linlithgow Palace, 44 
 
 Lisieux, 30 
 
 Liverpool, 78 
 
 Lochleven Castle, 44, 135 
 
 London, 108 
 
 LoutherliMiuv;. 1 \< > 
 
 1. >ns, 62, 100 ; cathe- 
 dral of, 59 
 
 Manchester, 78 
 
 d n
 
 196 
 
 IXDEX 
 
 Marathon, 174 
 Marmion, 135 
 Marochetti, 178 (n.) 
 Masaccio, 126 
 Maxwell, Sir John, of 
 
 Pollock, 78 (n.) 
 Mediaevalism confesses 
 
 Christ, 157 
 Melrose, 135 ; abbey, 44 
 Michael Angelo, 90, 121, 
 
 168 
 Middle ages, 162 ; carved 
 
 work of the, 109 
 Milan, 127 ; cathedral, 
 
 101 
 Millais, J. E., 65, 66, 
 
 184, 188; his 'Ophe- 
 lia,' 188 
 Miltiades, 174 
 Modernism, 162, 173. 
 
 177 ; denies Christ, 
 
 157 
 Moliere, 133 
 Monastery, The, 135 
 Monte Viso, 158 
 
 Nash, Mr., 129 
 Nelson, 156 
 Netherlands, 30 
 Norman architecture, 10 
 Normandy, 30 
 Northern France, 30 
 Notre-Dame of Paris, 
 100 
 
 Oakham Castle, 8 (n.) 
 Orcagna, 122, 123, 125, 
 167 (n.), 168 ; his fresco 
 ' The Triumph of 
 Death,' 167 
 Ornamentation, modern 
 pseudo-Greek, 64 ; is 
 the principal part of 
 architecture, 88-98 ; 
 should be visible, 98- 
 
 101 ; should be natural, 
 101-5 ; should be 
 thoughtful, 105-6 
 
 Ostade, 187 
 
 Oxford Almanack, The, 
 138 
 
 Painters, Bad, retard 
 
 taste, 72 
 Papworth, Mr., 34 (n.) 
 Paris, 108 
 Parnassus, 171 
 Pastoral poetry, essence 
 
 of, 131 
 Pentland Hills, 3 
 Penuel, Tower of, 32 
 Pericles, 174 
 Perugino, 125 
 Peterborough Cathedral, 
 
 29 
 Petrarch, 171 
 Phidias, 90 ; carved 
 
 what he saw, 176 
 Picardy, 30 
 
 Picardy Place, Edin- 
 burgh, 5 (n.) 
 Pindar, 171 
 Plato, 114 
 Pleasures and virtues 
 
 enhanced by mutual 
 
 aid, 74 
 Portraiture, Modern, the 
 
 beginning and end of 
 
 is adulation, 177 
 Potter, Paul, 187 
 Poussin, Caspar, 134,140 
 Powers of association 
 
 and beauty entirely 
 
 distinct, 19-22 
 Pre-Raphaelites,i5i, 155. 
 
 169, 180, 181, 184, 
 
 187, 188, 189 ; their 
 
 landscape, 182 
 Princes St., Edinburgh, 4 
 Prout, Samuel, 29, 30 
 
 (n.), 137 
 Pugin, 95 (n.)
 
 INDEX 
 
 197 
 
 Queen Street, Edin- 
 burgh, 5 
 
 Radcliffe, Mrs., 134 
 
 Raphael, 121, 125, 158, 
 169, 174, 175 ; de- 
 corates the Vatican 
 for Pope Julius II, 
 170 ; painted the men 
 of his own time, 176 ; 
 his ' Disputa,' 191 
 
 Reformation, The, 158 
 
 Rembrandt, 140 
 
 Renaissance architec- 
 ture, character of, 11 1 
 (n.) 
 
 Retreat of the ten thou- 
 sand, 52 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 
 124 
 
 Rheims, 100 ; cathedral 
 of. 29 
 
 Rhone, 158 
 
 Richmond Bridge, 132 
 
 Robespierre, 155 
 
 Robson, 137 
 
 Roman architecture, 14 
 
 Romanesque architec- 
 ture, 10 
 
 Romance and Utopian- 
 ism, meaning of, 51-5 
 
 Roslin Chapel, 44 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 188, 191 
 
 Rouen, 78, 100 ; cathe- 
 dral, 38 
 
 Rousseau, 134 
 
 Rutland Street, Edin- 
 burgh, 57 
 
 St. Gothard Alps, 3 
 
 St. Louis, no, 156 
 
 St. Mark's at Venice, 35 
 
 (n.l, 39 in.). 97 
 Sali >buj j < athedral, 36 
 Salvator Rosa, 12H, 129, 
 
 134, 137, 142. 166 
 Sand, George, 136 
 
 Saxon architecture, 10 
 San Michele of Lucca, 97 
 San Zeno, 99 
 Scotland, 78, 79, 158 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 134, 
 
 135 
 
 Sculpture an art of accu- 
 mulation, 73 ; six 
 main propositions of, 
 86 
 
 Seine, no 
 
 Sentimental Journey, The, 
 
 133 
 Shakespeare, comparison 
 
 of with Turner, 144 
 Shechem, Tower of, 32 
 Shelley, P. B., 135, 136 
 Smollett, Tobias, 133 
 Solomon, 118 
 Stanfield, 137 
 Sterne, Laurence, 133 
 Stonehenge, 14, 87 
 Stones of Venice, The, 86 
 
 (n.), 101 
 Strasbourg Cathedral, 29 
 Sue, Eugene, 136 
 Switzerland, South, 36 ; 
 
 valleys of, 117 
 
 Teniers, 187 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 135 
 
 Tiber, no 
 
 Tiberius, 52, 155 
 
 Tintoret, 122, 127, 129, 
 184, 189 
 
 Titian, 122, 126, 127, 
 129, 143, 166 ; his 
 ' St. Jerome,' 127 
 
 Tower-building, 31, sqq. 
 
 Turkish minaret, 33 
 
 Turner, J. M. W., 137- 
 50 ; first man to pre- 
 sent type of p<rfect 
 landscape art, 143 ; 
 obligation of modern 
 landscape artists to, 
 143 ; comparison of,
 
 198 
 
 INDEX 
 
 with Shakespeare and 
 Verulam, 144-5 : nrs t 
 and greatest of the 
 pre-Raphaelites, 183 
 
 Vandevelde, 140, 142 
 Voltaire, 54 
 Verona, 3, 99 
 Veronese, Paul, 122, 189 
 Versailles, Palace of, in 
 
 (n.) 
 Verulam, comparison of, 
 
 with Turner, 144-5 
 Vicar of Wakefield, The, 
 
 132 
 Virgil, 144 
 
 Walton's Angler, 132 
 
 Wellington, Duke of 
 177. 178 (and n.) 
 
 Wells, Turner's kind- 
 ness to the widow of, 
 148-9 
 
 Wells Cathedral, 101 
 
 Whalley Abbey, 139 
 
 Wilkie, 153, 174 
 
 Wilson, 140 
 
 Windows, English, n 
 
 Wordsworth, 135, 136 
 
 York Place, Edinburgh, 
 
 5 (n.) 
 \ oung, Edward, 53 
 Young, Rev. Edward, 
 
 191 (n.)
 

 
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