Part 15 (1/2)

Nay, but the reader interrupts n beautifully, I would not have hientlelass there, and I will have it blown and cut for hin and my finish too”

All ideas of this kind are founded upon two hts can be, or ought to be, executed by another radation, when it is governed by intellect

On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should be carried out by the labour of others; in this sense I have already defined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of manhood by the hands of childhood But on a sn which cannot be hts can never be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit of touch of thedirections, is often all the difference between a great and a coinal and second-hand execution, I shall endeavour to show elsewhere; it is not so much to our purpose here as tooverned by intellect; for it is no less fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, than to value it for its own sake We are always in these days endeavouring to separate the tant one , and we call one a gentleht often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentleentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers, and ht can be ht that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with iood handicraftsmen in some kind, and the dishonour of h there should still be a trenchant distinction of race between nobles and co the latter, be a trenchant distinction of e men, or between men of liberal and illiberal professions All professions should be liberal, and there should be less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of achievement And yet more, in each several profession, no master should be too proud to do its hardest work The painter should grind his own colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in his mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must naturally and justly obtain

I should be led far fro subject Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the terhtly understood, one of the most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble but an _essential_ one It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect And this is easily demonstrable For since the architect, ill suppose capable of doing all in perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either lish fashi+on, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to degrade it; or else he must take his workether with their strength, which will involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as the intellect of the age can make it

But the principle may be stated more broadly still I have confined the illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true of architecture only Hitherto I have used the words irossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the labourer's ood hatever can be perfect, and _the de of the ends of art_

This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws The first, that no greattill he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he beco of dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in er with hih the beholder be dissatisfied also I believe there has only been one e this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished And therefore, if we are to have greattheir best, the ill be imperfect, however beautiful Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way[161]

The second reason is, that imperfection is in son of life in a e Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent The foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloos that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its sye; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of hument, Mercy

Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of ood unless it be ie fact, which we shall discern clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless require silenced by veneration for greatness, or softened into forgiveness of sieness, which is the first mental element of Gothic architecture It is an element in many other healthy architectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothic cannot exist without it

The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or Variety

I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the inferior work the architecture by rendering it more Christian We have now to consider what ree obtain for the performance of this duty, na

Wherever the work must of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of his execution can only be reached by exercising hi else to do The degree in which the work whether the several parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greek work, all the capitals are alike, and all the radation is coh the ures is always the saradation is less total; if, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design and execution, the workether set free

How ains froland, where one of the strongest instincts in nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire that our house s should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us to yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a for, and forbid variation from it I would not impeach love of order: it is one of the lish mind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters; and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality Only do not let us suppose that love of order is love of art It is true that order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art, just as time is a necessity of ht enjoy, than love of punctuality with the appreciation of an opera Experience, I fear, teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldom characteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess, the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistent between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us fro and enjoying the noblest gifts of Invention We already do so, in every other branch of art except architecture, and we only do _not_ so there because we have been taught that it would be wrong Our architects gravely inform us that, as there are four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture; we, in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe them They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic We, considering that there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think that this also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition

Understanding, therefore, that one for a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we allow the architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper form, in such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care that the legal for done, we rest in forced confidence that we are well housed

But our higher instincts are not deceived We take no pleasure in the building provided for us, rese that which we take in a new book or a new picture We may be proud of its size, complacent in its correctness, and happy in its convenience We may take the same pleasure in its symmetry and workmanshi+p as in a well-ordered room, or a skilful piece of manufacture And this we suppose to be all the pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us The idea of reading a building as ould read Milton or Dante, and getting the saht out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our ood reason;--There is indeed rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the architecture, and a thousand ti else than rhythm The verses were neither made to order, nor to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of pleasure in the effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perception of a truth just as sireat art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does _not_ say the saain; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists in its saying new and different things; that to repeat itself is no enius in print; and that we ood taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining

Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden fro Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which either rules or iven Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and froiven models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of the two procedures, rather less rational (because s from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than to copy heads and hands from titian, and call ourselves painters

Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as s as in books; that there is no h there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size

And this we confess in deeds, though not in words All the pleasure which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, sculpture, minor objects of virtu, or mediaeval architecture, which we enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in hting to escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shall hereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape, which is characteristic of the age It would be well, if, in all other matters, ere as ready to put up e dislike, for the sake of compliance with established law, as we are in architecture

How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see e come to describe the Renaissance schools; here we have only to note, as the second most essential eleh that laherever it found it in existence; it not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; and invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that they were new, but that they were _capable of perpetual novelty_ The pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is always the sarouped shaft was not le one, but it ad, and in the proportions resultant fro The introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the treates in the interlacement of the tracery bars the Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic schools exhibited that love in culy; and their influence, wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic types being always first shown by greater irregularity, and richer variation in the for before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other recognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic mind

We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed In order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the different ways in which change andtheir use, like darkness and light, and the one incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being ht appears most brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed

I believe that the true relations ofthem in music We may therein notice first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which there is not in rapid or frequent variation This is true throughout all nature The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and especially the sublied fall and rise of an engine beam So also there is subliain, ree, beco or intolerable, and the ed to break it in one or tays: either while the air or passage is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and hares, an entirely new passage is introduced, which is th of the previous monotony Nature, of course, uses both these kinds of variation perpetually The sea-waves, reseeneral mass, but none like its brother in minor divisions and curves, are a reat plain, broken by an eent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of the second

Farther: in order to the enjoyree of patience is required from the hearer or observer In the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for entertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details In the second case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony for soe This is true even of the shortest e in which the element of monotony is employed In cases of more majestic monotony, the patience required is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain,--a price paid for the future pleasure

Again: the talent of the coes: heand taste by his use of rees; that is to say, by his _various_ eement or invention that his intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it

Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to be delightful, for then change itself becoht in extrerees of it This is the diseased love of change of which we have above spoken