Part 20 (1/2)

And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had tiht, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by any vice, or weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either in bad art, or by want of art; and that there is no national virtue, sreat, which is not manifestly expressed in all the art which circu that virtue to produce Take, for instance, your great English virtue of enduring and patient courage You have at present in England only one art of any consequence--that is, iron-working You know thoroughly well how to cast and hammer iron Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which you build volcanic cones to e at the mouths of the Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates, your courage and endurance are not written for ever,--not merely with an iron pen, but on iron parchlish vice--European vice--vice of all the world--vice of all other worlds that roll or shi+ne in heaven, bearing with them yet the ats competition into your commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into your wars--that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next neighbouring nation, the daily occupations of existence no longer possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in its sheath; so that at last, you have realized for all the reat peoples who lead the so-called civilization of the earth,--you have realized for them all, I say, in person and in policy, as once true only of the rough Border riders of your Cheviot hills--

They carved at the loves of steel,

And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;[204] do you think that this national shaibly on every rivet of your iron ared it?

Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or the more melancholy It is quite unspeakably both Suppose, instead of being now sent for by you, I had been sent for by soarden separated only by a fruit wall frohbour's; and he had called -roo about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and such a paper ht be desirable--perhaps a little fresco here and there on the ceiling--a damask curtain or so at the s ”Ah,”

says my employer, ”damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!” ”Yet the world credits you with a splendid income!” ”Ah, yes,” says ed to spend it nearly all in steel-traps?” ”Steel-traps! for whom?” ”Why, for that fellow on the other side the wall, you knoe're very good friends, capital friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly teruns The worst of it is, we are both clever fellows enough; and there's never a day passes that we don't find out a new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or so; we spend about fifteen ether; and I don't see hoe're to do with less” A highly coentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly comic Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's blood instead of ver else than coreat deal of this is play, and willingly allow for that You don't knohat to do with yourselves for a sensation: fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you through the whole of this unendurably long uns when you were schoolboys, and rifles and Ars better made: but then the worst of it is, that as play to you when boys, was not play to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, is not play to the sles, you are so shots at theet back to the matter in hand, however Believe me, without further instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's vice, or virtue, ritten in its art: the soldiershi+p of early Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of Tuscany; the splendid huy and beauty of Venice I have no tiht (I have done it elsewhere before now);[206]

but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in aall the new buildings that cover your once wild hills, churches and schools are e proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that the churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are never Gothic Will you allowof this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon When Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well as houses If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian St Paul's[207] But now you live under one school of architecture, and worshi+p under another What do youof changing your architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churches experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a church? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-e, which you think, like the fine frankincense, should be ious services? For if this be the feeling, though it raceful and reverent, you will find that, at the root of the nifies neither ion fronificance this fact has: and reland, who are behaving thus, just now

You have all got into the habit of calling the church ”the house of God” I have seen, over the doors of end actually carved, ”_This_ is the house of God and this is the gate of heaven”[208] Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what place it was first spoken A boy leaves his father's house to go on a long journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he has to cross a wild hill-desert; just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds to visit an uncle at Carlisle The second or third day your boy finds hih, in the y; he cannot go one foot further that night Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best he ether to put under his head;--so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones And there, lying under the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and the angels of God are ascending and descending upon it And when he wakes out of his sleep, he says, ”How dreadful is this place; surely this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” This PLACE, observe; not this church; not this city; not this stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial--the piece of flint on which his head has lain But this _place_; this windy slope of Wharnside; this hted! this _any_ place where God lets down the ladder And how are you to knohere that will be? or how are you to deter ready for it always? Do you knohere the lightning is to fall next? You _do_ know that, partly; you can guide the lightning; but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is that lightning when it shi+nes from the east to the west[209]

But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a merely ecclesiastical purpose is only one of the thousand instances in which we sink back into gross Judaism We call our churches ”temples”

Now, you know perfectly well they are _not_ te whatever to do with teather yourselves together as an asseain hty text--”Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches” [we should translate it], ”that they may be seen of men But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father”--which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but ”in secret”[210]

Now, you feel, as I say this to you--I know you feel--as if I were trying to take away the honour of your churches Not so; I a to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the Church is not sacred--but that the whole Earth is I would have you feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is in allyour churches only ”holy,”

you call your hearths and homes ”profane”; and have separated yourselves froround, instead of recognizing, in the place of their hty Lord and Lar

”But what has all this to do with our Exchange?” you askto do with it; on these inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones; and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had before been interested in anything I have written, you must know that all I have yet said about architecture was to show this The book I called _The Seven Laht states of teood architecture, without exception, had been produced _The Stones of Venice_ had, fro to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic corruption And now, you ask me what style is best to build in, and how can I answer, knowing theof the two styles, but by another question--do you mean to build as Christians or as Infidels? And still more--do you mean to build as honest Christians or as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and confessedly either one or the other? You don't like to be asked such rude questions I cannot help it; they are of e business; and if they can be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itself in a moment But before I press them farther, I must ask leave to explain one point clearly

In all ood architecture is essentially religious--the production of a faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people But in the course of doing this, I have had also to show that good architecture is not _ecclesiastical_ People are so apt to look upon religion as the business of the clergy, not their own, that the ion,” they think it must also have depended on the priesthood; and I have had to take what place was to be occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often with seeood and believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, ”Good architecture y, not of the laity” No--a thousand tiood architecture[211] has always been the work of the colorious cathedrals--the pride of Europe--did their builders not form Gothic architecture?” No; they corrupted Gothic architecture

Gothic was forher's street It was for citizens and warrior kings By the monk it was used as an instrument for the aid of his superstition; when that superstition became a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreaed and perished in the crusade,--through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your ist of what I want to say to-night;--when I repeat, that every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of a great national religion You can't have bits of it here, bits there--you must have it everywhere or nowhere It is not the monopoly of a clerical co of an initiated priesthood; it is the e of a people inspired by resolute and co resolute and coible laws of an undoubted God

Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of European architecture I say, European, because Asiatic and African architectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, that there is no question of the, I will siypt, and Syria, and India, is just good or great for the sas on our side of the Bosphorus We Europeans, then, have had three great religions: the Greek, which was the worshi+p of the God of Wisdom and Power; the Mediaeval, which was the worshi+p of the God of Judgment and Consolation; the Renaissance, which was the worshi+p of the God of Pride and Beauty: these three we have had--they are past,--and now, at last, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, about which I want to ask you But I must explain these three old ones first

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshi+pped the God of Wisdoion,--to the Jews a stu-block,--was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_[212]

The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which we keep the remnant in our words ”_Di_-urnal” and ”_Di_-vine”--the God of _Day_, Jupiter the revealer Athena is his daughter, but especially daughter of the Intellect, springing armed froation beginning to penetrate the depth ofcouched under the Athenaic syis, the es, in which she often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shi+eld, are both representativemen to stone, as it were), of the oute which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown e spring terror, dissension, danger, and disdain; but froth and peace, in sign of which she is croith the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear[213]

This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habit of life, and every forht, serene, resistless wisdohtly and strongly;[214] not with any ardent affection or ultiy of will, as knowing that for failure there was no consolation, and for sin there was no reht, clearly defined, and self-contained

Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was essentially the religion of Coreat doctrine is the remission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certain phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness thelorified, as if, theThe practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual conteinary states of purification froled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every one of our fancies, and be strong or ith us, as we are strong or weak ourselves It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base people build it--of all, the noblest, when built by the noble

And now note that both these religions--Greek and Mediaeval--perished by falsehood in their own ion of Wisdom perished in a false philosophy--”Oppositions of science, falsely so called” The Mediaeval religion of Consolation perished in false co of absolution that ended the Mediaeval faith; and I can tell youof absolution which, to the end of tiives her re_ theets her re for_ thelish have beautiful little quiet ways of buying absolution, whether in low Church or high, far [215]

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which all Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death First, _bals uillotines in every square And all these three worshi+ps issue in vast te Your Greek worshi+pped Wisdoin's temple The Mediaeval worshi+pped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also--but to our Lady of Salvation Then the Revivalist worshi+pped beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles and the Vatican Now, lastly, will you tell me what _orshi+p, and what _we_ build?

You knoe are speaking always of the real, active, continual, national worshi+p; that by which men act, while they live; not that which they talk of, when they die Noe have, indeed, a noion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of tiion, to which we devote nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of our tiion: but we are all unanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will adenerally described as the ”Goddess of Getting-on,” or ”Britannia of the Market” The Athenians had an ”Athena Agoraia,” or Athena of the Market; but she was a subordinate type of their Goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the principal type of ours And all your great architectural works are, of course, built to her It is long since you built a great cathedral; and how you would laugh ata cathedral on the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis!

But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innuhty and costly than cathedral spires!

your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!--all these are built to your great Goddess of ”Getting-on”; and she has for as you worshi+p her; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to _her_; you know far better than I