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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3), by
+John Ruskin
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3)
+
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 27, 2009  [eBook #30754]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STONES OF VENICE, VOLUME I (OF
+3)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Marius Masi, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 30754-h.htm or 30754-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30754/30754-h/30754-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30754/30754-h.zip)
+
+
+      Volumes II and III are available in the Project Gutenberg
+      Library:
+      Volume II--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30755
+      Volume III--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30756
+
+      Volume III contains the index for all three volumes. The
+      index in the html version of Volume III has links to the
+      the other two volumes.
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are
+      listed at the end of the text.
+
+      A number following a letter, such as d3, was printed as a
+      subscript in the original.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Complete Works of John Ruskin
+
+Volume VII
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+[Illustration: VENICE.
+               FROM A PAINTING BY
+               J. M. W. TURNER.]
+
+
+Library Edition
+
+The Complete Works of John Ruskin
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+VOLUMES I-II
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+National Library Association
+New York             Chicago
+
+
+
+
+THE
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+THE FOUNDATIONS
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In the course of arranging the following essay, I put many things aside
+in my thoughts to be said in the Preface, things which I shall now put
+aside altogether, and pass by; for when a book has been advertised a
+year and a half, it seems best to present it with as little preface as
+possible.
+
+Thus much, however, it is necessary for the reader to know, that, when I
+planned the work, I had materials by me, collected at different times of
+sojourn in Venice during the last seventeen years, which it seemed to me
+might be arranged with little difficulty, and which I believe to be of
+value as illustrating the history of Southern Gothic. Requiring,
+however, some clearer assurance respecting certain points of chronology,
+I went to Venice finally in the autumn of 1849, not doubting but that
+the dates of the principal edifices of the ancient city were either
+ascertained, or ascertainable without extraordinary research. To my
+consternation, I found that the Venetian antiquaries were not agreed
+within a century as to the date of the building of the façades of the
+Ducal Palace, and that nothing was known of any other civil edifice of
+the early city, except that at some time or other it had been fitted up
+for somebody's reception, and been thereupon fresh painted. Every date
+in question was determinable only by internal evidence, and it became
+necessary for me to examine not only every one of the older palaces,
+stone by stone, but every fragment throughout the city which afforded
+any clue to the formation of its styles. This I did as well as I could,
+and I believe there will be found, in the following pages, the only
+existing account of the details of early Venetian architecture on which
+dependence can be placed, as far as it goes. I do not care to point out
+the deficiencies of other works on this subject; the reader will find,
+if he examines them, either that the buildings to which I shall
+specially direct his attention have been hitherto undescribed, or else
+that there are great discrepancies between previous descriptions and
+mine: for which discrepancies I may be permitted to give this single and
+sufficient reason, that my account of every building is based on
+personal examination and measurement of it, and that my taking the pains
+so to examine what I had to describe, was a subject of grave surprise to
+my Italian friends. The work of the Marchese Selvatico is, however, to
+be distinguished with respect; it is clear in arrangement, and full of
+useful, though vague, information; and I have found cause to adopt, in
+great measure, its views of the chronological succession of the edifices
+of Venice. I shall have cause hereafter to quarrel with it on other
+grounds, but not without expression of gratitude for the assistance it
+has given me. Fontana's "Fabbriche di Venezia" is also historically
+valuable, but does not attempt to give architectural detail. Cicognara,
+as is now generally known, is so inaccurate as hardly to deserve
+mention.
+
+Indeed, it is not easy to be accurate in an account of anything, however
+simple. Zoologists often disagree in their descriptions of the curve of
+a shell, or the plumage of a bird, though they may lay their specimen on
+the table, and examine it at their leisure; how much greater becomes the
+likelihood of error in the description of things which must be in many
+parts observed from a distance, or under unfavorable circumstances of
+light and shade; and of which many of the distinctive features have been
+worn away by time. I believe few people have any idea of the cost of
+truth in these things; of the expenditure of time necessary to make sure
+of the simplest facts, and of the strange way in which separate
+observations will sometimes falsify each other, incapable of
+reconcilement, owing to some imperceptible inadvertency. I am ashamed of
+the number of times in which I have had to say, in the following pages,
+"I am not sure," and I claim for them no authority, as if they were
+thoroughly sifted from error, even in what they more confidently state.
+Only, as far as my time, and strength, and mind served me, I have
+endeavored down to the smallest matters, to ascertain and speak the
+truth.
+
+Nor was the subject without many and most discouraging difficulties,
+peculiar to itself. As far as my inquiries have extended, there is not a
+building in Venice, raised prior to the sixteenth century, which has not
+sustained essential change in one or more of its most important
+features. By far the greater number present examples of three or four
+different styles, it may be successive, it may be accidentally
+associated; and, in many instances, the restorations or additions have
+gradually replaced the entire structure of the ancient fabric, of which
+nothing but the name remains, together with a kind of identity,
+exhibited in the anomalous association of the modernized portions: the
+Will of the old building asserted through them all, stubbornly, though
+vainly, expressive; superseded by codicils, and falsified by
+misinterpretation; yet animating what would otherwise be a mere group of
+fantastic masque, as embarrassing to the antiquary, as to the
+mineralogist, the epigene crystal, formed by materials of one substance
+modelled on the perished crystals of another. The church of St. Mark's
+itself, harmonious as its structure may at first sight appear, is an
+epitome of the changes of Venetian architecture from the tenth to the
+nineteenth century. Its crypt, and the line of low arches which support
+the screen, are apparently the earliest portions; the lower stories of
+the main fabric are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with later
+Gothic interpolations; the pinnacles are of the earliest fully developed
+Venetian Gothic (fourteenth century); but one of them, that on the
+projection at the eastern extremity of the Piazzetta de Leoni, is of far
+finer, and probably earlier workmanship than all the rest. The southern
+range of pinnacles is again inferior to the northern and western, and
+visibly of later date. Then the screen, which most writers have
+described as part of the original fabric, bears its date inscribed on
+its architrave, 1394, and with it are associated a multitude of small
+screens, balustrades, decorations of the interior building, and probably
+the rose window of the south transept. Then come the interpolated
+traceries of the front and sides; then the crocketings of the upper
+arches, extravagances of the incipient Renaissance: and, finally, the
+figures which carry the waterspouts on the north side--utterly barbarous
+seventeenth or eighteenth century work--connect the whole with the
+plastered restorations of the year 1844 and 1845. Most of the palaces in
+Venice have sustained interpolations hardly less numerous; and those of
+the Ducal Palace are so intricate, that a year's labor would probably be
+insufficient altogether to disentangle and define them. I therefore gave
+up all thoughts of obtaining a perfectly clear chronological view of the
+early architecture; but the dates necessary to the main purposes of the
+book the reader will find well established; and of the evidence brought
+forward for those of less importance, he is himself to judge. Doubtful
+estimates are never made grounds of argument; and the accuracy of the
+account of the buildings themselves, for which alone I pledge myself,
+is of course entirely independent of them.
+
+In like manner, as the statements briefly made in the chapters on
+construction involve questions so difficult and so general, that I
+cannot hope that every expression referring to them will be found free
+from error: and as the conclusions to which I have endeavored to lead
+the reader are thrown into a form the validity of which depends on that
+of each successive step, it might be argued, if fallacy or weakness
+could be detected in one of them, that all the subsequent reasonings
+were valueless. The reader may be assured, however, that it is not so;
+the method of proof used in the following essay being only one out of
+many which were in my choice, adopted because it seemed to me the
+shortest and simplest, not as being the strongest. In many cases, the
+conclusions are those which men of quick feeling would arrive at
+instinctively; and I then sought to discover the reasons of what so
+strongly recommended itself as truth. Though these reasons could every
+one of them, from the beginning to the end of the book, be proved
+insufficient, the truth of its conclusions would remain the same. I
+should only regret that I had dishonored them by an ill-grounded
+defence; and endeavor to repair my error by a better one.
+
+I have not, however, written carelessly; nor should I in any wise have
+expressed doubt of the security of the following argument, but that it
+is physically impossible for me, being engaged quite as much with
+mountains, and clouds, and trees, and criticism of painting, as with
+architecture, to verify, as I should desire, the expression of every
+sentence bearing upon empirical and technical matters. Life is not long
+enough; nor does a day pass by without causing me to feel more bitterly
+the impossibility of carrying out to the extent which I should desire,
+the separate studies which general criticism continually forces me to
+undertake. I can only assure the reader, that he will find the certainty
+of every statement I permit myself to make, increase with its
+importance; and that, for the security of the final conclusions of the
+following essay, as well as for the resolute veracity of its account of
+whatever facts have come under my own immediate cognizance, I will
+pledge myself to the uttermost.
+
+It was necessary, to the accomplishment of the purpose of the work (of
+which account is given in the First Chapter), that I should establish
+some canons of judgment, which the general reader should thoroughly
+understand, and, if it pleased him, accept, before we took cognizance,
+together, of any architecture whatsoever. It has taken me more time and
+trouble to do this than I expected; but, if I have succeeded, the thing
+done will be of use for many other purposes than that to which it is now
+put. The establishment of these canons, which I have called "the
+Foundations," and some account of the connection of Venetian
+architecture with that of the rest of Europe, have filled the present
+volume. The second will, I hope, contain all I have to say about Venice
+itself.
+
+It was of course inexpedient to reduce drawings of crowded details to
+the size of an octavo volume,--I do not say impossible, but inexpedient;
+requiring infinite pains on the part of the engraver, with no result
+except farther pains to the beholder. And as, on the other hand, folio
+books are not easy reading, I determined to separate the text and the
+unreducible plates. I have given, with the principal text, all the
+illustrations absolutely necessary to the understanding of it, and, in
+the detached work, such additional text as has special reference to the
+larger illustrations.
+
+A considerable number of these larger plates were at first intended to
+be executed in tinted lithography; but, finding the result
+unsatisfactory, I have determined to prepare the principal subjects for
+mezzotinting,--a change of method requiring two new drawings to be made
+of every subject; one a carefully penned outline for the etcher, and
+then a finished drawing upon the etching. This work does not proceed
+fast, while I am also occupied with the completion of the text; but the
+numbers of it will appear as fast as I can prepare them.
+
+For the illustrations of the body of the work itself, I have used any
+kind of engraving which seemed suited to the subjects--line and
+mezzotint, on steel, with mixed lithographs and woodcuts, at
+considerable loss of uniformity in the appearance of the volume, but, I
+hope, with advantage, in rendering the character of the architecture it
+describes. And both in the plates and the text I have aimed chiefly at
+clear intelligibility; that any one, however little versed in the
+subject, might be able to take up the book, and understand what it meant
+forthwith. I have utterly failed of my purpose, if I have not made all
+the essential parts of the essay intelligible to the least learned, and
+easy to the most desultory readers, who are likely to take interest in
+the matter at all. There are few passages which even require so much as
+an acquaintance with the elements of Euclid, and these may be missed,
+without harm to the sense of the rest, by every reader to whom they may
+appear mysterious; and the architectural terms necessarily employed
+(which are very few) are explained as they occur, or in a note; so that,
+though I may often be found trite or tedious, I trust that I shall not
+be obscure. I am especially anxious to rid this essay of ambiguity,
+because I want to gain the ear of all kinds of persons. Every man has,
+at some time of his life, personal interest in architecture. He has
+influence on the design of some public building; or he has to buy, or
+build, or alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge
+of other arts be general or not; men may live without buying pictures or
+statues: but, in architecture, all must in some way commit themselves;
+they _must_ do mischief, and waste their money, if they do not know how
+to turn it to account. Churches, and shops, and warehouses, and
+cottages, and small row, and place, and terrace houses, must be built,
+and lived in, however joyless or inconvenient. And it is assuredly
+intended that all of us should have knowledge, and act upon our
+knowledge, in matters with which we are daily concerned, and not to be
+left to the caprice of architects or mercy of contractors. There is not,
+indeed, anything in the following essay bearing on the special forms and
+needs of modern buildings; but the principles it inculcates are
+universal; and they are illustrated from the remains of a city which
+should surely be interesting to the men of London, as affording the
+richest existing examples of architecture raised by a mercantile
+community, for civil uses, and domestic magnificence.
+
+  DENMARK HILL, _February_, 1851.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                    PAGE
+  Preface,                                           iii
+
+                          CHAPTER I.
+  The Quarry,                                          1
+
+                         CHAPTER II.
+  The Virtues of Architecture,                        36
+
+                         CHAPTER III.
+  The Six Divisions of Architecture,                  47
+
+                          CHAPTER IV.
+  The Wall Base,                                      52
+
+                          CHAPTER V.
+  The Wall Veil,                                      58
+
+                         CHAPTER VI.
+  The Wall Cornice,                                   63
+
+                         CHAPTER VII.
+  The Pier Base,                                      71
+
+                         CHAPTER VIII.
+  The Shaft,                                          84
+
+                          CHAPTER IX.
+  The Capital,                                       105
+
+                          CHAPTER X.
+  The Arch Line,                                     122
+
+                          CHAPTER XI.
+  The Arch Masonry,                                  132
+
+                         CHAPTER XII.
+  The Arch Load,                                     144
+
+                         CHAPTER XIII.
+  The Roof,                                          148
+
+                          CHAPTER XIV.
+  The Roof Cornice,                                  155
+
+                          CHAPTER XV.
+  The Buttress,                                      166
+
+                          CHAPTER XVI.
+  Form of Aperture,                                  174
+
+                         CHAPTER XVII.
+  Filling of Aperture,                               183
+
+                         CHAPTER XVIII.
+  Protection of Aperture,                            195
+
+                          CHAPTER XIX.
+  Superimposition,                                   200
+
+                          CHAPTER XX.
+  The Material of Ornament,                          211
+
+                          CHAPTER XXI.
+  Treatment of Ornament,                             236
+
+                         CHAPTER XXII.
+  The Angle,                                         259
+
+                         CHAPTER XXIII.
+  The Edge and Fillet,                               267
+
+                         CHAPTER XXIV.
+  The Roll and Recess,                               276
+
+                          CHAPTER XXV.
+  The Base,                                          281
+
+                         CHAPTER XXVI.
+  The Wall Veil and Shaft,                           294
+
+                         CHAPTER XXVII.
+  The Cornice and Capital,                           305
+
+                         CHAPTER XXVIII.
+  The Archivolt and Aperture,                        333
+
+                         CHAPTER XXIX.
+  The Roof,                                          343
+
+                          CHAPTER XXX.
+  The Vestibule,                                     349
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+   APPENDIX.
+
+   1. Foundation of Venice,                          359
+   2. Power of the Doges,                            360
+   3. Serrar del Consiglio,                          360
+   4. S. Pietro di Castello,                         361
+   5. Papal Power in Venice,                         362
+   6. Renaissance Ornament,                          369
+   7. Varieties of the Orders,                       370
+   8. The Northern Energy,                           371
+   9. Wooden Churches of the North,                  381
+  10. Church of Alexandria,                          381
+  11. Renaissance Landscape,                         381
+  12. Romanist Modern Art,                           384
+  13. Mr. Fergusson's System,                        388
+  14. Divisions of Humanity,                         394
+  15. Instinctive Judgments,                         399
+  16. Strength of Shafts,                            402
+  17. Answer to Mr. Garbett,                         403
+  18. Early English Capitals,                        411
+  19. Tombs near St. Anastasia,                      412
+  20. Shafts of the Ducal Palace,                    413
+  21. Ancient Representations of Water,              417
+  22. Arabian Ornamentation,                         429
+  23. Varieties of Chamfer,                          429
+  24. Renaissance Bases,                             431
+  25. Romanist Decoration of Bases,                  432
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES.
+
+
+                                                         Facing Page
+
+ Plate 1. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan and Ca' Dario,       13
+
+   "   2. Plans of Piers,                                        100
+
+   "   3. Arch Masonry,                                          134
+
+   "   4. Arch Masonry,                                          137
+
+   "   5. Arch Masonry, Bruletto of Como,                        141
+
+   "   6. Types of Towers,                                       207
+
+   "   7. Abstracts Lines,                                       222
+
+   "   8. Decorations by Disks, Ca' Badoari,                     241
+
+   "   9. Edge Decoration,                                       268
+
+   "  10. Profiles of Bases,                                     283
+
+   "  11. Plans of Bases,                                        288
+
+   "  12. Decorations of Bases,                                  289
+
+   "  13. Wall Veil Decorations,                                 295
+
+   "  14. Spandril Decorations, Ducal Palace,                    298
+
+   "  15. Cornice Profiles,                                      306
+
+   "  16. Cornice Decorations,                                   311
+
+   "  17. Capitals--Concave,                                     323
+
+   "  18. Capitals--Convex,                                      327
+
+   "  19. Archivolt Decoration, Verona,                          333
+
+   "  20. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan,                    369
+
+   "  21. Wall Veil Decoration, San Michele, Lucca,              378
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  THE QUARRY.
+
+
+§ I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three
+thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the
+thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers
+only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which
+inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through
+prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
+
+The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
+for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
+of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a
+lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
+the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
+forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
+the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
+
+Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
+endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
+period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
+quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
+as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
+was the City, and which the Shadow.
+
+I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
+lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
+be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
+passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
+
+§ II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which
+might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange
+and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless
+chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred with
+brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the
+surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which
+we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but their
+results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as they bear
+upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind than that
+usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may, perhaps, in
+the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to form a
+clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of Venetian
+character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which the
+true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have gleaned from
+the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
+
+§ III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so during a
+period less than the half of her existence, and that including the days
+of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing severe
+examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the change in
+the form of her government, or altogether, as assuredly in great part,
+to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was composed.
+
+The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
+the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
+Rialto,[1] to the moment when the General-in-chief of the French army of
+Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this
+period, Two Hundred and Seventy-six[2] years were passed in a nominal
+subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in an
+agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears to have been
+entrusted to tribunes,[3] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the
+principal islands. For six hundred years,[4] during which the power of
+Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective
+monarchy, her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
+independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
+gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
+prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
+magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
+king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
+fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.
+
+§ IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the Venetian
+state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine hundred,
+the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by what
+was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final and
+absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
+establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
+the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
+doge on the other.
+
+Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
+interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order
+and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and
+noblest man whom they could find among them,[5] called their Doge or
+Leader, with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself
+around him, out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an
+aristocracy owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and
+wealth of some among the families of the fugitives from the older
+Venetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into
+a separate body.
+
+This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
+and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
+European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated,
+we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
+Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
+
+§ V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the most
+eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her
+life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed
+by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of
+Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and
+distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this
+period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs),
+Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
+
+I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
+Zeno, 8th May, 1418;[6] the _visible_ commencement from that of another
+of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who
+expired five years later. The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with
+pestilence and war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were
+made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace,
+significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at
+Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice, the first of
+the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk: in the same
+year was established the Inquisition of State,[7] and from this period
+her government takes the perfidious and mysterious form under which it
+is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror
+to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks
+the period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the
+Venetian power;[8] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of
+the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence
+of the diminution of her internal strength.
+
+§ VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between the
+establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
+diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
+at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
+determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
+question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
+individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
+Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
+itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
+enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
+Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
+of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
+people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
+disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
+nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
+three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
+call was heard.
+
+§ VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at many
+periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and the
+man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
+sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
+the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
+powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
+masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
+impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
+the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
+prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
+sign covenant with Death.[9]
+
+§ VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be fixed
+throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double interest to
+every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the evidence
+which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be both
+frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political prosperity
+was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual religion.
+
+I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
+wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
+Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
+deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
+fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
+last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
+interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
+enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
+but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
+conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
+The fame of success remains, when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
+reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
+princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
+which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
+devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
+its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
+of her own private interests, at once broke her faith[10] and betrayed
+her religion.
+
+§ IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall be
+struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
+feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
+could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
+of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions,
+and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every
+great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are
+instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches
+the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course
+where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely
+trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to
+trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of
+Alexander III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by
+the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked
+by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only
+in her hastiest councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency
+whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or
+when they are sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the
+entire subjection of private piety to national policy is not only
+remarkable throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and
+tyrannies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but
+symbolised by a very singular circumstance in the building of the city
+itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was
+not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the
+chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the "Chiesa
+Ducale." The patriarchal church,[11] inconsiderable in size and mean in
+decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its
+name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the greater number of
+travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it less worthy of
+remark, that the two most important temples of Venice, next to the ducal
+chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to national effort, but to
+the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast
+organization of those great societies on the mainland of Italy, and
+countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the
+most wise, of all the princes of Venice,[12] who now rests beneath the
+roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not satirized by
+the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his
+tomb.
+
+§ X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which we
+have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
+Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep and constant tone of individual
+religion characterising the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
+greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
+immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct
+even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
+simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
+a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
+religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
+conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
+serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and
+a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
+motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
+spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
+its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
+it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
+demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
+presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
+short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
+national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
+several characteristics of the temper of our present English
+legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
+interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of
+my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment
+of which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be
+able to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.
+
+§ XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the policy
+of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a Romanist
+would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely, the
+magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
+temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
+survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
+to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
+the portico of St. Mark's,[13] the central expression in most men's
+thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is
+true that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of
+her prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service
+thus rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years
+more than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement
+V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
+Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the
+great tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the
+doge or the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo
+blotted out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of
+ecclesiastics from all share in the councils of Venice became an
+enduring mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and
+of her defiance of it.
+
+To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
+will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.[14]
+The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
+of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
+that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
+themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
+theirs to avoid.
+
+§ XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the Venetian
+government, the singular unity of the families composing it,--unity far
+from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when contrasted with the
+fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the restless successions of
+families and parties in power, which fill the annals of the other states
+of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or
+enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be
+anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so severe a
+restraint: it is much that jealousy appears usually unmingled with
+illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance in which private
+passion sought its gratification through public danger, there are a
+thousand in which it was sacrificed to the public advantage. Venice may
+well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which
+are still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there
+is but one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and
+that one was a watch-tower only: from first to last, while the palaces
+of the other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of
+rampart, and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the
+bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a war tower, and
+her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes
+suspended on the leaves of lilies.[15]
+
+§ XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief general
+interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would next
+endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the
+testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the
+arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connexion
+with the history of the state.
+
+1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
+
+It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
+as far back as 1418.
+
+Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
+and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
+sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
+animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
+Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
+sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
+larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
+rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
+subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the
+Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connexion
+between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
+surround her.
+
+Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
+Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
+school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
+artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
+natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up
+in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the
+vital religion of Venice had expired.
+
+§ XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward observance
+was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were painted, in
+almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna or St.
+Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of the
+Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the ducal
+palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a
+curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of one of
+Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal. The eye
+is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of Venice
+was in her wars, not in her worship.
+
+The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
+Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
+which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
+principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
+subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
+portraiture.
+
+The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
+Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
+had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
+
+§ XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of Architecture
+will be our task through many a page to come; but I must here give a
+general idea of its heads.
+
+Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,--
+
+"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
+l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
+grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les
+gallees y passent à travers et y ay ven navire de quatre cens tonneaux
+ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit
+en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les
+maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
+anciennes toutes painctes; les aultres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
+ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de
+là, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
+devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais vene et qui
+plus faict d'honneur à ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
+saigement se gouverne, et où le service de Dieu est le plus
+sollempnellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
+faultes, si je croy que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
+portent au service de l'Eglise."[16]
+
+[Illustration: Plate I. Wall-Veil-Decoration.
+                        CA'TREVISAN
+                        CA'DARIO.]
+
+§ XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons. Observe,
+first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of Venice: of
+which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with some
+glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real life
+had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
+instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
+palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
+their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
+and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
+fronts."
+
+On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
+which so struck the French ambassador.[17] He was right in his notice of
+the distinction. There had indeed come a change over Venetian
+architecture in the fifteenth century; and a change of some importance
+to us moderns: we English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe
+in general owes to it the utter degradation or destruction of her
+schools of architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may
+understand this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea
+of the connexion of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of
+Europe, from its origin forwards.
+
+§ XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is derived
+from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the East. The
+history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various modes
+and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all: if you
+hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types of
+successive architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The Doric
+and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque,
+massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else you
+can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English,
+French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks gave the
+shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The
+shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from
+the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael,
+Abraham, and Shem.
+
+§ XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his shaft
+system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier derivation in
+the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should be able to
+refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft was first
+perfected. But it may be incidentally observed, that if the Greeks did
+indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the
+earth have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture: and
+Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing
+member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the spiritualisation of both.
+
+§ XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are the
+roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
+orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
+more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex:
+those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the
+other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English,
+Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
+form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
+both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
+grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species.[18]
+
+§ XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was clumsily
+copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result, until they
+begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service; except only
+that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it, and the
+Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very
+beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized
+upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a
+new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the
+Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand,
+to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian
+architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time,
+very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many respects
+ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination,
+which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the
+Bosphorus and the Ĉgean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the
+people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-light. The
+architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange, gilded, and embalmed
+repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so would have remained
+for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.[19]
+But rough wakening was ordained for it.
+
+§ XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two
+great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at
+Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly
+so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by
+Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the
+reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art together in
+his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same; that is to
+say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome
+itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and
+entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found--Latins in Italy
+and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the
+general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the
+refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was
+elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek
+workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may
+conceive as extending in its various branches over all the central
+provinces of the empire, taking aspects more or less refined, according
+to its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power
+on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as
+that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking
+into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and
+incapable of advance or change.
+
+§ XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While in
+Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
+influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
+refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by
+inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of
+this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the
+empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
+and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art
+was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and
+borrowed art was organising itself into strength and consistency. The
+reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as
+broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately
+languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the
+imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early
+organisation, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely
+nominal extent.
+
+§ XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not susceptible
+of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps, appear, like the
+Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with the enervated
+Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with which they mingle,
+without materially affecting its intellectual character. But others,
+both south and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the
+beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks of the
+North Sea on the other. On the north and west the influence was of the
+Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two nations, pre-eminent
+above all the rest, represent to us the force of derived mind on either
+side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light
+gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done
+their work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a
+glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both horizons, and the
+fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over its golden
+paralysis.
+
+§ XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system to the
+enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab was
+to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The
+Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured
+representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.[20] The Arab
+banished all imagination of creature form from his temples, and
+proclaimed from their minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in
+their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they
+came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava
+stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and
+the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead
+water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the
+Roman wreck, is VENICE.
+
+The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
+proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of
+the world.
+
+§ XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
+importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
+the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between
+the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture
+expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
+necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
+
+§ XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to mark
+the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures were
+developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
+distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian
+Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
+well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
+mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
+with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
+sacred symbols.
+
+The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
+Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
+introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
+and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
+writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
+and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace
+it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates
+it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
+of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the
+dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
+
+§ XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious still, for
+they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its decoration. The
+Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of that of the
+northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first, an
+imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas. Without
+staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader will
+easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles,
+the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from
+the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of
+flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part
+of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof.
+
+These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
+wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
+horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
+pillars, which were themselves also of wood.[21] Now, these uprights
+were necessarily thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed
+vertical square pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended
+and civilisation increased, these wooden structures were changed into
+stone; but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had
+been made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above
+the nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the
+great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft.
+In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century,
+and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of
+Pavia.
+
+§ XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
+walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
+Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the
+first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of
+the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of
+the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts
+in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
+Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be
+described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts,
+added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic
+superstitions.
+
+§ XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one of the
+Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
+without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
+their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it
+ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of
+Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and
+spiritualisation of Northern work under its influence. The noblest
+buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque)
+Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools
+themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of
+the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards
+brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the
+Arab.
+
+§ XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great European
+styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession of
+architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central
+character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude
+that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and
+contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was
+the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at
+Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
+settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the
+mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the
+beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government;
+while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form,
+was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine
+workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the
+church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
+the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
+the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
+very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
+islands.
+
+§ XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the body
+of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The first
+church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
+destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
+obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
+architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
+is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs,[22] it being
+quite immaterial whether the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or
+both Arabic; the workmen being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the
+invention of new forms by their Arabian masters, and bringing these
+forms into use in whatever other parts of the world they were employed.
+
+To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with vestiges as
+remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first division of the
+following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist of three noble
+churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part of St.
+Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
+
+§ XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character much
+more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the arches
+consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes, not to be
+enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and mouldings.
+This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for the
+Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
+dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the
+mosque for Christian churches.
+
+I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
+in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
+position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
+elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
+two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in
+Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in
+almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second
+division of the following essay.
+
+§ XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in art from
+their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But their
+especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long prevented
+them from receiving the influence of the art which that people had
+introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice
+of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primitive
+condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical architecture.
+It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab forms, which
+were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would probably, if
+left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab school, with
+which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found
+difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to
+have been built under this early Gothic influence. The churches of San
+Giacopo dell'Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine, and one or two
+more, furnish the only important examples of it. But, in the thirteenth
+century, the Franciscans and Dominicans introduced from the continent
+their morality and their architecture, already a distinct Gothic,
+curiously developed from Lombardic and Northern (German?) forms; and the
+influence of the principles exhibited in the vast churches of St. Paul
+and the Frari began rapidly to affect the Venetian-Arab school. Still
+the two systems never became united; the Venetian policy repressed the
+power of the church, and the Venetian artists resisted its example; and
+thenceforward the architecture of the city becomes divided into
+ecclesiastical and civil: the one an ungraceful yet powerful form of the
+Western Gothic, common to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian
+sympathies in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings; the
+other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed from the
+Venetian-Arab by the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan
+architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon the Arab forms of
+the most novel feature of the Franciscan work, its traceries. These
+various forms of Gothic, the _distinctive_ architecture of Venice,
+chiefly represented by the churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and
+San Stefano, on the ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and
+the other principal Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the
+subject of the third division of the essay.
+
+§ XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic) style of
+the Venetian work is centralised by the date 1180, and is transformed
+gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from the middle
+of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century; that is to
+say, over the precise period which I have described as the central epoch
+of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year 1418; Foscari
+became doge five years later, and in his reign the first marked signs
+appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe de Commynes
+notices as above, the change to which London owes St. Paul's, Rome St.
+Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be their
+noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has
+since practised.
+
+§ XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality in
+existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap.
+ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted
+at once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
+extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
+strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
+mainland into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
+the Cathedral of Como (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
+Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della
+Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all
+architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked
+the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the
+Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which
+brought about the Reformation.
+
+§ XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
+adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
+and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
+destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the
+heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he
+injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one
+of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It
+may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
+been a consequence of this error.
+
+The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
+rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
+return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
+Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
+Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
+Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio.
+
+§ XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a flood of
+folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then perverted
+into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representations of
+Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of
+men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity,
+nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups
+upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets
+with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused
+intellect; the base school of landscape[23] gradually usurps the place
+of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,--the
+Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of
+Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps,
+and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation
+of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and
+morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into
+one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution in
+France, and the condition of art in England (saved by her Protestantism
+from severer penalty) in the time of George II.
+
+§ XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything
+towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
+painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
+as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
+and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their
+works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very
+slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor
+mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation.
+Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the
+magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by
+men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino,
+Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its
+influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
+are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number
+regard it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with
+architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious business with
+it. It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three
+hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a
+nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous
+building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which
+we have to regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in
+it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of
+modern times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one
+destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our
+schools and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass
+through them.
+
+Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
+corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre
+of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline
+the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of
+the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in
+the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation,
+and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
+than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the
+grave.
+
+§ XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that effectual
+blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance. Destroy
+its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere else.
+This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay. I
+shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader with
+successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of the
+earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features with
+those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and pause, in
+the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as I have
+made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon two
+distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by
+particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the
+builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be
+bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite
+in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of
+the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
+be immediately useful in fixing in the readers mind the epoch above
+indicated for the commencement of decline.
+
+§ XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above attached
+to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The tomb of
+that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of the same
+general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the period, and it
+is one of the last which retains it. The classical element enters
+largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet
+unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a
+sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful
+but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of
+the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet--his
+head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are simply
+crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, but so
+pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have looked
+like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
+thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
+skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
+eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
+light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
+all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
+stern angles of the cheek and brow.
+
+This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
+most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
+respecting Venetian art.
+
+   "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel)
+   sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be
+   called one of the last links which connect the declining art of the
+   Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We
+   will not stay to particularise the defects of each of the seven
+   figures of the front and sides, which represent the cardinal and
+   theological virtues; nor will we make any remarks upon those which
+   stand in the niches above the pavilion, because we consider them
+   unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Florentine school,
+   which was then with reason considered the most notable in Italy."[24]
+
+It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
+been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
+mortality.
+
+§ XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another
+tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478, after a
+short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice.
+He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried
+to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea
+and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue
+distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb
+ever bestowed on her monarchs.
+
+§ XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of one of
+the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the
+tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative
+by translation.
+
+   "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
+   proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo sapore
+   antico che senza ombra d'imitazione traspare da tutta l'opera"--&c.
+   "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti intagli s'alza uno
+   stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il predetto stilobate si muta
+   leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novità di pensiero e di
+   effetto va coronato da un fregio il più gentile che veder si
+   possa"--&c. "Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno l'_arca dove_ sta
+   chiuso il doge; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," &c.
+
+There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
+above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the
+dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this
+rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it
+here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
+unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
+and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico)
+
+   "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
+   scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts
+   attained by ministry of the chisel."
+
+To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
+attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
+ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
+keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
+feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
+off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
+Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
+finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
+veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
+far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes
+us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for
+it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the
+joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought
+it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
+wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the inner
+side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made
+monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled
+elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is
+chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and
+distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately
+imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side,
+is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
+work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.
+
+§ XLIII. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one; and I do not
+blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for
+regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
+not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a
+monstrous mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and,
+secondly, such utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an
+extreme of intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his
+breast, could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old
+man's countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by
+the solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the
+bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so
+much the zecchin?
+
+I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much
+talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this
+base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation
+of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a
+pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
+chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
+on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea
+by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
+lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
+Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
+its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from
+Venice for forgery_ in 1487.[25]
+
+§ XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter; but I
+pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting piece
+of evidence, which I promised.
+
+The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards the sea, the
+other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the
+seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early
+part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while
+the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in
+age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have
+examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never
+examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one
+document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of
+referring,--the masonry of the palace itself.
+
+§ XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from the
+sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
+stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins
+with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."[26] The
+ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which
+is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth
+century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and
+carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe, reader. The
+face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della Carta, was built
+at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside whose tomb you have
+been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his
+successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it
+is only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of which, however, the
+proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the
+masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that
+in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the
+costumes of the figures introduced in the sea façade being purely
+Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel at
+Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is Renaissance-Classic:
+and the lions' heads between the arches change at the same point. And
+there are a multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels,
+with which I shall not at present trouble the reader.
+
+§ XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424 (remember my
+date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow the
+principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent
+new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old
+ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea façade, eighteen
+on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six
+pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right to left,
+from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next the
+Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I thus have
+the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the 18th, and
+the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace; and the
+first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated, the 9th
+from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series,
+and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above
+twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth
+century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
+
+Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
+from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33rd,
+from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
+inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th, which is very nobly
+designed.
+
+§ XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of the
+palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
+the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
+with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
+Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
+Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
+somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
+(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
+arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
+open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
+the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
+from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
+Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima
+in Deo."
+
+§ XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect chiselling,
+imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have lost their
+hard features and living expression; they have now all got Roman noses,
+and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems are, however,
+preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but she is
+praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone._
+
+Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
+become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light
+He gave; so that in the issue, when that light opened into the
+Reformation, on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient
+literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted?
+
+§ XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I shall
+depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the Renaissance
+workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself is not so
+easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the Renaissance
+work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very forcibly as I
+read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps," in "The
+Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's: "Mr.
+Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the Architect,
+"think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the difference
+of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a subject of
+opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume that there
+_is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it:
+but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply set their
+opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at present to which
+either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of
+the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with
+resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter
+could be otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity
+of partizanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that there
+_was_ a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputably
+discerned and divided from the bad; that the opposition in their very
+nature and essence was clearly visible; and that we were all of us just
+as unwise in disputing about the matter without reference to principle,
+as we should be for debating about the genuineness of a coin, without
+ringing it. I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it
+were conclusive; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base
+work, and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference to style
+or national feeling; that it must sanction the design of all truly great
+nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and
+reprobate the design of all foolish nations and times, Chinese or
+Mexican, or modern European: and that it must be easily applicable to
+all possible architectural inventions of human mind. I set myself,
+therefore, to establish such a law, in full belief that men are
+intended, without excessive difficulty, and by use of their general
+common sense, to know good things from bad; and that it is only because
+they will not be at the pains required for the discernment, that the
+world is so widely encumbered with forgeries and basenesses. I found the
+work simpler than I had hoped; the reasonable things ranged themselves
+in the order I required, and the foolish things fell aside, and took
+themselves away so soon as they were looked in the face. I had then,
+with respect to Venetian architecture, the choice, either to establish
+each division of law in a separate form, as I came to the features with
+which it was concerned, or else to ask the reader's patience, while I
+followed out the general inquiry first, and determined with him a code
+of right and wrong, to which we might together make retrospective
+appeal. I thought this the best, though perhaps the dullest way; and in
+these first following pages I have therefore endeavored to arrange those
+foundations of criticism, on which I shall rest in my account of
+Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple enough to be
+intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture before. To
+those who have, much of what is stated in them will be well known or
+self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a simplicity on which
+the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From that which appears a
+mere truism when first stated, they will find very singular consequences
+sometimes following,--consequences altogether unexpected, and of
+considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell on their
+importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done; for I believe
+most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion of right and
+wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture, and will be apt
+rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than dispute its
+usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair trial, being
+certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to
+induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at
+least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which
+may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference. And
+if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of Venice
+touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more
+subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and if thus
+I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of architecture and
+nearly every other art, which have for three centuries been predominant
+in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be serviceable for
+proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have hitherto hinted.
+For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the arts, and the
+Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done meanwhile? He
+boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why could it not
+support them when it was left to its own strength? How came it to yield
+to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose no barrier
+to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully conceived imagery
+of its worship to stage decoration? Shall we not rather find that
+Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown
+itself capable of a single great conception since the separation of
+Protestantism from its side?[27] So long as, corrupt though it might be,
+no clear witness had been borne against it, so that it still included in
+its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts were
+noble. But the witness was borne--the error made apparent; and Rome,
+refusing to hear the testimony or forsake the falsehood, has been struck
+from that instant with an intellectual palsy, which has not only
+incapacitated her from any further use of the arts which once were her
+ministers, but has made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and
+her worshippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these
+are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we enter the
+streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit ourselves to
+their undistinguished enchantment, and to look upon the last changes
+which were wrought on the lifted forms of her palaces, as we should on
+the capricious towering of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank
+into the deep of night; or whether, rather, we shall not behold in the
+brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence of
+her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface it, as they
+fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished it."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] Appendix 1, "Foundation of Venice."
+
+  [2] Appendix 2, "Power of the Doges."
+
+  [3] Sismondi, Hist. des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.
+
+  [4] Appendix 3, "Serrar del Consiglio."
+
+  [5] "Ha saputo trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti,
+    signoreggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un
+    ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino._) Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this,
+    indeed.
+
+  [6] Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.
+
+  [7] Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery
+    of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.
+
+  [8] Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as
+    before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right
+    of appointing the clergy of their territories.
+
+  [9] The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority
+    of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)
+
+  [10] By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian
+    prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)
+
+  [11] Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."
+
+  [12] Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, § V.
+
+  [13]                         "In that temple porch,
+         (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
+         Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
+         And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
+         Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled
+         For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
+         On his stone pillow."
+
+    I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
+    believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all
+    libraries, and will never be removed from it. There is more true
+    expression of the spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in
+    that poem, than in all else that has been written of her.
+
+  [14] At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The Papal
+    Power in Venice."
+
+  [15] The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no
+    exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
+    They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the
+    attack of a foreign enemy.
+
+  [16] Mémoires de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.
+
+  [17] Appendix 6, "Renaissance Ornaments."
+
+  [18] Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."
+
+  [19] The reader will find the _weak_ points of Byzantine
+    architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the
+    opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever
+    opened,--Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."
+
+  [20] Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."
+
+  [21] Appendix 9, "Wooden Churches of the North."
+
+  [22] Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."
+
+  [23] Appendix 11, "Renaissance Landscape."
+
+  [24] Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.
+
+  [25] Selvatico, p. 221.
+
+  [26] The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different
+    quality.
+
+  [27] Appendix 12, "Romanist Modern Art."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
+
+
+§ I. We address ourselves, then, first to the task of determining some
+law of right which we may apply to the architecture of all the world and
+of all time; and by help of which, and judgment according to which, we
+may easily pronounce whether a building is good or noble, as, by
+applying a plumb-line, whether it be perpendicular.
+
+The first question will of course be: What are the possible Virtues of
+architecture?
+
+In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of
+goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be
+graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of
+duty.
+
+Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches,--acting and
+talking:--acting, as to defend us from weather or violence; talking, as
+the duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and express feelings; or
+of churches, temples, public edifices, treated as books of history, to
+tell such history clearly and forcibly.
+
+We have thus, altogether, three great branches of architectural virtue,
+and we require of any building,--
+
+1. That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do in the best
+    way.
+
+2. That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to say in the
+    best words.
+
+3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, whatever it has to
+    do or say.[28]
+
+§ II. Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is evident that
+we can establish no general laws. First, because it is not a virtue
+required in all buildings; there are some which are only for covert or
+defence, and from which we ask no conversation. Secondly, because there
+are countless methods of expression, some conventional, some natural:
+each conventional mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be no
+subject of general laws. Every natural mode is instinctively employed
+and instinctively understood, wherever there is true feeling; and this
+instinct is above law. The choice of conventional methods depends on
+circumstances out of calculation, and that of natural methods on
+sensations out of control; so that we can only say that the choice is
+right, when we feel that the means are effective; and we cannot always
+say that it is wrong when they are not so.
+
+A building which recorded the Bible history by means of a series of
+sculptural pictures, would be perfectly useless to a person unacquainted
+with the Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of the Old and
+New Testaments might be written on its walls, and yet the building be a
+very inconvenient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been adorned
+with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, again, the power of exciting
+emotion must vary or vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or
+cold; and the building may be often blamed for what is the fault of its
+critic, or endowed with a charm which is of its spectator's creation. It
+is not, therefore, possible to make expressional character any fair
+criterion of excellence in buildings, until we can fully place ourselves
+in the position of those to whom their expression was originally
+addressed, and until we are certain that we understand every symbol, and
+are capable of being touched by every association which its builders
+employed as letters of their language. I shall continually endeavor to
+put the reader into such sympathetic temper, when I ask for his judgment
+of a building; and in every work I may bring before him I shall point
+out, as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its expression; nay, I
+must even depend on such peculiarities for much of my best evidence
+respecting the character of the builders. But I cannot legalize the
+judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it if it be refused. I can
+neither force the reader to feel this architectural rhetoric, nor compel
+him to confess that the rhetoric is powerful, if it have produced no
+impression on his own mind.
+
+§ III. I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for incidental
+notice only. But their other two virtues are proper subjects of
+law,--their performance of their common and necessary work, and their
+conformity with universal and divine canons of loveliness: respecting
+these there can be no doubt, no ambiguity. I would have the reader
+discern them so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he may, by a
+glance of the eye, distinguish the noble from the ignoble work. He can
+do this, if he permit free play to his natural instincts; and all that I
+have to do for him is to remove from those instincts the artificial
+restraints which prevent their action, and to encourage them to an
+unaffected and unbiassed choice between right and wrong.
+
+§ IV. We have, then, two qualities of buildings for subjects of separate
+inquiry: their action, and aspect, and the sources of virtue in both;
+that is to say, Strength and Beauty, both of these being less admired in
+themselves, than as testifying the intelligence or imagination of the
+builder.
+
+For we have a worthier way of looking at human than at divine
+architecture: much of the value both of construction and decoration, in
+the edifices of men, depends upon our being led by the thing produced or
+adorned, to some contemplation of the powers of mind concerned in its
+creation or adornment. We are not so led by divine work, but are content
+to rest in the contemplation of the thing created. I wish the reader to
+note this especially: we take pleasure, or _should_ take pleasure, in
+architectural construction altogether as the manifestation of an
+admirable human intelligence; it is not the strength, not the size, not
+the finish of the work which we are to venerate: rocks are always
+stronger, mountains always larger, all natural objects more finished;
+but it is the intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming physical
+difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and subject of our
+praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is less the actual
+loveliness of the thing produced, than the choice and invention
+concerned in the production, which are to delight us; the love and the
+thoughts of the workman more than his work: his work must always be
+imperfect, but his thoughts and affections may be true and deep.
+
+§ V. This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must insist upon at
+somewhat greater length, for I would fain do away with some of the
+ungrateful coldness which we show towards the good builders of old time.
+In no art is there closer connection between our delight in the work,
+and our admiration of the workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet
+we rarely ask for a builder's name. The patron at whose cost, the monk
+through whose dreaming, the foundation was laid, we remember
+occasionally; never the man who verily did the work. Did the reader ever
+hear of William of Sens as having had anything to do with Canterbury
+Cathedral? or of Pietro Basegio as in anywise connected with the Ducal
+Palace of Venice? There is much ingratitude and injustice in this; and
+therefore I desire my reader to observe carefully how much of his
+pleasure in building is derived, or should be derived, from admiration
+of the intellect of men whose names he knows not.
+
+§ VI. The two virtues of architecture which we can justly weigh, are, we
+said, its strength or good construction, and its beauty or good
+decoration. Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you say a
+building is well constructed or well built; you do not merely mean that
+it answers its purpose,--this is much, and many modern buildings fail of
+this much; but if it be verily well built, it must answer this purpose
+in the simplest way, and with no over-expenditure of means. We require
+of a light-house, for instance, that it shall stand firm and carry a
+light; if it do not this, assuredly it has been ill built; but it may do
+it to the end of time, and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds
+of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and have cost thousands
+of pounds more than it ought. To pronounce it well or ill built, we must
+know the utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best arrangements
+of stone for encountering them, and the quickest ways of effecting such
+arrangements: then only, so far as such arrangements have been chosen,
+and such methods used, is it well built. Then the knowledge of all
+difficulties to be met, and of all means of meeting them, and the quick
+and true fancy or invention of the modes of applying the means to the
+end, are what we have to admire in the builder, even as he is seen
+through this first or inferior part of his work. Mental power, observe:
+not muscular nor mechanical, nor technical, nor empirical,--pure,
+precious, majestic, massy intellect; not to be had at vulgar price, nor
+received without thanks, and without asking from whom.
+
+§ VII. Suppose, for instance, we are present at the building of a
+bridge: the bricklayers or masons have had their centring erected for
+them, and that centring was put together by a carpenter, who had the
+line of its curve traced for him by the architect: the masons are
+dexterously handling and fitting their bricks, or, by the help of
+machinery, carefully adjusting stones which are numbered for their
+places. There is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of
+hand something admirable; but this is not what I ask the reader to
+admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything that he
+can presently see and understand, but the choice of the curve, and the
+shaping of the numbered stones, and the appointment of that number;
+there were many things to be known and thought upon before these were
+decided. The man who chose the curve and numbered the stones, had to
+know the times and tides of the river, and the strength of its floods,
+and the height and flow of them, and the soil of the banks, and the
+endurance of it, and the weight of the stones he had to build with, and
+the kind of traffic that day by day would be carried on over his
+bridge,--all this specially, and all the great general laws of force and
+weight, and their working; and in the choice of the curve and numbering
+of stones are expressed not only his knowledge of these, but such
+ingenuity and firmness as he had, in applying special means to overcome
+the special difficulties about his bridge. There is no saying how much
+wit, how much depth of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind,
+courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone to the placing of a
+single stone of it. This is what we have to admire,--this grand power
+and heart of man in the thing; not his technical or empirical way of
+holding the trowel and laying mortar.
+
+§ VIII. Now there is in everything properly called art this concernment
+of the intellect, even in the province of the art which seems merely
+practical. For observe: in this bridge-building I suppose no reference
+to architectural principles; all that I suppose we want is to get safely
+over the river; the man who has taken us over is still a mere
+bridge-builder,--a _builder_, not an architect: he may be a rough,
+artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one truly fine thing
+all his days. I shall call upon you to despise him presently in a sort,
+but not as if he were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great man,
+infinite in memory, indefatigable in labor, exhaustless in expedient,
+unsurpassable in quickness of thought. Take good heed you understand him
+before you despise him.
+
+§ IX. But why is he to be in anywise despised? By no means despise him,
+unless he happen to be without a soul,[29] or at least to show no signs
+of it; which possibly he may not in merely carrying you across the
+river. He may be merely what Mr. Carlyle rightly calls a human beaver
+after all; and there may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater
+than a complication of animal faculties, an intricate bestiality,--nest
+or hive building in its highest development. You need something more
+than this, or the man is despicable; you need that virtue of building
+through which he may show his affections and delights; you need its
+beauty or decoration.
+
+§ X. Not that, in reality, one division of the man is more human than
+another. Theologists fall into this error very fatally and continually;
+and a man from whom I have learned much, Lord Lindsay, has hurt his
+noble book by it, speaking as if the spirit of the man only were
+immortal, and were opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the
+senses; whereas all the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal,
+immortal or mortal, according to the degree of their sanctification; and
+there is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine when it is
+once given to God, and no part of him which is not mortal by the second
+death, and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn from God. For
+to what shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts that perish?
+To our higher intellect?--yet are we not bidden to be wise as the
+serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant?--or to our affections?
+nay; these are more shared by the lower animals than our intelligence.
+Hamlet leaps into the grave of his beloved, and leaves it,--a dog had
+stayed. Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love;
+not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the
+thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it,--but in the dedication of
+them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.
+
+§ XI. It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections, which man
+leaves upon his work, are indeed more ennobling than the signs of his
+intelligence; but it is the balance of both whose expression we need,
+and the signs of the government of them all by Conscience; and
+Discretion, the daughter of Conscience. So, then, the intelligent part
+of man being eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure of
+his work, his affectionate part is to be shown in its decoration; and,
+that decoration may be indeed lovely, two things are needed: first, that
+the affections be vivid, and honestly shown; secondly, that they be
+fixed on the right things.
+
+§ XII. You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements in wrong order.
+Logically I have; practically I have not: for it is necessary first to
+teach men to speak out, and say what they like, truly; and, in the
+second place, to teach them which of their likings are ill set, and
+which justly. If a man is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he
+will not tell you what he likes, you can make nothing of him. Only get
+him to feel quickly and to speak plainly, and you may set him right. And
+the fact is, that the great evil of all recent architectural effort has
+not been that men liked wrong things: but that they either cared nothing
+about any, or pretended to like what they did not. Do you suppose that
+any modern architect likes what he builds, or enjoys it? Not in the
+least. He builds it because he has been told that such and such things
+are fine, and that he _should_ like them. He pretends to like them, and
+gives them a false relish of vanity. Do you seriously imagine, reader,
+that any living soul in London likes triglyphs?[30]--or gets any hearty
+enjoyment out of pediments?[31] You are much mistaken. Greeks did:
+English people never did,--never will. Do you fancy that the architect
+of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had any particular
+satisfaction in putting the blank triangle over the archway, instead of
+a useful garret window? By no manner of means. He had been told it was
+right to do so, and thought he should be admired for doing it. Very few
+faults of architecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are almost
+always hypocrisies.
+
+§ XIII. So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the decoration is
+that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. It matters not
+so much what the thing is, as that the builder should really love it and
+enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked
+hawthorns; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn,--it is a perfect
+Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try to gather it
+forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects
+liked hunting; so they covered their work with horses and hounds, and
+men blowing trumpets two yards long. The base Renaissance architects of
+Venice liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their work with
+comic masks and musical instruments. Even that was better than our
+English way of liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs.
+
+§ XIV. But the second requirement in decoration, is a sign of our liking
+the right thing. And the right thing to be liked is God's work, which He
+made for our delight and contentment in this world. And all noble
+ornamentation is the expression of man's delight in God's work.
+
+§ XV. So, then, these are the two virtues of building: first, the signs
+of man's own good work; secondly, the expression of man's delight in
+better work than his own. And these are the two virtues of which I
+desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at least in some measure;
+to have a definite opinion up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point
+he cannot form one. When the science of the building is great, great
+science is of course required to comprehend it; and, therefore, of
+difficult bridges, and light-houses, and harbor walls, and river dykes,
+and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly formed. But of common
+buildings, built in common circumstances, it is very possible for every
+man, or woman, or child, to form judgment both rational and rapid. Their
+necessary, or even possible, features are but few; the laws of their
+construction are as simple as they are interesting. The labor of a few
+hours is enough to render the reader master of their main points; and
+from that moment he will find in himself a power of judgment which can
+neither be escaped nor deceived, and discover subjects of interest where
+everything before had appeared barren. For though the laws are few and
+simple, the modes of obedience to them are not so. Every building
+presents its own requirements and difficulties; and every good building
+has peculiar appliances or contrivances to meet them. Understand the
+laws of structure, and you will feel the special difficulty in every new
+building which you approach; and you will know also, or feel
+instinctively,[32] whether it has been wisely met or otherwise. And an
+enormous number of buildings, and of styles of buildings, you will be
+able to cast aside at once, as at variance with these constant laws of
+structure, and therefore unnatural and monstrous.
+
+§ XVI. Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to consult your own
+natural choice and liking. There is a right and wrong in it; but you
+will assuredly like the right if you suffer your natural instinct to
+lead you. Half the evil in this world comes from people not knowing what
+they do like, not deliberately setting themselves to find out what they
+really enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance: they
+don't know _that_,--they rather think they like keeping it; and they
+_do_ keep it under this false impression, often to their great
+discomfort. Every body likes to do good; but not one in a hundred finds
+_this_ out. Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever
+really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
+
+So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs some little care to try
+experiments upon yourself: it needs deliberate question and upright
+answer. But there is no difficulty to be overcome, no abstruse reasoning
+to be gone into; only a little watchfulness needed, and thoughtfulness,
+and so much honesty as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all
+men, that you enjoy things, though great authorities say you should not.
+
+§ XVII. This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true humility, a trust
+that you have been so created as to enjoy what is fitting for you, and a
+willingness to be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It is the
+child's spirit, which we are then most happy when we most recover; only
+wiser than children in that we are ready to think it subject of
+thankfulness that we can still be pleased with a fair color or a dancing
+light. And, above all, do not try to make all these pleasures
+reasonable, nor to connect the delight which you take in ornament with
+that which you take in construction or usefulness. They have no
+connection; and every effort that you make to reason from one to the
+other will blunt your sense of beauty, or confuse it with sensations
+altogether inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and the world
+was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to
+be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to
+other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things
+in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at
+least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a
+peacock's would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time
+are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me
+the hay was none the better for them.
+
+§ XVIII. Our task therefore divides itself into two branches, and these
+I shall follow in succession. I shall first consider the construction of
+buildings, dividing them into their really necessary members or
+features; and I shall endeavor so to lead the reader forward from the
+foundation upwards, as that he may find out for himself the best way of
+doing everything, and having so discovered it, never forget it. I shall
+give him stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and trowels, and the
+ground, and then ask him to build; only helping him, as I can, if I find
+him puzzled. And when he has built his house or church, I shall ask him
+to ornament it, and leave it to him to choose the ornaments as I did to
+find out the construction: I shall use no influence with him whatever,
+except to counteract previous prejudices, and leave him, as far as may
+be, free. And when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his
+forms of decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence in
+what he has done. I shall assure him that no one in the world could, so
+far, have done better, and require him to condemn, as futile or
+fallacious, whatever has no resemblance to his own performances.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [28] Appendix 13, "Mr. Fergusson's System."
+
+  [29] Appendix 14, "Divisions of Humanity."
+
+  [30] Triglyph. Literally, "Three Cut." The awkward upright ornament
+    with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be seen
+    everywhere at the tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and modern.
+
+  [31] Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticoes, as on the
+    Mansion House or Royal Exchange.
+
+  [32] Appendix 15: "Instinctive Judgments."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE.
+
+
+§ I. The practical duties of buildings are twofold.
+
+They have either (1), to hold and protect something; or (2), to place or
+carry something.
+
+1. Architecture of Protection. This is architecture intended to
+   protect men or their possessions from violence of any kind, whether
+   of men or of the elements. It will include all churches, houses, and
+   treasuries; fortresses, fences, and ramparts; the architecture of the
+   hut and sheepfold; of the palace and the citadel: of the dyke,
+   breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when of living
+   creatures, is to be understood as including commodiousness and
+   comfort of habitation, wherever these are possible under the given
+   circumstances.
+
+2. Architecture of Position. This is architecture intended to carry
+   men or things to some certain places, or to hold them there. This
+   will include all bridges, aqueducts, and road architecture;
+   light-houses, which have to hold light in appointed places; chimneys
+   to carry smoke or direct currents of air; staircases; towers, which
+   are to be watched from or cried from, as in mosques, or to hold
+   bells, or to place men in positions of offence, as ancient moveable
+   attacking towers, and most fortress towers.
+
+§ II. Protective architecture has to do one or all of three things: to
+wall a space, to roof it, and to give access to it, of persons, light,
+and air; and it is therefore to be considered under the three divisions
+of walls, roofs, and apertures.
+
+We will take, first, a short, general view of the connection of these
+members, and then examine them in detail: endeavoring always to keep the
+simplicity of our first arrangement in view; for protective architecture
+has indeed no other members than these, unless flooring and paving be
+considered architecture, which it is only when the flooring is also a
+roof; the laying of the stones or timbers for footing being pavior's or
+carpenter's work, rather than architect's; and, at all events, work
+respecting the well or ill doing of which we shall hardly find much
+difference of opinion, except in points of ĉsthetics. We shall therefore
+concern ourselves only with the construction of walls, roofs, and
+apertures.
+
+§ III. 1. _Walls._--A wall is an even and united fence, whether of wood,
+earth, stone, or metal. When meant for purposes of mere partition or
+enclosure, it remains a wall proper: but it has generally also to
+sustain a certain vertical or lateral pressure, for which its strength
+is at first increased by some general addition to its thickness; but if
+the pressure becomes very great, it is gathered up into _piers_ to
+resist vertical pressure, and supported by _buttresses_ to resist
+lateral pressure.
+
+If its functions of partition or enclosure are continued, together with
+that of resisting vertical pressure, it remains as a wall veil between
+the piers into which it has been partly gathered; but if it is required
+only to resist the vertical or roof pressure, it is gathered up into
+piers altogether, loses its wall character, and becomes a group or line
+of piers.
+
+On the other hand, if the lateral pressure be slight, it may retain its
+character of a wall, being supported against the pressure by buttresses
+at intervals; but if the lateral pressure be very great, it is supported
+against such pressure by a continuous buttress, loses its wall
+character, and becomes a dyke or rampart.
+
+§ IV. We shall have therefore (A) first to get a general idea of a wall,
+and of right construction of walls; then (B) to see how this wall is
+gathered into piers; and to get a general idea of piers and the right
+construction of piers; then (C) to see how a wall is supported by
+buttresses, and to get a general idea of buttresses and the right
+construction of buttresses. This is surely very simple, and it is all we
+shall have to do with walls and their divisions.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. I.]
+
+§ V. 2. _Roofs._--A roof is the covering of a space, narrow or wide. It
+will be most conveniently studied by first considering the forms in
+which it may be carried over a narrow space, and then expanding these on
+a wide plan; only there is some difficulty here in the nomenclature, for
+an arched roof over a narrow space has (I believe) no name, except that
+which belongs properly to the piece of stone or wood composing such a
+roof, namely, lintel. But the reader will have no difficulty in
+understanding that he is first to consider roofs on the section only,
+thinking how best to construct a narrow bar or slice of them, of
+whatever form; as, for instance, _x_, _y_, or _z_, over the plan or area
+_a_, Fig. I. Having done this, let him imagine these several divisions,
+first moved along (or set side by side) over a rectangle, _b_, Fig. I.,
+and then revolved round a point (or crossed at it) over a polygon, _c_,
+or circle, _d_, and he will have every form of simple roof: the arched
+section giving successively the vaulted roof and dome, and the gabled
+section giving the gabled roof and spire.
+
+As we go farther into the subject, we shall only have to add one or two
+forms to the sections here given, in order to embrace all the
+_uncombined_ roofs in existence; and we shall not trouble the reader
+with many questions respecting cross-vaulting, and other modes of their
+combination.
+
+§ VI. Now, it also happens, from its place in buildings, that the
+sectional roof over a narrow space will need to be considered before we
+come to the expanded roof over a broad one. For when a wall has been
+gathered, as above explained, into piers, that it may better bear
+vertical pressure, it is generally necessary that it should be expanded
+again at the top into a continuous wall before it carries the true roof.
+Arches or lintels are, therefore, thrown from pier to pier, and a level
+preparation for carrying the real roof is made above them. After we have
+examined the structure of piers, therefore, we shall have to see how
+lintels or arches are thrown from pier to pier, and the whole prepared
+for the superincumbent roof; this arrangement being universal in all
+good architecture prepared for vertical pressures: and we shall then
+examine the condition of the great roof itself. And because the
+structure of the roof very often introduces certain lateral pressures
+which have much to do with the placing of buttresses, it will be well to
+do all this before we examine the nature of buttresses, and, therefore,
+between parts (B) and (C) of the above plan, § IV. So now we shall have
+to study: (A) the construction of walls; (B) that of piers; (C) that of
+lintels or arches prepared for roofing; (D) that of roofs proper; and
+(E) that of buttresses.
+
+§ VII. 3. _Apertures._--There must either be intervals between the
+piers, of which intervals the character will be determined by that of
+the piers themselves, or else doors or windows in the walls proper. And,
+respecting doors or windows, we have to determine three things: first,
+the proper shape of the entire aperture; secondly, the way in which it
+is to be filled with valves or glass; and thirdly, the modes of
+protecting it on the outside, and fitting appliances of convenience to
+it, as porches or balconies. And this will be our division F; and if the
+reader will have the patience to go through these six heads, which
+include every possible feature of protective architecture, and to
+consider the simple necessities and fitnesses of each, I will answer for
+it, he shall never confound good architecture with bad any more. For, as
+to architecture of position, a great part of it involves necessities of
+construction with which the spectator cannot become generally
+acquainted, and of the compliance with which he is therefore never
+expected to judge,--as in chimneys, light-houses, &c.: and the other
+forms of it are so closely connected with those of protective
+architecture, that a few words in Chap. XIX. respecting staircases and
+towers, will contain all with which the reader need be troubled on the
+subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  THE WALL BASE.
+
+
+§ I. Our first business, then, is with Wall, and to find out wherein
+lies the true excellence of the "Wittiest Partition." For it is rather
+strange that, often as we speak of a "dead" wall, and that with
+considerable disgust, we have not often, since Snout's time, heard of a
+living one. But the common epithet of opprobrium is justly bestowed, and
+marks a right feeling. A wall has no business to be dead. It ought to
+have members in its make, and purposes in its existence, like an
+organized creature, and to answer its ends in a living and energetic
+way; and it is only when we do not choose to put any strength nor
+organization into it, that it offends us by its deadness. Every wall
+ought to be a "sweet and lovely wall." I do not care about its having
+ears; but, for instruction and exhortation, I would often have it to
+"hold up its fingers." What its necessary members and excellences are,
+it is our present business to discover.
+
+§ II. A wall has been defined to be an even and united fence of wood,
+earth, stone, or metal. Metal fences, however, seldom, if ever, take the
+form of walls, but of railings; and, like all other metal constructions,
+must be left out of our present investigation; as may be also walls
+composed merely of light planks or laths for purposes of partition or
+inclosure. Substantial walls, whether of wood or earth (I use the word
+earth as including clay, baked or unbaked, and stone), have, in their
+perfect form, three distinct members;--the Foundation, Body or Veil, and
+Cornice.
+
+§ III. The foundation is to the wall what the paw is to an animal. It
+is a long foot, wider than the wall, on which the wall is to stand, and
+which keeps it from settling into the ground. It is most necessary that
+this great element of security should be visible to the eye, and
+therefore made a part of the structure above ground. Sometimes, indeed,
+it becomes incorporated with the entire foundation of the building, a
+vast table on which walls or piers are alike set: but even then, the
+eye, taught by the reason, requires some additional preparation or foot
+for the wall, and the building is felt to be imperfect without it. This
+foundation we shall call the Base of the wall.
+
+§ IV. The body of the wall is of course the principal mass of it, formed
+of mud or clay, of bricks or stones, of logs or hewn timber; the
+condition of structure being, that it is of equal thickness everywhere,
+below and above. It may be half a foot thick, or six feet thick, or
+fifty feet thick; but if of equal thickness everywhere, it is still a
+wall proper: if to its fifty feet of proper thickness there be added so
+much as an inch of thickness in particular parts, that added thickness
+is to be considered as some form of buttress or pier, or other
+appliance.[33]
+
+In perfect architecture, however, the walls are generally kept of
+moderate thickness, and strengthened by piers or buttresses; and the
+part of the wall between these, being generally intended only to secure
+privacy, or keep out the slighter forces of weather, may be properly
+called a Wall Veil. I shall always use this word "Veil" to signify the
+even portion of a wall, it being more expressive than the term Body.
+
+§ V. When the materials with which this veil is built are very loose, or
+of shapes which do not fit well together, it sometimes becomes
+necessary, or at least adds to security, to introduce courses of more
+solid material. Thus, bricks alternate with rolled pebbles in the old
+walls of Verona, and hewn stones with brick in its Lombard churches. A
+banded structure, almost a stratification of the wall, is thus produced;
+and the courses of more solid material are sometimes decorated with
+carving. Even when the wall is not thus banded through its whole height,
+it frequently becomes expedient to lay a course of stone, or at least of
+more carefully chosen materials, at regular heights; and such belts or
+bands we may call String courses. These are a kind of epochs in the
+wall's existence; something like periods of rest and reflection in human
+life, before entering on a new career. Or else, in the building, they
+correspond to the divisions of its stories within, express its internal
+structure, and mark off some portion of the ends of its existence
+already attained.
+
+§ VI. Finally, on the top of the wall some protection from the weather
+is necessary, or some preparation for the reception of superincumbent
+weight, called a coping, or Cornice. I shall use the word Cornice for
+both; for, in fact, a coping is a roof to the wall itself, and is
+carried by a small cornice as the roof of the building by a large one.
+In either case, the cornice, small or large, is the termination of the
+wall's existence, the accomplishment of its work. When it is meant to
+carry some superincumbent weight, the cornice may be considered as its
+hand, opened to carry something above its head; as the base was
+considered its foot: and the three parts should grow out of each other
+and form one whole, like the root, stalk, and bell of a flower.
+
+These three parts we shall examine in succession; and, first, the Base.
+
+§ VII. It may be sometimes in our power, and it is always expedient, to
+prepare for the whole building some settled foundation, level and firm,
+out of sight. But this has not been done in some of the noblest
+buildings in existence. It cannot always be done perfectly, except at
+enormous expense; and, in reasoning upon the superstructure, we shall
+never suppose it to be done. The mind of the spectator does not
+conceive it; and he estimates the merits of the edifice on the
+supposition of its being built upon the ground. Even if there be a vast
+table land of foundation elevated for the whole of it, accessible by
+steps all round, as at Pisa, the surface of this table is always
+conceived as capable of yielding somewhat to superincumbent weight, and
+generally is so; and we shall base all our arguments on the widest
+possible supposition, that is to say, that the building stands on a
+surface either of earth, or, at all events, capable of yielding in some
+degree to its weight.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. II.]
+
+§ VIII. Now, let the reader simply ask himself how, on such a surface,
+he would set about building a substantial wall, that should be able to
+bear weight and to stand for ages. He would assuredly look about for the
+largest stones he had at his disposal, and, rudely levelling the ground,
+he would lay these well together over a considerably larger width than
+he required the wall to be (suppose as at _a_, Fig. II.), in order to
+equalise the pressure of the wall over a large surface, and form its
+foot. On the top of these he would perhaps lay a second tier of large
+stones, _b_, or even the third, _c_, making the breadth somewhat less
+each time, so as to prepare for the pressure of the wall on the centre,
+and, naturally or necessarily, using somewhat smaller stones above than
+below (since we supposed him to look about for the largest first), and
+cutting them more neatly. His third tier, if not his second, will
+probably appear a sufficiently secure foundation for finer work; for if
+the earth yield at all, it will probably yield pretty equally under the
+great mass of masonry now knit together over it. So he will prepare for
+the wall itself at once by sloping off the next tier of stones to the
+right diameter, as at _d_. If there be any joints in this tier within
+the wall, he may perhaps, for further security, lay a binding stone
+across them, _e_, and then begin the work of the wall veil itself,
+whether in bricks or stones.
+
+§ IX. I have supposed the preparation here to be for a large wall,
+because such a preparation will give us the best general type. But it is
+evident that the essential features of the arrangement are only two,
+that is to say, one tier of massy work for foundation, suppose _c_,
+missing the first two; and the receding tier or real foot of the wall,
+_d_. The reader will find these members, though only of brick, in most
+of the considerable and independent walls in the suburbs of London.
+
+§ X. It is evident, however, that the general type, Fig. II., will be
+subject to many different modifications in different circumstances.
+Sometimes the ledges of the tiers _a_ and _b_ may be of greater width;
+and when the building is in a secure place, and of finished masonry,
+these may be sloped off also like the main foot _d_. In Venetian
+buildings these lower ledges are exposed to the sea, and therefore left
+rough hewn; but in fine work and in important positions the lower ledges
+may be bevelled and decorated like the upper, or another added above
+_d_; and all these parts may be in different proportions, according to
+the disposition of the building above them. But we have nothing to do
+with any of these variations at present, they being all more or less
+dependent upon decorative considerations, except only one of very great
+importance, that is to say, the widening of the lower ledge into a stone
+seat, which may be often done in buildings of great size with most
+beautiful effect: it looks kind and hospitable, and preserves the work
+above from violence. In St. Mark's at Venice, which is a small and low
+church, and needing no great foundation for the wall veils of it, we
+find only the three members, _b_, _c_, and _d_. Of these the first rises
+about a foot above the pavement of St. Mark's Place, and forms an
+elevated dais in some of the recesses of the porches, chequered red and
+white; _c_ forms a seat which follows the line of the walls, while its
+basic character is marked by its also carrying certain shafts with
+which we have here no concern; _d_ is of white marble; and all are
+enriched and decorated in the simplest and most perfect manner possible,
+as we shall see in Chap. XXV. And thus much may serve to fix the type of
+wall bases, a type oftener followed in real practice than any other we
+shall hereafter be enabled to determine: for wall bases of necessity
+must be solidly built, and the architect is therefore driven into the
+adoption of the right form; or if he deviate from it, it is generally in
+meeting some necessity of peculiar circumstances, as in obtaining
+cellars and underground room, or in preparing for some grand features or
+particular parts of the wall, or in some mistaken idea of
+decoration,--into which errors we had better not pursue him until we
+understand something more of the rest of the building: let us therefore
+proceed to consider the wall veil.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [33] Many walls are slightly sloped or curved towards their tops,
+    and have buttresses added to them (that of the Queen's Bench Prison
+    is a curious instance of the vertical buttress and inclined wall);
+    but in all such instances the slope of the wall is properly to be
+    considered a condition of incorporated buttress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  THE WALL VEIL.
+
+
+§ I. The summer of the year 1849 was spent by the writer in researches
+little bearing upon his present subject, and connected chiefly with
+proposed illustrations of the mountain forms in the works of J. M. W.
+Turner. But there are sometimes more valuable lessons to be learned in
+the school of nature than in that of Vitruvius, and a fragment of
+building among the Alps is singularly illustrative of the chief feature
+which I have at present to develope as necessary to the perfection of
+the wall veil.
+
+It is a fragment of some size; a group of broken walls, one of them
+overhanging; crowned with a cornice, nodding some hundred and fifty feet
+over its massy flank, three thousand above its glacier base, and
+fourteen thousand above the sea,--a wall truly of some majesty, at once
+the most precipitous and the strongest mass in the whole chain of the
+Alps, the Mont Cervin.
+
+§ II. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower. It is a vast
+ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d'Erin,
+and lifting itself like a rearing horse with its face to the east. All
+the way along the flank of it, for half a day's journey on the Zmutt
+glacier, the grim black terraces of its foundations range almost without
+a break; and the clouds, when their day's work is done, and they are
+weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and rest till
+dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched along the grisly
+ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall gleaming in the moonlight,
+three thousand feet above.
+
+§ III. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down, as if by the
+single sweep of a sword, from the crest of it to the base; hewn concave
+and smooth, like the hollow of a wave: on each flank of it there is set
+a buttress, both of about equal height, their heads sloped out from the
+main wall about seven hundred feet below its summit. That on the north
+is the most important; it is as sharp as the frontal angle of a bastion,
+and sloped sheer away to the north-east, throwing out spur beyond spur,
+until it terminates in a long low curve of russet precipice, at whose
+foot a great bay of the glacier of the Col de Cervin lies as level as a
+lake. This spur is one of the few points from which the mass of the Mont
+Cervin is in anywise approachable. It is a continuation of the masonry
+of the mountain itself, and affords us the means of examining the
+character of its materials.
+
+§ IV. Few architects would like to build with them. The slope of the
+rocks to the north-west is covered two feet deep with their ruins, a
+mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull brick-red color, which yields
+beneath the foot like ashes, so that, in running down, you step one
+yard, and slide three. The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still
+disposed in thin courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that
+they look in places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a
+rock; and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the
+mountain were upheld by miracle; but surprise becomes more intelligent
+reverence for the great builder, when we find, in the middle of the mass
+of these dead leaves, a course of living rock, of quartz as white as the
+snow that encircles it, and harder than a bed of steel.
+
+§ V. It is one only of a thousand iron bands that knit the strength of
+the mighty mountain. Through the buttress and the wall alike, the
+courses of its varied masonry are seen in their successive order, smooth
+and true as if laid by line and plummet,[34] but of thickness and
+strength continually varying, and with silver cornices glittering along
+the edge of each, laid by the snowy winds and carved by the
+sunshine,--stainless ornaments of the eternal temple, by which "neither
+the hammer nor the axe, nor any tool, was heard while it was in
+building."
+
+§ VI. I do not, however, bring this forward as an instance of any
+universal law of natural building; there are solid as well as coursed
+masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious that the most noble
+cliff in Europe, which this eastern front of the Cervin is, I believe,
+without dispute, should be to us an example of the utmost possible
+stability of precipitousness attained with materials of imperfect and
+variable character; and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which
+do not display alternations between compact and friable conditions of
+their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes when the
+bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they are harder. And, although
+we are not hence to conclude that it is well to introduce courses of bad
+materials when we can get perfect material, I believe we may conclude
+with great certainty that it is better and easier to strengthen a wall
+necessarily of imperfect substance, as of brick, by introducing
+carefully laid courses of stone, than by adding to its thickness; and
+the first impression we receive from the unbroken aspect of a wall veil,
+unless it be of hewn stone throughout, is that it must be both thicker
+and weaker than it would have been, had it been properly coursed. The
+decorative reasons for adopting the coursed arrangement, which we shall
+notice hereafter, are so weighty, that they would alone be almost
+sufficient to enforce it; and the constructive ones will apply
+universally, except in the rare cases in which the choice of perfect or
+imperfect material is entirely open to us, or where the general system
+of the decoration of the building requires absolute unity in its
+surface.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. III.]
+
+§ VII. As regards the arrangement of the intermediate parts themselves,
+it is regulated by certain conditions of bonding and fitting the stones
+or bricks, which the reader need hardly be troubled to consider, and
+which I wish that bricklayers themselves were always honest enough to
+observe. But I hardly know whether to note under the head of ĉsthetic
+or constructive law, this important principle, that masonry is always
+bad which appears to have arrested the attention of the architect more
+than absolute conditions of strength require. Nothing is more
+contemptible in any work than an appearance of the slightest desire on
+the part of the builder to _direct attention_ to the way its stones are
+put together, or of any trouble taken either to show or to conceal it
+more than was rigidly necessary: it may sometimes, on the one hand, be
+necessary to conceal it as far as may be, by delicate and close fitting,
+when the joints would interfere with lines of sculpture or of mouldings;
+and it may often, on the other hand, be delightful to show it, as it is
+delightful in places to show the anatomy even of the most delicate human
+frame: but _studiously_ to conceal it is the error of vulgar painters,
+who are afraid to show that their figures have bones; and studiously to
+display it is the error of the base pupils of Michael Angelo, who turned
+heroes' limbs into surgeons' diagrams,--but with less excuse than
+theirs, for there is less interest in the anatomy displayed. Exhibited
+masonry is in most cases the expedient of architects who do not know how
+to fill up blank spaces, and many a building, which would have been
+decent enough if let alone, has been scrawled over with straight lines,
+as in Fig. III., on exactly the same principles, and with just the same
+amount of intelligence as a boy's in scrawling his copy-book when he
+cannot write. The device was thought ingenious at one period of
+architectural history; St. Paul's and Whitehall are covered with it, and
+it is in this I imagine that some of our modern architects suppose the
+great merit of those buildings to consist. There is, however, no excuse
+for errors in disposition of masonry, for there is but one law upon the
+subject, and that easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and
+all unnecessary expense, either in showing or concealing. Every one
+knows a building is built of separate stones; nobody will ever object to
+seeing that it is so, but nobody wants to count them. The divisions of a
+church are much like the divisions of a sermon; they are always right so
+long as they are necessary to edification, and always wrong when they
+are thrust upon the attention as divisions only. There may be neatness
+in carving when there is richness in feasting; but I have heard many a
+discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all carving and
+no meat.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [34] On the eastern side: violently contorted on the northern and
+    western.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  THE WALL CORNICE.
+
+
+§ I. We have lastly to consider the close of the wall's existence, or
+its cornice. It was above stated, that a cornice has one of two offices:
+if the wall have nothing to carry, the cornice is its roof, and defends
+it from the weather; if there is weight to be carried above the wall,
+the cornice is its hand, and is expanded to carry the said weight.
+
+There are several ways of roofing or protecting independent walls,
+according to the means nearest at hand: sometimes the wall has a true
+roof all to itself; sometimes it terminates in a small gabled ridge,
+made of bricks set slanting, as constantly in the suburbs of London; or
+of hewn stone, in stronger work; or in a single sloping face, inclined
+to the outside. We need not trouble ourselves at present about these
+small roofings, which are merely the diminutions of large ones; but we
+must examine the important and constant member of the wall structure,
+which prepares it either for these small roofs or for weights above, and
+is its true cornice.
+
+§ II. The reader will, perhaps, as heretofore, be kind enough to think
+for himself, how, having carried up his wall veil as high as it may be
+needed, he will set about protecting it from weather, or preparing it
+for weight. Let him imagine the top of the unfinished wall, as it would
+be seen from above with all the joints, perhaps uncemented, or
+imperfectly filled up with cement, open to the sky; and small broken
+materials filling gaps between large ones, and leaving cavities ready
+for the rain to soak into, and loosen and dissolve the cement, and
+split, as it froze, the whole to pieces. I am much mistaken if his
+first impulse would not be to take a great flat stone and lay it on the
+top; or rather a series of such, side by side, projecting well over the
+edge of the wall veil. If, also, he proposed to lay a weight (as, for
+instance, the end of a beam) on the wall, he would feel at once that the
+pressure of this beam on, or rather among, the small stones of the wall
+veil, might very possibly dislodge or disarrange some of them; and the
+first impulse would be, in this case, also to lay a large flat stone on
+the top of all to receive the beam, or any other weight, and distribute
+it equally among the small stones below, as at _a_, Fig. IV.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. IV.]
+
+§ III. We must therefore have our flat stone in either case; and let
+_b_, Fig. IV., be the section or side of it, as it is set across the
+wall. Now, evidently, if by any chance this weight happen to be thrown
+more on the edges of this stone than the centre, there will be a chance
+of these edges breaking off. Had we not better, therefore, put another
+stone, sloped off to the wall, beneath the projecting one, as at _c_.
+But now our cornice looks somewhat too heavy for the wall; and as the
+upper stone is evidently of needless thickness, we will thin it
+somewhat, and we have the form _d_. Now observe: the lower or bevelled
+stone here at _d_ corresponds to _d_ in the base (Fig. II., page 59).
+That was the foot of the wall; this is its hand. And the top stone here,
+which is a constant member of cornices, corresponds to the under stone
+_c_, in Fig. II., which is a constant member of bases. The reader has no
+idea at present of the enormous importance of these members; but as we
+shall have to refer to them perpetually, I must ask him to compare them,
+and fix their relations well in his mind: and, for convenience, I shall
+call the bevelled or sloping stone, X, and the upright edged stone, Y.
+The reader may remember easily which is which; for X is an intersection
+of two slopes, and may therefore properly mean either of the two sloping
+stones; and Y is a figure with a perpendicular line and two slopes, and
+may therefore fitly stand for the upright stone in relation to each of
+the sloping ones; and as we shall have to say much more about cornices
+than about bases, let X and Y stand for the stones of the cornice, and
+Xb and Yb for those of the base, when distinction is needed.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. V.]
+
+§ IV. Now the form at _d_, Fig. IV., is the great root and primal type
+of all cornices whatsoever. In order to see what forms may be developed
+from it, let us take its profile a little larger--_a_, Fig. V., with X
+and Y duly marked. Now this form, being the root of all cornices, may
+either have to finish the wall and so keep off rain; or, as so often
+stated, to carry weight. If the former, it is evident that, in its
+present profile, the rain will run back down the slope of X; and if the
+latter, that the sharp angle or edge of X, at _k_, may be a little too
+weak for its work, and run a chance of giving way. To avoid the evil in
+the first case, suppose we hollow the slope of X inwards, as at _b_; and
+to avoid it in the second case, suppose we strengthen X by letting it
+bulge outwards, as at c.
+
+§ V. These (_b_ and _c_) are the profiles of two vast families of
+cornices, springing from the same root, which, with a third arising
+from their combination (owing its origin to ĉsthetic considerations, and
+inclining sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other), have been
+employed, each on its third part of the architecture of the whole world
+throughout all ages, and must continue to be so employed through such
+time as is yet to come. We do not at present speak of the third or
+combined group; but the relation of the two main branches to each other,
+and to the line of origin, is given at _e_, Fig. V.; where the dotted
+lines are the representatives of the two families, and the straight line
+of the root. The slope of this right line, as well as the nature of the
+curves, here drawn as segments of circles, we leave undetermined: the
+slope, as well as the proportion of the depths of X and Y to each other,
+vary according to the weight to be carried, the strength of the stone,
+the size of the cornice, and a thousand other accidents; and the nature
+of the curves according to ĉsthetic laws. It is in these infinite fields
+that the invention of the architect is permitted to expatiate, but not
+in the alteration of primitive forms.
+
+§ VI. But to proceed. It will doubtless appear to the reader, that, even
+allowing for some of these permissible variations in the curve or slope
+of X, neither the form at _b_, nor any approximation to that form, would
+be sufficiently undercut to keep the rain from running back upon it.
+This is true; but we have to consider that the cornice, as the close of
+the wall's life, is of all its features that which is best fitted for
+honor and ornament. It has been esteemed so by almost all builders, and
+has been lavishly decorated in modes hereafter to be considered. But it
+is evident that, as it is high above the eye, the fittest place to
+receive the decoration is the slope of X, which is inclined towards the
+spectator; and if we cut away or hollow out this slope more than we have
+done at _b_, all decoration will be hid in the shadow. If, therefore,
+the climate be fine, and rain of long continuance not to be dreaded, we
+shall not hollow the stone X further, adopting the curve at _b_ merely
+as the most protective in our power. But if the climate be one in which
+rain is frequent and dangerous, as in alternations with frost, we may be
+compelled to consider the cornice in a character distinctly protective,
+and to hollow out X farther, so as to enable it thoroughly to accomplish
+its purpose. A cornice thus treated loses its character as the crown or
+honor of the wall, takes the office of its protector, and is called a
+DRIPSTONE. The dripstone is naturally the attribute of Northern
+buildings, and therefore especially of Gothic architecture; the true
+cornice is the attribute of Southern buildings, and therefore of Greek
+and Italian architecture; and it is one of their peculiar beauties, and
+eminent features of superiority.
+
+§ VII. Before passing to the dripstone, however, let us examine a little
+farther into the nature of the true cornice. We cannot, indeed, render
+either of the forms _b_ or _c_, Fig. V., perfectly protective from rain,
+but we can help them a little in their duty by a slight advance of their
+upper ledge. This, with the form _b_, we can best manage by cutting off
+the sharp upper point of its curve, which is evidently weak and useless;
+and we shall have the form _f_. By a slight advance of the upper stone
+_c_, we shall have the parallel form _g_.
+
+These two cornices, _f_ and _g_, are characteristic of early Byzantine
+work, and are found on all the most lovely examples of it in Venice. The
+type _a_ is rarer, but occurs pure in the most exquisite piece of
+composition in Venice--the northern portico of St. Mark's; and will be
+given in due time.
+
+§ VIII. Now the reader has doubtless noticed that these forms of cornice
+result, from considerations of fitness and necessity, far more neatly
+and decisively than the forms of the base, which we left only very
+generally determined. The reason is, that there are many ways of
+building foundations, and many _good_ ways, dependent upon the peculiar
+accidents of the ground and nature of accessible materials. There is
+also room to spare in width, and a chance of a part of the arrangement
+being concealed by the ground, so as to modify height. But we have no
+room to spare in width on the top of a wall, and all that we do must be
+thoroughly visible; and we can but have to deal with bricks, or stones
+of a certain degree of fineness, and not with mere gravel, or sand, or
+clay,--so that as the conditions are limited, the forms become
+determined; and our steps will be more clear and certain the farther we
+advance. The sources of a river are usually half lost among moss and
+pebbles, and its first movements doubtful in direction; but, as the
+current gathers force, its banks are determined, and its branches are
+numbered.
+
+§ IX. So far of the true cornice: we have still to determine the form of
+the dripstone.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. VI.]
+
+We go back to our primal type or root of cornice, _a_ of Fig. V. We take
+this at _a_ in Fig. VI., and we are to consider it entirely as a
+protection against rain. Now the only way in which the rain can be kept
+from running back on the slope of X is by a bold hollowing out of it
+upwards, _b_. But clearly, by thus doing, we shall so weaken the
+projecting part of it that the least shock would break it at the neck,
+_c_; we must therefore cut the whole out of one stone, which will give
+us the form _d_. That the water may not lodge on the upper ledge of
+this, we had better round it off; and it will better protect the joint
+at the bottom of the slope if we let the stone project over it in a
+roll, cutting the recess deeper above. These two changes are made in
+_e_: _e_ is the type of dripstones; the projecting part being, however,
+more or less rounded into an approximation to the shape of a falcon's
+beak, and often reaching it completely. But the essential part of the
+arrangement is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we find
+this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the builders have
+been _bred_ in a wet country, and that the rest of the building will be
+prepared for rough weather. The up cutting of the curve is sometimes all
+the distinction between the mouldings of far-distant countries and
+utterly strange nations.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. VII.]
+
+Fig. VII. representing a moulding with an outer and inner curve, the
+latter undercut. Take the outer line, and this moulding is one constant
+in Venice, in architecture traceable to Arabian types, and chiefly to
+the early mosques of Cairo. But take the inner line; it is a dripstone
+at Salisbury. In that narrow interval between the curves there is, when
+we read it rightly, an expression of another and mightier curve,--the
+orbed sweep of the earth and sea, between the desert of the Pyramids,
+and the green and level fields through which the clear streams of Sarum
+wind so slowly.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. VIII.]
+
+And so delicate is the test, that though pure cornices are often found
+in the north,--borrowed from classical models,--so surely as we find a
+true dripstone moulding in the South, the influence of Northern builders
+has been at work; and this will be one of the principal evidences which
+I shall use in detecting Lombard influence on Arab work; for the true
+Byzantine and Arab mouldings are all open to the sky and light, but the
+Lombards brought with them from the North the fear of rain, and in all
+the Lombardic Gothic we instantly recognize the shadowy dripstone: _a_,
+Fig. VIII., is from a noble fragment at Milan, in the Piazza dei
+Mercanti; _b_, from the Broletto of Como. Compare them with _c_ and
+_d_; both from Salisbury; _e_ and _f_ from Lisieux, Normandy; _g_ and
+_h_ from Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire.
+
+§ X. The reader is now master of all that he need know about the
+construction of the general wall cornice, fitted either to become a
+crown of the wall, or to carry weight above. If, however, the weight
+above become considerable, it may be necessary to support the cornice at
+intervals with brackets; especially if it be required to project far, as
+well as to carry weight; as, for instance, if there be a gallery on top
+of the wall. This kind of bracket-cornice, deep or shallow, forms a
+separate family, essentially connected with roofs and galleries; for if
+there be no superincumbent weight, it is evidently absurd to put
+brackets to a plain cornice or dripstone (though this is sometimes done
+in carrying out a style); so that, as soon as we see a bracket put to a
+cornice, it implies, or should imply, that there is a roof or gallery
+above it. Hence this family of cornices I shall consider in connection
+with roofing, calling them "roof cornices," while what we have hitherto
+examined are proper "wall cornices." The roof cornice and wall cornice
+are therefore treated in division D.
+
+We are not, however, as yet nearly ready for our roof. We have only
+obtained that which was to be the object of our first division (A); we
+have got, that is to say, a general idea of a wall and of the three
+essential parts of a wall; and we have next, it will be remembered, to
+get an idea of a pier and the essential parts of a pier, which were to
+be the subjects of our second division (B).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  THE PIER BASE.
+
+
+§ I. In § III. of Chap. III., it was stated that when a wall had to
+sustain an addition of vertical pressure, it was first fitted to sustain
+it by some addition to its own thickness; but if the pressure became
+very great, by being gathered up into PIERS.
+
+I must first make the reader understand what I mean by a wall's being
+gathered up. Take a piece of tolerably thick drawing-paper, or thin
+Bristol board, five or six inches square. Set it on its edge on the
+table, and put a small octavo book on the edge or top of it, and it will
+bend instantly. Tear it into four strips all across, and roll up each
+strip tightly. Set these rolls on end on the table, and they will carry
+the small octavo perfectly well. Now the thickness or substance of the
+paper employed to carry the weight is exactly the same as it was before,
+only it is differently arranged, that is to say, "gathered up."[35] If
+therefore a wall be gathered up like the Bristol board, it will bear
+greater weight than it would if it remained a wall veil. The sticks into
+which you gather it are called _Piers_. A pier is a coagulated wall.
+
+§ II. Now you cannot quite treat the wall as you did the Bristol board,
+and twist it up at once; but let us see how you _can_ treat it. Let A,
+Fig. IX., be the plan of a wall which you have made inconveniently and
+expensively thick, and which still appears to be slightly too weak for
+what it must carry: divide it, as at B, into equal spaces, _a_, _b_,
+_a_, _b_, &c. Cut out a thin slice of it at every _a_ on each side, and
+put the slices you cut out on at every _b_ on each side, and you will
+have the plan at B, with exactly the same quantity of bricks. But your
+wall is now so much concentrated, that, if it was only slightly too weak
+before, it will be stronger now than it need be; so you may spare some
+of your space as well as your bricks by cutting off the corners of the
+thicker parts, as suppose _c_, _c_, _c_, _c_, at C: and you have now a
+series of square piers connected by a wall veil, which, on less space
+and with less materials, will do the work of the wall at A perfectly
+well.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. IX.]
+
+§ III. I do not say _how much_ may be cut away in the corners _c_,
+_c_,--that is a mathematical question with which we need not trouble
+ourselves: all that we need know is, that out of every slice we take
+from the "_b_'s" and put on at the "_a_'s," we may keep a certain
+percentage of room and bricks, until, supposing that we do not want the
+wall veil for its own sake, this latter is thinned entirely away, like
+the girdle of the Lady of Avenel, and finally breaks, and we have
+nothing but a row of square piers, D.
+
+§ IV. But have we yet arrived at the form which will spare most room,
+and use fewest materials. No; and to get farther we must apply the
+general principle to our wall, which is equally true in morals and
+mathematics, that the strength of materials, or of men, or of minds, is
+always most available when it is applied as closely as possible to a
+single point.
+
+Let the point to which we wish the strength of our square piers to be
+applied, be chosen. Then we shall of course put them directly under it,
+and the point will be in their centre. But now some of their materials
+are not so near or close to this point as others. Those at the corners
+are farther off than the rest.
+
+Now, if every particle of the pier be brought as near as possible to the
+centre of it, the form it assumes is the circle.
+
+The circle must be, therefore, the best possible form of plan for a
+pier, from the beginning of time to the end of it. A circular pier is
+called a pillar or column, and all good architecture adapted to vertical
+support is made up of pillars, has always been so, and must ever be so,
+as long as the laws of the universe hold.
+
+The final condition is represented at E, in its relation to that at D.
+It will be observed that though each circle projects a little beyond the
+side of the square out of which it is formed, the space cut off at the
+angles is greater than that added at the sides; for, having our
+materials in a more concentrated arrangement, we can afford to part with
+some of them in this last transformation, as in all the rest.
+
+§ V. And now, what have the base and the cornice of the wall been doing
+while we have been cutting the veil to pieces and gathering it together?
+
+The base is also cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the base
+of the column.
+
+The cornice is cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the capital
+of the column. Do not be alarmed at the new word, it does not mean a new
+thing; a capital is only the cornice of a column, and you may, if you
+like, call a cornice the capital of a wall.
+
+We have now, therefore, to examine these three concentrated forms of the
+base, veil, and cornice: first, the concentrated base, still called the
+BASE of the column; then the concentrated veil, called the SHAFT of the
+column; then the concentrated cornice, called the CAPITAL of the column.
+
+And first the Base:--
+
+[Illustration: Fig. X.]
+
+§ VI. Look back to the main type, Fig. II., page 55, and apply its
+profiles in due proportion to the feet of the pillars at E in Fig. IX.
+p. 72: If each step in Fig. II. were gathered accurately, the projection
+of the entire circular base would be less in proportion to its height
+than it is in Fig. II.; but the approximation to the result in Fig. X.
+is quite accurate enough for our purposes. (I pray the reader to observe
+that I have not made the smallest change, except this necessary
+expression of a reduction in diameter, in Fig. II. as it is applied in
+Fig. X., only I have not drawn the joints of the stones because these
+would confuse the outlines of the bases; and I have not represented the
+rounding of the shafts, because it does not bear at present on the
+argument.) Now it would hardly be convenient, if we had to pass between
+the pillars, to have to squeeze ourselves through one of those angular
+gaps or brêches de Roland in Fig. X. Our first impulse would be to cut
+them open; but we cannot do this, or our piers are unsafe. We have but
+one other resource, to fill them up until we have a floor wide enough to
+let us pass easily: this we may perhaps obtain at the first ledge, we
+are nearly sure to get it at the second, and we may then obtain access
+to the raised interval, either by raising the earth over the lower
+courses of foundation, or by steps round the entire building.
+
+Fig. XI. is the arrangement of Fig. X. so treated.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XI.]
+
+§ VII. But suppose the pillars are so vast that the lowest chink in Fig.
+X. would be quite wide enough to let us pass through it. Is there then
+any reason for filling it up? Yes. It will be remembered that in Chap.
+IV. § VIII. the chief reason for the wide foundation of the wall was
+stated to be "that it might equalise its pressure over a large surface;"
+but when the foundation is cut to pieces as in Fig. X., the pressure is
+thrown on a succession of narrowed and detached spaces of that surface.
+If the ground is in some places more disposed to yield than in others,
+the piers in those places will sink more than the rest, and this
+distortion of the system will be probably of more importance in pillars
+than in a wall, because the adjustment of the weight above is more
+delicate; we thus actually want the _weight_ of the stones between the
+pillars, in order that the whole foundation may be bonded into one, and
+sink together if it sink at all: and the more massy the pillars, the
+more we shall need to fill the intervals of their foundations. In the
+best form of Greek architecture, the intervals are filled up to the root
+of the shaft, and the columns have no independent base; they stand on
+the even floor of their foundation.
+
+§ VIII. Such a structure is not only admissible, but, when the column is
+of great thickness in proportion to its height, and the sufficient
+firmness, either of the ground or prepared floor, is evident, it is the
+best of all, having a strange dignity in its excessive simplicity. It
+is, or ought to be, connected in our minds with the deep meaning of
+primeval memorial. "And Jacob took the stone that he had put for his
+pillow, and set it up for a pillar." I do not fancy that he put a base
+for it first. If you try to put a base to the rock-piers of Stonehenge,
+you will hardly find them improved; and two of the most perfect
+buildings in the world, the Parthenon and Ducal palace of Venice, have
+no bases to their pillars: the latter has them, indeed, to its upper
+arcade shafts; and had once, it is said, a continuous raised base for
+its lower ones: but successive elevations of St. Mark's Place have
+covered this base, and parts of the shafts themselves, with an
+inundation of paving stones; and yet the building is, I doubt not, as
+grand as ever. Finally, the two most noble pillars in Venice, those
+brought from Acre, stand on the smooth marble surface of the Piazzetta,
+with no independent bases whatever. They are rather broken away beneath,
+so that you may look under parts of them, and stand (not quite erect,
+but leaning somewhat) safe by their own massy weight. Nor could any
+bases possibly be devised that would not spoil them.
+
+§ IX. But it is otherwise if the pillar be so slender as to look
+doubtfully balanced. It would indeed stand quite as safely without an
+independent base as it would with one (at least, unless the base be in
+the form of a socket). But it will not appear so safe to the eye. And
+here for the first time, I have to express and apply a principle, which
+I believe the reader will at once grant,--that features necessary to
+express security to the imagination, are often as essential parts of
+good architecture as those required for security itself. It was said
+that the wall base was the foot or paw of the wall. Exactly in the same
+way, and with clearer analogy, the pier base is the foot or paw of the
+pier. Let us, then, take a hint from nature. A foot has two offices, to
+bear up, and to hold firm. As far as it has to bear up, it is uncloven,
+with slight projection,--look at an elephant's (the Doric base of
+animality);[36] but as far as it has to hold firm, it is divided and
+clawed, with wide projections,--look at an eagle's.
+
+§ X. Now observe. In proportion to the massiness of the column, we
+require its foot to express merely the power of bearing up; in fact, it
+can do without a foot, like the Squire in Chevy Chase, if the ground
+only be hard enough. But if the column be slender, and look as if it
+might lose its balance, we require it to look as if it had hold of the
+ground, or the ground hold of it, it does not matter which,--some
+expression of claw, prop, or socket. Now let us go back to Fig. XI., and
+take up one of the bases there, in the state in which we left it. We may
+leave out the two lower steps (with which we have nothing more to do, as
+they have become the united floor or foundation of the whole), and, for
+the sake of greater clearness, I shall not draw the bricks in the shaft,
+nor the flat stone which carries them, though the reader is to suppose
+them remaining as drawn in Fig. XI.; but I shall only draw the shaft and
+its two essential members of base, Xb and Yb, as explained at p. 65,
+above: and now, expressing the rounding of these numbers on _a_ somewhat
+larger scale, we have the profile _a_, Fig. XII.; _b_, the perspective
+appearance of such a base seen from above; and _c_, the plan of it.
+
+§ XI. Now I am quite sure the reader is not satisfied of the stability
+of this form as it is seen at _b_; nor would he ever be so with the main
+contour of a circular base. Observe, we have taken some trouble to
+reduce the member Yb into this round form, and all that we have gained
+by so doing, is this unsatisfactory and unstable look of the base; of
+which the chief reason is, that a circle, unless enclosed by right
+lines, has never an appearance of fixture, or definite place,[37]--we
+suspect it of motion, like an orb of heaven; and the second is, that the
+whole base, considered as the foot of the shaft, has no grasp nor hold:
+it is a club-foot, and looks too blunt for the limb,--it wants at least
+expansion, if not division.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XII.]
+
+§ XII. Suppose, then, instead of taking so much trouble with the member
+Yb, we save time and labor, and leave it a square block. Xb must,
+however, evidently follow the pillar, as its condition is that it slope
+to the very base of the wall veil, and of whatever the wall veil
+becomes. So the corners of Yb will project beyond the circle of Xb, and
+we shall have (Fig. XII.) the profile _d_, the perspective appearance
+_e_, and the plan _f_. I am quite sure the reader likes _e_ much better
+than he did _b_. The circle is now placed, and we are not afraid of its
+rolling away. The foot has greater expansion, and we have saved labor
+besides, with little loss of space, for the interval between the bases
+is just as great as it was before,--we have only filled up the corners
+of the squares.
+
+But is it not possible to mend the form still further? There is surely
+still an appearance of separation between Xb and Yb, as if the one might
+slip off the other. The foot is expanded enough; but it needs some
+expression of grasp as well. It has no toes. Suppose we were to put a
+spur or prop to Xb at each corner, so as to hold it fast in the centre
+of Yb. We will do this in the simplest possible form. We will have the
+spur, or small buttress, sloping straight from the corner of Yb up to
+the top of Xb, and as seen from above, of the shape of a triangle.
+Applying such spurs in Fig. XII., we have the diagonal profile at _g_,
+the perspective _h_, and the plan _i_.
+
+§ XIII. I am quite sure the reader likes this last base the best, and
+feels as if it were the firmest. But he must carefully distinguish
+between this feeling or imagination of the eye, and the real stability
+of the structure. That this real stability has been slightly increased
+by the changes between _b_ and _h_, in Fig. XII., is true. There is in
+the base _h_ somewhat less chance of accidental dislocation, and
+somewhat greater solidity and weight. But this very slight gain of
+security is of no importance whatever when compared with the general
+requirements of the structure. The pillar must be _perfectly_ secure,
+and more than secure, with the base _b_, or the building will be unsafe,
+whatever other base you put to the pillar. The changes are made, not for
+the sake of the almost inappreciable increase of security they involve,
+but in order to convince the eye of the real security which the base _b_
+_appears_ to compromise. This is especially the case with regard to the
+props or spurs, which are absolutely useless in reality, but are of the
+highest importance as an expression of safety. And this will farther
+appear when we observe that they have been above quite arbitrarily
+supposed to be of a triangular form. Why triangular? Why should not the
+spur be made wider and stronger, so as to occupy the whole width of the
+angle of the square, and to become a complete expansion of Xb to the
+edge of the square? Simply because, whatever its width, it has, in
+reality, no supporting power whatever; and the _expression_ of support
+is greatest where it assumes a form approximating to that of the spur or
+claw of an animal. We shall, however, find hereafter, that it ought
+indeed to be much wider than it is in Fig. XII., where it is narrowed in
+order to make its structure clearly intelligible.
+
+§ XIV. If the reader chooses to consider this spur as an ĉsthetic
+feature altogether, he is at liberty to do so, and to transfer what we
+have here said of it to the beginning of Chap. XXV. I think that its
+true place is here, as an _expression_ of safety, and not a means of
+beauty; but I will assume only, as established, the form _e_ of Fig.
+XII., which is absolutely, as a construction, easier, stronger, and more
+perfect than _b_. A word or two now of its materials. The wall base, it
+will be remembered, was built of stones more neatly cut as they were
+higher in place; and the members, Y and X, of the pier base, were the
+highest members of the wall base gathered. But, exactly in proportion to
+this gathering or concentration in form, should, if possible, be the
+gathering or concentration of substance. For as the whole weight of the
+building is now to rest upon few and limited spaces, it is of the
+greater importance that it should be there received by solid masonry. Xb
+and Yb are therefore, if possible, to be each of a single stone; or,
+when the shaft is small, both cut out of one block, and especially if
+spurs are to be added to Xb. The reader must not be angry with me for
+stating things so self-evident, for these are all necessary steps in the
+chain of argument which I must not break. Even this change from detached
+stones to a single block is not without significance; for it is part of
+the real service and value of the member Yb to provide for the reception
+of the shaft a surface free from joints; and the eye always conceives it
+as a firm covering over all inequalities or fissures in the smaller
+masonry of the floor.
+
+§ XV. I have said nothing yet of the proportion of the height of Yb to
+its width, nor of that of Yb and Xb to each other. Both depend much on
+the height of shaft, and are besides variable within certain limits, at
+the architect's discretion. But the limits of the height of Yb may be
+thus generally stated. If it looks so thin as that the weight of the
+column above might break it, it is too low; and if it is higher than its
+own width, it is too high. The utmost admissible height is that of a
+cubic block; for if it ever become higher than it is wide, it becomes
+itself a part of a pier, and not the base of one.
+
+§ XVI. I have also supposed Yb, when expanded from beneath Xb, as always
+expanded into a square, and four spurs only to be added at the angles.
+But Yb may be expanded into a pentagon, hexagon, or polygon; and Xb then
+may have five, six, or many spurs. In proportion, however, as the sides
+increase in number, the spurs become shorter and less energetic in their
+effect, and the square is in most cases the best form.
+
+§ XVII. We have hitherto conducted the argument entirely on the
+supposition of the pillars being numerous, and in a range. Suppose,
+however, that we require only a single pillar: as we have free space
+round it, there is no need to fill up the first ranges of its
+foundations; nor need we do so in order to equalise pressure, since the
+pressure to be met is its own alone. Under such circumstances, it is
+well to exhibit the lower tiers of the foundation as well as Yb and Xb.
+The noble bases of the two granite pillars of the Piazzetta at Venice
+are formed by the entire series of members given in Fig. X., the lower
+courses expanding into steps, with a superb breadth of proportion to the
+shaft. The member Xb is of course circular, having its proper decorative
+mouldings, not here considered; Yb is octagonal, but filled up into a
+square by certain curious groups of figures representing the trades of
+Venice. The three courses below are octagonal, with their sides set
+across the angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet
+in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7 feet each
+side).
+
+§ XVIII. Detached buildings, like our own Monument, are not pillars, but
+towers built in imitation of Pillars. As towers they are barbarous,
+being dark, inconvenient, and unsafe, besides lying, and pretending to
+be what they are not. As shafts they are barbarous, because they were
+designed at a time when the Renaissance architects had introduced and
+forced into acceptance, as _de rigueur_, a kind of columnar high-heeled
+shoe,--a thing which they called a pedestal, and which is to a true base
+exactly what a Greek actor's cothurnus was to a Greek gentleman's
+sandal. But the Greek actor knew better, I believe, than to exhibit or
+to decorate his cork sole; and, with shafts as with heroes, it is rather
+better to put the sandal off than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed,
+occasions on which a pedestal may be necessary; it may be better to
+raise a shaft from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others,
+its companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher
+shaft; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if otherwise
+too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than to use a larger shaft of
+coarser material; but the pedestal is in each case a make-shift, not an
+additional perfection. It may, in the like manner, be sometimes
+convenient for men to walk on stilts, but not to keep their stilts on as
+ornamental parts of dress. The bases of the Nelson Column, the Monument,
+and the column of the Place Vendôme, are to the shafts, exactly what
+highly ornamented wooden legs would be to human beings.
+
+§ XIX. So far of bases of detached shafts. As we do not yet know in what
+manner shafts are likely to be grouped, we can say nothing of those of
+grouped shafts until we know more of what they are to support.
+
+Lastly; we have throughout our reasoning upon the base supposed the pier
+to be circular. But circumstances may occur to prevent its being
+reduced to this form, and it may remain square or rectangular; its base
+will then be simply the wall base following its contour, and we have no
+spurs at the angles. Thus much may serve respecting pier bases; we have
+next to examine the concentration of the Wall Veil, or the Shaft.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [35] The experiment is not quite fair in this rude fashion; for the
+    small rolls owe their increase of strength much more to their
+    tubular form than their aggregation of material; but if the paper be
+    cut up into small strips, and tied together firmly in three or four
+    compact bundles, it will exhibit increase of strength enough to show
+    the principle. Vide, however, Appendix 16, "Strength of Shafts."
+
+  [36] Appendix 17, "Answer to Mr. Garbett."
+
+  [37] Yet more so than any other figure enclosed by a curved line:
+    for the circle, in its relations to its own centre, is the curve of
+    greatest stability. Compare § XX. of Chap. XX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  THE SHAFT.
+
+
+§ I. We have seen in the last Chapter how, in converting the wall into
+the square or cylindrical shaft, we parted at every change of form with
+some quantity of material. In proportion to the quantity thus
+surrendered, is the necessity that what we retain should be good of its
+kind, and well set together, since everything now depends on it.
+
+It is clear also that the best material, and the closest concentration,
+is that of the natural crystalline rocks; and that, by having reduced
+our wall into the shape of shafts, we may be enabled to avail ourselves
+of this better material, and to exchange cemented bricks for
+crystallised blocks of stone. Therefore, the general idea of a perfect
+shaft is that of a single stone hewn into a form more or less elongated
+and cylindrical. Under this form, or at least under the ruder one of a
+long stone set upright, the conception of true shafts appears first to
+have occurred to the human mind; for the reader must note this
+carefully, once for all, it does not in the least follow that the order
+of architectural features which is most reasonable in their arrangement,
+is most probable in their invention. I have theoretically deduced shafts
+from walls, but shafts were never so reasoned out in architectural
+practice. The man who first propped a thatched roof with poles was the
+discoverer of their principle; and he who first hewed a long stone into
+a cylinder, the perfecter of their practice.
+
+§ II. It is clearly necessary that shafts of this kind (we will call
+them, for convenience, _block_ shafts) should be composed of stone not
+liable to flaws or fissures; and therefore that we must no longer
+continue our argument as if it were always possible to do what is to be
+done in the best way; for the style of a national architecture may
+evidently depend, in great measure, upon the nature of the rocks of the
+country.
+
+Our own English rocks, which supply excellent building stone from their
+thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most part entirely incapable
+of being worked into shafts of any size, except only the granites and
+whinstones, whose hardness renders them intractable for ordinary
+purposes;--and English architecture therefore supplies no instances of
+the block shaft applied on an extensive scale; while the facility of
+obtaining large masses of marble has in Greece and Italy been partly the
+cause of the adoption of certain noble types of architectural form
+peculiar to those countries, or, when occurring elsewhere, derived from
+them.
+
+We have not, however, in reducing our walls to shafts, calculated on the
+probabilities of our obtaining better materials than those of which the
+walls were built; and we shall therefore first consider the form of
+shaft which will be best when we have the best materials; and then
+consider how far we can imitate, or how far it will be wise to imitate,
+this form with any materials we can obtain.
+
+§ III. Now as I gave the reader the ground, and the stones, that he
+might for himself find out how to build his wall, I shall give him the
+block of marble, and the chisel, that he may himself find out how to
+shape his column. Let him suppose the elongated mass, so given him,
+rudely hewn to the thickness which he has calculated will be
+proportioned to the weight it has to carry. The conditions of stability
+will require that some allowance be made in finishing it for any chance
+of slight disturbance or subsidence of the ground below, and that, as
+everything must depend on the uprightness of the shaft, as little chance
+should be left as possible of its being thrown off its balance. It will
+therefore be prudent to leave it slightly thicker at the base than at
+the top. This excess of diameter at the base being determined, the
+reader is to ask himself how most easily and simply to smooth the
+column from one extremity to the other. To cut it into a true
+straight-sided cone would be a matter of much trouble and nicety, and
+would incur the continual risk of chipping into it too deep. Why not
+leave some room for a chance stroke, work it slightly, _very_ slightly
+convex, and smooth the curve by the eye between the two extremities? you
+will save much trouble and time, and the shaft will be all the stronger.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XIII.]
+
+This is accordingly the natural form of a detached block shaft. It is
+the best. No other will ever be so agreeable to the mind or eye. I do
+not mean that it is not capable of more refined execution, or of the
+application of some of the laws of ĉsthetic beauty, but that it is the
+best recipient of execution and subject of law; better in either case
+than if you had taken more pains, and cut it straight.
+
+§ IV. You will observe, however, that the convexity is to be very
+slight, and that the shaft is not to _bulge_ in the centre, but to taper
+from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character of the curve you
+will discern better by exaggerating, in a diagram, the conditions of its
+sculpture.
+
+Let _a_, _a_, _b_, _b_, at A, Fig. XIII., be the rough block of the
+shaft, laid on the ground; and as thick as you can by any chance require
+it to be; you will leave it of this full thickness at its base at A, but
+at the other end you will mark off upon it the diameter _c_, _d_, which
+you intend it to have at the summit; you will then take your mallet and
+chisel, and working from _c_ and _d_ you will roughly knock off the
+corners, shaded in the figure, so as to reduce the shaft to the figure
+described by the inside lines in A and the outside lines in B; you then
+proceed to smooth it, you chisel away the shaded parts in B, and leave
+your finished shaft of the form of the _inside_ lines _e_, _g_, _f_,
+_h_.
+
+The result of this operation will be of course that the shaft tapers
+faster towards the top than it does near the ground. Observe this
+carefully; it is a point of great future importance.
+
+§ V. So far of the shape of detached or block shafts. We can carry the
+type no farther on merely structural considerations: let us pass to the
+shaft of inferior materials.
+
+Unfortunately, in practice, this step must be soon made. It is alike
+difficult to obtain, transport, and raise, block shafts more than ten or
+twelve feet long, except in remarkable positions, and as pieces of
+singular magnificence. Large pillars are therefore always composed of
+more than one block of stone. Such pillars are either jointed like
+basalt columns, and composed of solid pieces of stone set one above
+another; or they are filled up _towers_, built of small stones cemented
+into a mass, with more or less of regularity: Keep this distinction
+carefully in mind, it is of great importance; for the jointed column,
+every stone composing which, however thin, is (so to speak) a complete
+_slice_ of the shaft, is just as strong as the block pillar of one
+stone, so long as no forces are brought into action upon it which would
+have a tendency to cause horizontal dislocation. But the pillar which is
+built as a filled-up tower is of course liable to fissure in any
+direction, if its cement give way.
+
+But, in either case, it is evident that all constructive reason of the
+curved contour is at once destroyed. Far from being an easy or natural
+procedure, the fitting of each portion of the curve to its fellow, in
+the separate stones, would require painful care and considerable masonic
+skill; while, in the case of the filled-up tower, the curve outwards
+would be even unsafe; for its greatest strength (and that the more in
+proportion to its careless building) lies in its bark, or shell of
+outside stone; and this, if curved outwards, would at once burst
+outwards, if heavily loaded above.
+
+If, therefore, the curved outline be ever retained in such shafts, it
+must be in obedience to ĉsthetic laws only.
+
+§ VI. But farther. Not only the curvature, but even the tapering by
+straight lines, would be somewhat difficult of execution in the pieced
+column. Where, indeed, the entire shaft is composed of four or five
+blocks set one upon another, the diameters may be easily determined at
+the successive joints, and the stones chiselled to the same slope. But
+this becomes sufficiently troublesome when the joints are numerous, so
+that the pillar is like a pile of cheeses; or when it is to be built of
+small and irregular stones. We should be naturally led, in the one case,
+to cut all the cheeses to the same diameter; in the other to build by
+the plumb-line; and in both to give up the tapering altogether.
+
+§ VII. Farther. Since the chance, in the one case, of horizontal
+dislocation, in the other, of irregular fissure, is much increased by
+the composition of the shaft out of joints or small stones, a larger
+bulk of shaft is required to carry the given weight; and, _cĉteris
+paribus_, jointed and cemented shafts must be thicker in proportion to
+the weight they carry than those which are of one block.
+
+We have here evidently natural causes of a very marked division in
+schools of architecture: one group composed of buildings whose shafts
+are either of a single stone or of few joints; the shafts, therefore,
+being gracefully tapered, and reduced by successive experiments to the
+narrowest possible diameter proportioned to the weight they carry: and
+the other group embracing those buildings whose shafts are of many
+joints or of small stones; shafts which are therefore not tapered, and
+rather thick and ponderous in proportion to the weight they carry; the
+latter school being evidently somewhat imperfect and inelegant as
+compared with the former.
+
+It may perhaps appear, also, that this arrangement of the materials in
+cylindrical shafts at all would hardly have suggested itself to a people
+who possessed no large blocks out of which to hew them; and that the
+shaft built of many pieces is probably derived from, and imitative of
+the shaft hewn from few or from one.
+
+§ VIII. If, therefore, you take a good geological map of Europe, and lay
+your finger upon the spots where volcanic influences supply either
+travertin or marble in accessible and available masses, you will
+probably mark the points where the types of the first school have been
+originated and developed. If, in the next place, you will mark the
+districts where broken and rugged basalt or whinstone, or slaty
+sandstone, supply materials on easier terms indeed, but fragmentary and
+unmanageable, you will probably distinguish some of the birthplaces of
+the derivative and less graceful school. You will, in the first case,
+lay your finger on Pĉstum, Agrigentum, and Athens; in the second, on
+Durham and Lindisfarne.
+
+The shafts of the great primal school are, indeed, in their first form,
+as massy as those of the other, and the tendency of both is to continual
+diminution of their diameters: but in the first school it is a true
+diminution in the thickness of the independent pier; in the last, it is
+an apparent diminution, obtained by giving it the appearance of a group
+of minor piers. The distinction, however, with which we are concerned is
+not that of slenderness, but of vertical or curved contour; and we may
+note generally that while throughout the whole range of Northern work,
+the perpendicular shaft appears in continually clearer development,
+throughout every group which has inherited the spirit of the Greek, the
+shaft retains its curved or tapered form; and the occurrence of the
+vertical detached shaft may at all times, in European architecture, be
+regarded as one of the most important collateral evidences of Northern
+influence.
+
+§ IX. It is necessary to limit this observation to European
+architecture, because the Egyptian shaft is often untapered, like the
+Northern. It appears that the Central Southern, or Greek shaft, was
+tapered or curved on ĉsthetic rather than constructive principles; and
+the Egyptian which precedes, and the Northern which follows it, are both
+vertical, the one because the best form had not been discovered, the
+other because it could not be attained. Both are in a certain degree
+barbaric; and both possess in combination and in their ornaments a power
+altogether different from that of the Greek shaft, and at least as
+impressive if not as admirable.
+
+§ X. We have hitherto spoken of shafts as if their number were fixed,
+and only their diameter variable according to the weight to be borne.
+But this supposition is evidently gratuitous; for the same weight may be
+carried either by many and slender, or by few and massy shafts. If the
+reader will look back to Fig. IX., he will find the number of shafts
+into which the wall was reduced to be dependent altogether upon the
+length of the spaces _a_, _b_, _a_, _b_, &c., a length which was
+arbitrarily fixed. We are at liberty to make these spaces of what length
+we choose, and, in so doing, to increase the number and diminish the
+diameter of the shafts, or _vice versâ_.
+
+§ XI. Supposing the materials are in each case to be of the same kind,
+the choice is in great part at the architect's discretion, only there is
+a limit on the one hand to the multiplication of the slender shaft, in
+the inconvenience of the narrowed interval, and on the other, to the
+enlargement of the massy shaft, in the loss of breadth to the
+building.[38] That will be commonly the best proportion which is a
+natural mean between the two limits; leaning to the side of grace or of
+grandeur according to the expressional intention of the work. I say,
+_commonly_ the best, because, in some cases, this expressional invention
+may prevail over all other considerations, and a column of unnecessary
+bulk or fantastic slightness be adopted in order to strike the spectator
+with awe or with surprise.[39] The architect is, however, rarely in
+practice compelled to use one kind of material only; and his choice
+lies frequently between the employment of a larger number of solid and
+perfect small shafts, or a less number of pieced and cemented large
+ones. It is often possible to obtain from quarries near at hand, blocks
+which might be cut into shafts eight or twelve feet long and four or
+five feet round, when larger shafts can only be obtained in distant
+localities; and the question then is between the perfection of smaller
+features and the imperfection of larger. We shall find numberless
+instances in Italy in which the first choice has been boldly, and I
+think most wisely made; and magnificent buildings have been composed of
+systems of small but perfect shafts, multiplied and superimposed. So
+long as the idea of the symmetry of a perfect shaft remained in the
+builder's mind, his choice could hardly be directed otherwise, and the
+adoption of the built and tower-like shaft appears to have been the
+result of a loss of this sense of symmetry consequent on the employment
+of intractable materials.
+
+§ XII. But farther: we have up to this point spoken of shafts as always
+set in ranges, and at equal intervals from each other. But there is no
+necessity for this; and material differences may be made in their
+diameters if two or more be grouped so as to do together the work of one
+large one, and that within, or nearly within, the space which the larger
+one would have occupied.
+
+§ XIII. Let A, B, C, Fig. XIV., be three surfaces, of which B and C
+contain equal areas, and each of them double that of A: then supposing
+them all loaded to the same height, B or C would receive twice as much
+weight as A; therefore, to carry B or C loaded, we should need a shaft
+of twice the strength needed to carry A. Let S be the shaft required to
+carry A, and S_2 the shaft required to carry B or C; then S_3 may be
+divided into two shafts, or S_2 into four shafts, as at S_3, all
+equal in area or solid contents;[40] and the mass A might be carried
+safely by two of them, and the masses B and C, each by four of them.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XIV.]
+
+Now if we put the single shafts each under the centre of the mass they
+have to bear, as represented by the shaded circles at _a_, _a2_, _a3_,
+the masses A and C are both of them very ill supported, and even B
+insufficiently; but apply the four and the two shafts as at _b_, _b2_,
+_b3_, and they are supported satisfactorily. Let the weight on each of
+the masses be doubled, and the shafts doubled in area, then we shall
+have such arrangements as those at _c_, _c2_, _c3_; and if again the
+shafts and weight be doubled, we shall have _d_, _d2_, _d3_.
+
+§ XIV. Now it will at once be observed that the arrangement of the
+shafts in the series of B and C is always exactly the same in their
+relations to each other; only the group of B is set evenly, and the
+group of C is set obliquely,--the one carrying a square, the other a
+cross.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XV.]
+
+You have in these two series the primal representations of shaft
+arrangement in the Southern and Northern schools; while the group _b_,
+of which _b2_ is the double, set evenly, and _c2_ the double, set
+obliquely, is common to both. The reader will be surprised to find how
+all the complex and varied forms of shaft arrangement will range
+themselves into one or other of these groups; and still more surprised
+to find the oblique or cross set system on the one hand, and the square
+set system on the other, severally distinctive of Southern and Northern
+work. The dome of St. Mark's, and the crossing of the nave and transepts
+of Beauvais, are both carried by square piers; but the piers of St.
+Mark's are set square to the walls of the church, and those of Beauvais
+obliquely to them: and this difference is even a more essential one than
+that between the smooth surface of the one and the reedy complication of
+the other. The two squares here in the margin (Fig. XV.) are exactly of
+the same size, but their expression is altogether different, and in that
+difference lies one of the most subtle distinctions between the Gothic
+and Greek spirit,--from the shaft, which bears the building, to the
+smallest decoration. The Greek square is by preference set evenly, the
+Gothic square obliquely; and that so constantly, that wherever we find
+the level or even square occurring as a prevailing form, either in plan
+or decoration, in early northern work, there we may at least suspect the
+presence of a southern or Greek influence; and, on the other hand,
+wherever the oblique square is prominent in the south, we may
+confidently look for farther evidence of the influence of the Gothic
+architects. The rule must not of course be pressed far when, in either
+school, there has been determined search for every possible variety of
+decorative figures; and accidental circumstances may reverse the usual
+system in special cases; but the evidence drawn from this character is
+collaterally of the highest value, and the tracing it out is a pursuit
+of singular interest. Thus, the Pisan Romanesque might in an instant be
+pronounced to have been formed under some measure of Lombardic
+influence, from the oblique squares set under its arches; and in it we
+have the spirit of northern Gothic affecting details of the
+southern;--obliquity of square, in magnificently shafted Romanesque. At
+Monza, on the other hand, the levelled square is the characteristic
+figure of the entire decoration of the façade of the Duomo, eminently
+giving it southern character; but the details are derived almost
+entirely from the northern Gothic. Here then we have southern spirit and
+northern detail. Of the cruciform outline of the load of the shaft, a
+still more positive test of northern work, we shall have more to say in
+the 28th Chapter; we must at present note certain farther changes in the
+form of the grouped shaft, which open the way to every branch of its
+endless combinations, southern or northern.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XVI.]
+
+§ XV. 1. If the group at _d3_, Fig. XIV., be taken from under its
+loading, and have its centre filled up, it will become a quatrefoil; and
+it will represent, in their form of most frequent occurrence, a family
+of shafts, whose plans are foiled figures, trefoils, quatrefoils,
+cinquefoils, &c.; of which a trefoiled example, from the Frari at
+Venice, is the third in Plate II., and a quatrefoil from Salisbury the
+eighth. It is rare, however, to find in Gothic architecture shafts of
+this family composed of a large number of foils, because multifoiled
+shafts are seldom true grouped shafts, but are rather canaliculated
+conditions of massy piers. The representatives of this family may be
+considered as the quatrefoil on the Gothic side of the Alps; and the
+Egyptian multifoiled shaft on the south, approximating to the general
+type, _b_, Fig. XVI.
+
+§ XVI. Exactly opposed to this great family is that of shafts which have
+concave curves instead of convex on each of their sides; but these are
+not, properly speaking, grouped shafts at all, and their proper place is
+among decorated piers; only they must be named here in order to mark
+their exact opposition to the foiled system. In their simplest form,
+represented by _c_, Fig. XVI., they have no representatives in good
+architecture, being evidently weak and meagre; but approximations to
+them exist in late Gothic, as in the vile cathedral of Orleans, and in
+modern cast-iron shafts. In their fully developed form they are the
+Greek Doric, _a_, Fig. XVI., and occur in caprices of the Romanesque and
+Italian Gothic: _d_, Fig. XVI., is from the Duomo of Monza.
+
+§ XVII. 2. Between _c3_ and _d3_ of Fig. XIV. there may be evidently
+another condition, represented at 6, Plate II., and formed by the
+insertion of a central shaft within the four external ones. This central
+shaft we may suppose to expand in proportion to the weight it has to
+carry. If the external shafts expand in the same proportion, the entire
+form remains unchanged; but if they do not expand, they may (1) be
+pushed out by the expanding shaft, or (2) be gradually swallowed up in
+its expansion, as at 4, Plate II. If they are pushed out, they are
+removed farther from each other by every increase of the central shaft;
+and others may then be introduced in the vacant spaces; giving, on the
+plan, a central orb with an ever increasing host of satellites, 10,
+Plate II.; the satellites themselves often varying in size, and perhaps
+quitting contact with the central shaft. Suppose them in any of their
+conditions fixed, while the inner shaft expands, and they will be
+gradually buried in it, forming more complicated conditions of 4, Plate
+II. The combinations are thus altogether infinite, even supposing the
+central shaft to be circular only; but their infinity is multiplied by
+many other infinities when the central shaft itself becomes square or
+crosslet on the section, or itself multifoiled (8, Plate II.) with
+satellite shafts eddying about its recesses and angles, in every
+possible relation of attraction. Among these endless conditions of
+change, the choice of the architect is free, this only being generally
+noted: that, as the whole value of such piers depends, first, upon their
+being wisely fitted to the weight above them, and, secondly, upon their
+all working together: and one not failing the rest, perhaps to the ruin
+of all, he must never multiply shafts without visible cause in the
+disposition of members superimposed:[41] and in his multiplied group he
+should, if possible, avoid a marked separation between the large central
+shaft and its satellites; for if this exist, the satellites will either
+appear useless altogether, or else, which is worse, they will look as if
+they were meant to keep the central shaft together by wiring or caging
+it in; like iron rods set round a supple cylinder,--a fatal fault in the
+piers of Westminster Abbey, and, in a less degree, in the noble nave of
+the cathedral of Bourges.
+
+§ XVIII. While, however, we have been thus subdividing or assembling our
+shafts, how far has it been possible to retain their curved or tapered
+outline? So long as they remain distinct and equal, however close to
+each other, the independent curvature may evidently be retained. But
+when once they come in contact, it is equally evident that a column,
+formed of shafts touching at the base and separate at the top, would
+appear as if in the very act of splitting asunder. Hence, in all the
+closely arranged groups, and especially those with a central shaft, the
+tapering is sacrificed; and with less cause for regret, because it was a
+provision against subsidence or distortion, which cannot now take place
+with the separate members of the group. Evidently, the work, if safe at
+all, must be executed with far greater accuracy and stability when its
+supports are so delicately arranged, than would be implied by such
+precaution. In grouping shafts, therefore, a true perpendicular line is,
+in nearly all cases, given to the pier; and the reader will anticipate
+that the two schools, which we have already found to be distinguished,
+the one by its perpendicular and pieced shafts, and the other by its
+curved and block shafts, will be found divided also in their employment
+of grouped shafts;--it is likely that the idea of grouping, however
+suggested, will be fully entertained and acted upon by the one, but
+hesitatingly by the other; and that we shall find, on the one hand,
+buildings displaying sometimes massy piers of small stones, sometimes
+clustered piers of rich complexity, and on the other, more or less
+regular succession of block shafts, each treated as entirely independent
+of those around it.
+
+§ XIX. Farther, the grouping of shafts once admitted, it is probable
+that the complexity and richness of such arrangements would recommend
+them to the eye, and induce their frequent, even their unnecessary
+introduction; so that weight which might have been borne by a single
+pillar, would be in preference supported by four or five. And if the
+stone of the country, whose fragmentary character first occasioned the
+building and piecing of the large pier, were yet in beds consistent
+enough to supply shafts of very small diameter, the strength and
+simplicity of such a construction might justify it, as well as its
+grace. The fact, however, is that the charm which the multiplication of
+line possesses for the eye has always been one of the chief ends of the
+work in the grouped schools; and that, so far from employing the grouped
+piers in order to the introduction of very slender block shafts, the
+most common form in which such piers occur is that of a solid jointed
+shaft, each joint being separately cut into the contour of the group
+required.
+
+§ XX. We have hitherto supposed that all grouped or clustered shafts
+have been the result or the expression of an actual gathering and
+binding together of detached shafts. This is not, however, always so:
+for some clustered shafts are little more than solid piers channelled on
+the surface, and their form appears to be merely the development of some
+longitudinal furrowing or striation on the original single shaft. That
+clustering or striation, whichever we choose to call it, is in this case
+a decorative feature, and to be considered under the head of decoration.
+
+§ XXI. It must be evident to the reader at a glance, that the real
+serviceableness of any of these grouped arrangements must depend upon
+the relative shortness of the shafts, and that, when the whole pier is
+so lofty that its minor members become mere reeds or rods of stone,
+those minor members can no longer be charged with any considerable
+weight. And the fact is, that in the most complicated Gothic
+arrangements, when the pier is tall and its satellites stand clear of
+it, no real work is given them to do, and they might all be removed
+without endangering the building. They are merely the _expression_ of a
+great consistent system, and are in architecture what is often found in
+animal anatomy,--a bone, or process of a bone, useless, under the
+ordained circumstances of its life, to the particular animal in which it
+is found, and slightly developed, but yet distinctly existent, and
+representing, for the sake of absolute consistency, the same bone in its
+appointed, and generally useful, place, either in skeletons of all
+animals, or in the genus to which the animal itself belongs.
+
+§ XXII. Farther: as it is not easy to obtain pieces of stone long enough
+for these supplementary shafts (especially as it is always unsafe to lay
+a stratified stone with its beds upright) they have been frequently
+composed of two or more short shafts set upon each other, and to conceal
+the unsightly junction, a flat stone has been interposed, carved into
+certain mouldings, which have the appearance of a ring on the shaft. Now
+observe: the whole pier was the gathering of the whole wall, the base
+gathers into base, the veil into the shaft, and the string courses of
+the veil gather into these rings; and when this is clearly expressed,
+and the rings do indeed correspond with the string courses of the wall
+veil, they are perfectly admissible and even beautiful; but otherwise,
+and occurring, as they do in the shafts of Westminster, in the middle of
+continuous lines, they are but sorry make-shifts, and of late since gas
+has been invented, have become especially offensive from their unlucky
+resemblance to the joints of gas-pipes, or common water-pipes. There are
+two leaden ones, for instance, on the left hand as one enters the abbey
+at Poet's Corner, with their solderings and funnels looking exactly like
+rings and capitals, and most disrespectfully mimicking the shafts of
+the abbey, inside.
+
+Thus far we have traced the probable conditions of shaft structure in
+pure theory; I shall now lay before the reader a brief statement of the
+facts of the thing in time past and present.
+
+§ XXIII. In the earliest and grandest shaft architecture which we know,
+that of Egypt, we have no grouped arrangements, properly so called, but
+either single and smooth shafts, or richly reeded and furrowed shafts,
+which represent the extreme conditions of a complicated group bound
+together to sustain a single mass; and are indeed, without doubt,
+nothing else than imitations of bundles of reeds, or of clusters of
+lotus:[42] but in these shafts there is merely the idea of a group, not
+the actual function or structure of a group; they are just as much solid
+and simple shafts as those which are smooth, and merely by the method of
+their decoration present to the eye the image of a richly complex
+arrangement.
+
+§ XXIV. After these we have the Greek shaft, less in scale, and losing
+all suggestion or purpose of suggestion of complexity, its so-called
+flutings being, visibly as actually, an external decoration.
+
+§ XXV. The idea of the shaft remains absolutely single in the Roman and
+Byzantine mind; but true grouping begins in Christian architecture by
+the placing of two or more separate shafts side by side, each having its
+own work to do; then three or four, still with separate work; then, by
+such steps as those above theoretically pursued, the number of the
+members increases, while they coagulate into a single mass; and we have
+finally a shaft apparently composed of thirty, forty, fifty, or more
+distinct members; a shaft which, in the reality of its service, is as
+much a single shaft as the old Egyptian one; but which differs from the
+Egyptian in that all its members, how many soever, have each individual
+work to do, and a separate rib of arch or roof to carry: and thus the
+great Christian truth of distinct services of the individual soul is
+typified in the Christian shaft; and the old Egyptian servitude of the
+multitudes, the servitude inseparable from the children of Ham, is
+typified also in that ancient shaft of the Egyptians, which in its
+gathered strength of the river reeds, seems, as the sands of the desert
+drift over its ruin, to be intended to remind us for ever of the end of
+the association of the wicked. "Can the rush grow up without mire, or
+the flag grow without water?--So are the paths of all that forget God;
+and the hypocrite's hope shall perish."
+
+§ XXVI. Let the reader then keep this distinction of the three systems
+clearly in his mind: Egyptian system, an apparent cluster supporting a
+simple capital and single weight; Greek and Roman system, single shaft,
+single weight; Gothic system, divided shafts, divided weight: at first
+actually and simply divided, at last apparently and infinitely divided;
+so that the fully formed Gothic shaft is a return to the Egyptian, but
+the weight is divided in the one and undivided in the other.
+
+§ XXVII. The transition from the actual to the apparent cluster, in the
+Gothic, is a question of the most curious interest; I have thrown
+together the shaft sections in Plate II. to illustrate it, and exemplify
+what has been generally stated above.[43]
+
+[Illustration: Plate II.
+               PLANS OF PIERS.]
+
+1. The earliest, the most frequent, perhaps the most beautiful of all
+the groups, is also the simplest; the two shafts arranged as at _b_ or
+_c_, (Fig. XIV.) above, bearing an oblong mass, and substituted for the
+still earlier structure _a_, Fig. XIV. In Plate XVII. (Chap. XXVII.) are
+three examples of the transition: the one on the left, at the top, is
+the earliest single-shafted arrangement, constant in the rough
+Romanesque windows; a huge hammer-shaped capital being employed to
+sustain the thickness of the wall. It was rapidly superseded by the
+double shaft, as on the right of it; a very early example from the
+cloisters of the Duomo, Verona. Beneath, is a most elaborate and perfect
+one from St. Zeno of Verona, where the group is twice complicated, two
+shafts being used, both with quatrefoil sections. The plain double
+shaft, however, is by far the most frequent, both in the Northern and
+Southern Gothic, but for the most part early; it is very frequent in
+cloisters, and in the singular one of St. Michael's Mount, Normandy, a
+small pseudo-arcade runs along between the pairs of shafts, a miniature
+aisle. The group is employed on a magnificent scale, but ill
+proportioned, for the main piers of the apse of the cathedral of
+Coutances, its purpose being to conceal one shaft behind the other, and
+make it appear to the spectator from the nave as if the apse were
+sustained by single shafts, of inordinate slenderness. The attempt is
+ill-judged, and the result unsatisfactory.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XVII.]
+
+§ XXVIII. 2. When these pairs of shafts come near each other, as
+frequently at the turnings of angles (Fig. XVII.), the quadruple group
+results, _b_ 2, Fig. XIV., of which the Lombardic sculptors were
+excessively fond, usually tying the shafts together in their centre, in
+a lover's knot. They thus occur in Plate V., from the Broletto of Como;
+at the angle of St. Michele of Lucca, Plate XXI.; and in the balustrade
+of St. Mark's. This is a group, however, which I have never seen used on
+a large scale.[44]
+
+§ XXIX. 3. Such groups, consolidated by a small square in their centre,
+form the shafts of St. Zeno, just spoken of, and figured in Plate XVII.,
+which are among the most interesting pieces of work I know in Italy. I
+give their entire arrangement in Fig. XVIII.: both shafts have the same
+section, but one receives a half turn as it ascends, giving it an
+exquisite spiral contour: the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is
+given at 2, Plate II.; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of
+all that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square. It
+was asserted that the oblique belonged to the north, the even to the
+south: we have here the northern Lombardic nation naturalised in Italy,
+and, behold, the oblique and even quatrefoil linked together; not
+confused, but actually linked by a bar of stone, as seen in Plate XVII.,
+under the capitals.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XVIII.]
+
+4. Next to these, observe the two groups of five shafts each, 5 and 6,
+Plate II., one oblique, the other even. Both are from upper stories; the
+oblique one from the triforium of Salisbury; the even one from the upper
+range of shafts in the façade of St. Mark's at Venice.[45]
+
+§ XXX. Around these central types are grouped, in Plate II., four simple
+examples of the satellitic cluster, all of the Northern Gothic: 4, from
+the Cathedral of Amiens; 7, from that of Lyons (nave pier); 8, the same
+from Salisbury; 10, from the porch of Notre Dame, Dijon, having
+satellites of three magnitudes: 9 is one of the piers between the doors
+of the same church, with shafts of four magnitudes, and is an instance
+of the confusion of mind of the Northern architects between piers proper
+and jamb mouldings (noticed farther in the next chapter, § XXXI.): for
+this fig. 9, which is an angle at the meeting of two jambs, is treated
+like a rich independent shaft, and the figure below, 12, which is half
+of a true shaft, is treated like a meeting of jambs.
+
+All these four examples belonging to the oblique or Northern system, the
+curious trefoil plan, 3, lies _between_ the two, as the double
+quatrefoil next it _unites_ the two. The trefoil is from the Frari,
+Venice, and has a richly worked capital in the Byzantine manner,--an
+imitation, I think, of the Byzantine work by the Gothic builders: 1 is
+to be compared with it, being one of the earliest conditions of the
+cross shaft, from the atrium of St. Ambrogio at Milan. 13 is the nave
+pier of St. Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully
+developed: and 11 another nave pier from Vienne, on the Rhone, of far
+more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is set to the
+nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the grandest development
+I have ever seen of the cross shaft, with satellite shafts in the nooks
+of it: it is half of one of the great western piers of the cathedral of
+Bourges, measuring eight feet each side, thirty-two round.[46] Then the
+one below (15) is half of a nave pier of Rouen Cathedral, showing the
+mode in which such conditions as that of Dijon (9) and that of Bourges
+(12) were fused together into forms of inextricable complexity
+(inextricable I mean in the irregularity of proportion and projection,
+for all of them are easily resolvable into simple systems in connexion
+with the roof ribs). This pier of Rouen is a type of the last condition
+of the good Gothic; from this point the small shafts begin to lose
+shape, and run into narrow fillets and ridges, projecting at the same
+time farther and farther in weak tongue-like sections, as described in
+the "Seven Lamps." I have only here given one example of this family, an
+unimportant but sufficiently characteristic one (16) from St. Gervais of
+Falaise. One side of the nave of that church is Norman, the other
+Flamboyant, and the two piers 14 and 16 stand opposite each other. It
+would be useless to endeavor to trace farther the fantasticism of the
+later Gothic shafts; they become mere aggregations of mouldings very
+sharply and finely cut, their bases at the same time running together in
+strange complexity and their capitals diminishing and disappearing. Some
+of their conditions, which, in their rich striation, resemble crystals
+of beryl, are very massy and grand; others, meagre, harsh, or effeminate
+in themselves, are redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration; and
+I have long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of this
+French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible power. But
+this inquiry is foreign altogether to our present purpose, and we shall
+therefore turn back from the Flamboyant to the Norman side of the
+Falaise aisle, resolute for the future that all shafts of which we may
+have the ordering, shall be permitted, as with wisdom we may also permit
+men or cities, to gather themselves into companies, or constellate
+themselves into clusters, but not to fuse themselves into mere masses of
+nebulous aggregation.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [38] In saying this, it is assumed that the interval is one which is
+    to be traversed by men; and that a certain relation of the shafts
+    and intervals to the size of the human figure is therefore
+    necessary. When shafts are used in the upper stories of buildings,
+    or on a scale which ignores all relation to the human figure, no
+    such relative limits exist either to slenderness or solidity.
+
+  [39] Vide the interesting discussion of this point in Mr.
+    Fergusson's account of the Temple of Karnak, "Principles of Beauty
+    in Art," p. 219.
+
+  [40] I have assumed that the strength of similar shafts of equal
+    height is as the squares of their diameters; which, though not
+    actually a correct expression, is sufficiently so for all our
+    present purposes.
+
+  [41] How far this condition limits the system of shaft grouping we
+    shall see presently. The reader must remember, that we at present
+    reason respecting shafts in the abstract only.
+
+  [42] The capitals being formed by the flowers, or by a
+    representation of the bulging out of the reeds at the top, under the
+    weight of the architrave.
+
+  [43] I have not been at the pains to draw the complicated piers in
+    this plate with absolute exactitude to the scale of each: they are
+    accurate enough for their purpose: those of them respecting which we
+    shall have farther question will be given on a much larger scale.
+
+  [44] The largest I remember support a monument in St. Zeno of
+    Verona; they are of red marble, some ten or twelve feet high.
+
+  [45] The effect of this last is given in Plate VI. of the folio
+    series.
+
+  [46] The entire development of this cross system in connexion with
+    the vaulting ribs, has been most clearly explained by Professor
+    Willis (Architecture of Mid. Ages, Chap. IV.); and I strongly
+    recommend every reader who is inclined to take pains in the matter,
+    to read that chapter. I have been contented, in my own text, to
+    pursue the abstract idea of shaft form.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THE CAPITAL.
+
+
+§ I. The reader will remember that in Chap. VII. § V. it was said that
+the cornice of the wall, being cut to pieces and gathered together,
+formed the capital of the column. We have now to follow it in its
+transformation.
+
+We must, of course, take our simplest form or root of cornices (_a_, in
+Fig. V., above). We will take X and Y there, and we must necessarily
+gather them together as we did Xb and Yb in Chap. VII. Look back to the
+tenth paragraph of Chap. VII., read or glance it over again, substitute
+X and Y for Xb and Yb, read capital for base, and, as we said that the
+capital was the hand of the pillar, while the base was its foot, read
+also fingers for toes; and as you look to the plate, Fig. XII., turn it
+upside down. Then _h_, in Fig. XII., becomes now your best general form
+of block capital, as before of block base.
+
+§ II. You will thus have a perfect idea of the analogies between base
+and capital; our farther inquiry is into their differences. You cannot
+but have noticed that when Fig. XII. is turned upside down, the square
+stone (Y) looks too heavy for the supporting stone (X); and that in the
+profile of cornice (_a_ of Fig. V.) the proportions are altogether
+different. You will feel the fitness of this in an instant when you
+consider that the principal function of the sloping part in Fig. XII. is
+as a prop to the pillar to keep it from _slipping aside_; but the
+function of the sloping stone in the cornice and capital is to _carry
+weight above_. The thrust of the slope in the one case should therefore
+be lateral, in the other upwards.
+
+§ III. We will, therefore, take the two figures, _e_ and _h_ of Fig.
+XII., and make this change in them as we reverse them, using now the
+exact profile of the cornice _a_,--the father of cornices; and we shall
+thus have _a_ and _b_, Fig. XIX.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XIX.]
+
+Both of these are sufficiently ugly, the reader thinks; so do I; but we
+will mend them before we have done with them: that at _a_ is assuredly
+the ugliest,--like a tile on a flower-pot. It is, nevertheless, the
+father of capitals; being the simplest condition of the gathered father
+of cornices. But it is to be observed that the diameter of the shaft
+here is arbitrarily assumed to be small, in order more clearly to show
+the general relations of the sloping stone to the shaft and upper stone;
+and this smallness of the shaft diameter is inconsistent with the
+serviceableness and beauty of the arrangement at _a_, if it were to be
+realised (as we shall see presently); but it is not inconsistent with
+its central character, as the representative of every species of
+possible capital; nor is its tile and flower-pot look to be regretted,
+as it may remind the reader of the reported origin of the Corinthian
+capital. The stones of the cornice, hitherto called X and Y, receive,
+now that they form the capital, each a separate name; the sloping stone
+is called the Bell of the capital, and that laid above it, the Abacus.
+Abacus means a board or tile: I wish there were an English word for it,
+but I fear there is no substitution possible, the term having been long
+fixed, and the reader will find it convenient to familiarise himself
+with the Latin one.
+
+§ IV. The form of base, _e_ of Fig. XII., which corresponds to this
+first form of capital, _a_, was said to be objectionable only because it
+_looked_ insecure; and the spurs were added as a kind of pledge of
+stability to the eye. But evidently the projecting corners of the abacus
+at _a_, Fig. XIX., are _actually_ insecure; they may break off, if great
+weight be laid upon them. This is the chief reason of the ugliness of
+the form; and the spurs in _b_ are now no mere pledges of apparent
+stability, but have very serious practical use in supporting the angle
+of the abacus. If, even with the added spur, the support seems
+insufficient, we may fill up the crannies between the spurs and the
+bell, and we have the form _c_.
+
+Thus _a_, though the germ and type of capitals, is itself (except under
+some peculiar conditions) both ugly and insecure; _b_ is the first type
+of capitals which carry light weight; _c_, of capitals which carry
+excessive weight.
+
+§ V. I fear, however, the reader may think he is going slightly too
+fast, and may not like having the capital forced upon him out of the
+cornice; but would prefer inventing a capital for the shaft itself,
+without reference to the cornice at all. We will do so then; though we
+shall come to the same result.
+
+The shaft, it will be remembered, has to sustain the same weight as the
+long piece of wall which was concentrated into the shaft; it is enabled
+to do this both by its better form and better knit materials; and it can
+carry a greater weight than the space at the top of it is adapted to
+receive. The first point, therefore, is to expand this space as far as
+possible, and that in a form more convenient than the circle for the
+adjustment of the stones above. In general the square is a more
+convenient form than any other; but the hexagon or octagon is sometimes
+better fitted for masses of work which divide in six or eight
+directions. Then our first impulse would be to put a square or hexagonal
+stone on the top of the shaft, projecting as far beyond it as might be
+safely ventured; as at _a_, Fig. XX. This is the abacus. Our next idea
+would be to put a conical shaped stone beneath this abacus, to support
+its outer edge, as at _b_. This is the bell.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XX.]
+
+§ VI. Now the entire treatment of the capital depends simply on the
+manner in which this bell-stone is prepared for fitting the shaft below
+and the abacus above. Placed as at _a_, in Fig. XIX., it gives us the
+simplest of possible forms; with the spurs added, as at _b_, it gives
+the germ of the richest and most elaborate forms: but there are two
+modes of treatment more dexterous than the one, and less elaborate than
+the other, which are of the highest possible importance,--modes in which
+the bell is brought to its proper form by truncation.
+
+§ VII. Let _d_ and _f_, Fig. XIX., be two bell-stones; _d_ is part of a
+cone (a sugar-loaf upside down, with its point cut off); _f_ part of a
+four-sided pyramid. Then, assuming the abacus to be square, _d_ will
+already fit the shaft, but has to be chiselled to fit the abacus; _f_
+will already fit the abacus, but has to be chiselled to fit the shaft.
+
+From the broad end of _d_ chop or chisel off, in four vertical planes,
+as much as will leave its head an exact square. The vertical cuttings
+will form curves on the sides of the cone (curves of a curious kind,
+which the reader need not be troubled to examine), and we shall have the
+form at _e_, which is the root of the greater number of Norman capitals.
+
+From _f_ cut off the angles, beginning at the corners of the square and
+widening the truncation downwards, so as to give the form at _g_, where
+the base of the bell is an octagon, and its top remains a square. A
+very slight rounding away of the angles of the octagon at the base of
+_g_ will enable it to fit the circular shaft closely enough for all
+practical purposes, and this form, at _g_, is the root of nearly all
+Lombardic capitals.
+
+If, instead of a square, the head of the bell were hexagonal or
+octagonal, the operation of cutting would be the same on each angle; but
+there would be produced, of course, six or eight curves on the sides of
+_e_, and twelve or sixteen sides to the base of _g_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXI.]
+
+§ VIII. The truncations in _e_ and _g_ may of course be executed on
+concave or convex forms of _d_ and _f_; but _e_ is usually worked on a
+straight-sided bell, and the truncation of _g_ often becomes concave
+while the bell remains straight; for this simple reason,--that the sharp
+points at the angles of _g_, being somewhat difficult to cut, and easily
+broken off, are usually avoided by beginning the truncation a little way
+down the side of the bell, and then recovering the lost ground by a
+deeper cut inwards, as here, Fig. XXI. This is the actual form of the
+capitals of the balustrades of St. Mark's: it is the root of all the
+Byzantine Arab capitals, and of all the most beautiful capitals in the
+world, whose function is to express lightness.
+
+§ IX. We have hitherto proceeded entirely on the assumption that the
+form of cornice which was gathered together to produce the capital was
+the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V. But this, it will be remembered,
+was said in § VI. of Chap. VI. to be especially characteristic of
+southern work, and that in northern and wet climates it took the form of
+a dripstone.
+
+Accordingly, in the northern climates, the dripstone gathered together
+forms a peculiar northern capital, commonly called the Early
+English,[47] owing to its especial use in that style.
+
+There would have been no absurdity in this if shafts were always to be
+exposed to the weather; but in Gothic constructions the most important
+shafts are in the inside of the building. The dripstone sections of
+their capitals are therefore unnecessary and ridiculous.
+
+§ X. They are, however, much worse than unnecessary.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXII.]
+
+The edge of the dripstone, being undercut, has no bearing power, and the
+capital fails, therefore, in its own principal function; and besides
+this, the undercut contour admits of no distinctly visible decoration;
+it is, therefore, left utterly barren, and the capital looks as if it
+had been turned in a lathe. The Early English capital has, therefore,
+the three greatest faults that any design can have: (1) it fails in its
+own proper purpose, that of support; (2) it is adapted to a purpose to
+which it can never be put, that of keeping off rain; (3) it cannot be
+decorated.
+
+The Early English capital is, therefore, a barbarism of triple
+grossness, and degrades the style in which it is found, otherwise very
+noble, to one of second-rate order.
+
+§ XI. Dismissing, therefore, the Early English capital, as deserving no
+place in our system, let us reassemble in one view the forms which have
+been legitimately developed, and which are to become hereafter subjects
+of decoration. To the forms _a_, _b_, and _c_, Fig. XIX., we must add
+the two simplest truncated forms _e_ and _g_, Fig. XIX., putting their
+abaci on them (as we considered their contours in the bells only), and
+we shall have the five forms now given in parallel perspective in Fig.
+XXII., which are the roots of all good capitals existing, or capable of
+existence, and whose variations, infinite and a thousand times infinite,
+are all produced by introduction of various curvatures into their
+contours, and the endless methods of decoration superinduced on such
+curvatures.
+
+§ XII. There is, however, a kind of variation, also infinite, which
+takes place in these radical forms, before they receive either curvature
+or decoration. This is the variety of proportion borne by the different
+lines of the capital to each other, and to the shafts. This is a
+structural question, at present to be considered as far as is possible.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXIII.]
+
+§ XIII. All the five capitals (which are indeed five orders with
+legitimate distinction; very different, however, from the five orders as
+commonly understood) may be represented by the same profile, a section
+through the sides of _a_, _b_, _d_, and _e_, or through the angles of
+_c_, Fig. XXII. This profile we will put on the top of a shaft, as at A,
+Fig. XXIII., which shaft we will suppose of equal diameter above and
+below for the sake of greater simplicity: in this simplest condition,
+however, relations of proportion exist between five quantities, any one
+or any two, or any three, or any four of which may change, irrespective
+of the others. These five quantities are:
+
+  1. The height of the shaft, _a b_;
+  2. Its diameter, _b c_;
+  3. The length of slope of bell, _b d_;
+  4. The inclination of this slope, or angle _c b d_;
+  5. The depth of abacus, _d e_.
+
+For every change in any one of these quantities we have a new proportion
+of capital: five infinities, supposing change only in one quantity at a
+time: infinity of infinities in the sum of possible changes.
+
+It is, therefore, only possible to note the general laws of change;
+every scale of pillar, and every weight laid upon it admitting, within
+certain limits, a variety out of which the architect has his choice; but
+yet fixing limits which the proportion becomes ugly when it approaches,
+and dangerous when it exceeds. But the inquiry into this subject is too
+difficult for the general reader, and I shall content myself with
+proving four laws, easily understood and generally applicable; for proof
+of which if the said reader care not, he may miss the next four
+paragraphs without harm.
+
+§ XIV. 1. _The more slender the shaft, the greater, proportionally, may
+be the projection of the abacus._ For, looking back to Fig. XXIII., let
+the height _a b_ be fixed, the length _d b_, the angle _d b c_, and the
+depth _d e_. Let the single quantity _b c_ be variable, let B be a
+capital and shaft which are found to be perfectly safe in proportion to
+the weight they bear, and let the weight be equally distributed over the
+whole of the abacus. Then this weight may be represented by any number
+of equal divisions, suppose four, as _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, of brickwork
+above, of which each division is one fourth of the whole weight; and let
+this weight be placed in the most trying way on the abacus, that is to
+say, let the masses _l_ and _r_ be detached from _m_ and _n_, and bear
+with their full weight on the outside of the capital. We assume, in B,
+that the width of abacus _e f_ is twice as great as that of the shaft,
+_b c_, and on these conditions we assume the capital to be safe.
+
+But _b c_ is allowed to be variable. Let it become _b2 c2_ at C, which
+is a length representing about the diameter of a shaft containing half
+the substance of the shaft B, and, therefore, able to sustain not more
+than half the weight sustained by B. But the slope _b d_ and depth _d
+e_ remaining unchanged, we have the capital of C, which we are to load
+with only half the weight of _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, i.e., with _l_ and _r_
+alone. Therefore the weight of _l_ and _r_, now represented by the
+masses _l2_, _r2_, is distributed over the whole of the capital. But the
+weight _r_ was adequately supported by the projecting piece of the first
+capital _h f c_: much more is it now adequately supported by _i h_, _f2
+c2_. Therefore, if the capital of B was safe, that of C is more than
+safe. Now in B the length _e f_ was only twice _b c_; but in C, _e2 f2_
+will be found more than twice that of _b2_ _c2_. Therefore, the more
+slender the shaft, the greater may be the proportional excess of the
+abacus over its diameter.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXIV.]
+
+§ XV. 2. _The smaller the scale of the building, the greater may be the
+excess of the abacus over the diameter of the shaft._ This principle
+requires, I think, no very lengthy proof: the reader can understand at
+once that the cohesion and strength of stone which can sustain a small
+projecting mass, will not sustain a vast one overhanging in the same
+proportion. A bank even of loose earth, six feet high, will sometimes
+overhang its base a foot or two, as you may see any day in the gravelly
+banks of the lanes of Hampstead: but make the bank of gravel, equally
+loose, six hundred feet high, and see if you can get it to overhang a
+hundred or two! much more if there be weight above it increased in the
+same proportion. Hence, let any capital be given, whose projection is
+just safe, and no more, on its existing scale; increase its proportions
+every way equally, though ever so little, and it is unsafe; diminish
+them equally, and it becomes safe in the exact degree of the diminution.
+
+Let, then, the quantity _e d_, and angle _d b c_, at A of Fig. XXIII.,
+be invariable, and let the length _d b_ vary: then we shall have such a
+series of forms as may be represented by _a_, _b_, _c_, Fig. XXIV., of
+which _a_ is a proportion for a colossal building, _b_ for a moderately
+sized building, while _c_ could only be admitted on a very small scale
+indeed.
+
+§ XVI. 3. _The greater the excess of abacus, the steeper must be the
+slope of the bell, the shaft diameter being constant._
+
+This will evidently follow from the considerations in the last
+paragraph; supposing only that, instead of the scale of shaft and
+capital varying together, the scale of the capital varies alone. For it
+will then still be true, that, if the projection of the capital be just
+safe on a given scale, as its excess over the shaft diameter increases,
+the projection will be unsafe, if the slope of the bell remain constant.
+But it may be rendered safe by making this slope steeper, and so
+increasing its supporting power.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXV.]
+
+Thus let the capital _a_, Fig. XXV., be just safe. Then the capital _b_,
+in which the slope is the same but the excess greater, is unsafe. But
+the capital _c_, in which, though the excess equals that of _b_, the
+steepness of the supporting slope is increased, will be as safe as _b_,
+and probably as strong as _a_.[48]
+
+§ XVII. 4. _The steeper the slope of the bell, the thinner may be the
+abacus._
+
+The use of the abacus is eminently to equalise the pressure over the
+surface of the bell, so that the weight may not by any accident be
+directed exclusively upon its edges. In proportion to the strength of
+these edges, this function of the abacus is superseded, and these edges
+are strong in proportion to the steepness of the slope. Thus in Fig.
+XXVI., the bell at _a_ would carry weight safely enough without any
+abacus, but that at _c_ would not: it would probably have its edges
+broken off. The abacus superimposed might be on _a_ very thin, little
+more than formal, as at _b_; but on _c_ must be thick, as at _d_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXVI.]
+
+§ XVIII. These four rules are all that are necessary for general
+criticism; and observe that these are only semi-imperative,--rules of
+permission, not of compulsion. Thus Law 1 asserts that the slender shaft
+_may_ have greater excess of capital than the thick shaft; but it need
+not, unless the architect chooses; his thick shafts _must_ have small
+excess, but his slender ones need not have large. So Law 2 says, that as
+the building is smaller, the excess _may_ be greater; but it need not,
+for the excess which is safe in the large is still safer in the small.
+So Law 3 says that capitals of great excess must have steep slopes; but
+it does not say that capitals of small excess may not have steep slopes
+also, if we choose. And lastly, Law 4 asserts the necessity of the thick
+abacus for the shallow bell; but the steep bell may have a thick abacus
+also.
+
+§ XIX. It will be found, however, that in practice some confession of
+these laws will always be useful, and especially of the two first. The
+eye always requires, on a slender shaft, a more spreading capital than
+it does on a massy one, and a bolder mass of capital on a small scale
+than on a large. And, in the application of the first rule, it is to be
+noted that a shaft becomes slender either by diminution of diameter or
+increase of height; that either mode of change presupposes the weight
+above it diminished, and requires an expansion of abacus. I know no mode
+of spoiling a noble building more frequent in actual practice than the
+imposition of flat and slightly expanded capitals on tall shafts.
+
+§ XX. The reader must observe, also, that, in the demonstration of the
+four laws, I always assumed the weight above to be given. By the
+alteration of this weight, therefore, the architect has it in his power
+to relieve, and therefore alter, the forms of his capitals. By its
+various distribution on their centres or edges, the slope of their bells
+and thickness of abaci will be affected also; so that he has countless
+expedients at his command for the various treatment of his design. He
+can divide his weights among more shafts; he can throw them in different
+places and different directions on the abaci; he can alter slope of
+bells or diameter of shafts; he can use spurred or plain bells, thin or
+thick abaci; and all these changes admitting of infinity in their
+degrees, and infinity a thousand times told in their relations: and all
+this without reference to decoration, merely with the five forms of
+block capital!
+
+§ XXI. In the harmony of these arrangements, in their fitness, unity,
+and accuracy, lies the true proportion of every building,--proportion
+utterly endless in its infinities of change, with unchanged beauty. And
+yet this connexion of the frame of their building into one harmony has,
+I believe, never been so much as dreamed of by architects. It has been
+instinctively done in some degree by many, empirically in some degree by
+many more; thoughtfully and thoroughly, I believe, by none.
+
+§ XXII. We have hitherto considered the abacus as necessarily a separate
+stone from the bell: evidently, however, the strength of the capital
+will be undiminished if both are cut out of one block. This is actually
+the case in many capitals, especially those on a small scale; and in
+others the detached upper stone is a mere representative of the abacus,
+and is much thinner than the form of the capital requires, while the
+true abacus is united with the bell, and concealed by its decoration, or
+made part of it.
+
+§ XXIII. Farther. We have hitherto considered bell and abacus as both
+derived from the concentration of the cornice. But it must at once occur
+to the reader, that the projection of the under stone and the thickness
+of the upper, which are quite enough for the work of the continuous
+cornice, may not be enough always, or rather are seldom likely to be so,
+for the harder work of the capital. Both may have to be deepened and
+expanded: but as this would cause a want of harmony in the parts, when
+they occur on the same level, it is better in such case to let the
+_entire_ cornice form the abacus of the capital, and put a deep capital
+bell beneath it.
+
+§ XXIV. The reader will understand both arrangements instantly by two
+examples. Fig. XXVII. represents two windows, more than usually
+beautiful examples of a very frequent Venetian form. Here the deep
+cornice or string course which runs along the wall of the house is quite
+strong enough for the work of the capitals of the slender shafts: its
+own upper stone is therefore also theirs; its own lower stone, by its
+revolution or concentration, forms their bells: but to mark the
+increased importance of its function in so doing, it receives
+decoration, as the bell of the capital, which it did not receive as the
+under stone of the cornice.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXVII.]
+
+In Fig. XXVIII., a little bit of the church of Santa Fosca at Torcello,
+the cornice or string course, which goes round every part of the church,
+is not strong enough to form the capitals of the shafts. It therefore
+forms their abaci only; and in order to mark the diminished importance
+of its function, it ceases to receive, as the abacus of the capital, the
+decoration which it received as the string course of the wall.
+
+This last arrangement is of great frequency in Venice, occurring most
+characteristically in St. Mark's: and in the Gothic of St. John and Paul
+we find the two arrangements beautifully united, though in great
+simplicity; the string courses of the walls form the capitals of the
+shafts of the traceries; and the abaci of the vaulting shafts of the
+apse.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXVIII.]
+
+§ XXV. We have hitherto spoken of capitals of circular shafts only:
+those of square piers are more frequently formed by the cornice only;
+otherwise they are like those of circular piers, without the difficulty
+of reconciling the base of the bell with its head.
+
+§ XXVI. When two or more shafts are grouped together, their capitals are
+usually treated as separate, until they come into actual contact. If
+there be any awkwardness in the junction, it is concealed by the
+decoration, and one abacus serves, in most cases, for all. The double
+group, Fig. XXVII., is the simplest possible type of the arrangement. In
+the richer Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster
+together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the capitals of
+the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with small nominal
+abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry the serviceable abacus
+of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rouen. There is, however, evident
+sacrifice of sound principle in this system, the smaller abaci being of
+no use. They are the exact contrary of the rude early abacus at Milan,
+given in Plate XVII. There one poor abacus stretched itself out to do
+all the work: here there are idle abaci getting up into corners and
+doing none.
+
+§ XXVII. Finally, we have considered the capital hitherto entirely as an
+expansion of the bearing power of the shaft, supposing the shaft
+composed of a single stone. But, evidently, the capital has a function,
+if possible, yet more important, when the shaft is composed of small
+masonry. It enables all that masonry to act together, and to receive the
+pressure from above collectively and with a single strength. And thus,
+considered merely as a large stone set on the top of the shaft, it is a
+feature of the highest architectural importance, irrespective of its
+expansion, which indeed is, in some very noble capitals, exceedingly
+small. And thus every large stone set at any important point to
+reassemble the force of smaller masonry and prepare it for the
+sustaining of weight, is a capital or "head" stone (the true meaning of
+the word) whether it project or not. Thus at 6, in Plate IV., the stones
+which support the thrust of the brickwork are capitals, which have no
+projection at all; and the large stones in the window above are capitals
+projecting in one direction only.
+
+§ XXVIII. The reader is now master of all he need know respecting
+construction of capitals; and from what has been laid before him, must
+assuredly feel that there can never be any new system of architectural
+forms invented; but that all vertical support must be, to the end of
+time, best obtained by shafts and capitals. It has been so obtained by
+nearly every nation of builders, with more or less refinement in the
+management of the details; and the later Gothic builders of the North
+stand almost alone in their effort to dispense with the natural
+development of the shaft, and banish the capital from their
+compositions.
+
+They were gradually led into this error through a series of steps which
+it is not here our business to trace. But they may be generalised in a
+few words.
+
+§ XXIX. All classical architecture, and the Romanesque which is
+legitimately descended from it, is composed of bold independent shafts,
+plain or fluted, with bold detached capitals, forming arcades or
+colonnades where they are needed; and of walls whose apertures are
+surrounded by courses of parallel lines called mouldings, which are
+continuous round the apertures, and have neither shafts nor capitals.
+The shaft system and moulding system are entirely separate.
+
+The Gothic architects confounded the two. They clustered the shafts till
+they looked like a group of mouldings. They shod and capitaled the
+mouldings till they looked like a group of shafts. So that a pier became
+merely the side of a door or window rolled up, and the side of the
+window a pier unrolled (vide last Chapter, § XXX.), both being composed
+of a series of small shafts, each with base and capital. The architect
+seemed to have whole mats of shafts at his disposal, like the rush mats
+which one puts under cream cheese. If he wanted a great pier he rolled
+up the mat; if he wanted the side of a door he spread out the mat: and
+now the reader has to add to the other distinctions between the Egyptian
+and the Gothic shaft, already noted in § XXVI. of Chap. VIII., this one
+more--the most important of all--that while the Egyptian rush cluster
+has only one massive capital altogether, the Gothic rush mat has a
+separate tiny capital to every several rush.
+
+§ XXX. The mats were gradually made of finer rushes, until it became
+troublesome to give each rush its capital. In fact, when the groups of
+shafts became excessively complicated, the expansion of their small
+abaci was of no use: it was dispensed with altogether, and the mouldings
+of pier and jamb ran up continuously into the arches.
+
+This condition, though in many respects faulty and false, is yet the
+eminently characteristic state of Gothic: it is the definite formation
+of it as a distinct style, owing no farther aid to classical models; and
+its lightness and complexity render it, when well treated, and enriched
+with Flamboyant decoration, a very glorious means of picturesque effect.
+It is, in fact, this form of Gothic which commends itself most easily to
+the general mind, and which has suggested the innumerable foolish
+theories about the derivation of Gothic from tree trunks and avenues,
+which have from time to time been brought forward by persons ignorant of
+the history of architecture.
+
+§ XXXI. When the sense of picturesqueness, as well as that of justness
+and dignity, had been lost, the spring of the continuous mouldings was
+replaced by what Professor Willis calls the Discontinuous impost; which,
+being a barbarism of the basest and most painful kind, and being to
+architecture what the setting of a saw is to music, I shall not trouble
+the reader to examine. For it is not in my plan to note for him all the
+various conditions of error, but only to guide him to the appreciation
+of the right; and I only note even the true Continuous or Flamboyant
+Gothic because this is redeemed by its beautiful decoration, afterwards
+to be considered. For, as far as structure is concerned, the moment the
+capital vanishes from the shaft, that moment we are in error: all good
+Gothic has true capitals to the shafts of its jambs and traceries, and
+all Gothic is debased the instant the shaft vanishes. It matters not how
+slender, or how small, or how low, the shaft may be: wherever there is
+indication of concentrated vertical support, then the capital is a
+necessary termination. I know how much Gothic, otherwise beautiful, this
+sweeping principle condemns; but it condemns not altogether. We may
+still take delight in its lovely proportions, its rich decoration, or
+its elastic and reedy moulding; but be assured, wherever shafts, or any
+approximations to the forms of shafts, are employed, for whatever
+office, or on whatever scale, be it in jambs or piers, or balustrades,
+or traceries, without capitals, there is a defiance of the natural laws
+of construction; and that, wherever such examples are found in ancient
+buildings, they are either the experiments of barbarism, or the
+commencements of decline.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [47] Appendix 19, "Early English Capitals."
+
+  [48] In this case the weight borne is supposed to increase as the
+    abacus widens; the illustration would have been clearer if I had
+    assumed the breadth of abacus to be constant, and that of the shaft
+    to vary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  THE ARCH LINE.
+
+
+§ I. We have seen in the last section how our means of vertical support
+may, for the sake of economy both of space and material, be gathered
+into piers or shafts, and directed to the sustaining of particular
+points. The next question is how to connect these points or tops of
+shafts with each other, so as to be able to lay on them a continuous
+roof. This the reader, as before, is to favor me by finding out for
+himself, under these following conditions.
+
+Let _s_, _s_, Fig. XXIX. opposite, be two shafts, with their capitals
+ready prepared for their work; and _a_, _b_, _b_, and _c_, _c_, _c_, be
+six stones of different sizes, one very long and large, and two smaller,
+and three smaller still, of which the reader is to choose which he likes
+best, in order to connect the tops of the shafts.
+
+I suppose he will first try if he can lift the great stone _a_, and if he
+can, he will put it very simply on the tops of the two pillars, as at A.
+
+Very well indeed: he has done already what a number of Greek architects
+have been thought very clever for having done. But suppose he _cannot_
+lift the great stone _a_, or suppose I will not give it to him, but only
+the two smaller stones at _b_, _b_; he will doubtless try to put them
+up, tilted against each other, as at _d_. Very awkward this; worse than
+card-house building. But if he cuts off the corners of the stones, so as
+to make each of them of the form _e_, they will stand up very securely,
+as at B.
+
+But suppose he cannot lift even these less stones, but can raise those
+at _c_, _c_, _c_. Then, cutting each of them into the form at _e_, he
+will doubtless set them up as at _f_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXIX.]
+
+§ II. This last arrangement looks a little dangerous. Is there not a
+chance of the stone in the middle pushing the others out, or tilting
+them up and aside, and slipping down itself between them? There is such
+a chance: and if by somewhat altering the form of the stones, we can
+diminish this chance, all the better. I must say "we" now, for perhaps I
+may have to help the reader a little.
+
+The danger is, observe, that the midmost stone at _f_ pushes out the
+side ones: then if we can give the side ones such a shape as that, left
+to themselves, they would fall heavily forward, they will resist this
+push _out_ by their weight, exactly in proportion to their own
+particular inclination or desire to tumble _in_. Take one of them
+separately, standing up as at _g_; it is just possible it may stand up
+as it is, like the Tower of Pisa: but we want it to fall forward.
+Suppose we cut away the parts that are shaded at _h_ and leave it as at
+_i_, it is very certain it cannot stand alone now, but will fall forward
+to our entire satisfaction.
+
+Farther: the midmost stone at _f_ is likely to be troublesome chiefly by
+its weight, pushing down between the others; the more we lighten it the
+better: so we will cut it into exactly the same shape as the side ones,
+chiselling away the shaded parts, as at _h_. We shall then have all the
+three stones _k_, _l_, _m_, of the same shape; and now putting them
+together, we have, at C, what the reader, I doubt not, will perceive at
+once to be a much more satisfactory arrangement than that at _f_.
+
+§ III. We have now got three arrangements; in one using only one piece
+of stone, in the second two, and in the third three. The first
+arrangement has no particular name, except the "horizontal:" but the
+single stone (or beam, it may be,) is called a lintel; the second
+arrangement is called a "Gable;" the third an "Arch."
+
+We might have used pieces of wood instead of stone in all these
+arrangements, with no difference in plan, so long as the beams were kept
+loose, like the stones; but as beams can be securely nailed together at
+the ends, we need not trouble ourselves so much about their shape or
+balance, and therefore the plan at _f_ is a peculiarly wooden
+construction (the reader will doubtless recognise in it the profile of
+many a farm-house roof): and again, because beams are tough, and light,
+and long, as compared with stones, they are admirably adapted for the
+constructions at A and B, the plain lintel and gable, while that at C
+is, for the most part, left to brick and stone.
+
+§ IV. But farther. The constructions, A, B, and C, though very
+conveniently to be first considered as composed of one, two, and three
+pieces, are by no means necessarily so. When we have once cut the stones
+of the arch into a shape like that of _k_, _l_, and _m_, they will hold
+together, whatever their number, place, or size, as at _n_; and the
+great value of the arch is, that it permits small stones to be used with
+safety instead of large ones, which are not always to be had. Stones cut
+into the shape of _k_, _l_, and _m_, whether they be short or long (I
+have drawn them all sizes at _n_ on purpose), are called Voussoirs; this
+is a hard, ugly French name; but the reader will perhaps be kind enough
+to recollect it; it will save us both some trouble: and to make amends
+for this infliction, I will relieve him of the term _keystone_. One
+voussoir is as much a keystone as another; only people usually call the
+stone which is last put in the keystone; and that one happens generally
+to be at the top or middle of the arch.
+
+§ V. Not only the arch, but even the lintel, may be built of many stones
+or bricks. The reader may see lintels built in this way over most of the
+windows of our brick London houses, and so also the gable: there are,
+therefore, two distinct questions respecting each arrangement;--First,
+what is the line or direction of it, which gives it its strength? and,
+secondly, what is the manner of masonry of it, which gives it its
+consistence? The first of these I shall consider in this Chapter under
+the head of the Arch Line, using the term arch as including all manner
+of construction (though we shall have no trouble except about curves);
+and in the next Chapter I shall consider the second, under the head,
+Arch Masonry.
+
+§ VI. Now the arch line is the ghost or skeleton of the arch; or rather
+it is the spinal marrow of the arch, and the voussoirs are the vertebrĉ,
+which keep it safe and sound, and clothe it. This arch line the
+architect has first to conceive and shape in his mind, as opposed to, or
+having to bear, certain forces which will try to distort it this way and
+that; and against which he is first to direct and bend the line itself
+into as strong resistance as he may, and then, with his voussoirs and
+what else he can, to guard it, and help it, and keep it to its duty and
+in its shape. So the arch line is the moral character of the arch, and
+the adverse forces are its temptations; and the voussoirs, and what else
+we may help it with, are its armor and its motives to good conduct.
+
+§ VII. This moral character of the arch is called by architects its
+"Line of Resistance." There is a great deal of nicety in calculating it
+with precision, just as there is sometimes in finding out very precisely
+what is a man's true line of moral conduct; but this, in arch morality
+and in man morality, is a very simple and easily to be understood
+principle,--that if either arch or man expose themselves to their
+special temptations or adverse forces, _outside_ of the voussoirs or
+proper and appointed armor, both will fall. An arch whose line of
+resistance is in the middle of its voussoirs is perfectly safe: in
+proportion as the said line runs near the edge of its voussoirs, the
+arch is in danger, as the man is who nears temptation; and the moment
+the line of resistance emerges out of the voussoirs the arch falls.
+
+§ VIII. There are, therefore, properly speaking, two arch lines. One is
+the visible direction or curve of the arch, which may generally be
+considered as the under edge of its voussoirs, and which has often no
+more to do with the real stability of the arch, than a man's apparent
+conduct has with his heart. The other line, which is the line of
+resistance, or line of good behavior, may or may not be consistent with
+the outward and apparent curves of the arch; but if not, then the
+security of the arch depends simply upon this, whether the voussoirs
+which assume or pretend to the one line are wide enough to include the
+other.
+
+§ IX. Now when the reader is told that the line of resistance varies
+with every change either in place or quantity of the weight above the
+arch, he will see at once that we have no chance of arranging arches by
+their moral characters: we can only take the apparent arch line, or
+visible direction, as a ground of arrangement. We shall consider the
+possible or probable forms or contours of arches in the present Chapter,
+and in the succeeding one the forms of voussoir and other help which
+may best fortify these visible lines against every temptation to lose
+their consistency.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXX.]
+
+§ X. Look back to Fig. XXIX. Evidently the abstract or ghost line of the
+arrangement at A is a plain horizontal line, as here at _a_, Fig. XXX.
+The abstract line of the arrangement at B, Fig. XXIX., is composed of
+two straight lines, set against each other, as here at _b_. The abstract
+line of C, Fig. XXIX., is a curve of some kind, not at present
+determined, suppose _c_, Fig. XXX. Then, as _b_ is two of the straight
+lines at _a_, set up against each other, we may conceive an arrangement,
+_d_, made up of two of the curved lines at _c_, set against each other.
+This is called a pointed arch, which is a contradiction in terms: it
+ought to be called a curved gable; but it must keep the name it has got.
+
+Now _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, Fig. XXX., are the ghosts of the lintel, the
+gable, the arch, and the pointed arch. With the poor lintel ghost we
+need trouble ourselves no farther; there are no changes in him: but
+there is much variety in the other three, and the method of their
+variety will be best discerned by studying _b_ and _d_, as subordinate
+to and connected with the simple arch at _c_.
+
+§ XI. Many architects, especially the worst, have been very curious in
+designing out of the way arches,--elliptical arches, and four-centred
+arches, so called, and other singularities. The good architects have
+generally been content, and we for the present will be so, with God's
+arch, the arch of the rainbow and of the apparent heaven, and which the
+sun shapes for us as it sets and rises. Let us watch the sun for a
+moment as it climbs: when it is a quarter up, it will give us the arch
+_a_, Fig. XXXI.; when it is half up, _b_, and when three quarters up,
+_c_. There will be an infinite number of arches between these, but we
+will take these as sufficient representatives of all. Then _a_ is the
+low arch, _b_ the central or pure arch, _c_ the high arch, and the rays
+of the sun would have drawn for us their voussoirs.
+
+§ XII. We will take these several arches successively, and fixing the
+top of each accurately, draw two right lines thence to its base, _d_,
+_e_, _f_, Fig. XXXI. Then these lines give us the relative gables of
+each of the arches; _d_ is the Italian or southern gable, _e_ the
+central gable, _f_ the Gothic gable.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXI.]
+
+§ XIII. We will again take the three arches with their gables in
+succession, and on each of the sides of the gable, between it and the
+arch, we will describe another arch, as at _g_, _h_, _i_. Then the
+curves so described give the pointed arches belonging to each of the
+round arches; _g_, the flat pointed arch, _h_, the central pointed arch,
+and _i_, the lancet pointed arch.
+
+§ XIV. If the radius with which these intermediate curves are drawn be
+the base of _f_, the last is the equilateral pointed arch, one of great
+importance in Gothic work. But between the gable and circle, in all the
+three figures, there are an infinite number of pointed arches,
+describable with different radii; and the three round arches, be it
+remembered, are themselves representatives of an infinite number,
+passing from the flattest conceivable curve, through the semicircle and
+horseshoe, up to the full circle.
+
+The central and the last group are the most important. The central
+round, or semicircle, is the Roman, the Byzantine, and Norman arch; and
+its relative pointed includes one wide branch of Gothic. The horseshoe
+round is the Arabic and Moorish arch, and its relative pointed includes
+the whole range of Arabic and lancet, or Early English and French
+Gothics. I mean of course by the relative pointed, the entire group of
+which the equilateral arch is the representative. Between it and the
+outer horseshoe, as this latter rises higher, the reader will find, on
+experiment, the great families of what may be called the horseshoe
+pointed,--curves of the highest importance, but which are all included,
+with English lancet, under the term, relative pointed of the horseshoe
+arch.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXII.]
+
+§ XV. The groups above described are all formed of circular arcs, and
+include all truly useful and beautiful arches for ordinary work. I
+believe that singular and complicated curves are made use of in modern
+engineering, but with these the general reader can have no concern: the
+Ponte della Trinita at Florence is the most graceful instance I know of
+such structure; the arch made use of being very subtle, and
+approximating to the low ellipse; for which, in common work, a barbarous
+pointed arch, called four-centred, and composed of bits of circles, is
+substituted by the English builders. The high ellipse, I believe, exists
+in eastern architecture. I have never myself met with it on a large
+scale; but it occurs in the niches of the later portions of the Ducal
+palace at Venice, together with a singular hyperbolic arch, _a_ in Fig.
+XXXIII., to be described hereafter: with such caprices we are not here
+concerned.
+
+§ XVI. We are, however, concerned to notice the absurdity of another
+form of arch, which, with the four-centred, belongs to the English
+perpendicular Gothic.
+
+Taking the gable of any of the groups in Fig. XXXI. (suppose the
+equilateral), here at _b_, in Fig. XXXIII., the dotted line representing
+the relative pointed arch, we may evidently conceive an arch formed by
+reversed curves on the inside of the gable, as here shown by the inner
+curved lines. I imagine the reader by this time knows enough of the
+nature of arches to understand that, whatever strength or stability was
+gained by the curve on the _outside_ of the gable, exactly so much is
+lost by curves on the _inside_. The natural tendency of such an arch to
+dissolution by its own mere weight renders it a feature of detestable
+ugliness, wherever it occurs on a large scale. It is eminently
+characteristic of Tudor work, and it is the profile of the Chinese roof
+(I say on a large scale, because this as well as all other capricious
+arches, may be made secure by their masonry when small, but not
+otherwise). Some allowable modifications of it will be noticed in the
+chapter on Roofs.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXIII.]
+
+§ XVII. There is only one more form of arch which we have to notice.
+When the last described arch is used, not as the principal arrangement,
+but as a mere heading to a common pointed arch, we have the form _c_,
+Fig. XXXIII. Now this is better than the entirely reversed arch for two
+reasons; first, less of the line is weakened by reversing; secondly, the
+double curve has a very high ĉsthetic value, not existing in the mere
+segments of circles. For these reasons arches of this kind are not only
+admissible, but even of great desirableness, when their scale and
+masonry render them secure, but above a certain scale they are
+altogether barbarous; and, with the reversed Tudor arch, wantonly
+employed, are the characteristics of the worst and meanest schools of
+architecture, past or present.
+
+This double curve is called the Ogee; it is the profile of many German
+leaden roofs, of many Turkish domes (there more excusable, because
+associated and in sympathy with exquisitely managed arches of the same
+line in the walls below), of Tudor turrets, as in Henry the Seventh's
+Chapel, and it is at the bottom or top of sundry other blunders all over
+the world.
+
+§ XVIII. The varieties of the ogee curve are infinite, as the reversed
+portion of it may be engrafted on every other form of arch, horseshoe,
+round, or pointed. Whatever is generally worthy of note in these
+varieties, and in other arches of caprice, we shall best discover by
+examining their masonry; for it is by their good masonry only that they
+are rendered either stable or beautiful. To this question, then, let us
+address ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  THE ARCH MASONRY.
+
+
+§ I. On the subject of the stability of arches, volumes have been
+written and volumes more are required. The reader will not, therefore,
+expect from me any very complete explanation of its conditions within
+the limits of a single chapter. But that which is necessary for him to
+know is very simple and very easy; and yet, I believe, some part of it
+is very little known, or noticed.
+
+We must first have a clear idea of what is meant by an arch. It is a
+curved _shell_ of firm materials, on whose back a burden is to be laid
+of _loose_ materials. So far as the materials above it are _not loose_,
+but themselves hold together, the opening below is not an arch, but an
+_excavation_. Note this difference very carefully. If the King of
+Sardinia tunnels through the Mont Cenis, as he proposes, he will not
+require to build a brick arch under his tunnel to carry the weight of
+the Mont Cenis: that would need scientific masonry indeed. The Mont
+Cenis will carry itself, by its own cohesion, and a succession of
+invisible granite arches, rather larger than the tunnel. But when Mr.
+Brunel tunnelled the Thames bottom, he needed to build a brick arch to
+carry the six or seven feet of mud and the weight of water above. That
+is a type of all arches proper.
+
+§ II. Now arches, in practice, partake of the nature of the two. So far
+as their masonry above is Mont-Cenisian, that is to say, colossal in
+comparison of them, and granitic, so that the arch is a mere hole in the
+rock substance of it, the form of the arch is of no consequence
+whatever: it may be rounded, or lozenged, or ogee'd, or anything else;
+and in the noblest architecture there is always _some_ character of this
+kind given to the masonry. It is independent enough not to care about
+the holes cut in it, and does not subside into them like sand. But the
+theory of arches does not presume on any such condition of things; it
+allows itself only the shell of the arch proper; the vertebrĉ, carrying
+their marrow of resistance; and, above this shell, it assumes the wall
+to be in a state of flux, bearing down on the arch, like water or sand,
+with its whole weight. And farther, the problem which is to be solved by
+the arch builder is not merely to carry this weight, but to carry it
+with the least thickness of shell. It is easy to carry it by continually
+thickening your voussoirs: if you have six feet depth of sand or gravel
+to carry, and you choose to employ granite voussoirs six feet thick, no
+question but your arch is safe enough. But it is perhaps somewhat too
+costly: the thing to be done is to carry the sand or gravel with brick
+voussoirs, six inches thick, or, at any rate, with the least thickness
+of voussoir which will be safe; and to do this requires peculiar
+arrangement of the lines of the arch. There are many arrangements,
+useful all in their way, but we have only to do, in the best
+architecture, with the simplest and most easily understood. We have
+first to note those which regard the actual shell of the arch, and then
+we shall give a few examples of the superseding of such expedients by
+Mont-Cenisian masonry.
+
+§ III. What we have to say will apply to all arches, but the central
+pointed arch is the best for general illustration. Let _a_, Plate III.,
+be the shell of a pointed arch with loose loading above; and suppose you
+find that shell not quite thick enough; and that the weight bears too
+heavily on the top of the arch, and is likely to break it in: you
+proceed to thicken your shell, but need you thicken it all equally? Not
+so; you would only waste your good voussoirs. If you have any common
+sense you will thicken it at the top, where a Mylodon's skull is
+thickened for the same purpose (and some human skulls, I fancy), as at
+_b_. The pebbles and gravel above will now shoot off it right and left,
+as the bullets do off a cuirassier's breastplate, and will have no
+chance of beating it in.
+
+If still it be not strong enough, a farther addition may be made, as at
+_c_, now thickening the voussoirs a little at the base also. But as this
+may perhaps throw the arch inconveniently high, or occasion a waste of
+voussoirs at the top, we may employ another expedient.
+
+§ IV. I imagine the reader's common sense, if not his previous
+knowledge, will enable him to understand that if the arch at _a_, Plate
+III., burst _in_ at the top, it must burst _out_ at the sides. Set up
+two pieces of pasteboard, edge to edge, and press them down with your
+hand, and you will see them bend out at the sides. Therefore, if you can
+keep the arch from starting out at the points _p_, _p_, it _cannot_
+curve in at the top, put what weight on it you will, unless by sheer
+crushing of the stones to fragments.
+
+§ V. Now you may keep the arch from starting out at _p_ by loading it at
+_p_, putting more weight upon it and against it at that point; and this,
+in practice, is the way it is usually done. But we assume at present
+that the weight above is sand or water, quite unmanageable, not to be
+directed to the points we choose; and in practice, it may sometimes
+happen that we cannot put weight upon the arch at _p_. We may perhaps
+want an opening above it, or it may be at the side of the building, and
+many other circumstances may occur to hinder us.
+
+§ VI. But if we are not sure that we can put weight above it, we are
+perfectly sure that we can hang weight under it. You may always thicken
+your shell inside, and put the weight upon it as at _x x_, in _d_, Plate
+III. Not much chance of its bursting out at _p_, now, is there?
+
+§ VII. Whenever, therefore, an arch has to bear vertical pressure, it
+will bear it better when its shell is shaped as at _b_ or _d_, than as
+at _a_: _b_ and _d_ are, therefore, the types of arches built to resist
+vertical pressure, all over the world, and from the beginning of
+architecture to its end. None others can be compared with them: all are
+imperfect except these.
+
+[Illustration: Plate III.
+               ARCH MASONRY.]
+
+The added projections at _x x_, in _d_, are called CUSPS, and they are
+the very soul and life of the best northern Gothic; yet never thoroughly
+understood nor found in perfection, except in Italy, the northern
+builders working often, even in the best times, with the vulgar form at
+_a_.
+
+The form at _b_ is rarely found in the north: its perfection is in the
+Lombardic Gothic; and branches of it, good and bad according to their
+use, occur in Saracenic work.
+
+§ VIII. The true and perfect cusp is single only. But it was probably
+invented (by the Arabs?) not as a constructive, but a decorative
+feature, in pure fantasy; and in early northern work it is only the
+application to the arch of the foliation, so called, of penetrated
+spaces in stone surfaces, already enough explained in the "Seven Lamps,"
+Chap. III., p. 85 _et seq._ It is degraded in dignity, and loses its
+usefulness, exactly in proportion to its multiplication on the arch. In
+later architecture, especially English Tudor, it is sunk into dotage,
+and becomes a simple excrescence, a bit of stone pinched up out of the
+arch, as a cook pinches the paste at the edge of a pie.
+
+§ IX. The depth and place of the cusp, that is to say, its exact
+application to the shoulder of the curve of the arch, varies with the
+direction of the weight to be sustained. I have spent more than a month,
+and that in hard work too, in merely trying to get the forms of cusps
+into perfect order: whereby the reader may guess that I have not space
+to go into the subject now; but I shall hereafter give a few of the
+leading and most perfect examples, with their measures and masonry.
+
+§ X. The reader now understands all that he need about the shell of the
+arch, considered as an united piece of stone.
+
+He has next to consider the shape of the voussoirs. This, as much as is
+required, he will be able best to comprehend by a few examples; by which
+I shall be able also to illustrate, or rather which will force me to
+illustrate, some of the methods of Mont-Cenisian masonry, which were to
+be the second part of our subject.
+
+§ XI. 1 and 2, Plate IV., are two cornices; 1 from St. Antonio, Padua;
+2, from the Cathedral of Sens. I want them for cornices; but I have put
+them in this plate because, though their arches are filled up behind,
+and are in fact mere blocks of stone with arches cut into their faces,
+they illustrate the constant masonry of small arches, both in Italian
+and Northern Romanesque, but especially Italian, each arch being cut out
+of its own proper block of stone: this is Mont-Cenisian enough, on a
+small scale.
+
+3 is a window from Carnarvon Castle, and very primitive and interesting
+in manner,--one of its arches being of one stone, the other of two. And
+here we have an instance of a form of arch which would be barbarous
+enough on a large scale, and of many pieces; but quaint and agreeable
+thus massively built.
+
+4 is from a little belfry in a Swiss village above Vevay; one fancies
+the window of an absurd form, seen in the distance, but one is pleased
+with it on seeing its masonry. It could hardly be stronger.
+
+§ XII. These then are arches cut of one block. The next step is to form
+them of two pieces, set together at the head of the arch. 6, from the
+Eremitani, Padua, is very quaint and primitive in manner: it is a
+curious church altogether, and has some strange traceries cut out of
+single blocks. One is given in the "Seven Lamps," Plate VII., in the
+left-hand corner at the bottom.
+
+7, from the Frari, Venice, very firm and fine, and admirably decorated,
+as we shall see hereafter. 5, the simple two-pieced construction,
+wrought with the most exquisite proportion and precision of workmanship,
+as is everything else in the glorious church to which it belongs, San
+Fermo of Verona. The addition of the top piece, which completes the
+circle, does not affect the plan of the beautiful arches, with their
+simple and perfect cusps; but it is highly curious, and serves to show
+how the idea of the cusp rose out of mere foliation. The whole of the
+architecture of this church may be characterised as exhibiting the
+maxima of simplicity in construction, and perfection in workmanship,--a
+rare unison: for, in general, simple designs are rudely worked, and as
+the builder perfects his execution, he complicates his plan. Nearly
+all the arches of San Fermo are two-pieced.
+
+[Illustration: Plate IV.
+               ARCH MASONRY.]
+
+§ XIII. We have seen the construction with one and two pieces: _a_ and
+_b_, Fig. 8, Plate IV., are the general types of the construction with
+three pieces, uncusped and cusped; _c_ and _d_ with five pieces,
+uncusped and cusped. Of these the three-pieced construction is of
+enormous importance, and must detain us some time. The five-pieced is
+the three-pieced with a joint added on each side, and is also of great
+importance. The four-pieced, which is the two-pieced with added joints,
+rarely occurs, and need not detain us.
+
+§ XIV. It will be remembered that in first working out the principle of
+the arch, we composed the arch of three pieces. Three is the smallest
+number which can exhibit the real _principle_ of arch masonry, and it
+may be considered as representative of all arches built on that
+principle; the one and two-pieced arches being microscopic
+Mont-Cenisian, mere caves in blocks of stone, or gaps between two rocks
+leaning together.
+
+But the three-pieced arch is properly representative of all; and the
+larger and more complicated constructions are merely produced by keeping
+the central piece for what is called a keystone, and putting additional
+joints at the sides. Now so long as an arch is pure circular or pointed,
+it does not matter how many joints or voussoirs you have, nor where the
+joints are; nay, you may joint your keystone itself, and make it
+two-pieced. But if the arch be of any bizarre form, especially ogee, the
+joints must be in particular places, and the masonry simple, or it will
+not be thoroughly good and secure; and the fine schools of the ogee arch
+have only arisen in countries where it was the custom to build arches of
+few pieces.
+
+§ XV. The typical pure pointed arch of Venice is a five-pieced arch,
+with its stones in three orders of magnitude, the longest being the
+lowest, as at _b2_, Plate III. If the arch be very large, a fourth order
+of magnitude is added, as at _a2_. The portals of the palaces of Venice
+have one or other of these masonries, almost without exception. Now, as
+one piece is added to make a larger door, one piece is taken away to
+make a smaller one, or a window, and the masonry type of the Venetian
+Gothic window is consequently three-pieced, _c2_.
+
+§ XVI. The reader knows already where a cusp is useful. It is wanted, he
+will remember, to give weight to those side stones, and draw them
+inwards against the thrust of the top stone. Take one of the side stones
+of _c2_ out for a moment, as at _d_. Now the _proper_ place of the cusp
+upon it varies with the weight which it bears or requires; but in
+practice this nicety is rarely observed; the place of the cusp is almost
+always determined by ĉsthetic considerations, and it is evident that the
+variations in its place may be infinite. Consider the cusp as a wave
+passing up the side stone from its bottom to its top; then you will have
+the succession of forms from _e_ to _g_ (Plate III.), with infinite
+degrees of transition from each to each; but of which you may take _e_,
+_f_, and _g_, as representing three great families of cusped arches. Use
+_e_ for your side stones, and you have an arch as that at _h_ below,
+which may be called a down-cusped arch. Use _f_ for the side stone, and
+you have _i_, which may be called a mid-cusped arch. Use _g_, and you
+have _k_, an up-cusped arch.
+
+§ XVII. The reader will observe that I call the arch mid-cusped, not
+when the cusped point is in the middle of the curve of the arch, but
+when it is in the middle of the _side piece_, and also that where the
+side pieces join the keystone there will be a change, perhaps somewhat
+abrupt, in the curvature.
+
+I have preferred to call the arch mid-cusped with respect to its side
+piece than with respect to its own curve, because the most beautiful
+Gothic arches in the world, those of the Lombard Gothic, have, in all
+the instances I have examined, a form more or less approximating to this
+mid-cusped one at _i_ (Plate III.), but having the curvature of the cusp
+carried up into the keystone, as we shall see presently: where, however,
+the arch is built of many voussoirs, a mid-cusped arch will mean one
+which has the point of the cusp midway between its own base and apex.
+
+The Gothic arch of Venice is almost invariably up-cusped, as at _k_.
+The reader may note that, in both down-cusped and up-cusped arches, the
+piece of stone, added to form the cusp, is of the shape of a scymitar,
+held down in the one case and up in the other.
+
+§ XVIII. Now, in the arches _h_, _i_, _k_, a slight modification has
+been made in the form of the central piece, in order that it may
+continue the curve of the cusp. This modification is not to be given to
+it in practice without considerable nicety of workmanship; and some
+curious results took place in Venice from this difficulty.
+
+At _l_ (Plate III.) is the shape of the Venetian side stone, with its
+cusp detached from the arch. Nothing can possibly be better or more
+graceful, or have the weight better disposed in order to cause it to nod
+forwards against the keystone, as above explained, Ch. X. § II., where I
+developed the whole system of the arch from three pieces, in order that
+the reader might now clearly see the use of the weight of the cusp.
+
+Now a Venetian Gothic palace has usually at least three stories; with
+perhaps ten or twelve windows in each story, and this on two or three of
+its sides, requiring altogether some hundred to a hundred and fifty side
+pieces.
+
+I have no doubt, from observation of the way the windows are set
+together, that the side pieces were carved in pairs, like hooks, of
+which the keystones were to be the eyes; that these side pieces were
+ordered by the architect in the gross, and were used by him sometimes
+for wider, sometimes for narrower windows; bevelling the two ends as
+required, fitting in keystones as he best could, and now and then
+varying the arrangement by turning the side pieces _upside down_.
+
+There were various conveniences in this way of working, one of the
+principal being that the side pieces with their cusps were always cut to
+their complete form, and that no part of the cusp was carried out into
+the keystone, which followed the curve of the outer arch itself. The
+ornaments of the cusp might thus be worked without any troublesome
+reference to the rest of the arch.
+
+§ XIX. Now let us take a pair of side pieces, made to order, like that
+at _l_, and see what we can make of them. We will try to fit them first
+with a keystone which continues the curve of the outer arch, as at _m_.
+This the reader assuredly thinks an ugly arch. There are a great many of
+them in Venice, the ugliest things there, and the Venetian builders
+quickly began to feel them so. What could they do to better them? The
+arch at _m_ has a central piece of the form _r_. Substitute for it a
+piece of the form _s_, and we have the arch at _n_.
+
+§ XX. This arch at _n_ is not so strong as that at _m_; but, built of
+good marble, and with its pieces of proper thickness, it is quite strong
+enough for all practical purposes on a small scale. I have examined at
+least two thousand windows of this kind and of the other Venetian ogees,
+of which that at _y_ (in which the plain side-piece _d_ is used instead
+of the cusped one) is the simplest; and I never found _one_, even in the
+most ruinous palaces (in which they had had to sustain the distorted
+weight of falling walls) in which the central piece was fissured; and
+this is the only danger to which the window is exposed; in other
+respects it is as strong an arch as can be built.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the change from the _r_ keystone to the
+_s_ keystone was instantaneous. It was a change wrought out by many
+curious experiments, which we shall have to trace hereafter, and to
+throw the resultant varieties of form into their proper groups.
+
+§ XXI. One step more: I take a mid-cusped side piece in its block form
+at _t_, with the bricks which load the back of it. Now, as these bricks
+support it behind, and since, as far as the use of the cusp is
+concerned, it matters not whether its weight be in marble or bricks,
+there is nothing to hinder us from cutting out some of the marble, as at
+_u_, and filling up the space with bricks. (_Why_ we should take a fancy
+to do this, I do not pretend to guess at present; all I have to assert
+is, that, if the fancy should strike us, there would be no harm in it).
+Substituting this side piece for the other in the window _n_, we have
+that at _w_, which may, perhaps, be of some service to us afterwards;
+here we have nothing more to do with it than to note that, thus built,
+and properly backed by brickwork, it is just as strong and safe a
+form as that at _n_; but that this, as well as every variety of ogee
+arch, depends entirely for its safety, fitness, and beauty, on the
+masonry which we have just analysed; and that, built on a large scale,
+and with many voussoirs, all such arches would be unsafe and absurd in
+general architecture. Yet they may be used occasionally for the sake of
+the exquisite beauty of which their rich and fantastic varieties admit,
+and sometimes for the sake of another merit, exactly the opposite of the
+constructional ones we are at present examining, that they seem to stand
+by enchantment.
+
+[Illustration: Plate V.
+               Arch Masonry.
+               BRULETTO OF COMO.]
+
+§ XXII. In the above reasonings, the inclination of the joints of the
+voussoirs to the curves of the arch has not been considered. It is a
+question of much nicety, and which I have not been able as yet fully to
+investigate: but the natural idea of the arrangement of these lines
+(which in round arches are of course perpendicular to the curve) would
+be that every voussoir should have the lengths of its outer and inner
+arched surface in the same proportion to each other. Either this actual
+law, or a close approximation to it, is assuredly enforced in the best
+Gothic buildings.
+
+§ XXIII. I may sum up all that it is necessary for the reader to keep in
+mind of the general laws connected with this subject, by giving him an
+example of each of the two forms of the perfect Gothic arch, uncusped
+and cusped, treated with the most simple and magnificent masonry, and
+partly, in both cases, Mont-Cenisian.
+
+The first, Plate V., is a window from the Broletto of Como. It shows, in
+its filling, first, the single-pieced arch, carried on groups of four
+shafts, and a single slab of marble filling the space above, and pierced
+with a quatrefoil (Mont-Cenisian, this), while the mouldings above are
+each constructed with a separate system of voussoirs, all of them
+shaped, I think, on the principle above stated, § XXII., in alternate
+serpentine and marble; the outer arch being a noble example of the pure
+uncusped Gothic construction, _b_ of Plate III.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXIV.]
+
+§ XXIV. Fig. XXXIV. is the masonry of the side arch of, as far as I know
+or am able to judge, the most perfect Gothic sepulchral monument in the
+world, the foursquare canopy of the (nameless?)[49] tomb standing over
+the small cemetery gate of the Church of St. Anastasia at Verona. I
+shall have frequent occasion to recur to this monument, and, I believe,
+shall be able sufficiently to justify the terms in which I speak of it:
+meanwhile, I desire only that the reader should observe the severity
+and simplicity of the arch lines, the exquisitely delicate suggestion of
+the ogee curve in the apex, and chiefly the use of the cusp in giving
+_inward_ weight to the great pieces of stone on the flanks of the arch,
+and preventing their thrust outwards from being severely thrown on the
+lowermost stones. The effect of this arrangement is, that the whole
+massy canopy is sustained safely by four slender pillars (as will be
+seen hereafter in the careful plate I hope to give of it), these pillars
+being rather steadied than materially assisted against the thrust, by
+iron bars, about an inch thick, connecting them at the heads of the
+abaci; a feature of peculiar importance in this monument, inasmuch as we
+know it to be part of the original construction, by a beautiful little
+Gothic wreathed pattern, like one of the hems of garments of Fra
+Angelico, running along the iron bar itself. So carefully, and so far,
+is the system of decoration carried out in this pure and lovely
+monument, my most beloved throughout all the length and breadth of
+Italy;--chief, as I think, among all the sepulchral marbles of a land of
+mourning.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [49] At least I cannot find any account of it in Maffei's "Verona,"
+    nor anywhere else, to be depended upon. It is, I doubt not, a work
+    of the beginning of the thirteenth century. Vide Appendix 19, "Tombs
+    at St. Anastasia."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  THE ARCH LOAD.
+
+
+§ I. In the preceding enquiry we have always supposed either that the
+load upon the arch was perfectly loose, as of gravel or sand, or that it
+was Mont-Cenisian, and formed one mass with the arch voussoirs, of more
+or less compactness.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXV.]
+
+In practice, the state is usually something between the two. Over
+bridges and tunnels it sometimes approaches to the condition of mere
+dust or yielding earth; but in architecture it is mostly firm masonry,
+not altogether acting with the voussoirs, yet by no means bearing on
+them with perfectly dead weight, but locking itself together above them,
+and capable of being thrown into forms which relieve them, in some
+degree, from its pressure.
+
+§ II. It is evident that if we are to place a continuous roof above the
+line of arches, we must fill up the intervals between them on the tops
+of the columns. We have at present nothing granted us but the bare
+masonry, as here at _a_, Fig. XXXV., and we must fill up the intervals
+between the semicircle so as to obtain a level line of support. We may
+first do this simply as at _b_, with plain mass of wall; so laying the
+roof on the top, which is the method of the pure Byzantine and Italian
+Romanesque. But if we find too much stress is thus laid on the arches,
+we may introduce small second shafts on the top of the great shaft, _a_,
+Fig. XXXVI., which may assist in carrying the roof, conveying great part
+of its weight at once to the heads of the main shafts, and relieving
+from its pressure the centres of the arches.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXVI.]
+
+§ III. The new shaft thus introduced may either remain lifted on the
+head of the great shaft, or may be carried to the ground in front of it,
+or through it, _b_, Fig. XXXVI.; in which latter case the main shaft
+divides into two or more minor shafts, and forms a group with the shaft
+brought down from above.
+
+§ IV. When this shaft, brought from roof to ground, is subordinate to
+the main pier, and either is carried down the face of it, or forms no
+large part of the group, the principle is Romanesque or Gothic, _b_,
+Fig. XXXVI. When it becomes a bold central shaft, and the main pier
+splits into two minor shafts on its sides, the principle is Classical or
+Palladian, _c_, Fig. XXXVI. Which latter arrangement becomes absurd or
+unsatisfactory in proportion to the sufficiency of the main shaft to
+carry the roof without the help of the minor shafts or arch, which in
+many instances of Palladian work look as if they might be removed
+without danger to the building.
+
+§ V. The form _a_ is a more pure Northern Gothic type than even _b_,
+which is the connecting link between it and the classical type. It is
+found chiefly in English and other northern Gothic, and in early
+Lombardic, and is, I doubt not, derived as above explained, Chap. I. §
+XXVII. _b_ is a general French Gothic and French Romanesque form, as in
+great purity at Valence.
+
+The small shafts of the form _a_ and _b_, as being northern, are
+generally connected with steep vaulted roofs, and receive for that
+reason the name of vaulting shafts.
+
+§ VI. Of these forms _b_, Fig. XXXV., is the purest and most sublime,
+expressing the power of the arch most distinctly. All the others have
+some appearance of dovetailing and morticing of timber rather than
+stonework; nor have I ever yet seen a single instance, quite
+satisfactory, of the management of the capital of the main shaft, when
+it had either to sustain the base of the vaulting shaft, as in _a_, or
+to suffer it to pass through it, as in _b_, Fig. XXXVI. Nor is the
+bracket which frequently carries the vaulting shaft in English work a
+fitting support for a portion of the fabric which is at all events
+presumed to carry a considerable part of the weight of the roof.
+
+§ VII. The triangular spaces on the flanks of the arch are called
+Spandrils, and if the masonry of these should be found, in any of its
+forms, too heavy for the arch, their weight may be diminished, while
+their strength remains the same, by piercing them with circular holes or
+lights. This is rarely necessary in ordinary architecture, though
+sometimes of great use in bridges and iron roofs (a succession of such
+circles may be seen, for instance, in the spandrils at the Euston Square
+station); but, from its constructional value, it becomes the best form
+in which to arrange spandril decorations, as we shall see hereafter.
+
+§ VIII. The height of the load above the arch is determined by the needs
+of the building and possible length of the shaft; but with this we have
+at present nothing to do, for we have performed the task which was set
+us. We have ascertained, as it was required that we should in § VI. of
+Chap. III. (A), the construction of walls; (B), that of piers; (C), that
+of piers with lintels or arches prepared for roofing. We have next,
+therefore, to examine (D) the structure of the roof.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  THE ROOF.
+
+
+§ I. Hitherto our enquiry has been unembarrassed by any considerations
+relating exclusively either to the exterior or interior of buildings.
+But it can remain so no longer. As far as the architect is concerned,
+one side of a wall is generally the same as another; but in the roof
+there are usually two distinct divisions of the structure; one, a shell,
+vault, or flat ceiling, internally visible, the other, an upper
+structure, built of timber, to protect the lower; or of some different
+form, to support it. Sometimes, indeed, the internally visible structure
+is the real roof, and sometimes there are more than two divisions, as in
+St. Paul's, where we have a central shell with a mask below and above.
+Still it will be convenient to remember the distinction between the part
+of the roof which is usually visible from within, and whose only
+business is to stand strongly, and not fall in, which I shall call the
+Roof Proper; and, secondly, the upper roof, which, being often partly
+supported by the lower, is not so much concerned with its own stability
+as with the weather, and is appointed to throw off snow, and get rid of
+rain, as fast as possible, which I shall call the Roof Mask.
+
+§ II. It is, however, needless for me to engage the reader in the
+discussion of the various methods of construction of Roofs Proper, for
+this simple reason, that no person without long experience can tell
+whether a roof be wisely constructed or not; nor tell at all, even with
+help of any amount of experience, without examination of the several
+parts and bearings of it, very different from any observation possible
+to the general critic: and more than this, the enquiry would be useless
+to us in our Venetian studies, where the roofs are either not
+contemporary with the buildings, or flat, or else vaults of the simplest
+possible constructions, which have been admirably explained by Willis in
+his "Architecture of the Middle Ages," Chap. VII., to which I may refer
+the reader for all that it would be well for him to know respecting the
+connexion of the different parts of the vault with the shafts. He would
+also do well to read the passages on Tudor vaulting, pp. 185-193, in Mr.
+Garbett's rudimentary Treatise on Design, before alluded to.[50] I shall
+content myself therefore with noting one or two points on which neither
+writer has had occasion to touch, respecting the Roof Mask.
+
+§ III. It was said in § V. of Chapter III. that we should not have
+occasion, in speaking of roof construction, to add materially to the
+forms then suggested. The forms which we have to add are only those
+resulting from the other curves of the arch developed in the last
+chapter; that is to say, the various eastern domes and cupolas arising
+out of the revolution of the horseshoe and ogee curves, together with
+the well-known Chinese concave roof. All these forms are of course
+purely decorative, the bulging outline, or concave surface, being of no
+more use, or rather of less, in throwing off snow or rain, than the
+ordinary spire and gable; and it is rather curious, therefore, that all
+of them, on a small scale, should have obtained so extensive use in
+Germany and Switzerland, their native climate being that of the east,
+where their purpose seems rather to concentrate light upon their orbed
+surfaces. I much doubt their applicability, on a large scale, to
+architecture of any admirable dignity; their chief charm is, to the
+European eye, that of strangeness; and it seems to me possible that in
+the east the bulging form may be also delightful, from the idea of its
+enclosing a volume of cool air. I enjoy them in St. Mark's, chiefly
+because they increase the fantastic and unreal character of St. Mark's
+Place; and because they appear to sympathise with an expression,
+common, I think, to all the buildings of that group, of a natural
+buoyancy, as if they floated in the air or on the surface of the sea.
+But, assuredly, they are not features to be recommended for
+imitation.[51]
+
+§ IV. One form, closely connected with the Chinese concave, is, however,
+often constructively right,--the gable with an inward angle, occurring
+with exquisitely picturesque effect throughout the domestic architecture
+of the north, especially Germany and Switzerland; the lower slope being
+either an attached external penthouse roof, for protection of the wall,
+as in Fig. XXXVII., or else a kind of buttress set on the angle of the
+tower; and in either case the roof itself being a simple gable,
+continuous beneath it.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXVII.]
+
+§ V. The true gable, as it is the simplest and most natural, so I esteem
+it the grandest of roofs; whether rising in ridgy darkness, like a grey
+slope of slaty mountains, over the precipitous walls of the northern
+cathedrals, or stretched in burning breadth above the white and
+square-set groups of the southern architecture. But this difference
+between its slope in the northern and southern structure is a matter of
+far greater importance than is commonly supposed, and it is this to
+which I would especially direct the reader's attention.
+
+§ VI. One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off snow in the
+north, has been a thousand times alluded to: another I do not remember
+having seen noticed, namely, that rooms in a roof are comfortably
+habitable in the north, which are painful _sotto piombi_ in Italy; and
+that there is in wet climates a natural tendency in all men to live as
+high as possible, out of the damp and mist. These two causes, together
+with accessible quantities of good timber, have induced in the north a
+general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or squared above a
+tower, becomes a spire or turret; and this feature, worked out with
+elaborate decoration, is the key-note of the whole system of aspiration,
+so called, which the German critics have so ingeniously and falsely
+ascribed to a devotional sentiment pervading the Northern Gothic: I
+entirely and boldly deny the whole theory; our cathedrals were for the
+most part built by worldly people, who loved the world, and would have
+gladly staid in it for ever; whose best hope was the escaping hell,
+which they thought to do by building cathedrals, but who had very vague
+conceptions of Heaven in general, and very feeble desires respecting
+their entrance therein; and the form of the spired cathedral has no more
+intentional reference to Heaven, as distinguished from the flattened
+slope of the Greek pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman house has,
+as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one. We may now, with
+ingenious pleasure, trace such symbolic characters in the form; we may
+now use it with such definite meaning; but we only prevent ourselves
+from all right understanding of history, by attributing much influence
+to these poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The
+human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such silken cords;
+and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose tiles in the roof,
+have, unhappily, much more to do with the fashions of a man's house
+building than his ideas of celestial happiness or angelic virtue.
+Associations of affection have far higher power, and forms which can be
+no otherwise accounted for may often be explained by reference to the
+natural features of the country, or to anything which habit must have
+rendered familiar, and therefore delightful; but the direct
+symbolisation of a sentiment is a weak motive with all men, and far
+more so in the practical minds of the north than among the early
+Christians, who were assuredly quite as heavenly-minded, when they built
+basilicas, or cut conchas out of the catacombs, as were ever the Norman
+barons or monks.
+
+§ VII. There is, however, in the north an animal activity which
+materially aided the system of building begun in mere utility,--an
+animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as the languor of the
+south in reclining or level work. Imagine the difference between the
+action of a man urging himself to his work in a snow storm, and the
+inaction of one laid at his length on a sunny bank among cicadas and
+fallen olives, and you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies
+which were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remembering
+always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the other death.
+
+§ VIII. And to the force of this vital instinct we have farther to add
+the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of the groups and
+wildernesses of the tree which is to the German mind what the olive or
+palm is to the southern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once been
+habituated to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the
+multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the
+repetition of similar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of
+flat or massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of the
+poplar, more especially in the valleys of France; but think of the
+spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling with which the
+Northman would be inspired by the frostwork wreathed upon its glittering
+point, and the Italian by the dark green depth of sunshine on the broad
+table of the stone-pine[52] (and consider by the way whether the spruce
+fir be a more heavenly-minded tree than those dark canopies of the
+Mediterranean isles).
+
+§ IX. Circumstance and sentiment, therefore, aiding each other, the
+steep roof becomes generally adopted, and delighted in, throughout the
+north; and then, with the gradual exaggeration with which every pleasant
+idea is pursued by the human mind, it is raised into all manner of
+peaks, and points, and ridges; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on
+its flanks, and the walls increased in height, in proportion, until we
+get indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more principle of
+religious aspiration in it than a child's tower of cards. What is more,
+the desire to build high is complicated with the peculiar love of the
+grotesque[53] which is characteristic of the north, together with
+especial delight in multiplication of small forms, as well as in
+exaggerated points of shade and energy, and a certain degree of
+consequent insensibility to perfect grace and quiet truthfulness; so
+that a northern architect could not feel the beauty of the Elgin
+marbles, and there will always be (in those who have devoted themselves
+to this particular school) a certain incapacity to taste the finer
+characters of Greek art, or to understand Titian, Tintoret, or Raphael:
+whereas among the Italian Gothic workmen, this capacity was never lost,
+and Nino Pisano and Orcagna could have understood the Theseus in an
+instant, and would have received from it new life. There can be no
+question that theirs was the greatest school, and carried out by the
+greatest men; and that while those who began with this school could
+perfectly well feel Rouen Cathedral, those who study the Northern Gothic
+remain in a narrowed field--one of small pinnacles, and dots, and
+crockets, and twitched faces--and cannot comprehend the meaning of a
+broad surface or a grand line. Nevertheless the northern school is an
+admirable and delightful thing, but a lower thing than the southern. The
+Gothic of the Ducal Palace of Venice is in harmony with all that is
+grand in all the world: that of the north is in harmony with the
+grotesque northern spirit only.
+
+§ X. We are, however, beginning to lose sight of our roof structure in
+its spirit, and must return to our text. As the height of the walls
+increased, in sympathy with the rise of the roof, while their thickness
+remained the same, it became more and more necessary to support them by
+buttresses; but--and this is another point that the reader must
+specially note--it is not the steep roof mask which requires the
+buttress, but the vaulting beneath it; the roof mask being a mere wooden
+frame tied together by cross timbers, and in small buildings often put
+together on the ground, raised afterwards, and set on the walls like a
+hat, bearing vertically upon them; and farther, I believe in most cases
+the northern vaulting requires its great array of external buttress, not
+so much from any peculiar boldness in its own forms, as from the greater
+comparative thinness and height of the walls, and more determined
+throwing of the whole weight of the roof on particular points. Now the
+connexion of the interior frame-work (or true roof) with the buttress,
+at such points, is not visible to the spectators from without; but the
+relation of the roof mask to the top of the wall which it protects, or
+from which it springs, is perfectly visible; and it is a point of so
+great importance in the effect of the building, that it will be well to
+make it a subject of distinct consideration in the following Chapter.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [50] Appendix 17
+
+  [51] I do not speak of the true dome, because I have not studied its
+    construction enough to know at what largeness of scale it begins to
+    be rather a _tour de force_ than a convenient or natural form of
+    roof, and because the ordinary spectator's choice among its various
+    outlines must always be dependent on ĉsthetic considerations only,
+    and can in no wise be grounded on any conception of its infinitely
+    complicated structural principles.
+
+  [52] I shall not be thought to have overrated the effect of forest
+    scenery on the _northern_ mind; but I was glad to hear a Spanish
+    gentleman, the other day, describing, together with his own, the
+    regret which the peasants in his neighborhood had testified for the
+    loss of a noble stone-pine, one of the grandest in Spain, which its
+    proprietor had suffered to be cut down for small gain. He said that
+    the mere spot where it had grown was still popularly known as "El
+    Pino."
+
+  [53] Appendix 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  THE ROOF CORNICE.
+
+
+§ I. It will be remembered that in the Sixth Chapter we paused (§ X.) at
+the point where the addition of brackets to the ordinary wall cornice
+would have converted it into a structure proper for sustaining a roof.
+Now the wall cornice was treated throughout our enquiry (compare Chapter
+VII. § V.) as the capital of the wall, and as forming, by its
+concentration, the capital of the shaft. But we must not reason _back_
+from the capital to the cornice, and suppose that an extension of the
+principles of the capital to the whole length of the wall, will serve
+for the roof cornice; for all our conclusions respecting the capital
+were based on the supposition of its being adapted to carry considerable
+weight condensed on its abacus: but the roof cornice is, in most cases,
+required rather to project boldly than to carry weight; and arrangements
+are therefore to be adopted for it which will secure the projection of
+large surfaces without being calculated to resist extraordinary
+pressure. This object is obtained by the use of brackets at intervals,
+which are the peculiar distinction of the roof cornice.
+
+§ II. Roof cornices are generally to be divided into two great families:
+the first and simplest, those which are composed merely by the
+projection of the edge of the roof mask over the wall, sustained by such
+brackets or spurs as may be necessary; the second, those which provide a
+walk round the edge of the roof, and which require, therefore, some
+stronger support, as well as a considerable mass of building above or
+beside the roof mask, and a parapet. These two families we shall
+consider in succession.
+
+§ III. 1. The Eaved Cornice. We may give it this name, as represented in
+the simplest form by cottage eaves. It is used, however, in bold
+projection, both in north, and south, and east; its use being, in the
+north, to throw the rain well away from the wall of the building; in the
+south to give it shade; and it is ordinarily constructed of the ends of
+the timbers of the roof mask (with their tiles or shingles continued to
+the edge of the cornice), and sustained by spurs of timber. This is its
+most picturesque and natural form; not inconsistent with great splendor
+of architecture in the mediĉval Italian domestic buildings, superb in
+its mass of cast shadow, and giving rich effect to the streets of Swiss
+towns, even when they have no other claim to interest. A farther value
+is given to it by its waterspouts, for in order to avoid loading it with
+weight of water in the gutter at the edge, where it would be a strain on
+the fastenings of the pipe, it has spouts of discharge at intervals of
+three or four feet,--rows of magnificent leaden or iron dragons' heads,
+full of delightful character, except to any person passing along the
+middle of the street in a heavy shower. I have had my share of their
+kindness in my time, but owe them no grudge; on the contrary, much
+gratitude for the delight of their fantastic outline on the calm blue
+sky, when they had no work to do but to open their iron mouths and pant
+in the sunshine.
+
+§ IV. When, however, light is more valuable than shadow, or when the
+architecture of the wall is too fair to be concealed, it becomes
+necessary to draw the cornice into narrower limits; a change of
+considerable importance, in that it permits the gutter, instead of being
+of lead and hung to the edge of the cornice, to be of stone, and
+supported by brackets in the wall, these brackets becoming proper
+recipients of after decoration (and sometimes associated with the stone
+channels of discharge, called gargoyles, which belong, however, more
+properly to the other family of cornices). The most perfect and
+beautiful example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the
+rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by small
+brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower edge decorated
+with the English dogtooth moulding, whose sharp zigzag mingles richly
+with the curved edges of the tiling. I know no cornice more beautiful in
+its extreme simplicity and serviceableness.
+
+§ V. The cornice of the Greek Doric is a condition of the same kind, in
+which, however, there are no brackets, but useless appendages hung to
+the bottom of the gutter (giving, however, some impression of support as
+seen from a distance), and decorated with stone symbolisms of raindrops.
+The brackets are not allowed, because they would interfere with the
+sculpture, which in this architecture is put beneath the cornice; and
+the overhanging form of the gutter is nothing more than a vast dripstone
+moulding, to keep the rain from such sculpture: its decoration of guttĉ,
+seen in silver points against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a
+kind of continual refreshment and remembrance of rain in it; but the
+whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only endurable when the
+eye is quickly drawn away from it to sculpture.
+
+§ VI. In later cornices, invented for the Greek orders, and farther
+developed by the Romans, the bracket appears in true importance, though
+of barbarous and effeminate outline: and gorgeous decorations are
+applied to it, and to the various horizontal mouldings which it carries,
+some of them of great beauty, and of the highest value to the mediĉval
+architects who imitated them. But a singularly gross mistake was made in
+the distribution of decoration on these rich cornices (I do not know
+when first, nor does it matter to me or to the reader), namely, the
+charging with ornament the under surface of the cornice between the
+brackets, that is to say, the exact piece of the whole edifice, from top
+to bottom, where ornament is least visible. I need hardly say much
+respecting the wisdom of this procedure, excusable only if the whole
+building were covered with ornament; but it is curious to see the way in
+which modern architects have copied it, even when they had little enough
+ornament to spare. For instance, I suppose few persons look at the
+Athenĉum Club-house without feeling vexed at the meagreness and
+meanness of the windows of the ground floor: if, however, they look up
+under the cornice, and have good eyes, they will perceive that the
+architect has reserved his decorations to put between the brackets; and
+by going up to the first floor, and out on the gallery, they may succeed
+in obtaining some glimpses of the designs of the said decorations.
+
+§ VII. Such as they are, or were, these cornices were soon considered
+essential parts of the "order" to which they belonged; and the same
+wisdom which endeavored to fix the proportions of the orders, appointed
+also that no order should go without its cornice. The reader has
+probably heard of the architectural division of superstructure into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice; parts which have been appointed by
+great architects to all their work, in the same spirit in which great
+rhetoricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium, and
+narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to consider that it
+may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof, and get rid of rain,
+without such an arrangement, as it is to tell a plain fact without an
+exordium or peroration; but he must very absolutely consider that the
+architectural peroration or cornice is strictly and sternly limited to
+the end of the wall's speech,--that is, to the edge of the roof; and
+that it has nothing whatever to do with shafts nor the orders of them.
+And he will then be able fully to enjoy the farther ordinance of the
+late Roman and Renaissance architects, who, attaching it to the shaft as
+if it were part of its shadow, and having to employ their shafts often
+in places where they came not near the roof, forthwith cut the
+roof-cornice to pieces and attached a bit of it to every column;
+thenceforward to be carried by the unhappy shaft wherever it went, in
+addition to any other work on which it might happen to be employed. I do
+not recollect among any living beings, except Renaissance architects,
+any instance of a parallel or comparable stupidity: but one can imagine
+a savage getting hold of a piece of one of our iron wire ropes, with its
+rings upon it at intervals to bind it together, and pulling the wires
+asunder to apply them to separate purposes; but imagining there was
+magic in the ring that bound them, and so cutting that to pieces also,
+and fastening a little bit of it to every wire.
+
+§ VIII. Thus much may serve us to know respecting the first family of
+wall cornices. The second is immeasurably more important, and includes
+the cornices of all the best buildings in the world. It has derived its
+best form from mediĉval military architecture, which imperatively
+required two things; first, a parapet which should permit sight and
+offence, and afford defence at the same time; and secondly, a projection
+bold enough to enable the defenders to rake the bottom of the wall with
+falling bodies; projection which, if the wall happened to slope inwards,
+required not to be small. The thoroughly magnificent forms of cornice
+thus developed by necessity in military buildings, were adopted, with
+more or less of boldness or distinctness, in domestic architecture,
+according to the temper of the times and the circumstances of the
+individual--decisively in the baron's house, imperfectly in the
+burgher's: gradually they found their way into ecclesiastical
+architecture, under wise modifications in the early cathedrals, with
+infinite absurdity in the imitations of them; diminishing in size as
+their original purpose sank into a decorative one, until we find
+battlements, two-and-a-quarter inches square, decorating the gates of
+the Philanthropic Society.
+
+§ IX. There are, therefore, two distinct features in all cornices of
+this kind; first, the bracket, now become of enormous importance and of
+most serious practical service; the second, the parapet: and these two
+features we shall consider in succession, and in so doing, shall learn
+all that is needful for us to know, not only respecting cornices, but
+respecting brackets in general, and balconies.
+
+§ X. 1. The Bracket. In the simplest form of military cornice, the
+brackets are composed of two or more long stones, supporting each other
+in gradually increasing projection, with roughly rounded ends, Fig.
+XXXVIII., and the parapet is simply a low wall carried on the ends of
+these, leaving, of course, behind, or within it, a hole between each
+bracket for the convenient dejection of hot sand and lead. This form is
+best seen, I think, in the old Scotch castles; it is very grand, but has
+a giddy look, and one is afraid of the whole thing toppling off the
+wall. The next step was to deepen the brackets, so as to get them
+propped against a great depth of the main rampart, and to have the inner
+ends of the stones held by a greater weight of that main wall above;
+while small arches were thrown from bracket to bracket to carry the
+parapet wall more securely. This is the most perfect form of cornice,
+completely satisfying the eye of its security, giving full protection to
+the wall, and applicable to all architecture, the interstices between
+the brackets being filled up, when one does not want to throw boiling
+lead on any body below, and the projection being always delightful, as
+giving greater command and view of the building, from its angles, to
+those walking on the rampart. And as, in military buildings, there were
+usually towers at the angles (round which the battlements swept) in
+order to flank the walls, so often in the translation into civil or
+ecclesiastical architecture, a small turret remained at the angle, or a
+more bold projection of balcony, to give larger prospect to those upon
+the rampart. This cornice, perfect in all its parts, as arranged for
+ecclesiastical architecture, and exquisitely decorated, is the one
+employed in the duomo of Florence and campanile of Giotto, of which I
+have already spoken as, I suppose, the most perfect architecture in the
+world.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXVIII.]
+
+§ XI. In less important positions and on smaller edifices, this cornice
+diminishes in size, while it retains its arrangement, and at last we
+find nothing but the spirit and form of it left; the real practical
+purpose having ceased, and arch, brackets and all, being cut out of a
+single stone. Thus we find it used in early buildings throughout the
+whole of the north and south of Europe, in forms sufficiently
+represented by the two examples in Plate IV.: 1, from St. Antonio,
+Padua; 2, from Sens in France.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXIX.]
+
+§ XII. I wish, however, at present to fix the reader's attention on the
+form of the bracket itself; a most important feature in modern as well
+as ancient architecture. The first idea of a bracket is that of a long
+stone or piece of timber projecting from the wall, as _a_, Fig. XXXIX.,
+of which the strength depends on the toughness of the stone or wood, and
+the stability on the weight of wall above it (unless it be the end of a
+main beam). But let it be supposed that the structure at _a_, being of
+the required projection, is found too weak: then we may strengthen it in
+one of three ways; (1) by putting a second or third stone beneath it, as
+at _b_; (2) by giving it a spur, as at _c_; (3) by giving it a shaft and
+another bracket below, _d_; the great use of this arrangement being that
+the lowermost bracket has the help of the weight of the shaft-length of
+wall above its insertion, which is, of course, greater than the weight
+of the small shaft: and then the lower bracket may be farther helped by
+the structure at _b_ or _c_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XL.]
+
+§ XIII. Of these structures, _a_ and _c_ are evidently adapted
+especially for wooden buildings; _b_ and _d_ for stone ones; the last,
+of course, susceptible of the richest decoration, and superbly employed
+in the cornice of the cathedral of Monza: but all are beautiful in their
+way, and are the means of, I think, nearly half the picturesqueness and
+power of mediĉval building; the forms _b_ and _c_ being, of course, the
+most frequent; _a_, when it occurs, being usually rounded off, as at
+_a_, Fig. XL.; _b_, also, as in Fig. XXXVIII., or else itself composed
+of a single stone cut into the form of the group _b_ here, Fig. XL., or
+plain, as at _c_, which is also the proper form of the brick bracket,
+when stone is not to be had. The reader will at once perceive that the
+form _d_ is a barbarism (unless when the scale is small and the weight
+to be carried exceedingly light): it is of course, therefore, a
+favorite form with the Renaissance architects; and its introduction is
+one of the first corruptions of the Venetian architecture.
+
+§ XIV. There is one point necessary to be noticed, though bearing on
+decoration more than construction, before we leave the subject of the
+bracket. The whole power of the construction depends upon the stones
+being well _let into_ the wall; and the first function of the decoration
+should be to give the idea of this insertion, if possible; at all
+events, not to contradict this idea. If the reader will glance at any of
+the brackets used in the ordinary architecture of London, he will find
+them of some such character as Fig. XLI.; not a bad form in itself, but
+exquisitely absurd in its curling lines, which give the idea of some
+writhing suspended tendril, instead of a stiff support, and by their
+careful avoidance of the wall make the bracket look pinned on, and in
+constant danger of sliding down. This is, also, a Classical and
+Renaissance decoration.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLI.]
+
+§ XV. 2. The Parapet. Its forms are fixed in military architecture by
+the necessities of the art of war at the time of building, and are
+always beautiful wherever they have been really thus fixed; delightful
+in the variety of their setting, and in the quaint darkness of their
+shot-holes, and fantastic changes of elevation and outline. Nothing is
+more remarkable than the swiftly discerned difference between the
+masculine irregularity of such true battlements, and the formal
+pitifulness of those which are set on modern buildings to give them a
+military air,--as on the jail at Edinburgh.
+
+§ XVI. Respecting the Parapet for mere safeguard upon buildings not
+military, there are just two fixed laws. It should be pierced, otherwise
+it is not recognised from below for a parapet at all, and it should not
+be in the form of a battlement, especially in church architecture.
+
+The most comfortable heading of a true parapet is a plain level on which
+the arm can be rested, and along which it can glide. Any jags or
+elevations are disagreeable; the latter, as interrupting the view and
+disturbing the eye, if they are higher than the arm, the former, as
+opening some aspect of danger if they are much lower; and the
+inconvenience, therefore, of the battlemented form, as well as the worse
+than absurdity, the bad feeling, of the appliance of a military feature
+to a church, ought long ago to have determined its rejection. Still (for
+the question of its picturesque value is here so closely connected with
+that of its practical use, that it is vain to endeavor to discuss it
+separately) there is a certain agreeableness in the way in which the
+jagged outline dovetails the shadow of the slated or leaded roof into
+the top of the wall, which may make the use of the battlement excusable
+where there is a difficulty in managing some unvaried line, and where
+the expense of a pierced parapet cannot be encountered: but remember
+always, that the value of the battlement consists in its letting shadow
+into the light of the wall, or _vice versâ_, when it comes against light
+sky, letting the light of the sky into the shade of the wall; but that
+the actual outline of the parapet itself, if the eye be arrested upon
+this, instead of upon the alternation of shadow, is as _ugly_ a
+succession of line as can by any possibility be invented. Therefore, the
+battlemented parapet may only be used where this alternation of shade is
+certain to be shown, under nearly all conditions of effect; and where
+the lines to be dealt with are on a scale which may admit battlements of
+bold and manly size. The idea that a battlement is an ornament anywhere,
+and that a miserable and diminutive imitation of castellated outline
+will always serve to fill up blanks and Gothicise unmanageable spaces,
+is one of the great idiocies of the present day. A battlement is in its
+origin a piece of wall large enough to cover a man's body, and however
+it may be decorated, or pierced, or finessed away into traceries, as
+long as so much of its outline is retained as to suggest its origin, so
+long its size must remain undiminished. To crown a turret six feet high
+with chopped battlements three inches wide, is children's Gothic: it is
+one of the paltry falsehoods for which there is no excuse, and part of
+the system of using models of architecture to decorate architecture,
+which we shall hereafter note as one of the chief and most destructive
+follies of the Renaissance;[54] and in the present day the practice may
+be classed as one which distinguishes the architects of whom there is no
+hope, who have neither eye nor head for their work, and who must pass
+their lives in vain struggles against the refractory lines of their own
+buildings.
+
+§ XVII. As the only excuse for the battlemented parapet is its
+alternation of shadow, so the only fault of the natural or level parapet
+is its monotony of line. This is, however, in practice, almost always
+broken by the pinnacles of the buttresses, and if not, may be varied by
+the tracery of its penetrations. The forms of these evidently admit
+every kind of change; for a stone parapet, however pierced, is sure to
+be strong enough for its purpose of protection, and, as regards the
+strength of the building in general, the lighter it is the better. More
+fantastic forms may, therefore, be admitted in a parapet than in any
+other architectural feature, and for most services, the Flamboyant
+parapets seem to me preferable to all others; especially when the leaden
+roofs set off by points of darkness the lace-like intricacy of
+penetration. These, however, as well as the forms usually given to
+Renaissance balustrades (of which, by the bye, the best piece of
+criticism I know is the sketch in "David Copperfield" of the personal
+appearance of the man who stole Jip), and the other and finer forms
+invented by Paul Veronese in his architectural backgrounds, together
+with the pure columnar balustrade of Venice, must be considered as
+altogether decorative features.
+
+§ XVIII. So also are, of course, the jagged or crown-like finishings of
+walls employed where no real parapet of protection is desired;
+originating in the defences of outworks and single walls: these are used
+much in the east on walls surrounding unroofed courts. The richest
+examples of such decoration are Arabian; and from Cairo they seem to
+have been brought to Venice. It is probable that few of my readers,
+however familiar the general form of the Ducal Palace may have been
+rendered to them by innumerable drawings, have any distinct idea of its
+roof, owing to the staying of the eye on its superb parapet, of which we
+shall give account hereafter. In most of the Venetian cases the parapets
+which surround roofing are very sufficient for protection, except that
+the stones of which they are composed appear loose and infirm: but their
+purpose is entirely decorative; every wall, whether detached or roofed,
+being indiscriminately fringed with Arabic forms of parapet, more or
+less Gothicised, according to the lateness of their date.
+
+I think there is no other point of importance requiring illustration
+respecting the roof itself, or its cornice: but this Venetian form of
+ornamental parapet connects itself curiously, at the angles of nearly
+all the buildings on which it occurs, with the pinnacled system of the
+north, founded on the structure of the buttress. This, it will be
+remembered, is to be the subject of the fifth division of our inquiry.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [54] Not of Renaissance alone: the practice of modelling buildings
+    on a minute scale for niches and tabernacle-work has always been
+    more or less admitted, and I suppose _authority_ for diminutive
+    battlements might be gathered from the Gothic of almost every
+    period, as well as for many other faults and mistakes: no Gothic
+    school having ever been thoroughly systematised or perfected, even
+    in its best times. But that a mistaken decoration sometimes occurs
+    among a crowd of noble ones, is no more an excuse for the
+    habitual--far less, the exclusive--use of such a decoration, than
+    the accidental or seeming misconstructions of a Greek chorus are an
+    excuse for a school boy's ungrammatical exercise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+  THE BUTTRESS.
+
+
+§ I. We have hitherto supposed ourselves concerned with the support of
+vertical pressure only; and the arch and roof have been considered as
+forms of abstract strength, without reference to the means by which
+their lateral pressure was to be resisted. Few readers will need now to
+be reminded, that every arch or gable not tied at its base by beams or
+bars, exercises a lateral pressure upon the walls which sustain
+it,--pressure which may, indeed, be met and sustained by increasing the
+thickness of the wall or vertical piers, and which is in reality thus
+met in most Italian buildings, but may, with less expenditure of
+material, and with (perhaps) more graceful effect, be met by some
+particular application of the provisions against lateral pressure called
+Buttresses. These, therefore, we are next to examine.
+
+§ II. Buttresses are of many kinds, according to the character and
+direction of the lateral forces they are intended to resist. But their
+first broad division is into buttresses which meet and break the force
+before it arrives at the wall, and buttresses which stand on the lee
+side of the wall, and prop it against the force.
+
+The lateral forces which walls have to sustain are of three distinct
+kinds: dead weight, as of masonry or still water; moving weight, as of
+wind or running water; and sudden concussion, as of earthquakes,
+explosions, &c.
+
+Clearly, dead weight can only be resisted by the buttress acting as a
+prop; for a buttress on the side of, or towards the weight, would only
+add to its effect. This, then, forms the first great class of buttressed
+architecture; lateral thrusts, of roofing or arches, being met by props
+of masonry outside--the thrust from within, the prop without; or the
+crushing force of water on a ship's side met by its cross timbers--the
+thrust here from without the wall, the prop within.
+
+Moving weight may, of course, be resisted by the prop on the lee side of
+the wall, but is often more effectually met, on the side which is
+attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms, cunning buttresses, which do
+not attempt to sustain the weight, but _parry_ it, and throw it off in
+directions clear of the wall.
+
+Thirdly: concussions and vibratory motion, though in reality only
+supported by the prop buttress, must be provided for by buttresses on
+both sides of the wall, as their direction cannot be foreseen, and is
+continually changing.
+
+We shall briefly glance at these three systems of buttressing; but the
+two latter being of small importance to our present purpose, may as well
+be dismissed first.
+
+§ III. 1. Buttresses for guard against moving weight and set towards the
+weight they resist.
+
+The most familiar instance of this kind of buttress we have in the sharp
+piers of a bridge, in the centre of a powerful stream, which divide the
+current on their edges, and throw it to each side under the arches. A
+ship's bow is a buttress of the same kind, and so also the ridge of a
+breastplate, both adding to the strength of it in resisting a cross
+blow, and giving a better chance of a bullet glancing aside. In
+Switzerland, projecting buttresses of this kind are often built round
+churches, heading up hill, to divide and throw off the avalanches. The
+various forms given to piers and harbor quays, and to the bases of
+light-houses, in order to meet the force of the waves, are all
+conditions of this kind of buttress. But in works of ornamental
+architecture such buttresses are of rare occurrence; and I merely name
+them in order to mark their place in our architectural system, since in
+the investigation of our present subject we shall not meet with a single
+example of them, unless sometimes the angle of the foundation of a
+palace set against the sweep of the tide, or the wooden piers of some
+canal bridge quivering in its current.
+
+§ IV. 2. Buttresses for guard against vibratory motion.
+
+The whole formation of this kind of buttress resolves itself into mere
+expansion of the base of the wall, so as to make it stand steadier, as a
+man stands with his feet apart when he is likely to lose his balance.
+This approach to a pyramidal form is also of great use as a guard
+against the action of artillery; that if a stone or tier of stones be
+battered out of the lower portions of the wall, the whole upper part may
+not topple over or crumble down at once. Various forms of this buttress,
+sometimes applied to particular points of the wall, sometimes forming a
+great sloping rampart along its base, are frequent in buildings of
+countries exposed to earthquake. They give a peculiarly heavy outline to
+much of the architecture of the kingdom of Naples, and they are of the
+form in which strength and solidity are first naturally sought, in the
+slope of the Egyptian wall. The base of Guy's Tower at Warwick is a
+singularly bold example of their military use; and so, in general,
+bastion and rampart profiles, where, however, the object of stability
+against a shock is complicated with that of sustaining weight of earth
+in the rampart behind.
+
+§ V. 3. Prop buttresses against dead weight.
+
+This is the group with which we have principally to do; and a buttress
+of this kind acts in two ways, partly by its weight and partly by its
+strength. It acts by its weight when its mass is so great that the
+weight it sustains cannot stir it, but is lost upon it, buried in it,
+and annihilated: neither the shape of such a buttress nor the cohesion
+of its materials are of much consequence; a heap of stones or sandbags,
+laid up against the wall, will answer as well as a built and cemented
+mass.
+
+But a buttress acting by its strength is not of mass sufficient to
+resist the weight by mere inertia; but it conveys the weight through its
+body to something else which is so capable; as, for instance, a man
+leaning against a door with his hands, and propping himself against the
+ground, conveys the force which would open or close the door against him
+through his body to the ground. A buttress acting in this way must be of
+perfectly coherent materials, and so strong that though the weight to
+be borne could easily move it, it cannot break it: this kind of buttress
+may be called a conducting buttress. Practically, however, the two modes
+of action are always in some sort united. Again, the weight to be borne
+may either act generally on the whole wall surface, or with excessive
+energy on particular points: when it acts on the whole wall surface, the
+whole wall is generally supported; and the arrangement becomes a
+continuous rampart, as a dyke, or bank of reservoir.
+
+§ VI. It is, however, very seldom that lateral force in architecture is
+equally distributed. In most cases the weight of the roof, or the force
+of any lateral thrust, are more or less confined to certain points and
+directions. In an early state of architectural science this definiteness
+of direction is not yet clear, and it is met by uncertain application of
+mass or strength in the buttress, sometimes by mere thickening of the
+wall into square piers, which are partly piers, partly buttresses, as in
+Norman keeps and towers. But as science advances, the weight to be borne
+is designedly and decisively thrown upon certain points; the direction
+and degree of the forces which are then received are exactly calculated,
+and met by conducting buttresses of the smallest possible dimensions;
+themselves, in their turn, supported by vertical buttresses acting by
+weight, and these perhaps, in their turn, by another set of conducting
+buttresses: so that, in the best examples of such arrangements, the
+weight to be borne may be considered as the shock of an electric fluid,
+which, by a hundred different rods and channels, is divided and carried
+away into the ground.
+
+§ VII. In order to give greater weight to the vertical buttress piers
+which sustain the conducting buttresses, they are loaded with pinnacles,
+which, however, are, I believe, in all the buildings in which they
+become very prominent, merely decorative: they are of some use, indeed,
+by their weight; but if this were all for which they were put there, a
+few cubic feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose,
+without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader likes to ask any
+Gothic architect with whom he may happen to be acquainted, to
+substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles, he will see by the
+expression of his face how far he considers the pinnacles decorative
+members. In the work which seems to me the great type of simple and
+masculine buttress structure, the apse of Beauvais, the pinnacles are
+altogether insignificant, and are evidently added just as exclusively to
+entertain the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the slight
+shafts which are set on its angles; while in other very noble Gothic
+buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches for statues, without
+any reference to construction at all: and sometimes even, as in the tomb
+of Can Signoria at Verona, on small piers detached from the main
+building.
+
+§ VIII. I believe, therefore, that the development of the pinnacle is
+merely a part of the general erectness and picturesqueness of northern
+work above alluded to: and that, if there had been no other place for
+the pinnacles, the Gothic builders would have put them on the tops of
+their arches (they often _did_ on the tops of gables and pediments),
+rather than not have had them; but the natural position of the pinnacle
+is, of course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability
+of the building; that is to say, on its main wall piers and the vertical
+piers at the buttresses. And thus the edifice is surrounded at last by a
+complete company of detached piers and pinnacles, each sustaining an
+inclined prop against the central wall, and looking something like a
+band of giants holding it up with the butts of their lances. This
+arrangement would imply the loss of an enormous space of ground, but the
+intervals of the buttresses are usually walled in below, and form minor
+chapels.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLII.]
+
+§ IX. The science of this arrangement has made it the subject of much
+enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic architects, almost as
+unreasonable, in some respects, as the declamation of the Renaissance
+architects respecting Greek structure. The fact is, that the whole
+northern buttress system is based on the grand requirement of tall
+windows and vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to
+gain this quantity of light, the piers between the windows are
+diminished in thickness until they are far too weak to bear the roof,
+and then sustained by external buttresses. In the Italian method the
+light is rather dreaded than desired, and the wall is made wide enough
+between the windows to bear the roof, and so left. In fact, the simplest
+expression of the difference in the systems is, that a northern apse is
+a southern one with its inter-fenestrial piers set edgeways. Thus, _a_,
+Fig. XLII., is the general idea of the southern apse; take it to pieces,
+and set all its piers edgeways, as at _b_, and you have the northern
+one. You gain much light for the interior, but you cut the exterior to
+pieces, and instead of a bold rounded or polygonal surface, ready for
+any kind of decoration, you have a series of dark and damp cells, which
+no device that I have yet seen has succeeded in decorating in a
+perfectly satisfactory manner. If the system be farther carried, and a
+second or third order of buttresses be added, the real fact is that we
+have a building standing on two or three rows of concentric piers, with
+the _roof off_ the whole of it except the central circle, and only ribs
+left, to carry the weight of the bit of remaining roof in the middle;
+and after the eye has been accustomed to the bold and simple rounding of
+the Italian apse, the skeleton character of the disposition is painfully
+felt. After spending some months in Venice, I thought Bourges Cathedral
+looked exactly like a half-built ship on its shores. It is useless,
+however, to dispute respecting the merits of the two systems: both are
+noble in their place; the Northern decidedly the most scientific, or at
+least involving the greatest display of science, the Italian the
+calmest and purest, this having in it the sublimity of a calm heaven or
+a windless noon, the other that of a mountain flank tormented by the
+north wind, and withering into grisly furrows of alternate chasm and
+crag.
+
+§ X. If I have succeeded in making the reader understand the veritable
+action of the buttress, he will have no difficulty in determining its
+fittest form. He has to deal with two distinct kinds; one, a narrow
+vertical pier, acting principally by its weight, and crowned by a
+pinnacle; the other, commonly called a Flying buttress, a cross bar set
+from such a pier (when detached from the building) against the main
+wall. This latter, then, is to be considered as a mere prop or shore,
+and its use by the Gothic architects might be illustrated by the
+supposition that we were to build all our houses with walls too thin to
+stand without wooden props outside, and then to substitute stone props
+for wooden ones. I have some doubts of the real dignity of such a
+proceeding, but at all events the merit of the form of the flying
+buttress depends on its faithfully and visibly performing this somewhat
+humble office; it is, therefore, in its purity, a mere sloping bar of
+stone, with an arch beneath it to carry its weight, that is to say, to
+prevent the action of gravity from in any wise deflecting it, or causing
+it to break downwards under the lateral thrust; it is thus formed quite
+simple in Notre Dame of Paris, and in the Cathedral of Beauvais, while
+at Cologne the sloping bars are pierced with quatrefoils, and at Amiens
+with traceried arches. Both seem to me effeminate and false in
+principle; not, of course, that there is any occasion to make the flying
+buttress heavy, if a light one will answer the purpose; but it seems as
+if some security were sacrificed to ornament. At Amiens the arrangement
+is now seen to great disadvantage, for the early traceries have been
+replaced by base flamboyant ones, utterly weak and despicable. Of the
+degradations of the original form which took place in after times, I
+have spoken at p. 35 of the "Seven Lamps."
+
+§ XI. The form of the common buttress must be familiar to the eye of
+every reader, sloping if low, and thrown into successive steps if they
+are to be carried to any considerable height. There is much dignity in
+them when they are of essential service; but even in their best
+examples, their awkward angles are among the least manageable features
+of the Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was
+destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a diminished
+scale; until the buttress became actually confused with the shaft, and
+we find strangely crystallised masses of diminutive buttress applied,
+for merely vertical support, in the northern tabernacle work; while in
+some recent copies of it the principle has been so far distorted that
+the tiny buttressings look as if they carried the superstructure on the
+points of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford. Indeed,
+in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently consider buttresses as
+convenient breaks of blank surface, and general apologies for deadness
+of wall. They stand in the place of ideas, and I think are supposed also
+to have something of the odor of sanctity about them; otherwise, one
+hardly sees why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the
+kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one's hat off,
+should have a bunch of them at every corner; and worse than this, they
+are even thought ornamental when they can be of no possible use; and
+these stupid penthouse outlines are forced upon the eye in every species
+of decoration: in St. Margaret's Chapel, West Street, there are actually
+a couple of buttresses at the end of every pew.
+
+§ XII. It is almost impossible, in consequence of these unwise
+repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some degree of
+prejudice; and I look upon it as one of the most justifiable causes of
+the unfortunate aversion with which many of our best architects regard
+the whole Gothic school. It may, however, always be regarded with
+respect when its form is simple and its service clear; but no treason to
+Gothic can be greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to
+enhance the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  FORM OF APERTURE.
+
+
+§ I. We have now, in order, examined the means of raising walls and
+sustaining roofs, and we have finally to consider the structure of the
+necessary apertures in the wall veil, the door and window; respecting
+which there are three main points to be considered.
+
+1. The form of the aperture, _i.e._, its outline, its size, and the
+forms of its sides.
+
+2. The filling of the aperture, _i.e._, valves and glass, and their
+holdings.
+
+3. The protection of the aperture, and its appliances, _i.e._, canopies,
+porches, and balconies. We shall examine these in succession.
+
+§ II. 1. The form of the aperture: and first of doors. We will, for the
+present, leave out of the question doors and gates in unroofed walls,
+the forms of these being very arbitrary, and confine ourselves to the
+consideration of doors of entrance into roofed buildings. Such doors
+will, for the most part, be at, or near, the base of the building;
+except when raised for purposes of defence, as in the old Scotch border
+towers, and our own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit
+access in deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for
+convenience or magnificence. But in most cases, whether high or low, a
+door may be assumed to be considerably lower than the apartments or
+buildings into which it gives admission, and therefore to have some
+height of wall above it, whose weight must be carried by the heading of
+the door. It is clear, therefore, that the best heading must be an
+arch, because the strongest, and that a square-headed door must be
+wrong, unless under Mont-Cenisian masonry; or else, unless the top of
+the door be the roof of the building, as in low cottages. And a
+square-headed door is just so much more wrong and ugly than a connexion
+of main shafts by lintels, as the weight of wall above the door is
+likely to be greater than that above the main shafts. Thus, while I
+admit the Greek general forms of temple to be admirable in their kind, I
+think the Greek door always offensive and unmanageable.
+
+§ III. We have it also determined by necessity, that the apertures shall
+be at least above a man's height, with perpendicular sides (for sloping
+sides are evidently unnecessary, and even inconvenient, therefore
+absurd) and level threshold; and this aperture we at present suppose
+simply cut through the wall without any bevelling of the jambs. Such a
+door, wide enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and with
+such fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be fit
+enough for any building into which entrance is required neither often,
+nor by many persons at a time. But when entrance and egress are
+constant, or required by crowds, certain further modifications must take
+place.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLIII.]
+
+§ IV. When entrance and egress are constant, it may be supposed that the
+valves will be absent or unfastened,--that people will be passing more
+quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfrequent, and that the
+square angles of the wall will be inconvenient to such quick passers
+through. It is evident, therefore, that what would be done in time, for
+themselves, by the passing multitude, should be done for them at once by
+the architect; and that these angles, which would be worn away by
+friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called, splayed,
+and the most contracted part of the aperture made as short as possible,
+so that the plan of the entrance should become as at _a_, Fig. XLIII.
+
+§ V. Farther. As persons on the outside may often approach the door or
+depart from it, _beside_ the building, so as to turn aside as they enter
+or leave the door, and therefore touch its jamb, but, on the inside,
+will in almost every case approach the door, or depart from it in the
+direct line of the entrance (people generally walking _forward_ when
+they enter a hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do
+so when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may be
+very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside, so that
+the plan of the aperture should become as at _b_, Fig. XLIII. Farther,
+as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently carry an unbevelled arch, the
+door arch must be bevelled also, and the aperture, seen from the
+outside, will have somewhat the aspect of a small cavern diminishing
+towards the interior.
+
+§ VI. If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is required for
+multitudes at the same time, the size of the aperture either must be
+increased, or other apertures must be introduced. It may, in some
+buildings, be optional with the architect whether he shall give many
+small doors, or few large ones; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres,
+and other places where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are
+by far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the purposes of
+the building, as when it is to be entered by processions, or where the
+crowd most usually enter in one direction, require the large single
+entrance; and (for here again the ĉsthetic and structural laws cannot be
+separated) the expression and harmony of the building require, in nearly
+every case, an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which
+is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multitude
+should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps do, through holes; and
+nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English
+cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress,
+but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides,
+the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to
+desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man
+of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship
+in going up to worship, which is suggested by the vast single entrance;
+partly because it is at the entrance that the most serious words of the
+building are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the
+worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken to all at
+once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak repetitions over
+minor doors.
+
+In practice the matter has been, I suppose, regulated almost altogether
+by convenience, the western doors being single in small churches, while
+in the larger the entrances become three or five, the central door
+remaining always principal, in consequence of the fine sense of
+composition which the mediĉval builders never lost. These arrangements
+have formed the noblest buildings in the world. Yet it is worth
+observing[55] how perfect in its simplicity the single entrance may
+become, when it is treated as in the Duomo and St. Zeno of Verona, and
+other such early Lombard churches, having noble porches, and rich
+sculptures grouped around the entrance.
+
+§ VII. However, whether the entrances be single, triple, or manifold, it
+is a constant law that one shall be principal, and all shall be of size
+in some degree proportioned to that of the building. And this size is,
+of course, chiefly to be expressed in width, that being the only useful
+dimension in a door (except for pageantry, chairing of bishops and
+waving of banners, and other such vanities, not, I hope, after this
+century, much to be regarded in the building of Christian temples); but
+though the width is the only necessary dimension, it is well to increase
+the height also in some proportion to it, in order that there may be
+less weight of wall above, resting on the increased span of the arch.
+This is, however, so much the necessary result of the broad curve of the
+arch itself, that there is no structural necessity of elevating the
+jamb; and I believe that beautiful entrances might be made of every span
+of arch, retaining the jamb at a little more than a man's height, until
+the sweep of the curves became so vast that the small vertical line
+became a part of them, and one entered into the temple as under a great
+rainbow.
+
+§ VIII. On the other hand, the jamb _may_ be elevated indefinitely, so
+that the increasing entrance retains _at least_ the proportion of width
+it had originally; say 4 ft. by 7 ft. 5 in. But a less proportion of
+width than this has always a meagre, inhospitable, and ungainly look
+except in military architecture, where the narrowness of the entrance is
+necessary, and its height adds to its grandeur, as between the entrance
+towers of our British castles. This law however, observe, applies only
+to true doors, not to the arches of porches, which may be of any
+proportion, as of any number, being in fact intercolumniations, not
+doors; as in the noble example of the west front of Peterborough, which,
+in spite of the destructive absurdity of its central arch being the
+narrowest, would still, if the paltry porter's lodge, or gatehouse, or
+turnpike, or whatever it is, were knocked out of the middle of it, be
+the noblest west front in England.
+
+§ IX. Further, and finally. In proportion to the height and size of the
+building, and therefore to the size of its doors, will be the thickness
+of its walls, especially at the foundation, that is to say, beside the
+doors; and also in proportion to the numbers of a crowd will be the
+unruliness and pressure of it. Hence, partly in necessity and partly in
+prudence, the splaying or chamfering of the jamb of the larger door will
+be deepened, and, if possible, made at a larger angle for the large door
+than for the small one; so that the large door will always be
+encompassed by a visible breadth of jamb proportioned to its own
+magnitude. The decorative value of this feature we shall see hereafter.
+
+§ X. The second kind of apertures we have to examine are those of
+windows.
+
+Window apertures are mainly of two kinds; those for outlook, and those
+for inlet of light, many being for both purposes, and either purpose, or
+both, combined in military architecture with those of offence and
+defence. But all window apertures, as compared with door apertures, have
+almost infinite licence of form and size: they may be of any shape, from
+the slit or cross slit to the circle;[56] of any size, from the loophole
+of the castle to the pillars of light of the cathedral apse. Yet,
+according to their place and purpose, one or two laws of fitness hold
+respecting them, which let us examine in the two classes of windows
+successively, but without reference to military architecture, which
+here, as before, we may dismiss as a subject of separate science, only
+noticing that windows, like all other features, are always delightful,
+if not beautiful, when their position and shape have indeed been thus
+necessarily determined, and that many of their most picturesque forms
+have resulted from the requirements of war. We should also find in
+military architecture the typical forms of the two classes of outlet and
+inlet windows in their utmost development; the greatest sweep of sight
+and range of shot on the one hand, and the fullest entry of light and
+air on the other, being constantly required at the smallest possible
+apertures. Our business, however, is to reason out the laws for
+ourselves, not to take the examples as we find them.
+
+§ XI. 1. Outlook apertures. For these no general outline is determinable
+by the necessities or inconveniences of outlooking, except only that the
+bottom or sill of the windows, at whatever height, should be horizontal,
+for the convenience of leaning on it, or standing on it if the window
+be to the ground. The form of the upper part of the window is quite
+immaterial, for all windows allow a greater range of sight when they are
+_approached_ than that of the eye itself: it is the approachability of
+the window, that is to say, the annihilation of the thickness of the
+wall, which is the real point to be attended to. If, therefore, the
+aperture be inaccessible, or so small that the thickness of the wall
+cannot be entered, the wall is to be bevelled[57] on the outside, so as
+to increase the range of sight as far as possible; if the aperture can
+be entered, then bevelled from the point to which entrance is possible.
+The bevelling will, if possible, be in every direction, that is to say,
+upwards at the top, outwards at the sides, and downwards at the bottom,
+but essentially _downwards_; the earth and the doings upon it being the
+chief object in outlook windows, except of observatories; and where the
+object is a distinct and special view downwards, it will be of advantage
+to shelter the eye as far as possible from the rays of light coming from
+above, and the head of the window may be left horizontal, or even the
+whole aperture sloped outwards, as the slit in a letter-box is inwards.
+
+The best windows for outlook are, of course, oriels and bow windows, but
+these are not to be considered under the head of apertures merely; they
+are either balconies roofed and glazed, and to be considered under the
+head of external appliances, or they are each a story of an external
+semi-tower, having true aperture windows on each side of it.
+
+§ XII. 2. Inlet windows. These windows may, of course, be of any shape and
+size whatever, according to the other necessities of the building, and
+the quantity and direction of light desired, their purpose being now to
+throw it in streams on particular lines or spots; now to diffuse it
+everywhere; sometimes to introduce it in broad masses, tempered in
+strength, as in the cathedral colored window; sometimes in starry
+showers of scattered brilliancy, like the apertures in the roof of an
+Arabian bath; perhaps the most beautiful of all forms being the rose,
+which has in it the unity of both characters, and sympathy with that of
+the source of light itself. It is noticeable, however, that while both
+the circle and pointed oval are beautiful window forms, it would be very
+painful to cut either of them in half and connect them by vertical
+lines, as in Fig. XLIV. The reason is, I believe, that so treated, the
+upper arch is not considered as connected with the lower, and forming an
+entire figure, but as the ordinary arch roof of the aperture, and the
+lower arch as an arch _floor_, equally unnecessary and unnatural. Also,
+the elliptical oval is generally an unsatisfactory form, because it
+gives the idea of useless trouble in building it, though it occurs
+quaintly and pleasantly in the former windows of France: I believe it is
+also objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look, like
+that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated forms,
+are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because this is the
+weakest position they can structurally have; that is to say, less light
+is admitted, with greater loss of strength to the building, than by any
+other form. If admissible anywhere, it is for the sake of variety at the
+top of the building, as the flat parallelogram sometimes not
+ungracefully in Italian Renaissance.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLIV.]
+
+§ XIII. The question of bevelling becomes a little more complicated in
+the inlet than the outlook window, because the mass or quantity of light
+admitted is often of more consequence than its direction, and often
+_vice versâ_; and the outlook window is supposed to be approachable,
+which is far from being always the case with windows for light, so that
+the bevelling which in the outlook window is chiefly to open range of
+sight, is in the inlet a means not only of admitting the light in
+greater quantity, but of directing it to the spot on which it is to
+fall. But, in general, the bevelling of the one window will reverse that
+of the other; for, first, no natural light will strike on the inlet
+window from beneath, unless reflected light, which is (I believe)
+injurious to the health and the sight; and thus, while in the outlook
+window the outside bevel downwards is essential, in the inlet it would
+be useless: and the sill is to be flat, if the window be on a level with
+the spot it is to light; and sloped downwards within, if above it.
+Again, as the brightest rays of light are the steepest, the outside
+bevel upwards is as essential in the roof of the inlet as it was of
+small importance in that of the outlook window.
+
+§ XIV. On the horizontal section the aperture will expand internally, a
+somewhat larger number of rays being thus reflected from the jambs; and
+the aperture being thus the smallest possible outside, this is the
+favorite military form of inlet window, always found in magnificent
+development in the thick walls of mediĉval castles and convents. Its
+effect is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon-like in its fullest
+development, owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the
+outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it to a mere
+point of light. A modified condition of it, with some combination of the
+outlook form, is probably the best for domestic buildings in general
+(which, however, in modern architecture, are unhappily so thin walled,
+that the outline of the jambs becomes a matter almost of indifference),
+it being generally noticeable that the depth of recess which I have
+observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also a
+certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended rather to
+admit light to persons quietly occupied in their homes, than to
+stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [55] And worth questioning, also, whether the triple porch has not
+    been associated with Romanist views of mediatorship; the Redeemer
+    being represented as presiding over the central door only, and the
+    lateral entrances being under the protection of saints, while the
+    Madonna almost always has one or both of the transepts. But it would
+    be wrong to press this, for, in nine cases out of ten, the architect
+    has been merely influenced in his placing of the statues by an
+    artist's desire of variety in their forms and dress; and very
+    naturally prefers putting a canonisation over one door, a martyrdom
+    over another, and an assumption over a third, to repeating a
+    crucifixion or a judgment above all. The architect's doctrine is
+    only, therefore, to be noted with indisputable reprobation when the
+    Madonna gets possession of the main door.
+
+  [56] The arch heading is indeed the best where there is much
+    incumbent weight, but a window frequently has very little weight
+    above it, especially when placed high, and the arched form loses
+    light in a low room: therefore the square-headed window is
+    admissible where the square-headed door is not.
+
+  [57] I do not like the sound of the word "splayed;" I always shall
+    use "bevelled" instead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  FILLING OF APERTURE.
+
+
+§ I. Thus far we have been concerned with the outline only of the
+aperture: we were next, it will be remembered, to consider the necessary
+modes of filling it with valves in the case of the door, or with glass
+or tracery in that of the window.
+
+1. Fillings of doors. We concluded, in the previous Chapter, that doors
+in buildings of any importance or size should have headings in the form
+of an arch. This is, however, the most inconvenient form we could
+choose, as respects the fitting of the valves of the doorway; for the
+arch-shaped head of the valves not only requires considerable nicety in
+fitting to the arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,--a
+double disadvantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in
+opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the eye, that a
+door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable object. It
+becomes, therefore, a matter of true necessity so to arrange the doorway
+as to admit of its being fitted with rectangular valves.
+
+§ II. Now, in determining the form of the aperture, we supposed the jamb
+of the door to be of the utmost height required for entrance. The extra
+height of the arch is unnecessary as an opening, the arch being required
+for its strength only, not for its elevation. There is, therefore, no
+reason why it should not be barred across by a horizontal lintel, into
+which the valves may be fitted, and the triangular or semicircular
+arched space above the lintel may then be permanently closed, as we
+choose, either with bars, or glass, or stone.
+
+This is the form of all good doors, without exception, over the whole
+world and in all ages, and no other can ever be invented.
+
+§ III. In the simplest doors the cross lintel is of wood only, and glass
+or bars occupy the space above, a very frequent form in Venice. In more
+elaborate doors the cross lintel is of stone, and the filling sometimes
+of brick, sometimes of stone, very often a grand single stone being used
+to close the entire space: the space thus filled is called the Tympanum.
+In large doors the cross lintel is too long to bear the great incumbent
+weight of this stone filling without support; it is, therefore, carried
+by a pier in the centre; and two valves are used, fitted to the
+rectangular spaces on each side of the pier. In the most elaborate
+examples of this condition, each of these secondary doorways has an arch
+heading, a cross lintel, and a triangular filling or tympanum of its
+own, all subordinated to the main arch above.
+
+§ IV. 2. Fillings of windows.
+
+When windows are large, and to be filled with glass, the sheet of glass,
+however constructed, whether of large panes or small fragments, requires
+the support of bars of some kind, either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood
+is inapplicable on a large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit
+for door-valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight would
+be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars, which, if they
+decayed, might let the whole window be blown in before their decay was
+observed, and in which weight would be an advantage, as offering more
+resistance to the wind.
+
+Iron is, however, fit for window-bars, and there seems no constructive
+reason why we should not have iron traceries, as well as iron pillars,
+iron churches, and iron steeples. But I have, in the "Seven Lamps,"
+given reasons for not considering such structures as architecture at
+all.
+
+The window-bars must, therefore, be of stone, and of stone only.
+
+§ V. The purpose of the window being always to let in as much light, and
+command as much view, as possible, these bars of stone are to be made
+as slender and as few as they can be, consistently with their due
+strength.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLV.]
+
+Let it be required to support the breadth of glass, _a_, _b_, Fig. XLV.
+The tendency of the glass sustaining any force, as of wind from without,
+is to bend into an arch inwards, in the dotted line, and break in the
+centre. It is to be supported, therefore, by the bar put in its centre,
+_c_.
+
+But this central bar, _c_, may not be enough, and the spaces _a c_, _c
+b_, may still need support. The next step will be to put two bars
+instead of one, and divide the window into three spaces as at _d_.
+
+But this may still not be enough, and the window may need three bars.
+Now the greatest stress is always on the centre of the window. If the
+three bars are equal in strength, as at _e_, the central bar is either
+too slight for its work, or the lateral bars too thick for theirs.
+Therefore, we must slightly increase the thickness of the central bar,
+and diminish that of the lateral ones, so as to obtain the arrangement
+at _f h_. If the window enlarge farther, each of the spaces _f g_, _g
+h_, is treated as the original space _a b_, and we have the groups of
+bars _k_ and _l_.
+
+So that, whatever the shape of the window, whatever the direction and
+number of the bars, there are to be central or main bars; second bars
+subordinated to them; third bars subordinated to the second, and so on
+to the number required. This is called the subordination of tracery, a
+system delightful to the eye and mind, owing to its anatomical framing
+and unity, and to its expression of the laws of good government in all
+fragile and unstable things. All tracery, therefore, which is not
+subordinated, is barbarous, in so far as this part of its structure is
+concerned.
+
+§ VI. The next question will be the direction of the bars. The reader
+will understand at once, without any laborious proof, that a given area
+of glass, supported by its edges, is stronger in its resistance to
+violence when it is arranged in a long strip or band than in a square;
+and that, therefore, glass is generally to be arranged, especially in
+windows on a large scale, in oblong areas: and if the bars so dividing
+it be placed horizontally, they will have less power of supporting
+themselves, and will need to be thicker in consequence, than if placed
+vertically. As far, therefore, as the form of the window permits, they
+are to be vertical.
+
+§ VII. But even when so placed, they cannot be trusted to support
+themselves beyond a certain height, but will need cross bars to steady
+them. Cross bars of stone are, therefore, to be introduced at necessary
+intervals, not to divide the glass, but to support the upright stone
+bars. The glass is always to be divided longitudinally as far as
+possible, and the upright bars which divide it supported at proper
+intervals. However high the window, it is almost impossible that it
+should require more than two cross bars.
+
+§ VIII. It may sometimes happen that when tall windows are placed very
+close to each other for the sake of more light, the masonry between them
+may stand in need, or at least be the better of, some additional
+support. The cross bars of the windows may then be thickened, in order
+to bond the intermediate piers more strongly together, and if this
+thickness appear ungainly, it may be modified by decoration.
+
+§ IX. We have thus arrived at the idea of a vertical frame work of
+subordinated bars, supported by cross bars at the necessary intervals,
+and the only remaining question is the method of insertion into the
+aperture. Whatever its form, if we merely let the ends of the bars into
+the voussoirs of its heading, the least settlement of the masonry would
+distort the arch, or push up some of its voussoirs, or break the window
+bars, or push them aside. Evidently our object should be to connect the
+window bars among themselves, so framing them together that they may
+give the utmost possible degree of support to the whole window head in
+case of any settlement. But we know how to do this already: our window
+bars are nothing but small shafts. Capital them; throw small arches
+across between the smaller bars, large arches over them between the
+larger bars, one comprehensive arch over the whole, or else a horizontal
+lintel, if the window have a flat head; and we have a complete system of
+mutual support, independent of the aperture head, and yet assisting to
+sustain it, if need be. But we want the spandrils of this arch system to
+be themselves as light, and to let as much light through them, as
+possible: and we know already how to pierce them (Chap. XII. § VII.). We
+pierce them with circles; and we have, if the circles are small and the
+stonework strong, the traceries of Giotto and the Pisan school; if the
+circles are as large as possible and the bars slender, those which I
+have already figured and described as the only perfect traceries of the
+Northern Gothic.[58] The varieties of their design arise partly from the
+different size of window and consequent number of bars; partly from the
+different heights of their pointed arches, as well as the various
+positions of the window head in relation to the roof, rendering one or
+another arrangement better for dividing the light, and partly from
+ĉsthetic and expressional requirements, which, within certain limits,
+may be allowed a very important influence: for the strength of the bars
+is ordinarily so much greater than is absolutely necessary, that some
+portion of it may be gracefully sacrificed to the attainment of variety
+in the plans of tracery--a variety which, even within its severest
+limits, is perfectly endless; more especially in the pointed arch, the
+proportion of the tracery being in the round arch necessarily more
+fixed.
+
+§ X. The circular window furnishes an exception to the common law, that
+the bars shall be vertical through the greater part of their length: for
+if they were so, they could neither have secure perpendicular footing,
+nor secure heading, their thrust being perpendicular to the curve of the
+voussoirs only in the centre of the window; therefore, a small circle,
+like the axle of a wheel, is put into the centre of the window, large
+enough to give footing to the necessary number of radiating bars; and
+the bars are arranged as spokes, being all of course properly capitaled
+and arch-headed. This is the best form of tracery for circular windows,
+naturally enough called wheel windows when so filled.
+
+§ XI. Now, I wish the reader especially to observe that we have arrived
+at these forms of perfect Gothic tracery without the smallest reference
+to any practice of any school, or to any law of authority whatever. They
+are forms having essentially nothing whatever to do either with Goths or
+Greeks. They are eternal forms, based on laws of gravity and cohesion;
+and no better, nor any others so good, will ever be invented, so long as
+the present laws of gravity and cohesion subsist.
+
+§ XII. It does not at all follow that this group of forms owes its
+origin to any such course of reasoning as that which has now led us to
+it. On the contrary, there is not the smallest doubt that tracery began,
+partly, in the grouping of windows together (subsequently enclosed
+within a large arch[59]), and partly in the fantastic penetrations of a
+single slab of stones under the arch, as the circle in Plate V. above.
+The perfect form seems to have been accidentally struck in passing from
+experiment on the one side, to affectation on the other; and it was so
+far from ever becoming systematised, that I am aware of no type of
+tracery for which a _less_ decided preference is shown in the buildings
+in which it exists. The early pierced traceries are multitudinous and
+perfect in their kind,--the late Flamboyant, luxuriant in detail, and
+lavish in quantity,--but the perfect forms exist in comparatively few
+churches, generally in portions of the church only, and are always
+connected, and that closely, either with the massy forms out of which
+they have emerged, or with the enervated types into which they are
+instantly to degenerate.
+
+§ XIII. Nor indeed are we to look upon them as in all points superior to
+the more ancient examples. We have above conducted our reasoning
+entirely on the supposition that a single aperture is given, which it is
+the object to fill with glass, diminishing the power of the light as
+little as possible. But there are many cases, as in triforium and
+cloister lights, in which glazing is not required; in which, therefore,
+the bars, if there be any, must have some more important function than
+that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is to give
+steadiness and _tone_, as it were, to the arches and walls above and
+beside them; or to give the idea of protection to those who pass along
+the triforium, and of seclusion to those who walk in the cloister. Much
+thicker shafts, and more massy arches, may be properly employed in work
+of this kind; and many groups of such tracery will be found resolvable
+into true colonnades, with the arches in pairs, or in triple or
+quadruple groups, and with small rosettes pierced above them for light.
+All this is just as _right_ in its place, as the glass tracery is in its
+own function, and often much more grand. But the same indulgence is not
+to be shown to the affectations which succeeded the developed forms. Of
+these there are three principal conditions: the Flamboyant of France,
+the Stump tracery of Germany, and the Perpendicular of England.
+
+§ XIV. Of these the first arose, by the most delicate and natural
+transitions, out of the perfect school. It was an endeavor to introduce
+more grace into its lines, and more change into its combinations; and
+the ĉsthetic results are so beautiful, that for some time after the
+right road had been left, the aberration was more to be admired than
+regretted. The final conditions became fantastic and effeminate, but, in
+the country where they had been invented, never lost their peculiar
+grace until they were replaced by the Renaissance. The copies of the
+school in England and Italy have all its faults and none of its
+beauties; in France, whatever it lost in method or in majesty, it gained
+in fantasy: literally Flamboyant, it breathed away its strength into
+the air; but there is not more difference between the commonest doggrel
+that ever broke prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of
+Coleridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between
+the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the flaming undulations
+of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that confuse themselves with
+the clouds of every morning sky that brightens above the valley of the
+Seine.
+
+§ XV. The second group of traceries, the intersectional or German group,
+may be considered as including the entire range of the absurd forms
+which were invented in order to display dexterity in stone-cutting and
+ingenuity in construction. They express the peculiar character of the
+German mind, which cuts the frame of every truth joint from joint, in
+order to prove the edge of its instruments; and, in all cases, prefers a
+new or a strange thought to a good one, and a subtle thought to a useful
+one. The point and value of the German tracery consists principally in
+turning the features of good traceries upside down, and cutting them in
+two where they are properly continuous. To destroy at once foundation
+and membership, and suspend everything in the air, keeping out of sight,
+as far as possible, the evidences of a beginning and the probabilities
+of an end, are the main objects of German architecture, as of modern
+German divinity.
+
+§ XVI. This school has, however, at least the merit of ingenuity. Not so
+the English Perpendicular, though a very curious school also in _its_
+way. In the course of the reasoning which led us to the determination of
+the perfect Gothic tracery, we were induced successively to reject
+certain methods of arrangement as weak, dangerous, or disagreeable.
+Collect all these together, and practise them at once, and you have the
+English Perpendicular.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLVI.]
+
+As thus. You find, in the first place (§ V.), that your tracery bars are
+to be subordinated, less to greater; so you take a group of, suppose,
+eight, which you make all exactly equal, giving you nine equal spaces in
+the window, as at A, Fig. XLVI. You found, in the second place (§ VII.),
+that there was no occasion for more than two cross bars; so you take at
+least four or five (also represented at A, Fig. XLVI.), also carefully
+equalised, and set at equal spaces. You found, in the third place (§
+VIII.), that these bars were to be strengthened, in order to support the
+main piers; you will therefore cut the ends off the uppermost, and the
+fourth into three pieces (as also at A). In the fourth place, you found
+(§ IX.) that you were never to run a vertical bar into the arch head; so
+you run them all into it (as at B, Fig. XLVI.); and this last
+arrangement will be useful in two ways, for it will not only expose both
+the bars and the archivolt to an apparent probability of every species
+of dislocation at any moment, but it will provide you with two pleasing
+interstices at the flanks, in the shape of carving-knives, _a_, _b_,
+which, by throwing across the curves _c_, _d_, you may easily multiply
+into four; and these, as you can put nothing into their sharp tops, will
+afford you a more than usually rational excuse for a little bit of
+Germanism, in filling them with arches upside down, _e_, _f_. You will
+now have left at your disposal two and forty similar interstices, which,
+for the sake of variety, you will proceed to fill with two and forty
+similar arches: and, as you were told that the moment a bar received an
+arch heading, it was to be treated as a shaft and capitalled, you will
+take care to give your bars no capitals nor bases, but to run bars,
+foliations and all, well into each other after the fashion of cast-iron,
+as at C. You have still two triangular spaces occurring in an important
+part of your window, _g g_, which, as they are very conspicuous, and you
+cannot make them uglier than they are, you will do wisely to let
+alone;--and you will now have the west window of the cathedral of
+Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular. Nor do I
+think that you can, on the whole, better the arrangement, unless,
+perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars, as is done in the
+cathedral at Gloucester; these buttresses having the double advantage of
+darkening the window when seen from within, and suggesting, when it is
+seen from without, the idea of its being divided by two stout party
+walls, with a heavy thrust against the glass.
+
+§ XVII. Thus far we have considered the plan of the tracery only: we
+have lastly to note the conditions under which the glass is to be
+attached to the bars; and the sections of the bars themselves.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLVII.]
+
+These bars we have seen, in the perfect form, are to become shafts; but,
+supposing the object to be the admission of as much light as possible,
+it is clear that the thickness of the bar ought to be chiefly in the
+depth of the window, and that by increasing the depth of the bar we may
+diminish its breadth: clearly, therefore, we should employ the double
+group of shafts, _b_, of Fig. XIV., setting it edgeways in the window:
+but as the glass would then come between the two shafts, we must add a
+member into which it is to be fitted, as at _a_, Fig. XLVII., and
+uniting these three members together in the simplest way, with a curved
+instead of a sharp recess behind the shafts, we have the section _b_,
+the perfect, but simplest type of the main tracery bars in good Gothic.
+In triforium and cloister tracery, which has no glass to hold, the
+central member is omitted, and we have either the pure double shaft,
+always the most graceful, or a single and more massy shaft, which is the
+simpler and more usual form.
+
+§ XVIII. Finally: there is an intermediate arrangement between the
+glazed and the open tracery, that of the domestic traceries of Venice.
+Peculiar conditions, hereafter to be described, require the shafts of
+these traceries to become the main vertical supports of the floors and
+walls. Their thickness is therefore enormous; and yet free egress is
+required between them (into balconies) which is obtained by doors in
+their lattice glazing. To prevent the inconvenience and ugliness of
+driving the hinges and fastenings of them into the shafts, and having
+the play of the doors in the intervals, the entire glazing is thrown
+behind the pillars, and attached to their abaci and bases with iron. It
+is thus securely sustained by their massy bulk, and leaves their
+symmetry and shade undisturbed.
+
+§ XIX. The depth at which the glass should be placed, in windows without
+traceries, will generally be fixed by the forms of their bevelling, the
+glass occupying the narrowest interval; but when its position is not
+thus fixed, as in many London houses, it is to be remembered that the
+deeper the glass is set (the wall being of given thickness), the more
+light will enter, and the clearer the prospect will be to a person
+sitting quietly in the centre of the room; on the contrary, the farther
+out the glass is set, the more convenient the window will be for a
+person rising and looking out of it. The one, therefore, is an
+arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only about what is going
+on upon the earth: the other for those who are willing to remain at
+rest, so that they have free admission of the light of Heaven. This
+might be noted as a curious expressional reason for the necessity (of
+which no man of ordinary feeling would doubt for a moment) of a deep
+recess in the window, on the outside, to all good or architectural
+effect: still, as there is no reason why people should be made idle by
+having it in their power to look out of window, and as the slight
+increase of light or clearness of view in the centre of a room is more
+than balanced by the loss of space, and the greater chill of the nearer
+glass and outside air, we can, I fear, allege no other structural reason
+for the picturesque external recess, than the expediency of a certain
+degree of protection, for the glass, from the brightest glare of
+sunshine, and heaviest rush of rain.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [58] "Seven Lamps," p. 53.
+
+  [59] On the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Lyons, there
+    is an early French window, presenting one of the usual groups of
+    foliated arches and circles, left, as it were, loose, without any
+    enclosing curve. The effect is very painful. This remarkable window
+    is associated with others of the common form.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  PROTECTION OF APERTURE.
+
+
+§ I. We have hitherto considered the aperture as merely pierced in the
+thickness of the walls; and when its masonry is simple and the fillings
+of the aperture are unimportant, it may well remain so. But when the
+fillings are delicate and of value, as in the case of colored glass,
+finely wrought tracery, or sculpture, such as we shall often find
+occupying the tympanum of doorways, some protection becomes necessary
+against the run of the rain down the walls, and back by the bevel of the
+aperture to the joints or surface of the fillings.
+
+§ II. The first and simplest mode of obtaining this is by channelling
+the jambs and arch head; and this is the chief practical service of
+aperture mouldings, which are otherwise entirely decorative. But as this
+very decorative character renders them unfit to be made channels for
+rain water, it is well to add some external roofing to the aperture,
+which may protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which
+necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its most usual
+form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or round the head of the
+aperture. But this is, in reality, only a contracted form of a true
+_roof_, projecting from the wall over the aperture; and all protections
+of apertures whatsoever are to be conceived as portions of small roofs,
+attached to the wall behind; and supported by it, so long as their scale
+admits of their being so with safety, and afterwards in such manner as
+may be most expedient. The proper forms of these, and modes of their
+support, are to be the subject of our final enquiry.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLVIII.]
+
+§ III. Respecting their proper form we need not stay long in doubt. A
+deep gable is evidently the best for throwing off rain; even a low gable
+being better than a high arch. Flat roofs, therefore, may only be used
+when the nature of the building renders the gable unsightly; as when
+there is not room for it between the stories; or when the object is
+rather shade than protection from rain, as often in verandahs and
+balconies. But for general service the gable is the proper and natural
+form, and may be taken as representative of the rest. Then this gable
+may either project unsupported from the wall, _a_, Fig. XLVIII., or be
+carried by brackets or spurs, _b_, or by walls or shafts, _c_, which
+shafts or walls may themselves be, in windows, carried on a sill; and
+this, in its turn, supported by brackets or spurs. We shall glance at
+the applications of each of these forms in order.
+
+§ IV. There is not much variety in the case of the first, _a_, Fig.
+XLVIII. In the Cumberland and border cottages the door is generally
+protected by two pieces of slate arranged in a gable, giving the purest
+possible type of the first form. In elaborate architecture such a
+projection hardly ever occurs, and in large architecture cannot with
+safety occur, without brackets; but by cutting away the greater part of
+the projection, we shall arrive at the idea of a plain gabled cornice,
+of which a perfect example will be found in Plate VII. of the folio
+series. With this first complete form we may associate the rude, single,
+projecting, penthouse roof; imperfect, because either it must be level
+and the water lodge lazily upon it, or throw off the drip upon the
+persons entering.
+
+§ V. 2. _b_, Fig. XLVIII. This is a most beautiful and natural type, and
+is found in all good architecture, from the highest to the most humble:
+it is a frequent form of cottage door, more especially when carried on
+spurs, being of peculiarly easy construction in wood: as applied to
+large architecture, it can evidently be built, in its boldest and
+simplest form, either of wood only, or on a scale which will admit of
+its sides being each a single slab of stone. If so large as to require
+jointed masonry, the gabled sides will evidently require support, and an
+arch must be thrown across under them, as in Fig. XLIX., from Fiesole.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLIX.]
+
+If we cut the projection gradually down, we arrive at the common Gothic
+gable dripstone carried on small brackets, carved into bosses, heads, or
+some other ornamental form; the sub-arch in such case being useless, is
+removed or coincides with the arch head of the aperture.
+
+§ VI. 3. _c_, Fig. XLVIII. Substituting walls or pillars for the
+brackets, we may carry the projection as far out as we choose, and form
+the perfect porch, either of the cottage or village church, or of the
+cathedral. As we enlarge the structure, however, certain modifications
+of form become necessary, owing to the increased boldness of the
+required supporting arch. For, as the lower end of the gabled roof and
+of the arch cannot coincide, we have necessarily above the shafts one of
+the two forms _a_ or _b_, in Fig. L., of which the latter is clearly the
+best, requiring less masonry and shorter roofing; and when the arch
+becomes so large as to cause a heavy lateral thrust, it may become
+necessary to provide for its farther safety by pinnacles, _c_.
+
+This last is the perfect type of aperture protection. None other can
+ever be invented so good. It is that once employed by Giotto in the
+cathedral of Florence, and torn down by the proveditore, Benedetto
+Uguccione, to erect a Renaissance front instead; and another such has
+been destroyed, not long since, in Venice, the porch of the church of
+St. Apollinare, also to put up some Renaissance upholstery: for
+Renaissance, as if it were not nuisance enough in the mere fact of its
+own existence, appears invariably as a beast of prey, and founds itself
+on the ruin of all that is best and noblest. Many such porches, however,
+happily still exist in Italy, and are among its principal glories.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. L.]
+
+§ VII. When porches of this kind, carried by walls, are placed close
+together, as in cases where there are many and large entrances to a
+cathedral front, they would, in their general form, leave deep and
+uncomfortable intervals, in which damp would lodge and grass grow; and
+there would be a painful feeling in approaching the door in the midst of
+a crowd, as if some of them might miss the real doors, and be driven
+into the intervals, and embayed there. Clearly it will be a natural and
+right expedient, in such cases, to open the walls of the porch wider, so
+that they may correspond in slope, or nearly so, with the bevel of the
+doorway, and either meet each other in the intervals, or have the said
+intervals closed up with an intermediate wall, so that nobody may get
+embayed in them. The porches will thus be united, and form one range of
+great open gulphs or caverns, ready to receive all comers, and direct
+the current of the crowd into the narrower entrances. As the lateral
+thrust of the arches is now met by each other, the pinnacles, if there
+were any, must be removed, and waterspouts placed between each arch to
+discharge the double drainage of the gables. This is the form of all the
+noble northern porches, without exception, best represented by that of
+Rheims.
+
+§ VIII. Contracted conditions of the pinnacle porch are beautifully used
+in the doors of the cathedral of Florence; and the entire arrangement,
+in its most perfect form, as adapted to window protection and
+decoration, is applied by Giotto with inconceivable exquisiteness in the
+windows of the campanile; those of the cathedral itself being all of the
+same type. Various singular and delightful conditions of it are applied
+in Italian domestic architecture (in the Broletto of Monza very
+quaintly), being associated with balconies for speaking to the people,
+and passing into pulpits. In the north we glaze the sides of such
+projections, and they become bow-windows, the shape of roofing being
+then nearly immaterial and very fantastic, often a conical cap. All
+these conditions of window protection, being for real service, are
+endlessly delightful (and I believe the beauty of the balcony, protected
+by an open canopy supported by light shafts, never yet to have been
+properly worked out). But the Renaissance architects destroyed all of
+them, and introduced the magnificent and witty Roman invention of a
+model of a Greek pediment, with its cornices of monstrous thickness,
+bracketed up above the window. The horizontal cornice of the pediment is
+thus useless, and of course, therefore, retained; the protection to the
+head of the window being constructed on the principle of a hat with its
+crown sewn up. But the deep and dark triangular cavity thus obtained
+affords farther opportunity for putting ornament out of sight, of which
+the Renaissance architects are not slow to avail themselves.
+
+A more rational condition is the complete pediment with a couple of
+shafts, or pilasters, carried on a bracketed sill; and the windows of
+this kind, which have been well designed, are perhaps the best things
+which the Renaissance schools have produced: those of Whitehall are, in
+their way, exceedingly beautiful; and those of the Palazzo Ricardi at
+Florence, in their simplicity and sublimity, are scarcely unworthy of
+their reputed designer, Michael Angelo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  SUPERIMPOSITION.
+
+
+§ I. The reader has now some knowledge of every feature of all possible
+architecture. Whatever the nature of the building which may be submitted
+to his criticism, if it be an edifice at all, if it be anything else
+than a mere heap of stones like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large
+stone hewn into shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily
+resolvable into some of the parts which we have been hitherto
+considering: its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small
+shafts and roofs; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or
+walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported by various
+kinds of buttresses. Respecting each of these several features I am
+certain that the reader feels himself prepared, by understanding their
+plain function, to form something like a reasonable and definite
+judgment, whether they be good or bad; and this right judgment of parts
+will, in most cases, lead him to just reverence or condemnation of the
+whole.
+
+§ II. The various modes in which these parts are capable of combination,
+and the merits of buildings of different form and expression, are
+evidently not reducible into lists, nor to be estimated by general laws.
+The nobility of each building depends on its special fitness for its own
+purposes; and these purposes vary with every climate, every soil, and
+every national custom: nay, there were never, probably, two edifices
+erected in which some accidental difference of condition did not require
+some difference of plan or of structure; so that, respecting plan and
+distribution of parts, I do not hope to collect any universal law of
+right; but there are a few points necessary to be noticed respecting the
+means by which height is attained in buildings of various plans, and
+the expediency and methods of superimposition of one story or tier of
+architecture above another.
+
+§ III. For, in the preceding inquiry, I have always supposed either that
+a single shaft would reach to the top of the building, or that the
+farther height required might be added in plain wall above the heads of
+the arches; whereas it may often be rather expedient to complete the
+entire lower series of arches, or finish the lower wall, with a bold
+string course or cornice, and build another series of shafts, or another
+wall, on the top of it.
+
+§ IV. This superimposition is seen in its simplest form in the interior
+shafts of a Greek temple; and it has been largely used in nearly all
+countries where buildings have been meant for real service. Outcry has
+often been raised against it, but the thing is so sternly necessary that
+it has always forced itself into acceptance; and it would, therefore, be
+merely losing time to refute the arguments of those who have attempted
+its disparagement. Thus far, however, they have reason on their side,
+that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without sacrificing
+either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it is not well to
+divide it into stories until it has reached proportions too large to be
+justly measured by the eye. It ought then to be divided in order to mark
+its bulk; and decorative divisions are often possible, which rather
+increase than destroy the expression of general unity.
+
+§ V. Superimposition, wisely practised, is of two kinds, directly
+contrary to each other, of weight on lightness, and of lightness on
+weight; while the superimposition of weight on weight, or lightness on
+lightness, is nearly always wrong.
+
+1. Weight on lightness: I do not say weight on _weakness_. The
+superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call weight on
+lightness: the superimposition of the branches on a tree trunk I call
+lightness on weight: in both cases the support is fully adequate to the
+work, the form of support being regulated by the differences of
+requirement. Nothing in architecture is half so painful as the apparent
+want of sufficient support when the weight above is visibly passive:
+for all buildings are not passive; some seem to rise by their own
+strength, or float by their own buoyancy; a dome requires no visibility
+of support, one fancies it supported by the air. But passive
+architecture without help for its passiveness is unendurable. In a
+lately built house, No. 86, in Oxford Street, three huge stone pillars
+in the second story are carried apparently by the edges of three sheets
+of plate glass in the first. I hardly know anything to match the
+painfulness of this and some other of our shop structures, in which the
+iron-work is concealed; nor, even when it is apparent, can the eye ever
+feel satisfied of their security, when built, as at present, with fifty
+or sixty feet of wall above a rod of iron not the width of this page.
+
+§ VI. The proper forms of this superimposition of weight on lightness
+have arisen, for the most part, from the necessity or desirableness, in
+many situations, of elevating the inhabited portions of buildings
+considerably above the ground level, especially those exposed to damp or
+inundation, and the consequent abandonment of the ground story as
+unserviceable, or else the surrender of it to public purposes. Thus, in
+many market and town houses, the ground story is left open as a general
+place of sheltered resort, and the enclosed apartments raised on
+pillars. In almost all warm countries the luxury, almost the necessity,
+of arcades to protect the passengers from the sun, and the desirableness
+of large space in the rooms above, lead to the same construction.
+Throughout the Venetian islet group, the houses seem to have been thus,
+in the first instance, universally built, all the older palaces
+appearing to have had the rez de chaussée perfectly open, the upper
+parts of the palace being sustained on magnificent arches, and the
+smaller houses sustained in the same manner on wooden piers, still
+retained in many of the cortiles, and exhibited characteristically
+throughout the main street of Murano. As ground became more valuable and
+house-room more scarce, these ground-floors were enclosed with wall
+veils between the original shafts, and so remain; but the type of the
+structure of the entire city is given in the Ducal Palace.
+
+§ VII. To this kind of superimposition we owe the most picturesque
+street effects throughout the world, and the most graceful, as well as
+the most grotesque, buildings, from the many-shafted fantasy of the
+Alhambra (a building as beautiful in disposition as it is base in
+ornamentation) to the four-legged stolidity of the Swiss Chalet:[60] nor
+these only, but great part of the effect of our cathedrals, in which,
+necessarily, the close triforium and clerestory walls are superimposed
+on the nave piers; perhaps with most majesty where with greatest
+simplicity, as in the old basilican types, and the noble cathedral of
+Pisa.
+
+§ VIII. In order to the delightfulness and security of all such
+arrangements, this law must be observed:--that in proportion to the
+height of wall above them, the shafts are to be short. You may take your
+given height of wall, and turn any quantity of that wall into shaft that
+you like; but you must not turn it all into tall shafts, and then put
+more wall above. Thus, having a house five stories high, you may turn
+the lower story into shafts, and leave the four stories in wall; or the
+two lower stories into shafts, and leave three in wall; but, whatever
+you add to the shaft, you must take from the wall. Then also, of course,
+the shorter the shaft the thicker will be its _proportionate_, if not
+its actual, diameter. In the Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts
+are always the thickest.[61]
+
+§ IX. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on weight, is, in
+its most necessary use, of stories of houses one upon another, where, of
+course, wall veil is required in the lower ones, and has to support wall
+veil above, aided by as much of shaft structure as is attainable within
+the given limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman and
+Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful management of this
+kind of superimposition; sometimes of complete courses of external
+arches and shafts one above the other; sometimes of apertures with
+intermediate cornices at the levels of the floors, and large shafts from
+top to bottom of the building; always observing that the upper stories
+shall be at once lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire
+value of such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression of
+the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained by the
+varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of superimposition
+and separation by floors is frankly told.
+
+§ X. In churches and other buildings in which there is no separation by
+floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition is often used, in
+order to enable the builder to avail himself of short and slender
+shafts. It has been noted that these are often easily attainable, and of
+precious materials, when shafts large enough and strong enough to do the
+work at once, could not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and
+of coarse stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his
+work in successive stories; either frankly completing the arch work and
+cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it, which is the
+honester and nobler way, or else tying the stories together by
+supplementary shafts from floor to roof,--the general practice of the
+Northern Gothic, and one which, unless most gracefully managed, gives
+the look of a scaffolding, with cross-poles tied to its uprights, to the
+whole clerestory wall. The best method is that which avoids all chance
+of the upright shafts being supposed continuous, by increasing their
+number and changing their places in the upper stories, so that the whole
+work branches from the ground like a tree. This is the superimposition
+of the Byzantine and the Pisan Romanesque; the most beautiful examples
+of it being, I think, the Southern portico of St. Mark's, the church of
+S. Giovanni at Pistoja, and the apse of the cathedral of Pisa. In
+Renaissance work the two principles are equally distinct, though the
+shafts are (I think) always one above the other. The reader may see one
+of the best examples of the separately superimposed story in Whitehall
+(and another far inferior in St. Paul's), and by turning himself round
+at Whitehall may compare with it the system of connecting shafts in the
+Treasury; though this is a singularly bad example, the window cornices
+of the first floor being like shelves in a cupboard, and cutting the
+mass of the building in two, in spite of the pillars.
+
+§ XI. But this superimposition of lightness on weight is still more
+distinctly the system of many buildings of the kind which I have above
+called Architecture of Position, that is to say, architecture of which
+the greater part is intended merely to keep something in a peculiar
+position; as in light-houses, and many towers and belfries. The subject
+of spire and tower architecture, however, is so interesting and
+extensive, that I have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it,
+and, at all events, cannot enter upon it here: but this much is enough
+for the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many
+towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central towers of
+cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the real structure of
+the best and strongest, are the elevation of gradually diminishing
+weight on massy or even solid foundation. Nevertheless, since the tower
+is in its origin a building for strength of defence, and faithfulness of
+watch, rather than splendor of aspect, its true expression is of just so
+much diminution of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully
+balanced strength, not a jot more. There must be no light-headedness in
+your noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful crest, with the vizor
+down, and the dark vigilance seen through the clefts of it; not the
+filigree crown or embroidered cap. No towers are so grand as the
+square-browed ones, with massy cornices and rent battlements: next to
+these come the fantastic towers, with their various forms of steep roof;
+the best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of
+all in my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns, though
+these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes, and capable
+of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight pinnacled things we
+call towers in England (as in York Minster), are mere confectioner's
+Gothic, and not worth classing.
+
+§ XII. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of chief
+necessity,--that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily stand, in
+their own strength; not by help of buttresses nor artful balancings on
+this side and on that. Your noble tower must need no help, must be
+sustained by no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of
+decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings,
+or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own walls the strength to
+do this; it is to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other
+bulwarks; to rise and look forth, "the tower of Lebanon that looketh
+toward Damascus," like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its
+nurse's arms. A tower may, indeed, have a kind of buttress, a
+projection, or subordinate tower at each of its angles; but these are to
+its main body like the satellites to a shaft, joined with its strength,
+and associated in its uprightness, part of the tower itself: exactly in
+the proportion in which they lose their massive unity with its body and
+assume the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower
+loses its dignity.
+
+§ XIII. These two characters, then, are common to all noble towers,
+however otherwise different in purpose or feature,--the first, that they
+rise from massy foundation to lighter summits, frowning with battlements
+perhaps, but yet evidently more pierced and thinner in wall than
+beneath, and, in most ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open
+work: the second, that whatever the form of the tower, it shall not
+appear to stand by help of buttresses. It follows from the first
+condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary ĉsthetic
+requirements, that we shall have continual variation in the arrangements
+of the stories, and the larger number of apertures towards the top,--a
+condition exquisitely carried out in the old Lombardic towers, in which,
+however small they may be, the number of apertures is always regularly
+increased towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest
+stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six; often, also,
+one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing, not at
+present to our purpose. We may sufficiently exemplify the general laws
+of tower building by placing side by side, drawn to the same scale, a
+mediĉval tower, in which most of them are simply and unaffectedly
+observed, and one of our own modern towers, in which every one of them
+is violated, in small space, convenient for comparison. (Plate VI.)
+
+[Illustration: Plate VI.
+               TYPES OF TOWERS.
+               BRITISH VENETIAN.]
+
+§ XIV. The old tower is that of St. Mark's at Venice, not a very perfect
+example, for its top is Renaissance, but as good Renaissance as there is
+in Venice; and it is fit for our present purpose, because it owes none
+of its effect to ornament. It is built as simply as it well can be to
+answer its purpose: no buttresses; no external features whatever, except
+some huts at the base, and the loggia, afterwards built, which, on
+purpose, I have not drawn; one bold square mass of brickwork; double
+walls, with an ascending inclined plane between them, with apertures as
+small as possible, and these only in necessary places, giving just the
+light required for ascending the stair or slope, not a ray more; and the
+weight of the whole relieved only by the double pilasters on the sides,
+sustaining small arches at the top of the mass, each decorated with the
+scallop or cockle shell, presently to be noticed as frequent in
+Renaissance ornament, and here, for once, thoroughly well applied. Then,
+when the necessary height is reached, the belfry is left open, as in the
+ordinary Romanesque campanile, only the shafts more slender, but severe
+and simple, and the whole crowned by as much spire as the tower would
+carry, to render it more serviceable as a landmark. The arrangement is
+repeated in numberless campaniles throughout Italy.
+
+§ XV. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built college at
+Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many others (just as I have
+not taken the St. Mark's tower as better than many others); but it
+happens to compress our British system of tower building into small
+space. The Venetian tower rises 350 feet,[62] and has no buttresses,
+though built of brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built
+of stone, but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge
+buttresses on each angle. The St. Mark's tower has a high sloping roof,
+but carries it simply, requiring no pinnacles at its angles; the British
+tower has no visible roof, but has four pinnacles for mere ornament. The
+Venetian tower has its lightest part at the top, and is massy at the
+base; the British tower has its lightest part at the base, and shuts up
+its windows into a mere arrowslit at the top. What the tower was built
+for at all must therefore, it seems to me, remain a mystery to every
+beholder; for surely no studious inhabitant of its upper chambers will
+be conceived to be pursuing his employments by the light of the single
+chink on each side; and, had it been intended for a belfry, the sound of
+its bells would have been as effectually prevented from getting out as
+the light from getting in.
+
+§ XVI. In connexion with the subject of towers and of superimposition,
+one other feature, not conveniently to be omitted from our
+house-building, requires a moment's notice,--the staircase.
+
+In modern houses it can hardly be considered an architectural feature,
+and is nearly always an ugly one, from its being apparently without
+support. And here I may not unfitly note the important distinction,
+which perhaps ought to have been dwelt upon in some places before now,
+between the _marvellous_ and the _perilous_ in apparent construction.
+There are many edifices which are awful or admirable in their height,
+and lightness, and boldness of form, respecting which, nevertheless, we
+have no fear that they should fall. Many a mighty dome and aërial aisle
+and arch may seem to stand, as I said, by miracle, but by steadfast
+miracle notwithstanding; there is no fear that the miracle should cease.
+We have a sense of inherent power in them, or, at all events, of
+concealed and mysterious provision for their safety. But in leaning
+towers, as of Pisa or Bologna, and in much minor architecture, passive
+architecture, of modern times, we feel that there is but a chance
+between the building and destruction; that there is no miraculous life
+in it, which animates it into security, but an obstinate, perhaps vain,
+resistance to immediate danger. The appearance of this is often as
+strong in small things as in large; in the sounding-boards of pulpits,
+for instance, when sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one
+is in dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed if a
+single nail should give way; and again, the modern geometrical
+unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage, also, in the
+arrangement of this latter, when room is of value; and excessive
+ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the passage walls, or
+windows. In mediĉval architecture, where there was need of room, the
+staircase was spiral, and enclosed generally in an exterior tower, which
+added infinitely to the picturesque effect of the building; nor was the
+stair itself steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed
+straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the richest
+towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this arrangement. In
+Italy the staircase is often in the open air, surrounding the interior
+court of the house, and giving access to its various galleries or
+loggias: in this case it is almost always supported by bold shafts and
+arches, and forms a most interesting additional feature of the cortile,
+but presents no peculiarity of construction requiring our present
+examination.
+
+We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the subject of
+construction; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with the simplicity or
+apparent barrenness of their present results. He will find, when he
+begins to apply them, that they are of more value than they now seem;
+but I have studiously avoided letting myself be drawn into any intricate
+question, because I wished to ask from the reader only so much attention
+as it seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling to
+pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater practical interest.
+Evidently it would have been altogether beside the purpose of this essay
+to have entered deeply into the abstract science, or closely into the
+mechanical detail, of construction: both have been illustrated by
+writers far more capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the
+reader's discretion; all that has been here endeavored was the leading
+him to appeal to something like definite principle, and refer to the
+easily intelligible laws of convenience and necessity, whenever he found
+his judgment likely to be overborne by authority on the one hand, or
+dazzled by novelty on the other. If he has time to do more, and to
+follow out in all their brilliancy the mechanical inventions of the
+great engineers and architects of the day, I, in some sort, envy him,
+but must part company with him: for my way lies not along the viaduct,
+but down the quiet valley which its arches cross, nor through the
+tunnel, but up the hill-side which its cavern darkens, to see what gifts
+Nature will give us, and with what imagery she will fill our thoughts,
+that the stones we have ranged in rude order may now be touched with
+life; nor lose for ever, in their hewn nakedness, the voices they had of
+old, when the valley streamlet eddied round them in palpitating light,
+and the winds of the hill-side shook over them the shadows of the fern.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [60] I have spent much of my life among the Alps; but I never pass,
+    without some feeling of new surprise, the Chalet, standing on its
+    four pegs (each topped with a flat stone), balanced in the fury of
+    Alpine winds. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the chief use
+    of the arrangement is not so much to raise the building above the
+    snow, as to get a draught of wind beneath it, which may prevent the
+    drift from rising against its sides.
+
+  [61] Appendix 20, "Shafts of the Ducal Palace."
+
+  [62] I have taken Professor Willis's estimate; there being discrepancy
+    among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the
+    height myself, the building being one which does not come within the
+    range of our future inquiries; and its exact dimensions, even here,
+    are of no importance as respects the question at issue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT.
+
+
+§ I. We enter now on the second division of our subject. We have no more
+to do with heavy stones and hard lines; we are going to be happy: to
+look round in the world and discover (in a serious manner always,
+however, and under a sense of responsibility) what we like best in it,
+and to enjoy the same at our leisure: to gather it, examine it, fasten
+all we can of it into imperishable forms, and put it where we may see it
+for ever.
+
+This is to decorate architecture.
+
+§ II. There are, therefore, three steps in the process: first, to find
+out in a grave manner what we like best; secondly, to put as much of
+this as we can (which is little enough) into form; thirdly, to put this
+formed abstraction into a proper place.
+
+And we have now, therefore, to make these three inquiries in succession:
+first, what we like, or what is the right material of ornament; then how
+we are to present it, or its right treatment; then, where we are to put
+it, or its right place. I think I can answer that first inquiry in this
+Chapter, the second inquiry in the next Chapter, and the third I shall
+answer in a more diffusive manner, by taking up in succession the
+several parts of architecture above distinguished, and rapidly noting
+the kind of ornament fittest for each.
+
+§ III. I said in chapter II. § XIV., that all noble ornamentation was
+the expression of man's delight in God's work. This implied that there
+was an _ig_noble ornamentation, which was the expression of man's
+delight in his _own_. There is such a school, chiefly degraded classic
+and Renaissance, in which the ornament is composed of imitations of
+tilings made by man. I think, before inquiring what we like best of
+God's work, we had better get rid of all this imitation of man's, and be
+quite sure we do not like _that_.
+
+§ IV. We shall rapidly glance, then, at the material of decoration hence
+derived. And now I cannot, as I before have done respecting
+construction, _convince_ the reader of one thing being wrong, and
+another right. I have confessed as much again and again; I am now only
+to make appeal to him, and cross-question him, whether he really does
+like things or not. If he likes the ornament on the base of the column
+of the Place Vendôme, composed of Wellington boots and laced frock
+coats, I cannot help it; I can only say I differ from him, and don't
+like it. And if, therefore, I speak dictatorially, and say this is base,
+or degraded, or ugly, I mean, only that I believe men of the longest
+experience in the matter would either think it so, or would be prevented
+from thinking it so only by some morbid condition of their minds; and I
+believe that the reader, if he examine himself candidly, will usually
+agree in my statements.
+
+§ V. The subjects of ornament found in man's work may properly fall into
+four heads: 1. Instruments of art, agriculture, and war; armor, and
+dress; 2. Drapery; 3. Shipping; 4. Architecture itself.
+
+1. Instruments, armor, and dress.
+
+The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating arms in
+temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of employing them as
+the subjects of sculptural ornament: thenceforward, this abuse has been
+chiefly characteristic of classical architecture, whether true or
+Renaissance. Armor is a noble thing in its proper service and
+subordination to the body; so is an animal's hide on its back; but a
+heap of cast skins, or of shed armor, is alike unworthy of all regard or
+imitation. We owe much true sublimity, and more of delightful
+picturesqueness, to the introduction of armor both in painting and
+sculpture: in poetry it is better still,--Homer's undressed Achilles is
+less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles, though Phidias would
+rather have had him naked; in all mediĉval painting, arms, like all
+other parts of costume, are treated with exquisite care and delight; in
+the designs of Leonardo, Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes
+becomes almost too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention
+bestowed upon it; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash what the
+Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordinating
+heroism to the light of the steel, while the great designers wearied
+themselves in its elaborate fancy.
+
+But all this labor was given to the living, not the dead armor; to the
+shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of the beach; and even
+so, it was introduced more sparingly by the good sculptors than the good
+painters; for the former felt, and with justice, that the painter had
+the power of conquering the over prominence of costume by the expression
+and color of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and
+glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the flash of
+the mail; but they could hardly, by any boldness or energy of the marble
+features, conquer the forwardness and conspicuousness of the sharp
+armorial forms. Their armed figures were therefore almost always
+subordinate, their principal figures draped or naked, and their choice
+of subject was much influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the
+Renaissance sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla for the mere crest
+and plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their narrowed
+minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume without the person,
+but to the pettiest details of the costume itself. They could not
+describe Achilles, but they could describe his shield; a shield like
+those of dedicated spoil, without a handle, never to be waved in the
+face of war. And then we have helmets and lances, banners and swords,
+sometimes with men to hold them, sometimes without; but always chiselled
+with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery,--show helmets
+of the stage, no Vulcan work on them, no heavy hammer strokes, no Etna
+fire in the metal of them, nothing but pasteboard crests and high
+feathers. And these, cast together in disorderly heaps, or grinning
+vacantly over keystones, form one of the leading decorations of
+Renaissance architecture, and that one of the best; for helmets and
+lances, however loosely laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and
+books of music, which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian
+sources of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon
+became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap of cast
+clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of human figures,
+the indolence of architects came to the aid of their affectation, until
+by the moderns we find the practice carried out to its most interesting
+results, and, as above noted, a large pair of boots occupying the
+principal place in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Colonne Vendôme.
+
+§ VI. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example of the
+abuse at its height, occurs in the Hôtel des Invalides, where the dormer
+windows are suits of armor down to the bottom of the corselet, crowned
+by the helmet, and with the window in the middle of the breast.
+
+Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent occurrence,
+except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where they are not employed as
+ornaments, but represented for the sake of accurate knowledge, or as
+symbols. Wherever they have purpose of this kind, they are of course
+perfectly right; but they are then part of the building's conversation,
+not conducive to its beauty. The French have managed, with great
+dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation of
+their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base.
+
+§ VII. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of introducing
+drapery, as such, for ornament, in the "Seven Lamps." I may here note a
+curious instance of the abuse in the church of the Jesuiti at Venice
+(Renaissance). On first entering you suppose that the church, being in a
+poor quarter of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy
+green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer's pattern: on
+looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble, with the green
+pattern inlaid. Another remarkable instance is in a piece of not
+altogether unworthy architecture at Paris (Rue Rivoli), where the
+columns are supposed to be decorated with images of handkerchiefs tied
+in a stout knot round the middle of them. This shrewd invention bids
+fair to become a new order. Multitudes of massy curtains and various
+upholstery, more or less in imitation of that of the drawing-room, are
+carved and gilt, in wood or stone, about the altars and other theatrical
+portions of Romanist churches; but from these coarse and senseless
+vulgarities we may well turn, in all haste, to note, with respect as
+well as regret, one of the errors of the great school of Niccolo
+Pisano,--an error so full of feeling as to be sometimes all but
+redeemed, and altogether forgiven,--the sculpture, namely, of curtains
+around the recumbent statues upon tombs, curtains which angels are
+represented as withdrawing, to gaze upon the faces of those who are at
+rest. For some time the idea was simply and slightly expressed, and
+though there was always a painfulness in finding the shafts of stone,
+which were felt to be the real supporters of the canopy, represented as
+of yielding drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the
+tenderness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the scholars
+of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were unable to invent;
+and the quiet curtained canopy became a huge marble tent, with a pole in
+the centre of it. Thus vulgarised, the idea itself soon disappeared, to
+make room for urns, torches, and weepers, and the other modern
+paraphernalia of the churchyard.
+
+§ VIII. 3. Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to form a
+separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in Roman decoration,
+and to the continual occurrence of naval subjects in modern monumental
+bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a
+"_kind_ of beauty" in a ship: I say, without any manner of doubt, that a
+ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the
+noblest; nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so lovely as those
+of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of the timbers of a small
+boat, not a race boat, a mere floating chisel, but a broad, strong, sea
+boat, able to breast a wave and break it: and yet, with all this beauty,
+ships cannot be made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular
+delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty; nor does scenery of
+shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying it:
+witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and must be sometimes,
+introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, but just
+enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the lightest lines on the
+background; never with any attempt at realisation, never with any
+equality to the force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the
+subject be picturesque. I shall explain this exception presently, in
+speaking of imitative architecture.
+
+§ IX. There is one piece of a ship's fittings, however, which may be
+thought to have obtained acceptance as a constant element of
+architectural ornament,--the cable: it is not, however, the cable
+itself, but its abstract form, a group of twisted lines (which a cable
+only exhibits in common with many natural objects), which is indeed
+beautiful as an ornament. Make the resemblance complete, give to the
+stone the threads and character of the cable, and you may, perhaps,
+regard the sculpture with curiosity, but never more with admiration.
+Consider the effect of the base of the statue of King William IV. at the
+end of London Bridge.
+
+§ X. 4. Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or dress, or
+instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is almost exclusively
+confined to bad architecture--Roman or Renaissance. But the false use of
+architecture itself, as an ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even
+in the mediĉval work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some
+of its noblest examples.
+
+It is, therefore, of great importance to note exactly at what point this
+abuse begins, and in what it consists.
+
+§ XI. In all bas-relief, architecture may be introduced as an
+explanation of the scene in which the figures act; but with more or less
+prominence in the _inverse ratio of the importance of the figures_.
+
+The metaphysical reason of this is, that where the figures are of great
+value and beauty, the mind is supposed to be engaged wholly with them;
+and it is an impertinence to disturb its contemplation of them by any
+minor features whatever. As the figures become of less value, and are
+regarded with less intensity, accessory subjects may be introduced, such
+as the thoughts may have leisure for.
+
+Thus, if the figures be as large as life, and complete statues, it is
+gross vulgarity to carve a temple above them, or distribute them over
+sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyramids: I need hardly
+instance Canova's works,[63] and the Dutch pulpit groups, with
+fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of church naves.
+
+If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the scene may
+be explained by lightly traced outlines: this is admirably done in the
+Ninevite marbles.
+
+If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less than
+life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and produce
+picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts entirely to themselves,
+the scenery in which they act may become prominent. The most exquisite
+examples of this treatment are the gates of Ghiberti. What would that
+Madonna of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which she
+shrinks back? But all mediĉval work is full of delightful examples of
+the same kind of treatment: the gates of hell and of paradise are
+important pieces, both of explanation and effect, in all early
+representations of the last judgment, or of the descent into Hades. The
+keys of St. Peter, and the crushing flat of the devil under his own
+door, when it is beaten in, would hardly be understood without the
+respective gate-ways above. The best of all the later capitals of the
+Ducal Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the
+richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by a small
+emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs us, is "Numa
+Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e chiese."
+
+§ XII. Shipping may be introduced, or rich fancy of vestments, crowns,
+and ornaments, exactly on the same conditions as architecture; and if
+the reader will look back to my definition of the picturesque in the
+"Seven Lamps," he will see why I said, above, that they might only be
+prominent when the purpose of the subject was partly picturesque; that
+is to say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment
+from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not from the
+heart of the thing itself.
+
+And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the death of Nelson
+in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily enjoy the sculpture of a
+storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the
+church of St. Eustorgio at Milan, where the grouping of the figures is
+most fancifully complicated by the undercut cordage of the vessel.
+
+§ XIII. In all these instances, however, observe that the permission to
+represent the human work as an ornament, is conditional on its being
+necessary to the representation of a scene, or explanation of an action.
+On no terms whatever could any such subject be independently admissible.
+
+Observe, therefore, the use of manufacture as ornament is--
+
+  1. With heroic figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
+  2. With picturesque figure sculpture, admissible in the degree of its
+       picturesqueness.
+  3. Without figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
+
+So also in painting: Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel, would not
+have willingly painted a dress of figured damask or of watered satin;
+his was heroic painting, not admitting accessories.
+
+Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyck, would be very sorry to
+part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry, observe,
+exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should not _we_ also
+be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest, in that picture of the
+National Gallery?
+
+But I think Vandyck would not have liked, on the other hand, the vest
+without the bishop. I much doubt if Titian or Veronese would have
+enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and making studies of dresses upon
+the counter.
+
+§ XIV. So, therefore, finally, neither architecture nor any other human
+work is admissible as an ornament, except in subordination to figure
+subject. And this law is grossly and painfully violated by those curious
+examples of Gothic, both early and late, in the north, (but late, I
+think, exclusively, in Italy,) in which the minor features of the
+architecture were composed of _small models_ of the larger: examples
+which led the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life,
+strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic,--abuses which no
+Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine, nor Italian of the
+earlier ages would have endured for an instant, and which strike me with
+renewed surprise whenever I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century
+Northern Gothic, associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite
+feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges, Amiens,
+Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as
+conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive
+windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed
+with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are
+crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap
+for the saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the
+taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it becomes
+rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of Pavia; and at Venice we
+find the Renaissance churches decorated with models of fortifications
+like those in the Repository at Woolwich, or inlaid with mock arcades in
+pseudo-perspective, copied from gardeners' paintings at the ends of
+conservatories.
+
+§ XV. I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all ornament is
+base which takes for its subject human work, that it is utterly
+base,--painful to every rightly-toned mind, without perhaps immediate
+sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we _do_ think
+of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for admiration, is a
+miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our own wretched doings,
+when we might have been looking at God's doings. And all noble ornament
+is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man's delight in
+God's work.
+
+§ XVI. For observe, the function of ornament is to make you happy. Now
+in what are you rightly happy? Not in thinking of what you have done
+yourself; not in your own pride, not your own birth; not in your own
+being, or your own will, but in looking at God; watching what He does,
+what He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to His will.
+
+You are to be made happy by ornaments; therefore they must be the
+expression of all this. Not copies of your own handiwork; not boastings
+of your own grandeur; not heraldries; not king's arms, nor any
+creature's arms, but God's arm, seen in His work. Not manifestation of
+your delight in your own laws, or your own liberties, or your own
+inventions; but in divine laws, constant, daily, common laws;--not
+Composite laws, nor Doric laws, nor laws of the five orders, but of the
+Ten Commandments.
+
+§ XVII. Then the proper material of ornament will be whatever God has
+created; and its proper treatment, that which seems in accordance with
+or symbolical of His laws. And, for material, we shall therefore have,
+first, the abstract lines which are most frequent in nature; and then,
+from lower to higher, the whole range of systematised inorganic and
+organic forms. We shall rapidly glance in order at their kinds; and,
+however absurd the elemental division of inorganic matter by the
+ancients may seem to the modern chemist, it is one so grand and simple
+for arrangements of external appearances, that I shall here follow it;
+noticing first, after abstract lines, the imitable forms of the four
+elements, of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, and then those of animal
+organisms. It may be convenient to the reader to have the order stated
+in a clear succession at first, thus:--
+
+   1. Abstract lines.
+   2. Forms of Earth (Crystals).
+   3. Forms of Water (Waves).
+   4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays).
+   5. Forms of Air (Clouds).
+   6. (Organic forms.) Shells.
+   7. Fish.
+   8. Reptiles and insects.
+   9. Vegetation (A.) Stems and Trunks.
+  10. Vegetation (B.) Foliage.
+  11. Birds.
+  12. Mammalian animals and Man.
+
+It may be objected that clouds are a form of moisture, not of air. They
+are, however, a perfect expression of aërial states and currents, and
+may sufficiently well stand for the element they move in. And I have put
+vegetation apparently somewhat out of its place, owing to its vast
+importance as a means of decoration, and its constant association with
+birds and men.
+
+§ XVIII. 1. Abstract lines. I have not with lines named also shades and
+colors, for this evident reason, that there are no such things as
+abstract shadows, irrespective of the forms which exhibit them, and
+distinguished in their own nature from each other; and that the
+arrangement of shadows, in greater or less quantity, or in certain
+harmonical successions, is an affair of treatment, not of selection. And
+when we use abstract colors, we are in fact using a part of nature
+herself,--using a quality of her light, correspondent with that of the
+air, to carry sound; and the arrangement of color in harmonious masses
+is again a matter of treatment, not selection. Yet even in this separate
+art of coloring, as referred to architecture, it is very notable that
+the best tints are always those of natural stones. These can hardly be
+wrong; I think I never yet saw an offensive introduction of the natural
+colors of marble and precious stones, unless in small mosaics, and in
+one or two glaring instances of the resolute determination to produce
+something ugly at any cost. On the other hand, I have most assuredly
+never yet seen a painted building, ancient or modern, which seemed to me
+quite right.
+
+§ XIX. Our first constituents of ornament will therefore be abstract
+lines, that is to say, the most frequent contours of natural objects,
+transferred to architectural forms when it is not right or possible to
+render such forms distinctly imitative. For instance, the line or curve
+of the edge of a leaf may be accurately given to the edge of a stone,
+without rendering the stone in the least _like_ a leaf, or suggestive of
+a leaf; and this the more fully, because the lines of nature are alike
+in all her works; simpler or richer in combination, but the same in
+character; and when they are taken out of their combinations it is
+impossible to say from which of her works they have been borrowed, their
+universal property being that of ever-varying curvature in the most
+subtle and subdued transitions, with peculiar expressions of motion,
+elasticity, or dependence, which I have already insisted upon at some
+length in the chapters on typical beauty in "Modern Painters." But, that
+the reader may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from
+different sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the opposite
+plate, some ten or eleven lines from natural forms of very different
+substances and scale: the first, _a b_, is in the original, I think, the
+most beautiful simple curve I have ever seen in my life; it is a curve
+about three quarters of a mile long, formed by the surface of a small
+glacier of the second order, on a spur of the Aiguille de Blaitière
+(Chamouni). I have merely outlined the crags on the right of it, to show
+their sympathy and united action with the curve of the glacier, which is
+of course entirely dependent on their opposition to its descent;
+softened, however, into unity by the snow, which rarely melts on this
+high glacier surface.
+
+The line _d c_ is some mile and a half or two miles long; it is part of
+the flank of the chain of the Dent d'Oche above the lake of Geneva, one
+or two of the lines of the higher and more distant ranges being given in
+combination with it.
+
+[Illustration: Plate VII.
+               ABSTRACT LINES.]
+
+_h_ is a line about four feet long, a branch of spruce fir. I have taken
+this tree because it is commonly supposed to be stiff and ungraceful;
+its outer sprays are, however, more noble in their sweep than almost any
+that I know: but this fragment is seen at great disadvantage, because
+placed upside down, in order that the reader may compare its curvatures
+with _c d_, _e g_, and _i k_, which are all mountain lines; _e g_, about
+five hundred feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; _i k_, the
+entire slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley
+of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; _l m_ is the line of the side
+of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper; _n o_, one of
+the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a paper Nautilus; _p_, a
+spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula; _q r_, the leaf of the
+Alisma Plantago with its interior ribs, real size; _s t_, the side of a
+bay-leaf; _u w_, of a salvia leaf; and it is to be carefully noted that
+these last curves, being never intended by nature to be seen singly, are
+more heavy and less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen
+as independent lines. But all agree in their character of changeful
+curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the rest in
+delicacy and richness of transition.
+
+§ XX. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavored to show in the
+"Modern Painters;" but one point, there omitted, may be mentioned
+here,--that almost all these lines are expressive of action of _force_
+of some kind, while the circle is a line of limitation or support. In
+leafage they mark the forces of its growth and expansion, but some among
+the most beautiful of them are described by bodies variously in motion,
+or subjected to force; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of
+water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by their
+satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be considered
+instead of its relation to the planet; by boats, or birds, turning in
+the water or air, by clouds in various action upon the wind, by sails in
+the curvatures they assume under its force, and by thousands of other
+objects moving or bearing force. In the Alisma leaf, _q r_, the lines
+through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different
+expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those
+which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the
+shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its
+point. Circular curves, on the contrary, are always, I think, curves of
+limitation or support; that is to say, curves of perfect rest. The
+cylindrical curve round the stem of a plant binds its fibres together;
+while the _ascent_ of the stem is in lines of various curvature: so the
+curve of the horizon and of the apparent heaven, of the rainbow, etc.:
+and though the reader might imagine that the circular orbit of any
+moving body, or the curve described by a sling, was a curve of motion,
+he should observe that the circular character is given to the curve not
+by the motion, but by the confinement: the circle is the consequence not
+of the energy of the body, but of its being forbidden to leave the
+centre; and whenever the whirling or circular motion can be fully
+impressed on it we obtain instant balance and rest with respect to the
+centre of the circle.
+
+Hence the peculiar fitness of the circular curve as a sign of rest, and
+security of support, in arches; while the other curves, belonging
+especially to action, are to be used in the more active architectural
+features--the hand and foot (the capital and base), and in all minor
+ornaments; more freely in proportion to their independence of structural
+conditions.
+
+§ XXI. We need not, however, hope to be able to imitate, in general
+work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of nature's highest
+designing: on the contrary, their extreme refinement renders them unfit
+for coarse service or material. Lines which are lovely in the pearly
+film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and
+those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the
+substance of incumbent marble. Of all the graceful lines assembled on
+Plate VII., we shall do well to be content with two of the simplest. We
+shall take one mountain line (_e g_) and one leaf line (_u w_), or
+rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not want them all. I will
+mark off from _u w_ the little bit _x y_, and from _e g_ the piece _e
+f_; both which appear to me likely to be serviceable: and if hereafter
+we need the help of any abstract lines, we will see what we can do with
+these only.
+
+§ XXII. 2. Forms of Earth (Crystals). It may be asked why I do not say
+rocks or mountains? Simply, because the nobility of these depends,
+first, on their scale, and, secondly, on accident. Their scale cannot be
+represented, nor their accident systematised. No sculptor can in the
+least imitate the peculiar character of accidental fracture: he can obey
+or exhibit the laws of nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her
+fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain
+is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which
+are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of
+catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate
+recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labor of Nature, but not
+her disturbance; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained,[64] not
+what she has violently suffered, or strangely permitted. The only uses,
+therefore, of rock form which are wise in the architect, are its actual
+introduction (by leaving untouched such blocks as are meant for rough
+service), and that noble use of the general examples of mountain
+structure of which I have often heretofore spoken. Imitations of rock
+form have, for the most part, been confined to periods of degraded
+feeling and to architectural toys or pieces of dramatic effect,--the
+Calvaries and holy sepulchres of Romanism, or the grottoes and fountains
+of English gardens. They were, however, not unfrequent in mediĉval
+bas-reliefs; very curiously and elaborately treated by Ghiberti on the
+doors of Florence, and in religious sculpture necessarily introduced
+wherever the life of the anchorite was to be expressed. They were rarely
+introduced as of ornamental character, but for particular service and
+expression; we shall see an interesting example in the Ducal Palace at
+Venice.
+
+§ XXIII. But against crystalline form, which is the completely
+systematised natural structure of the earth, none of these objections
+hold good, and, accordingly, it is an endless element of decoration,
+where higher conditions of structure cannot be represented. The
+four-sided pyramid, perhaps the most frequent of all natural crystals,
+is called in architecture a dogtooth; its use is quite limitless, and
+always beautiful: the cube and rhomb are almost equally frequent in
+chequers and dentils: and all mouldings of the middle Gothic are little
+more than representations of the canaliculated crystals of the beryl,
+and such other minerals:
+
+§ XXIV. Not knowingly. I do not suppose a single hint was ever actually
+taken from mineral form; not even by the Arabs in their stalactite
+pendants and vaults: all that I mean to allege is, that beautiful
+ornament, wherever found, or however invented, is always either an
+intentional or unintentional copy of some constant natural form; and
+that in this particular instance, the pleasure we have in these
+geometrical figures of our own invention, is dependent for all its
+acuteness on the natural tendency impressed on us by our Creator to love
+the forms into which the earth He gave us to tread, and out of which He
+formed our bodies, knit itself as it was separated from the deep.
+
+§ XXV. 3. Forms of Water (Waves).
+
+The reasons which prevent rocks from being used for ornament repress
+still more forcibly the portraiture of the sea. Yet the constant
+necessity of introducing some representation of water in order to
+explain the scene of events, or as a sacred symbol, has forced the
+sculptors of all ages to the invention of some type or letter for it, if
+not an actual imitation. We find every degree of conventionalism or of
+naturalism in these types, the earlier being, for the most part,
+thoughtful symbols; the latter, awkward attempts at portraiture.[65] The
+most conventional of all types is the Egyptian zigzag, preserved in the
+astronomical sign of Aquarius; but every nation, with any capacities of
+thought, has given, in some of its work, the same great definition of
+open water, as "an undulatory thing with fish in it." I say _open_
+water, because inland nations have a totally different conception of the
+element. Imagine for an instant the different feelings of an husbandman
+whose hut is built by the Rhine or the Po, and who sees, day by day,
+the same giddy succession of silent power, the same opaque, thick,
+whirling, irresistible labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies,
+coiling themselves into serpentine race by the reedy banks, in omne
+volubilis ĉvum,--and the image of the sea in the mind of the fisher upon
+the rocks of Ithaca, or by the Straits of Sicily, who sees how, day by
+day, the morning winds come coursing to the shore, every breath of them
+with a green wave rearing before it; clear, crisp, ringing, merry-minded
+waves, that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as
+they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust of
+crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand. Fancy the difference of the
+image of water in those two minds, and then compare the sculpture of the
+coiling eddies of the Tigris and its reedy branches in those slabs of
+Nineveh, with the crested curls of the Greek sea on the coins of
+Camerina or Tarentum. But both agree in the undulatory lines, either of
+the currents or the surface, and in the introduction of fish as
+explanatory of the meaning of those lines (so also the Egyptians in
+their frescoes, with most elaborate realisation of the fish). There is a
+very curious instance on a Greek mirror in the British Museum,
+representing Orion on the Sea; and multitudes of examples with dolphins
+on the Greek vases: the type is preserved without alteration in mediĉval
+painting and sculpture. The sea in that Greek mirror (at least 400
+B.C.), in the mosaics of Torcello and St. Mark's, on the font of St.
+Frediano at Lucca, on the gate of the fortress of St. Michael's Mount in
+Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the Ducal
+Palace at Venice (under Arion on his Dolphin), is represented in a
+manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the frescoes of Avignon, has,
+with his usual strong feeling for naturalism, given the best example I
+remember, in painting, of the unity of the conventional system with
+direct imitation, and that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue
+color the coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the
+breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation and
+decorative effect are subordinate to easily understood symbolical
+language; the undulatory lines are often valuable as an enrichment of
+surface, but are rarely of any studied gracefulness. One of the best
+examples I know of their expressive arrangement is around some figures
+in a spandril at Bourges, representing figures sinking in deep sea (the
+deluge): the waved lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the
+edge of the moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order
+of nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times of
+debasement, water began to be represented with its waves, foam, etc., as
+on the Vendramin tomb at Venice, above cited; but even there, without
+any definite ornamental purpose, the sculptor meant partly to explain a
+story, partly to display dexterity of chiselling, but not to produce
+beautiful forms pleasant to the eye. The imitation is vapid and joyless,
+and it has often been matter of surprise to me that sculptors, so fond
+of exhibiting their skill, should have suffered this imitation to fall
+so short, and remain so cold,--should not have taken more pains to curl
+the waves clearly, to edge them sharply, and to express, by drill-holes
+or other artifices, the character of foam. I think in one of the Antwerp
+churches something of this kind is done in wood, but in general it is
+rare.
+
+§ XXVI. 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays). If neither the sea nor the
+rock can be imagined, still less the devouring fire. It has been
+symbolised by radiation both in painting and sculpture, for the most
+part in the latter very unsuccessfully. It was suggested to me, not long
+ago,[66] that zigzag decorations of Norman architects were typical of
+light springing from the half-set orb of the sun; the resemblance to the
+ordinary sun type is indeed remarkable, but I believe accidental. I
+shall give you, in my large plates, two curious instances of radiation
+in brick ornament above arches, but I think these also without any very
+luminous intention. The imitations of fire in the torches of Cupids and
+genii, and burning in tops of urns, which attest and represent the
+mephitic inspirations of the seventeenth century in most London
+churches, and in monuments all over civilised Europe, together with the
+gilded rays of Romanist altars, may be left to such mercy as the reader
+is inclined to show them.
+
+§ XXVII. 5. Forms of Air (Clouds). Hardly more manageable than flames,
+and of no ornamental use, their majesty being in scale and color, and
+inimitable in marble. They are lightly traced in much of the cinque
+cento sculpture; very boldly and grandly in the strange Last Judgment in
+the porch of St. Maclou at Rouen, described in the "Seven Lamps." But
+the most elaborate imitations are altogether of recent date, arranged in
+concretions like flattened sacks, forty or fifty feet above the altars
+of continental churches, mixed with the gilded truncheons intended for
+sunbeams above alluded to.
+
+§ XXVIII. 6. Shells. I place these lowest in the scale (after inorganic
+forms) as being moulds or coats of organism; not themselves organic. The
+sense of this, and of their being mere emptiness and deserted houses,
+must always prevent them, however beautiful in their lines, from being
+largely used in ornamentation. It is better to take the line and leave
+the shell. One form, indeed, that of the cockle, has been in all ages
+used as the decoration of half domes, which were named conchas from
+their shell form: and I believe the wrinkled lip of the cockle, so used,
+to have been the origin, in some parts of Europe at least, of the
+exuberant foliation of the round arch. The scallop also is a pretty
+radiant form, and mingles well with other symbols when it is needed. The
+crab is always as delightful as a grotesque, for here we suppose the
+beast inside the shell; and he sustains his part in a lively manner
+among the other signs of the zodiac, with the scorpion; or scattered
+upon sculptured shores, as beside the Bronze Boar of Florence. We shall
+find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one of the Piazzetta
+shafts.
+
+§ XXIX. 7. Fish. These, as beautiful in their forms as they are familiar
+to our sight, while their interest is increased by their symbolic
+meaning, are of great value as material of ornament. Love of the
+picturesque has generally induced a choice of some supple form with
+scaly body and lashing tail, but the simplest fish form is largely
+employed in mediĉval work. We shall find the plain oval body and sharp
+head of the Thunny constantly at Venice; and the fish used in the
+expression of sea-water, or water generally, are always plain bodied
+creatures in the best mediĉval sculpture. The Greek type of the dolphin,
+however, sometimes but slightly exaggerated from the real outline of the
+Delphinus Delphis,[67] is one of the most picturesque of animal forms;
+and the action of its slow revolving plunge is admirably caught upon the
+surface sea represented in Greek vases.
+
+§ XXX. 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and lizard
+exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange
+combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a
+pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite subjects in all
+periods of art; and the unity of both lizard and serpent in the ideal
+dragon, the most picturesque and powerful of all animal forms, and of
+peculiar symbolical interest to the Christian mind, is perhaps the
+principal of all the materials of mediĉval picturesque sculpture. By the
+best sculptors it is always used with this symbolic meaning, by the
+cinque cento sculptors as an ornament merely. The best and most natural
+representations of mere viper or snake are to be found interlaced among
+their confused groups of meaningless objects. The real power and horror
+of the snake-head has, however, been rarely reached. I shall give one
+example from Verona of the twelfth century.
+
+Other less powerful reptile forms are not unfrequent. Small frogs,
+lizards, and snails almost always enliven the foregrounds and leafage of
+good sculpture. The tortoise is less usually employed in groups. Beetles
+are chiefly mystic and colossal. Various insects, like everything else
+in the world, occur in cinque cento work; grasshoppers most frequently.
+We shall see on the Ducal Palace at Venice an interesting use of the
+bee.
+
+§ XXXI. 9. Branches and stems of Trees. I arrange these under a separate
+head; because, while the forms of leafage belong to all architecture,
+and ought to be employed in it always, those of the branch and stem
+belong to a peculiar imitative and luxuriant architecture, and are only
+applicable at times. Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived little
+beauty in the stems of trees; they were little else than timber to them;
+and they preferred the rigid and monstrous triglyph, or the fluted
+column, to a broken bough or gnarled trunk. But with Christian knowledge
+came a peculiar regard for the forms of vegetation, from the root
+upwards. The actual representation of the entire trees required in many
+scripture subjects,--as in the most frequent of Old Testament subjects,
+the Fall; and again in the Drunkenness of Noah, the Garden Agony, and
+many others, familiarised the sculptors of bas-relief to the beauty of
+forms before unknown; while the symbolical name given to Christ by the
+Prophets, "the Branch," and the frequent expressions referring to this
+image throughout every scriptural description of conversion, gave an
+especial interest to the Christian mind to this portion of vegetative
+structure. For some time, nevertheless, the sculpture of trees was
+confined to bas-relief; but it at last affected even the treatment of
+the main shafts in Lombard Gothic buildings,--as in the western façade
+of Genoa, where two of the shafts are represented as gnarled trunks: and
+as bas-relief itself became more boldly introduced, so did tree
+sculpture, until we find the writhed and knotted stems of the vine and
+fig used for angle shafts on the Doge's Palace, and entire oaks and
+appletrees forming, roots and all, the principal decorative sculptures
+of the Scala tombs at Verona. It was then discovered to be more easy to
+carve branches than leaves and, much helped by the frequent employment
+in later Gothic of the "Tree of Jesse," for traceries and other
+purposes, the system reached full developement in a perfect thicket of
+twigs, which form the richest portion of the decoration of the porches
+of Beauvais. It had now been carried to its richest extreme: men
+wearied of it and abandoned it, and like all other natural and beautiful
+things, it was ostracised by the mob of Renaissance architects. But it
+is interesting to observe how the human mind, in its acceptance of this
+feature of ornament, proceeded from the ground, and followed, as it
+were, the natural growth of the tree. It began with the rude and solid
+trunk, as at Genoa; then the branches shot out, and became loaded
+leaves; autumn came, the leaves were shed, and the eye was directed to
+the extremities of the delicate branches;--the Renaissance frosts came,
+and all perished.
+
+§ XXXII. 10. Foliage, Flowers, and Fruit. It is necessary to consider
+these as separated from the stems; not only, as above noted, because
+their separate use marks another school of architecture, but because
+they are the only organic structures which are capable of being so
+treated, and intended to be so, without strong effort of imagination. To
+pull animals to pieces, and use their paws for feet of furniture, or
+their heads for terminations of rods and shafts, is _usually_ the
+characteristic of feelingless schools; the greatest men like their
+animals whole. The head may, indeed, be so managed as to look emergent
+from the stone, rather than fastened to it; and wherever there is
+throughout the architecture any expression of sternness or severity
+(severity in its literal sense, as in Romans, XI. 22), such divisions of
+the living form may be permitted; still, you cannot cut an animal to
+pieces as you can gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our
+gathering, and for our constant delight: wherever men exist in a
+perfectly civilised and healthy state, they have vegetation around them;
+wherever their state approaches that of innocence or perfectness, it
+approaches that of Paradise,--it is a dressing of garden. And,
+therefore, where nothing else can be used for ornament, vegetation may;
+vegetation in any form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A
+single leaf laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or
+frame-work of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost of
+the leaf,--the hollow "foil" cut out of it,--possesses a charm which
+nothing else can replace; a charm not exciting, nor demanding laborious
+thought or sympathy, but perfectly simple, peaceful, and satisfying.
+
+§ XXXIII. The full recognition of leaf forms, as the general source of
+subordinate decoration, is one of the chief characteristics of Christian
+architecture; but the two _roots_ of leaf ornament are the Greek
+acanthus, and the Egyptian lotus.[68] The dry land and the river thus
+each contributed their part; and all the florid capitals of the richest
+Northern Gothic on the one hand, and the arrowy lines of the severe
+Lombardic capitals on the other, are founded on these two gifts of the
+dust of Greece and the waves of the Nile. The leaf which is, I believe,
+called the Persepolitan water-leaf, is to be associated with the lotus
+flower and stem, as the origin of our noblest types of simple capital;
+and it is to be noted that the florid leaves of the dry land are used
+most by the Northern architects, while the water leaves are gathered for
+their ornaments by the parched builders of the Desert.
+
+§ XXXIV. Fruit is, for the most part, more valuable in color than form;
+nothing is more beautiful as a subject of sculpture on a tree; but,
+gathered and put in baskets, it is quite possible to have too much of
+it. We shall find it so used very dextrously on the Ducal Palace of
+Venice, there with a meaning which rendered it right necessary; but the
+Renaissance architects address themselves to spectators who care for
+nothing but feasting, and suppose that clusters of pears and pineapples
+are visions of which their imagination can never weary, and above which
+it will never care to rise. I am no advocate for image worship, as I
+believe the reader will elsewhere sufficiently find; but I am very sure
+that the Protestantism of London would have found itself quite as secure
+in a cathedral decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung round
+with bunches of ribston pippins.
+
+§ XXXV. 11. Birds. The perfect and simple grace of bird form, in
+general, has rendered it a favorite subject with early sculptors, and
+with those schools which loved form more than action; but the difficulty
+of expressing action, where the muscular markings are concealed, has
+limited the use of it in later art. Half the ornament, at least, in
+Byzantine architecture, and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed of
+birds, either pecking at fruit or flowers, or standing on either side of
+a flower or vase, or alone, as generally the symbolical peacock. But how
+much of our general sense of grace or power of motion, of serenity,
+peacefulness, and spirituality, we owe to these creatures, it is
+impossible to conceive; their wings supplying us with almost the only
+means of representation of spiritual motion which we possess, and with
+an ornamental form of which the eye is never weary, however
+meaninglessly or endlessly repeated; whether in utter isolation, or
+associated with the bodies of the lizard, the horse, the lion, or the
+man. The heads of the birds of prey are always beautiful, and used as
+the richest ornaments in all ages.
+
+§ XXXVI. 12. Quadrupeds and Men. Of quadrupeds the horse has received an
+elevation into the primal rank of sculptural subject, owing to his
+association with men. The full value of other quadruped forms has hardly
+been perceived, or worked for, in late sculpture; and the want of
+science is more felt in these subjects than in any other branches of
+early work. The greatest richness of quadruped ornament is found in the
+hunting sculpture of the Lombards; but rudely treated (the most noble
+examples of treatment being the lions of Egypt, the Ninevite bulls, and
+the mediĉval griffins). Quadrupeds of course form the noblest subjects
+of ornament next to the human form; this latter, the chief subject of
+sculpture, being sometimes the end of architecture rather than its
+decoration.
+
+We have thus completed the list of the materials of architectural
+decoration, and the reader may be assured that no effort has ever been
+successful to draw elements of beauty from any other sources than
+these. Such an effort was once resolutely made. It was contrary to the
+religion of the Arab to introduce any animal form into his ornament; but
+although all the radiance of color, all the refinements of proportion,
+and all the intricacies of geometrical design were open to him, he could
+not produce any noble work without an _abstraction_ of the forms of
+leafage, to be used in his capitals, and made the ground plan of his
+chased ornament. But I have above noted that coloring is an entirely
+distinct and independent art; and in the "Seven Lamps" we saw that this
+art had most power when practised in arrangements of simple geometrical
+form: the Arab, therefore, lay under no disadvantage in coloring, and he
+had all the noble elements of constructive and proportional beauty at
+his command: he might not imitate the sea-shell, but he could build the
+dome. The imitation of radiance by the variegated voussoir, the
+expression of the sweep of the desert by the barred red lines upon the
+wall, the starred inshedding of light through his vaulted roof, and all
+the endless fantasy of abstract line,[69] were still in the power of his
+ardent and fantastic spirit. Much he achieved; and yet in the effort of
+his overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he made his
+architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined enchantment, and
+left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a startling dream, whose
+beauty we may indeed feel, and whose instruction we may receive, but
+must smile at its inconsistency, and mourn over its evanescence.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [63] The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly
+    symptoms in the civilisation of the upper classes in the present
+    century.
+
+  [64] Thus above, I adduced for the architect's imitation the
+    appointed stories and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular
+    forms of crag or fissure.
+
+  [65] Appendix 21, "Ancient Representations of Water."
+
+  [66] By the friend to whom I owe Appendix 21.
+
+  [67] One is glad to hear from Cuvier, that though dolphins in general
+    are "les plus carnassiers, et proportion gardée avec leur taille,
+    les plus cruels de l'ordre;" yet that in the Delphinus Delphis,
+    "tout l'organisation de son cerveau annonce _qu'il ne doit pas être
+    dépourvu de la docilité_ qu'ils (les anciens) lui attribuaient."
+
+  [68] Vide Wilkinson, vol. v., woodcut No. 478, fig. 8. The tamarisk
+    appears afterwards to have given the idea of a subdivision of leaf
+    more pure and quaint than that of the acanthus. Of late our
+    botanists have discovered, in the "Victoria regia" (supposing its
+    blossom reversed), another strangely beautiful type of what we may
+    perhaps hereafter find it convenient to call _Lily_ capitals.
+
+  [69] Appendix 22, "Arabian Ornamentation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT.
+
+
+§ I. We now know where we are to look for subjects of decoration. The
+next question is, as the reader must remember, how to treat or express
+these subjects.
+
+There are evidently two branches of treatment: the first being the
+expression, or rendering to the eye and mind, of the thing itself; and
+the second, the arrangement of the thing so expressed: both of these
+being quite distinct from the placing of the ornament in proper parts of
+the building. For instance, suppose we take a vine-leaf for our subject.
+The first question is, how to cut the vine-leaf? Shall we cut its ribs
+and notches on the edge, or only its general outline? and so on. Then,
+how to arrange the vine-leaves when we have them; whether symmetrically,
+or at random; or unsymmetrically, yet within certain limits? All these I
+call questions of treatment. Then, whether the vine-leaves so arranged
+are to be set on the capital of a pillar or on its shaft, I call a
+question of place.
+
+§ II. So, then, the questions of mere treatment are twofold, how to
+express, and how to arrange. And expression is to the mind or the sight.
+Therefore, the inquiry becomes really threefold:--
+
+  1. How ornament is to be expressed with reference to the mind.
+
+  2. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to the sight.
+
+  3. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to both.
+
+
+§ III. (1.) How is ornament to be treated with reference to the mind?
+
+If, to produce a good or beautiful ornament, it were only necessary to
+produce a perfect piece of sculpture, and if a well cut group of flowers
+or animals were indeed an ornament wherever it might be placed, the work
+of the architect would be comparatively easy. Sculpture and architecture
+would become separate arts; and the architect would order so many pieces
+of such subject and size as he needed, without troubling himself with
+any questions but those of disposition and proportion. But this is not
+so. _No perfect piece either of painting or sculpture is an
+architectural ornament at all_, except in that vague sense in which any
+beautiful thing is said to ornament the place it is in. Thus we say that
+pictures ornament a room; but we should not thank an architect who told
+us that his design, to be complete, required a Titian to be put in one
+corner of it, and a Velasquez in the other; and it is just as
+unreasonable to call perfect sculpture, niched in, or encrusted on a
+building, a portion of the ornament of that building, as it would be to
+hang pictures by the way of ornament on the outside of it. It is very
+possible that the sculptured work may be harmoniously associated with
+the building, or the building executed with reference to it; but in this
+latter case the architecture is subordinate to the sculpture, as in the
+Medicean chapel, and I believe also in the Parthenon. And so far from
+the perfection of the work conducing to its ornamental purpose, we may
+say, with entire security, that its perfection, in some degree, unfits
+it for its purpose, and that no absolutely complete sculpture can be
+decoratively right. We have a familiar instance in the flower-work of
+St. Paul's, which is probably, in the abstract, as perfect flower
+sculpture as could be produced at the time; and which is just as
+rational an ornament of the building as so many valuable Van Huysums,
+framed and glazed and hung up over each window.
+
+§ IV. The especial condition of true ornament is, that it be beautiful
+in its place, and nowhere else, and that it aid the effect of every
+portion of the building over which it has influence; that it does not,
+by its richness, make other parts bald, or, by its delicacy, make other
+parts coarse. Every one of its qualities has reference to its place and
+use: _and it is fitted for its service by what would be faults and
+deficiencies if it had no especial duty_. Ornament, the servant, is
+often formal, where sculpture, the master, would have been free; the
+servant is often silent where the master would have been eloquent; or
+hurried, where the master would have been serene.
+
+§ V. How far this subordination is in different situations to be
+expressed, or how far it may be surrendered, and ornament, the servant,
+be permitted to have independent will; and by what means the
+subordination is best to be expressed when it is required, are by far
+the most difficult questions I have ever tried to work out respecting
+any branch of art; for, in many of the examples to which I look as
+authoritative in their majesty of effect, it is almost impossible to say
+whether the abstraction or imperfection of the sculpture was owing to
+the choice, or the incapacity of the workman; and, if to the latter, how
+far the result of fortunate incapacity can be imitated by prudent
+self-restraint. The reader, I think, will understand this at once by
+considering the effect of the illuminations of an old missal. In their
+bold rejection of all principles of perspective, light and shade, and
+drawing, they are infinitely more ornamental to the page, owing to the
+vivid opposition of their bright colors and quaint lines, than if they
+had been drawn by Da Vinci himself: and so the Arena chapel is far more
+brightly _decorated_ by the archaic frescoes of Giotti, than the Stanze
+of the Vatican are by those of Raffaelle. But how far it is possible to
+recur to such archaicism, or to make up for it by any voluntary
+abandonment of power, I cannot as yet venture in any wise to determine.
+
+§ VI. So, on the other hand, in many instances of finished work in which
+I find most to regret or to reprobate, I can hardly distinguish what is
+erroneous in principle from what is vulgar in execution. For instance,
+in most Romanesque churches of Italy, the porches are guarded by
+gigantic animals, lions or griffins, of admirable severity of design;
+yet, in many cases, of so rude workmanship, that it can hardly be
+determined how much of this severity was intentional,--how much
+involuntary: in the cathedral of Genoa two modern lions have, in
+imitation of this ancient custom, been placed on the steps of its west
+front; and the Italian sculptor, thinking himself a marvellous great man
+because he knew what lions were really like, has copied them, in the
+menagerie, with great success, and produced two hairy and well-whiskered
+beasts, as like to real lions as he could possibly cut them. One wishes
+them back in the menagerie for his pains; but it is impossible to say
+how far the offence of their presence is owing to the mere stupidity and
+vulgarity of the sculpture, and how far we might have been delighted
+with a realisation, carried to nearly the same length by Ghiberti or
+Michael Angelo. (I say _nearly_, because neither Ghiberti nor Michael
+Angelo would ever have attempted, or permitted, entire realisation, even
+in independent sculpture.)
+
+§ VII. In spite of these embarrassments, however, some few certainties
+may be marked in the treatment of past architecture, and secure
+conclusions deduced for future practice. There is first, for instance,
+the assuredly intended and resolute abstraction of the Ninevite and
+Egyptian sculptors. The men who cut those granite lions in the Egyptian
+room of the British Museum, and who carved the calm faces of those
+Ninevite kings, knew much more, both of lions and kings, than they chose
+to express. Then there is the Greek system, in which the human sculpture
+is perfect, the architecture and animal sculpture is subordinate to it,
+and the architectural ornament severely subordinated to this again, so
+as to be composed of little more than abstract lines: and, finally,
+there is the peculiarly mediĉval system, in which the inferior details
+are carried to as great or greater imitative perfection as the higher
+sculpture; and the subordination is chiefly effected by symmetries of
+arrangement, and quaintnesses of treatment, respecting which it is
+difficult to say how far they resulted from intention, and how far from
+incapacity.
+
+§ VIII. Now of these systems, the Ninevite and Egyptian are altogether
+opposed to modern habits of thought and action; they are sculptures
+evidently executed under absolute authorities, physical and mental, such
+as cannot at present exist. The Greek system presupposes the possession
+of a Phidias; it is ridiculous to talk of building in the Greek manner;
+you may build a Greek shell or box, such as the Greek intended to
+contain sculpture, but you have not the sculpture to put in it. Find
+your Phidias first, and your new Phidias will very soon settle all your
+architectural difficulties in very unexpected ways indeed; but until you
+find him, do not think yourselves architects while you go on copying
+those poor subordinations, and secondary and tertiary orders of
+ornament, which the Greek put on the shell of his sculpture. Some of
+them, beads, and dentils, and such like, are as good as they can be for
+their work, and you may use them for subordinate work still; but they
+are nothing to be proud of, especially when you did not invent them: and
+others of them are mistakes and impertinences in the Greek himself, such
+as his so-called honeysuckle ornaments and others, in which there is a
+starched and dull suggestion of vegetable form, and yet no real
+resemblance nor life, for the conditions of them result from his own
+conceit of himself, and ignorance of the physical sciences, and want of
+relish for common nature, and vain fancy that he could improve
+everything he touched, and that he honored it by taking it into his
+service: by freedom from which conceits the true Christian architecture
+is distinguished--not by points to its arches.
+
+§ IX. There remains, therefore, only the mediĉval system, in which I
+think, generally, more completion is permitted (though this often
+because more was possible) in the inferior than in the higher portions
+of ornamental subject. Leaves, and birds, and lizards are realised, or
+nearly so; men and quadrupeds formalised. For observe, the smaller and
+inferior subject remains subordinate, however richly finished; but the
+human sculpture can only be subordinate by being imperfect. The
+realisation is, however, in all cases, dangerous except under most
+skilful management, and the abstraction, if true and noble, is almost
+always more delightful.[70]
+
+[Illustration: Plate VIII.
+               DECORATION BY DISKS.
+               PALAZZO DEI BADOARI PARTECIPAZZI.]
+
+§ X. What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first the essential
+elements of the thing to be represented, then the rest in the order of
+importance (so that wherever we pause we shall always have obtained more
+than we leave behind), and using any expedient to impress what we want
+upon the mind, without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such
+expedient. Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock: now a
+peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan; it has a high crest, so has
+a cockatoo; it has a long tail, so has a bird of Paradise. But the whole
+spirit and power of peacock is in those eyes of the tail. It is true,
+the argus pheasant, and one or two more birds, have something like them,
+but nothing for a moment comparable to them in brilliancy: express the
+gleaming of the blue eyes through the plumage, and you have nearly all
+you want of peacock, but without this, nothing; and yet those eyes are
+not in relief; a rigidly _true_ sculpture of a peacock's form could have
+no eyes,--nothing but feathers. Here, then, enters the stratagem of
+sculpture; you _must_ cut the eyes in relief, somehow or another; see
+how it is done in the peacock on the opposite page; it is so done by
+nearly all the Byzantine sculptors: this particular peacock is meant to
+be seen at some distance (how far off I know not, for it is an
+interpolation in the building where it occurs, of which more hereafter),
+but at all events at a distance of thirty or forty feet; I have put it
+close to you that you may see plainly the rude rings and rods which
+stand for the eyes and quills, but at the just distance their effect is
+perfect.
+
+§ XI. And the simplicity of the means here employed may help us, both to
+some clear understanding of the spirit of Ninevite and Egyptian work,
+and to some perception of the kind of enfantillage or archaicism to
+which it may be possible, even in days of advanced science, legitimately
+to return. The architect has no right, as we said before, to require of
+us a picture of Titian's in order to complete his design; neither has he
+the right to calculate on the co-operation of perfect sculptors, in
+subordinate capacities. Far from this; his business is to dispense with
+such aid altogether, and to devise such a system of ornament as shall be
+capable of execution by uninventive and even unintelligent workmen; for
+supposing that he required noble sculpture for his ornament, how far
+would this at once limit the number and the scale of possible buildings?
+Architecture is the work of nations; but we cannot have nations of great
+sculptors. Every house in every street of every city ought to be good
+architecture, but we cannot have Flaxman or Thorwaldsen at work upon it:
+nor, even if we chose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings,
+could the mass and majesty of them be great, if we required all to be
+executed by great men; greatness is not to be had in the required
+quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he cannot carve it; he can
+only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs at the base of it. And with
+every increase of your fastidiousness in the execution of your ornament,
+you diminish the possible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not
+think you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection
+will increase the supply: educated imbecility and finessed foolishness
+are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses; and there is no
+free-trade measure, which will ever lower the price of brains,--there is
+no California of common sense. Exactly in the degree in which you
+require your decoration to be wrought by thoughtful men, you diminish
+the extent and number of architectural works. Your business as an
+architect, is to calculate only on the co-operation of inferior men, to
+think for them, and to indicate for them such expressions of your
+thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and the feeblest hand
+can execute. This is the definition of the purest architectural
+abstractions. They are the deep and laborious thoughts of the greatest
+men, put into such easy letters that they can be written by the
+simplest. _They are expressions of the mind of manhood by the hands of
+childhood._
+
+§ XII. And now suppose one of those old Ninevite or Egyptian builders,
+with a couple of thousand men--mud-bred, onion-eating creatures--under
+him, to be set to work, like so many ants, on his temple sculptures.
+What is he to do with them? He can put them through a granitic exercise
+of current hand; he can teach them all how to curl hair thoroughly into
+croche-coeurs, as you teach a bench of school-boys how to shape
+pothooks; he can teach them all how to draw long eyes and straight
+noses, and how to copy accurately certain well-defined lines. Then he
+fits his own great design to their capacities; he takes out of king, or
+lion, or god, as much as was expressible by croche-coeurs and granitic
+pothooks; he throws this into noble forms of his own imagining, and
+having mapped out their lines so that there can be no possibility of
+error, sets his two thousand men to work upon them, with a will, and so
+many onions a day.
+
+§ XIII. I said those times cannot now return. We have, with
+Christianity, recognised the individual value of every soul; and there
+is no intelligence so feeble but that its single ray may in some sort
+contribute to the general light. This is the glory of Gothic
+architecture, that every jot and tittle, every point and niche of it,
+affords room, fuel, and focus for individual fire. But you cease to
+acknowledge this, and you refuse to accept the help of the lesser mind,
+if you require the work to be all executed in a great manner. Your
+business is to think out all of it nobly, to dictate the expression of
+it as far as your dictation can assist the less elevated intelligence:
+then to leave this, aided and taught as far as may be, to its own simple
+act and effort; and to rejoice in its simplicity if not in its power,
+and in its vitality if not in its science.
+
+§ XIV. We have, then, three orders of ornament, classed according to the
+degrees of correspondence of the executive and conceptive minds. We have
+the servile ornament, in which the executive is absolutely subjected to
+the inventive,--the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more
+especially Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its
+submissiveness. Then we have the mediĉval system, in which the mind of
+the inferior workman is recognised, and has full room for action, but is
+guided and ennobled by the ruling mind. This is the truly Christian and
+only perfect system. Finally, we have ornaments expressing the endeavor
+to equalise the executive and inventive,--endeavor which is Renaissance
+and revolutionary, and destructive of all noble architecture.
+
+§ XV. Thus far, then, of the incompleteness or simplicity of execution
+necessary in architectural ornament, as referred to the mind. Next we
+have to consider that which is required when it is referred to the
+sight, and the various modifications of treatment which are rendered
+necessary by the variation of its distance from the eye. I say
+necessary: not merely expedient or economical. It is foolish to carve
+what is to be seen forty feet off with the delicacy which the eye
+demands within two yards; not merely because such delicacy is lost in
+the distance, but because it is a great deal worse than lost:--the
+delicate work has actually worse effect in the distance than rough work.
+This is a fact well known to painters, and, for the most part,
+acknowledged by the critics of painters, namely, that there is a certain
+distance for which a picture is painted; and that the finish, which is
+delightful if that distance be small, is actually injurious if the
+distance be great: and, moreover, that there is a particular method of
+handling which none but consummate artists reach, which has its effects
+at the intended distance, and is altogether hieroglyphical and
+unintelligible at any other. This, I say, is acknowledged in painting,
+but it is not practically acknowledged in architecture; nor until my
+attention was especially directed to it, had I myself any idea of the
+care with which this great question was studied by the mediĉval
+architects. On my first careful examination of the capitals of the upper
+arcade of the Ducal Palace at Venice, I was induced, by their singular
+inferiority of workmanship, to suppose them posterior to those of the
+lower arcade. It was not till I discovered that some of those which I
+thought the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I
+obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation; a system
+which I afterwards found carried out in every building of the great
+times which I had opportunity of examining.
+
+§ XVI. There are two distinct modes in which this adaptation is
+effected. In the first, the same designs which are delicately worked
+when near the eye, are rudely cut, and have far fewer details when they
+are removed from it. In this method it is not always easy to distinguish
+economy from skill, or slovenliness from science. But, in the second
+method, a different design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of
+simpler lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of
+course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of purpose;
+but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both kinds when they are
+seen close; in the first, a bald execution of a perfect design; the
+second, a baldness of design with perfect execution. And in these very
+imperfections lies the admirableness of the ornament.
+
+§ XVII. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adaptation to the
+distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of observance of natural
+law. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far
+away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture
+of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent
+rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for
+their place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into
+vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look
+at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light
+is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The
+child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and
+heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is
+to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the
+depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it
+set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and
+bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the
+far-off sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away
+about its foundations, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the
+vast aërial shore, is at last met by the Eternal "Here shall thy waves
+be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its
+purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened
+into wasting snow, the storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes
+of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.
+
+Nor in such instances as these alone, though strangely enough, the
+discrepancy between apparent and actual beauty is greater in proportion
+to the unapproachableness of the object, is the law observed. For every
+distance from the eye there is a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different
+system of lines of form; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that
+distance, and for that alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of
+beauty is lost, and another succeeds, to be disorganised and reduced to
+strange and incomprehensible means and appliances in its turn. If you
+desire to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain,
+you must not ascend upon its sides. All is there disorder and accident,
+or seems so; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and thither;
+ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the ground; fallen
+fragments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. Retire
+from it, and, as your eye commands it more and more, as you see the
+ruined mountain world with a wider glance, behold! dim sympathies begin
+to busy themselves in the disjointed mass; line binds itself into
+stealthy fellowship with line; group by group, the helpless fragments
+gather themselves into ordered companies; new captains of hosts and
+masses of battalions become visible, one by one, and far away answers of
+foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos is seen
+risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap
+could now be spared from the mystic whole.
+
+§ XVIII. Now it is indeed true that where nature loses one kind of
+beauty, as you approach it, she substitutes another; this is worthy of
+her infinite power: and, as we shall see, art can sometimes follow her
+even in doing this; but all I insist upon at present is, that the
+several effects of nature are each worked with means referred to a
+particular distance, and producing their effect at that distance only.
+Take a singular and marked instance: When the sun rises behind a ridge
+of pines, and those pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two,
+against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches, and all,
+becomes one frostwork of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved
+against the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some distance on either
+side of the sun.[71] Now suppose that a person who had never seen pines
+were, for the first time in his life, to see them under this strange
+aspect, and, reasoning as to the means by which such effect could be
+produced, laboriously to approach the eastern ridge, how would he be
+amazed to find that the fiery spectres had been produced by trees with
+swarthy and grey trunks, and dark green leaves! We, in our simplicity,
+if we had been required to produce such an appearance, should have built
+up trees of chased silver, with trunks of glass, and then been
+grievously amazed to find that, at two miles off, neither silver nor
+glass were any more visible; but nature knew better, and prepared for
+her fairy work with the strong branches and dark leaves, in her own
+mysterious way.
+
+§ XIX. Now this is exactly what you have to do with your good ornament.
+It may be that it is capable of being approached, as well as likely to
+be seen far away, and then it ought to have microscopic qualities, as
+the pine leaves have, which will bear approach. But your calculation of
+its purpose is for a glory to be produced at a given distance; it may be
+here, or may be there, but it is a _given_ distance; and the excellence
+of the ornament depends upon its fitting that distance, and being seen
+better there than anywhere else, and having a particular function and
+form which it can only discharge and assume there. You are never to say
+that ornament has great merit because "you cannot see the beauty of it
+here;" but, it has great merit because "you _can_ see its beauty _here
+only_." And to give it this merit is just about as difficult a task as I
+could well set you. I have above noted the two ways in which it is done:
+the one, being merely rough cutting, may be passed over; the other,
+which is scientific alteration of design, falls, itself, into two great
+branches, Simplification and Emphasis.
+
+A word or two is necessary on each of these heads.
+
+§ XX. When an ornamental work is intended to be seen near, if its
+composition be indeed fine, the subdued and delicate portions of the
+design lead to, and unite, the energetic parts, and those energetic
+parts form with the rest a whole, in which their own immediate relations
+to each other are not perceived. Remove this design to a distance, and
+the connecting delicacies vanish, the energies alone remain, now either
+disconnected altogether, or assuming with each other new relations,
+which, not having been intended by the designer, will probably be
+painful. There is a like, and a more palpable, effect, in the retirement
+of a band of music in which the instruments are of very unequal powers;
+the fluting and fifeing expire, the drumming remains, and that in a
+painful arrangement, as demanding something which is unheard. In like
+manner, as the designer at arm's length removes or elevates his work,
+fine gradations, and roundings, and incidents, vanish, and a totally
+unexpected arrangement is established between the remainder of the
+markings, certainly confused, and in all probability painful.
+
+§ XXI. The art of architectural design is therefore, first, the
+preparation for this beforehand, the rejection of all the delicate
+passages as worse than useless, and the fixing the thought upon the
+arrangement of the features which will remain visible far away. Nor does
+this always imply a diminution of resource; for, while it may be assumed
+as a law that fine modulation of surface in light becomes quickly
+invisible as the object retires, there are a softness and mystery given
+to the harder markings, which enable them to be safely used as media of
+expression. There is an exquisite example of this use, in the head of
+the Adam of the Ducal Palace. It is only at the height of 17 or 18 feet
+above the eye; nevertheless, the sculptor felt it was no use to trouble
+himself about drawing the corners of the mouth, or the lines of the
+lips, delicately, at that distance; his object has been to mark them
+clearly, and to prevent accidental shadows from concealing them, or
+altering their expression. The lips are cut thin and sharp, so that
+their line cannot be mistaken, and a good deep drill-hole struck into
+the angle of the mouth; the eye is anxious and questioning, and one is
+surprised, from below, to perceive a kind of darkness in the iris of it,
+neither like color, nor like a circular furrow. The expedient can only
+be discovered by ascending to the level of the head; it is one which
+would have been quite inadmissible except in distant work, six
+drill-holes cut into the iris, round a central one for the pupil.
+
+§ XXII. By just calculation, like this, of the means at our disposal, by
+beautiful arrangement of the prominent features, and by choice of
+different subjects for different places, choosing the broadest forms for
+the farthest distance, it is possible to give the impression, not only
+of perfection, but of an exquisite delicacy, to the most distant
+ornament. And this is the true sign of the right having been done, and
+the utmost possible power attained:--The spectator should be satisfied
+to stay in his place, feeling the decoration, wherever it may be,
+equally rich, full, and lovely: not desiring to climb the steeples in
+order to examine it, but sure that he has it all, where he is. Perhaps
+the capitals of the cathedral of Genoa are the best instances of
+absolute perfection in this kind: seen from below, they appear as rich
+as the frosted silver of the Strada degli Orefici; and the nearer you
+approach them, the less delicate they seem.
+
+§ XXIII. This is, however, not the only mode, though the best, in which
+ornament is adapted for distance. The other is emphasis,--the unnatural
+insisting upon explanatory lines, where the subject would otherwise
+become unintelligible. It is to be remembered that, by a deep and narrow
+incision, an architect has the power, at least in sunshine, of drawing a
+black line on stone, just as vigorously as it can be drawn with chalk on
+grey paper; and that he may thus, wherever and in the degree that he
+chooses, substitute _chalk sketching_ for sculpture. They are curiously
+mingled by the Romans. The bas-reliefs of the Arc d'Orange are small,
+and would be confused, though in bold relief, if they depended for
+intelligibility on the relief only; but each figure is outlined by a
+strong _incision_ at its edge into the background, and all the ornaments
+on the armor are simply drawn with incised lines, and not cut out at
+all. A similar use of lines is made by the Gothic nations in all their
+early sculpture, and with delicious effect. Now, to draw a mere
+pattern--as, for instance, the bearings of a shield--with these simple
+incisions, would, I suppose, occupy an able sculptor twenty minutes or
+half an hour; and the pattern is then clearly seen, under all
+circumstances of light and shade; there can be no mistake about it, and
+no missing it. To carve out the bearings in due and finished relief
+would occupy a long summer's day, and the results would be feeble and
+indecipherable in the best lights, and in some lights totally and
+hopelessly invisible, ignored, non-existant. Now the Renaissance
+architects, and our modern ones, despise the simple expedient of the
+rough Roman or barbarian. They do not care to be understood. They care
+only to speak finely, and be thought great orators, if one could only
+hear them. So I leave you to choose between the old men, who took
+minutes to tell things plainly, and the modern men, who take days to
+tell them unintelligibly.
+
+§ XXIV. All expedients of this kind, both of simplification and energy,
+for the expression of details at a distance where their actual forms
+would have been invisible, but more especially this linear method, I
+shall call Proutism; for the greatest master of the art in modern times
+has been Samuel Prout. He actually takes up buildings of the later times
+in which the ornament has been too refined for its place, and
+translates it into the energised linear ornament of earlier art: and to
+this power of taking the life and essence of decoration, and putting it
+into a perfectly intelligible form, when its own fulness would have been
+confused, is owing the especial power of his drawings. Nothing can be
+more closely analogous than the method with which an old Lombard uses
+his chisel, and that with which Prout uses the reed-pen; and we shall
+see presently farther correspondence in their feeling about the
+enrichment of luminous surfaces.
+
+§ XXV. Now, all that has been hitherto said refers to ornament whose
+distance is fixed, or nearly so; as when it is at any considerable
+height from the ground, supposing the spectator to desire to see it, and
+to get as near it as he can. But the distance of ornament is never fixed
+to the _general_ spectator. The tower of a cathedral is bound to look
+well, ten miles off, or five miles, or half a mile, or within fifty
+yards. The ornaments of its top have fixed distances, compared with
+those of its base; but quite unfixed distances in their relation to the
+great world: and the ornaments of the base have no fixed distance at
+all. They are bound to look well from the other side of the cathedral
+close, and to look equally well, or better, as we enter the cathedral
+door. How are we to manage this?
+
+§ XXVI. As nature manages it. I said above, § XVII., that for every
+distance from the eye there was a different system of form in all
+natural objects: this is to be so then in architecture. The lesser
+ornament is to be grafted on the greater, and third or fourth orders of
+ornaments upon this again, as need may be, until we reach the limits of
+possible sight; each order of ornament being adapted for a different
+distance: first, for example, the great masses,--the buttresses and
+stories and black windows and broad cornices of the tower, which give it
+make, and organism, as it rises over the horizon, half a score of miles
+away: then the traceries and shafts and pinnacles, which give it
+richness as we approach: then the niches and statues and knobs and
+flowers, which we can only see when we stand beneath it. At this third
+order of ornament, we may pause, in the upper portions; but on the
+roofs of the niches, and the robes of the statues, and the rolls of the
+mouldings, comes a fourth order of ornament, as delicate as the eye can
+follow, when any of these features may be approached.
+
+§ XXVII. All good ornamentation is thus arborescent, as it were, one
+class of it branching out of another and sustained by it; and its
+nobility consists in this, that whatever order or class of it we may be
+contemplating, we shall find it subordinated to a greater, simpler, and
+more powerful; and if we then contemplate the greater order, we shall
+find it again subordinated to a greater still; until the greatest can
+only be quite grasped by retiring to the limits of distance commanding
+it.
+
+And if this subordination be not complete, the ornament is bad: if the
+figurings and chasings and borderings of a dress be not subordinated to
+the folds of it,--if the folds are not subordinate to the action and
+mass of the figure,--if this action and mass not to the divisions of the
+recesses and shafts among which it stands,--if these not to the shadows
+of the great arches and buttresses of the whole building, in each case
+there is error; much more if all be contending with each other and
+striving for attention at the same time.
+
+§ XXVIII. It is nevertheless evident, that, however perfect this
+distribution, there cannot be orders adapted to _every_ distance of the
+spectator. Between the ranks of ornament there must always be a bold
+separation; and there must be many intermediate distances, where we are
+too far off to see the lesser rank clearly, and yet too near to grasp
+the next higher rank wholly: and at all these distances the spectator
+will feel himself ill-placed, and will desire to go nearer or farther
+away. This must be the case in all noble work, natural or artificial. It
+is exactly the same with respect to Rouen cathedral or the Mont Blanc.
+We like to see them from the other side of the Seine, or of the lake of
+Geneva; from the Marché aux Fleurs, or the Valley of Chamouni; from the
+parapets of the apse, or the crags of the Montagne de la Côte: but there
+are intermediate distances which dissatisfy us in either case, and from
+which one is in haste either to advance or to retire.
+
+§ XXIX. Directly opposed to this ordered, disciplined, well officered
+and variously ranked ornament, this type of divine, and therefore of all
+good human government, is the democratic ornament, in which all is
+equally influential, and has equal office and authority; that is to say,
+none of it any office nor authority, but a life of continual struggle
+for independence and notoriety, or of gambling for chance regards. The
+English perpendicular work is by far the worst of this kind that I know;
+its main idea, or decimal fraction of an idea, being to cover its walls
+with dull, successive, eternity of reticulation, to fill with equal
+foils the equal interstices between the equal bars, and charge the
+interminable blanks with statues and rosettes, invisible at a distance,
+and uninteresting near.
+
+The early Lombardic, Veronese, and Norman work is the exact reverse of
+this; being divided first into large masses, and these masses covered
+with minute chasing and surface work, which fill them with interest, and
+yet do not disturb nor divide their greatness. The lights are kept broad
+and bright, and yet are found on near approach to be charged with
+intricate design. This, again, is a part of the great system of
+treatment which I shall hereafter call "Proutism;" much of what is
+thought mannerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of
+his determined resolution that minor details shall never break up his
+large masses of light.
+
+§ XXX. Such are the main principles to be observed in the adaptation of
+ornament to the sight. We have lastly to inquire by what method, and in
+what quantities, the ornament, thus adapted to mental contemplation, and
+prepared for its physical position, may most wisely be arranged. I think
+the method ought first to be considered, and the quantity last; for the
+advisable quantity depends upon the method.
+
+§ XXXI. It was said above, that the proper treatment or arrangement of
+ornament was that which expressed the laws and ways of Deity. Now, the
+subordination of visible orders to each other, just noted, is one
+expression of these. But there may also--must also--be a subordination
+and obedience of the parts of each order to some visible law, out of
+itself, but having reference to itself only (not to any upper order):
+some law which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain.
+
+In the tenth chapter of the second volume of "Modern Painters," the
+reader will find that I traced one part of the beauty of God's creation
+to the expression of a _self_-restrained liberty: that is to say, the
+image of that perfection of _divine_ action, which, though free to work
+in arbitrary methods, works always in consistent methods, called by us
+Laws.
+
+Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural objects are to
+become subjects of the art of man, their perfect treatment is an image
+of the perfection of _human_ action: a voluntary submission to divine
+law.
+
+It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose originality of
+thought I have before expressed my obligations, Mr. Newton, that the
+Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures, represented to the Greek
+mind the law of Fate, confining human action within limits not to be
+overpassed. I do not believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this;
+but the instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in
+some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessities of
+good ornament.[72] And this expression is heightened, rather than
+diminished, when some portion of the design slightly breaks the law to
+which the rest is subjected; it is like expressing the use of miracles
+in the divine government; or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing
+of a law, generally imperative, in compliance with some more imperative
+need--the hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringement of a
+general law was sometimes sought by the mediĉval workmen, I shall be
+frequently able to point out to the reader; but I remember just now a
+most curious instance, in an archivolt of a house in the Corte del Remer
+close to the Rialto at Venice. It is composed of a wreath of
+flower-work--a constant Byzantine design--with an animal in each coil;
+the whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or eating,
+scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within its coil, and
+between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not the tip of a tail,
+overpasses this appointed line, through a series of some five-and-twenty
+or thirty animals; until, on a sudden, and by mutual consent, two little
+beasts (not looking, for the rest, more rampant than the others), one on
+each side, lay their small paws across the enclosing fillet at exactly
+the same point of its course, and thus break the continuity of its line.
+Two ears of corn, or leaves, do the same thing in the mouldings round
+the northern door of the Baptistery at Florence.
+
+§ XXXII. Observe, however, and this is of the utmost possible
+importance, that the value of this type does not consist in the mere
+shutting of the ornament into a certain space, but in the acknowledgment
+_by_ the ornament of the fitness of the limitation--of its own perfect
+willingness to submit to it; nay, of a predisposition in itself to fall
+into the ordained form, without any direct expression of the command to
+do so; an anticipation of the authority, and an instant and willing
+submission to it, in every fibre and spray: not merely _willing_, but
+_happy_ submission, as being pleased rather than vexed to have so
+beautiful a law suggested to it, and one which to follow is so justly in
+accordance with its own nature. You must not cut out a branch of
+hawthorn as it grows, and rule a triangle round it, and suppose that it
+is then submitted to law. Not a bit of it. It is only put in a cage, and
+will look as if it must get out, for its life, or wither in the
+confinement. But the spirit of triangle must be put into the hawthorn.
+It must suck in isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and
+spray, must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon them,
+for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and to grow all the
+stronger and more gloriously. And though there may be a transgression
+here and there, and an adaptation to some other need, or a reaching
+forth to some other end greater even than the triangle, yet this liberty
+is to be always accepted under a solemn sense of special permission; and
+when the full form is reached and the entire submission expressed, and
+every blossom has a thrilling sense of its responsibility down into its
+tiniest stamen, you may take your terminal line away if you will. No
+need for it any more. The commandment is written on the heart of the
+thing.
+
+§ XXXIII. Then, besides this obedience to external law, there is the
+obedience to internal headship, which constitutes the unity of ornament,
+of which I think enough has been said for my present purpose in the
+chapter on Unity in the second vol. of "Modern Painters." But I hardly
+know whether to arrange as an expression of a divine law, or a
+representation of a physical fact, the alternation of shade with light
+which, in equal succession, forms one of the chief elements of
+_continuous_ ornament, and in some peculiar ones, such as dentils and
+billet mouldings, is the source of their only charm. The opposition of
+good and evil, the antagonism of the entire human system (so ably worked
+out by Lord Lindsay), the alternation of labor with rest, the mingling
+of life with death, or the actual physical fact of the division of light
+from darkness, and of the falling and rising of night and day, are all
+typified or represented by these chains of shade and light of which the
+eye never wearies, though their true meaning may never occur to the
+thoughts.
+
+§ XXXIV. The next question respecting the arrangement of ornament is one
+closely connected also with its quantity. The system of creation is one
+in which "God's creatures leap not, but express a feast, where all the
+guests sit close, and nothing wants." It is also a feast, where there is
+nothing redundant. So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must
+never be any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a
+single member, or fragment of a member, which could be spared. Whatever
+has nothing to do, whatever could go without being missed, is not
+ornament; it is deformity and encumbrance. Away with it. And, on the
+other hand, care must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we
+permit, in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate
+it, as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and curdled
+upon some points, and left the rest of the building whey. It is very
+difficult to give the rules, or analyse the feelings, which should
+direct us in this matter: for some shafts may be carved and others left
+unfinished, and that with advantage; some windows may be jewelled like
+Aladdin's, and one left plain, and still with advantage; the door or
+doors, or a single turret, or the whole western façade of a church, or
+the apse or transept, may be made special subjects of decoration, and
+the rest left plain, and still sometimes with advantage. But in all such
+cases there is either sign of that feeling which I advocated in the
+First Chapter of the "Seven Lamps," the desire of rather doing some
+portion of the building as we would have it, and leaving the rest plain,
+than doing the whole imperfectly; or else there is choice made of some
+important feature, to which, as more honorable than the rest, the
+decoration is confined. The evil is when, without system, and without
+preference of the nobler members, the ornament alternates between sickly
+luxuriance and sudden blankness. In many of our Scotch and English
+abbeys, especially Melrose, this is painfully felt; but the worst
+instance I have ever seen is the window in the side of the arch under
+the Wellington statue, next St. George's Hospital. In the first place, a
+window has no business there at all; in the second, the bars of the
+window are not the proper place for decoration, especially _wavy_
+decoration, which one instantly fancies of cast iron; in the third, the
+richness of the ornament is a mere patch and eruption upon the wall, and
+one hardly knows whether to be most irritated at the affectation of
+severity in the rest, or at the vain luxuriance of the dissolute
+parallelogram.
+
+§ XXXV. Finally, as regards quantity of ornament I have already said,
+again and again, you cannot have too much if it be good; that is, if it
+be thoroughly united and harmonised by the laws hitherto insisted upon.
+But you may easily have too much if you have more than you have sense to
+manage. For with every added order of ornament increases the difficulty
+of discipline. It is exactly the same as in war: you cannot, as an
+abstract law, have too many soldiers, but you may easily have more than
+the country is able to sustain, or than your generalship is competent
+to command. And every regiment which you cannot manage will, on the day
+of battle, be in your way, and encumber the movements it is not in
+disposition to sustain.
+
+§ XXXVI. As an architect, therefore, you are modestly to measure your
+capacity of governing ornament. Remember, its essence,--its being
+ornament at all, consists in its being governed. Lose your authority
+over it, let it command you, or lead you, or dictate to you in any wise,
+and it is an offence, an incumbrance, and a dishonor. And it is always
+ready to do this; wild to get the bit in its teeth, and rush forth on
+its own devices. Measure, therefore, your strength; and as long as there
+is no chance of mutiny, add soldier to soldier, battalion to battalion;
+but be assured that all are heartily in the cause, and that there is not
+one of whose position you are ignorant, or whose service you could
+spare.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [70] Vide "Seven Lamps," Chap. IV. § 34.
+
+  [71] Shakspeare and Wordsworth (I think they only) have noticed this,
+    Shakspeare, in Richard II.:--
+
+      "But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
+       He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines."
+
+    And Wordsworth, in one of his minor poems, on leaving Italy:
+
+      "My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pines
+       On the steep's lofty verge--how it blackened the air!
+       But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines
+       With threads that seem part of his own silver hair."
+
+  [72] Some valuable remarks on this subject will be found in a notice
+    of the "Seven Lamps" in the British Quarterly for August, 1849. I
+    think, however, the writer attaches too great importance to one out
+    of many ornamental necessities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  THE ANGLE.
+
+
+§ I. We have now examined the treatment and specific kinds of ornament
+at our command. We have lastly to note the fittest places for their
+disposal. Not but that all kinds of ornament are used in all places; but
+there are some parts of the building, which, without ornament, are more
+painful than others, and some which wear ornament more gracefully than
+others; so that, although an able architect will always be finding out
+some new and unexpected modes of decoration, and fitting his ornament
+into wonderful places where it is least expected, there are,
+nevertheless, one or two general laws which may be noted respecting
+every one of the parts of a building, laws not (except a few) imperative
+like those of construction, but yet generally expedient, and good to be
+understood, if it were only that we might enjoy the brilliant methods in
+which they are sometimes broken. I shall note, however, only a few of
+the simplest; to trace them into their ramifications, and class in due
+order the known or possible methods of decoration for each part of a
+building, would alone require a large volume, and be, I think, a
+somewhat useless work; for there is often a high pleasure in the very
+unexpectedness of the ornament, which would be destroyed by too
+elaborate an arrangement of its kinds.
+
+§ II. I think that the reader must, by this time, so thoroughly
+understand the connection of the parts of a building, that I may class
+together, in treating of decoration, several parts which I kept separate
+in speaking of construction. Thus I shall put under one head (A) the
+base of the wall and of the shaft; then (B) the wall veil and shaft
+itself; then (C) the cornice and capital; then (D) the jamb and
+archivolt, including the arches both over shafts and apertures, and the
+jambs of apertures, which are closely connected with their archivolts;
+finally (E) the roof, including the real roof, and the minor roofs or
+gables of pinnacles and arches. I think, under these divisions, all may
+be arranged which is necessary to be generally stated; for tracery
+decorations or aperture fillings are but smaller forms of application of
+the arch, and the cusps are merely smaller spandrils, while buttresses
+have, as far as I know, no specific ornament. The best are those which
+have least; and the little they have resolves itself into pinnacles,
+which are common to other portions of the building, or into small
+shafts, arches, and niches, of still more general applicability. We
+shall therefore have only five divisions to examine in succession, from
+foundation to roof.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LI.]
+
+§ III. But in the decoration of these several parts, certain minor
+conditions of ornament occur which are of perfectly general application.
+For instance, whether, in archivolts, jambs, or buttresses, or in square
+piers, or at the extremity of the entire building, we necessarily have
+the awkward (moral or architectural) feature, the _corner_. How to turn
+a corner gracefully becomes, therefore, a perfectly general question; to
+be examined without reference to any particular part of the edifice.
+
+§ IV. Again, the furrows and ridges by which bars of parallel light and
+shade are obtained, whether these are employed in arches, or jambs, or
+bases, or cornices, must of necessity present one or more of six forms:
+square projection, _a_ (Fig. LI.), or square recess, _b_, sharp
+projection, _c_, or sharp recess, _d_, curved projection, _e_, or curved
+recess, _f_. What odd curves the projection or recess may assume, or how
+these different conditions may be mixed and run into one another, is
+not our present business. We note only the six distinct kinds or types.
+
+Now, when these ridges or furrows are on a small scale they often
+themselves constitute all the ornament required for larger features, and
+are left smooth cut; but on a very large scale they are apt to become
+insipid, and they require a sub-ornament of their own, the consideration
+of which is, of course, in great part, general, and irrespective of the
+place held by the mouldings in the building itself: which consideration
+I think we had better undertake first of all.
+
+§ V. But before we come to particular examination of these minor forms,
+let us see how far we can simplify it. Look back to Fig. LI., above.
+There are distinguished in it six forms of moulding. Of these, _c_ is
+nothing but a small corner; but, for convenience sake, it is better to
+call it an edge, and to consider its decoration together with that of
+the member _a_, which is called a fillet; while _e_, which I shall call
+a roll (because I do not choose to assume that it shall be only of the
+semicircular section here given), is also best considered together with
+its relative recess, _f_; and because the shape of a recess is of no
+great consequence, I shall class all the three recesses together, and we
+shall thus have only three subjects for separate consideration:--
+
+  1. The Angle.
+  2. The Edge and Fillet.
+  3. The Roll and Recess.
+
+§ VI. There are two other general forms which may probably occur to the
+reader's mind, namely, the ridge (as of a roof), which is a corner laid
+on its back, or sloping,--a supine corner, decorated in a very different
+manner from a stiff upright corner: and the point, which is a
+concentrated corner, and has wonderfully elaborate decorations all to
+its insignificant self, finials, and spikes, and I know not what more.
+But both these conditions are so closely connected with roofs (even the
+cusp finial being a kind of pendant to a small roof), that I think it
+better to class them and their ornament under the head of roof
+decoration, together with the whole tribe of crockets and bosses; so
+that we shall be here concerned only with the three subjects above
+distinguished: and, first, the corner or Angle.
+
+§ VII. The mathematician knows there are many kinds of angles; but the
+one we have principally to deal with now, is that which the reader may
+very easily conceive as the corner of a square house, or square
+anything. It is of course the one of most frequent occurrence; and its
+treatment, once understood, may, with slight modification, be referred
+to other corners, sharper or blunter, or with curved sides.
+
+§ VIII. Evidently the first and roughest idea which would occur to any
+one who found a corner troublesome, would be to cut it off. This is a
+very summary and tyrannical proceeding, somewhat barbarous, yet
+advisable if nothing else can be done: an amputated corner is said to be
+chamfered. It can, however, evidently be cut off in three ways: 1. with
+a concave cut, _a_; 2. with a straight cut, _b_; 3. with a convex cut,
+_c_, Fig. LII.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LII.]
+
+The first two methods, the most violent and summary, have the apparent
+disadvantage that we get by them,--two corners instead of one; much
+milder corners, however, and with a different light and shade between
+them; so that both methods are often very expedient. You may see the
+straight chamfer (_b_) on most lamp posts, and pillars at railway
+stations, it being the easiest to cut: the concave chamfer requires more
+care, and occurs generally in well-finished but simple architecture--very
+beautifully in the small arches of the Broletto of Como, Plate V.; and
+the straight chamfer in architecture of every kind, very constantly in
+Norman cornices and arches, as in Fig. 2, Plate IV., at Sens.
+
+§ IX. The third, or convex chamfer, as it is the gentlest mode of
+treatment, so (as in medicine and morals) it is very generally the best.
+For while the two other methods produce two corners instead of one, this
+gentle chamfer does verily get rid of the corner altogether, and
+substitutes a soft curve in its place.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LIII.]
+
+But it has, in the form above given, this grave disadvantage, that it
+looks as if the corner had been rubbed or worn off, blunted by time and
+weather, and in want of sharpening again. A great deal often depends,
+and in such a case as this, everything depends, on the _Voluntariness_
+of the ornament. The work of time is beautiful on surfaces, but not on
+edges intended to be sharp. Even if we needed them blunt, we should not
+like them blunt on compulsion; so, to show that the bluntness is our own
+ordaining, we will put a slight incised line to mark off the rounding,
+and show that it goes no farther than we choose. We shall thus have the
+section _a_, Fig. LIII.; and this mode of turning an angle is one of the
+very best ever invented. By enlarging and deepening the incision, we get
+in succession the forms _b_, _c_, _d_; and by describing a small equal
+arc on each of the sloping lines of these figures, we get _e_, _f_, _g_,
+_h_.
+
+§ X. I do not know whether these mouldings are called by architects
+chamfers or beads; but I think _bead_ a bad word for a continuous
+moulding, and the proper sense of the word chamfer is fixed by Spenser
+as descriptive not merely of truncation, but of trench or furrow:--
+
+  "Tho gin you, fond flies, the cold to scorn,
+   And, crowing in pipes made of green corn,
+   You thinken to be lords of the year;
+   But eft when ye count you freed from fear,
+   Comes the breme winter with chamfred brows,
+   Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows."
+
+So I shall call the above mouldings beaded chamfers, when there is any
+chance of confusion with the plain chamfer, _a_, or _b_, of Fig. LII.:
+and when there is no such chance, I shall use the word chamfer only.
+
+§ XI. Of those above given, _b_ is the constant chamfer of Venice, and
+_a_ of Verona: _a_ being the grandest and best, and having a peculiar
+precision and quaintness of effect about it. I found it twice in Venice,
+used on the sharp angle, as at _a_ and _b_, Fig. LIV., _a_ being from
+the angle of a house on the Rio San Zulian, and _b_ from the windows of
+the church of San Stefano.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LIV.]
+
+§ XII. There is, however, evidently another variety of the chamfers, _f_
+and _g_, Fig. LIII., formed by an unbroken curve instead of two curves,
+as _c_, Fig. LIV.; and when this, or the chamfer _d_, Fig. LIII., is
+large, it is impossible to say whether they have been devised from the
+incised angle, or from small shafts set in a nook, as at _e_, Fig. LIV.,
+or in the hollow of the curved chamfer, as _d_, Fig. LIV. In general,
+however, the shallow chamfers, _a_, _b_, _e_, and _f_, Fig. LIII., are
+peculiar to southern work; and may be assumed to have been derived from
+the incised angle, while the deep chamfers, _c_, _d_, _g_, _h_, are
+characteristic of northern work, and may be partly derived or imitated
+from the angle shaft; while, with the usual extravagance of the northern
+architects, they are cut deeper and deeper until we arrive at the
+condition _f_, Fig. LIV., which is the favorite chamfer at Bourges and
+Bayeux, and in other good French work.
+
+I have placed in the Appendix[73] a figure belonging to this subject,
+but which cannot interest the general reader, showing the number of
+possible chamfers with a roll moulding of given size.
+
+§ XIII. If we take the plain chamfer, _b_, of Fig. LII., on a large
+scale, as at _a_, Fig. LV., and bead both its edges, cutting away the
+parts there shaded, we shall have a form much used in richly decorated
+Gothic, both in England and Italy. It might be more simply described as
+the chamfer _a_ of Fig. LII., with an incision on each edge; but the
+part here shaded is often worked into ornamental forms, not being
+entirely cut away.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LV.]
+
+§ XIV. Many other mouldings, which at first sight appear very elaborate,
+are nothing more than a chamfer, with a series of small echoes of it on
+each side, dying away with a ripple on the surface of the wall, as in
+_b_, Fig. LV., from Coutances (observe, here the white part is the solid
+stone, the shade is cut away).
+
+Chamfers of this kind are used on a small scale and in delicate work:
+the coarse chamfers are found on all scales: _f_ and _g_, Fig. LIII., in
+Venice, form the great angles of almost every Gothic palace; the roll
+being a foot or a foot and a half round, and treated as a shaft, with a
+capital and fresh base at every story, while the stones of which it is
+composed form alternate quoins in the brickwork beyond the chamfer
+curve. I need hardly say how much nobler this arrangement is than a
+common quoined angle; it gives a finish to the aspect of the whole pile
+attainable in no other way. And thus much may serve concerning angle
+decoration by chamfer.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [73] Appendix 23: "Varieties of Chamfer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  THE EDGE AND FILLET.
+
+
+§ I. The decoration of the angle by various forms of chamfer and bead,
+as above described, is the quietest method we can employ; too quiet,
+when great energy is to be given to the moulding, and impossible, when,
+instead of a bold angle, we have to deal with a small projecting edge,
+like _c_ in Fig. LI. In such cases we may employ a decoration, far ruder
+and easier in its simplest conditions than the bead, far more effective
+when not used in too great profusion; and of which the complete
+developments are the source of mouldings at once the most picturesque
+and most serviceable which the Gothic builders invented.
+
+§ II. The gunwales of the Venetian heavy barges being liable to somewhat
+rough collision with each other, and with the walls of the streets, are
+generally protected by a piece of timber, which projects in the form of
+the fillet, _a_, Fig. LI.; but which, like all other fillets, may, if we
+so choose, be considered as composed of two angles or edges, which the
+natural and most wholesome love of the Venetian boatmen for ornament,
+otherwise strikingly evidenced by their painted sails and glittering
+flag-vanes, will not suffer to remain wholly undecorated. The rough
+service of these timbers, however, will not admit of rich ornament, and
+the boatbuilder usually contents himself with cutting a series of
+notches in each edge, one series alternating with the other, as
+represented at 1, Plate IX.
+
+§ III. In that simple ornament, not as confined to Venetian boats, but
+as representative of a general human instinct to hack at an edge,
+demonstrated by all school-boys and all idle possessors of penknives or
+other cutting instruments on both sides of the Atlantic;--in that rude
+Venetian gunwale, I say, is the germ of all the ornament which has
+touched, with its rich successions of angular shadow, the portals and
+archivolts of nearly every early building of importance, from the North
+Cape to the Straits of Messina. Nor are the modifications of the first
+suggestion intricate. All that is generic in their character may be seen
+on Plate IX. at a glance.
+
+[Illustration: Plate IX.
+               EDGE DECORATION.]
+
+§ IV. Taking a piece of stone instead of timber, and enlarging the
+notches, until they meet each other, we have the condition 2, which is a
+moulding from the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark's. Now,
+considering this moulding as composed of two decorated edges, each edge
+will be reduced, by the meeting of the notches, to a series of
+four-sided pyramids (as marked off by the dotted lines), which, the
+notches here being shallow, will be shallow pyramids; but by deepening
+the notches, we get them as at 3, with a profile _a_, more or less
+steep. This moulding I shall always call "the plain dogtooth;" it is
+used in profusion in the Venetian and Veronese Gothic, generally set
+with its front to the spectator, as here at 3; but its effect may be
+much varied by placing it obliquely (4, and profile as at _b_); or with
+one side horizontal (5, and profile _c_). Of these three conditions, 3
+and 5 are exactly the same in reality, only differently placed; but in 4
+the pyramid is obtuse, and the inclination of its base variable, the
+upper side of it being always kept vertical. It is comparatively rare.
+Of the three, the last, 5, is far the most brilliant in effect, giving
+in the distance a zigzag form to the high light on it, and a full sharp
+shadow below. The use of this shadow is sufficiently seen by fig. 7 in
+this plate (the arch on the left, the number beneath it), in which these
+levelled dogteeth, with a small interval between each, are employed to
+set off by their vigor the delicacy of floral ornament above. This arch
+is the side of a niche from the tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, at
+Verona; and the value, as well as the distant expression of its
+dogtooth, may be seen by referring to Prout's beautiful drawing of this
+tomb in his "Sketches in France and Italy." I have before observed
+that this artist never fails of seizing the true and leading expression
+of whatever he touches: he has made this ornament the leading feature of
+the niche, expressing it, as in distance it is only expressible, by a
+zigzag.
+
+§ V. The reader may perhaps be surprised at my speaking so highly of
+this drawing, if he take the pains to compare Prout's symbolism of the
+work on the niche with the facts as they stand here in Plate IX. But the
+truth is that Prout has rendered the effect of the monument on the mind
+of the passer-by;--the effect it was intended to have on every man who
+turned the corner of the street beneath it: and in this sense there is
+actually more truth and likeness[74] in Prout's translation than in my
+fac-simile, made diligently by peering into the details from a ladder. I
+do not say that all the symbolism in Prout's Sketch is the best
+possible; but it is the best which any architectural draughtsman has yet
+invented; and in its application to special subjects it always shows
+curious internal evidence that the sketch has been made on the spot, and
+that the artist tried to draw what he saw, not to invent an attractive
+subject. I shall notice other instances of this hereafter.
+
+§ VI. The dogtooth, employed in this simple form, is, however, rather a
+foil for other ornament, than itself a satisfactory or generally
+available decoration. It is, however, easy to enrich it as we choose:
+taking up its simple form at 3, and describing the arcs marked by the
+dotted lines upon its sides, and cutting a small triangular cavity
+between them, we shall leave its ridges somewhat rudely representative
+of four leaves, as at 8, which is the section and front view of one of
+the Venetian stone cornices described above, Chap. XIV., § IV., the
+figure 8 being here put in the hollow of the gutter. The dogtooth is put
+on the outer lower truncation, and is actually in position as fig. 5;
+but being always looked up to, is to the spectator as 3, and always
+rich and effective. The dogteeth are perhaps most frequently expanded
+to the width of fig. 9.
+
+§ VII. As in nearly all other ornaments previously described, so in
+this,--we have only to deepen the Italian cutting, and we shall get the
+Northern type. If we make the original pyramid somewhat steeper, and
+instead of lightly incising, cut it through, so as to have the leaves
+held only by their points to the base, we shall have the English
+dogtooth; somewhat vulgar in its piquancy, when compared with French
+mouldings of a similar kind.[75] It occurs, I think, on one house in
+Venice, in the Campo St. Polo; but the ordinary moulding, with light
+incisions, is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well as in the
+roof cornices.
+
+§ VIII. This being the simplest treatment of the pyramid, fig. 10, from
+the refectory of Wenlock Abbey, is an example of the simplest decoration
+of the recesses or inward angles between the pyramids; that is to say,
+of a simple hacked edge like one of those in fig. 2, the _cuts_ being
+taken up and decorated instead of the _points_. Each is worked into a
+small trefoiled arch, with an incision round it to mark its outline, and
+another slight incision above, expressing the angle of the first
+cutting. I said that the teeth in fig. 7 had in distance the effect of a
+zigzag: in fig. 10 this zigzag effect is seized upon and developed, but
+with the easiest and roughest work; the angular incision being a mere
+limiting line, like that described in § IX. of the last chapter. But
+hence the farther steps to every condition of Norman ornament are self
+evident. I do not say that all of them arose from development of the
+dogtooth in this manner, many being quite independent inventions and
+uses of zigzag lines; still, they may all be referred to this simple
+type as their root and representative, that is to say, the mere hack of
+the Venetian gunwale, with a limiting line following the resultant
+zigzag.
+
+§ IX. Fig. 11 is a singular and much more artificial condition, cast in
+brick, from the church of the Frari, and given here only for future
+reference. Fig. 12, resulting from a fillet with the cuts on each of its
+edges interrupted by a bar, is a frequent Venetian moulding, and of
+great value; but the plain or leaved dogteeth have been the favorites,
+and that to such a degree, that even the Renaissance architects took
+them up; and the best bit of Renaissance design in Venice, the side of
+the Ducal Palace next the Bridge of Sighs, owes great part of its
+splendor to its foundation, faced with large flat dogteeth, each about a
+foot wide in the base, with their points truncated, and alternating with
+cavities which are their own negatives or casts.
+
+§ X. One other form of the dogtooth is of great importance in northern
+architecture, that produced by oblique cuts slightly curved, as in the
+margin, Fig. LVI. It is susceptible of the most fantastic and endless
+decoration; each of the resulting leaves being, in the early porches of
+Rouen and Lisieux, hollowed out and worked into branching tracery: and
+at Bourges, for distant effect, worked into plain leaves, or bold bony
+processes with knobs at the points, and near the spectator, into
+crouching demons and broad winged owls, and other fancies and
+intricacies, innumerable and inexpressible.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LVI.]
+
+§ XI. Thus much is enough to be noted respecting edge decoration. We
+were next to consider the fillet. Professor Willis has noticed an
+ornament, which he has called the Venetian dentil, "as the most
+universal ornament in its own district that ever I met with;" but has
+not noticed the reason for its frequency. It is nevertheless highly
+interesting.
+
+The whole early architecture of Venice is architecture of incrustation:
+this has not been enough noticed in its peculiar relation to that of the
+rest of Italy. There is, indeed, much incrusted architecture throughout
+Italy, in elaborate ecclesiastical work, but there is more which is
+frankly of brick, or thoroughly of stone. But the Venetian habitually
+incrusted his work with nacre; he built his houses, even the meanest, as
+if he had been a shell-fish,--roughly inside, mother-of-pearl on the
+surface: he was content, perforce, to gather the clay of the Brenta
+banks, and bake it into brick for his substance of wall; but he overlaid
+it with the wealth of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You
+might fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying sea
+had beaten upon till it coated it with marble: at first a dark
+city--washed white by the sea foam. And I told you before that it was
+also a city of shafts and arches, and that its dwellings were raised
+upon continuous arcades, among which the sea waves wandered. Hence the
+thoughts of its builders were early and constantly directed to the
+incrustation of arches.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LVII.]
+
+§ XII. In Fig. LVII. I have given two of these Byzantine stilted arches:
+the one on the right, _a_, as they now too often appear, in its bare
+brickwork; that on the left, with its alabaster covering, literally
+marble defensive armor, riveted together in pieces, which follow the
+contours of the building. Now, on the wall, these pieces are mere flat
+slabs cut to the arch outline; but under the soffit of the arch the
+marble mail is curved, often cut singularly thin, like bent tiles, and
+fitted together so that the pieces would sustain each other even without
+rivets. It is of course desirable that this thin sub-arch of marble
+should project enough to sustain the facing of the wall; and the reader
+will see, in Fig. LVII., that its edge forms a kind of narrow band round
+the arch (_b_), a band which the least enrichment would render a
+valuable decorative feature. Now this band is, of course, if the
+soffit-pieces project a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a
+mere fillet, like the wooden gunwale in Plate IX.; and the question is,
+how to enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dogtoothed, but
+the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth, and would not
+have used it here, if they had; for the dogtooth cannot be employed
+alone, especially on so principal an angle as this of the main arches,
+without giving to the whole building a peculiar look, which I can not
+otherwise describe than as being to the eye, exactly what untempered
+acid is to the tongue. The mere dogtooth is an _acid_ moulding, and can
+only be used in certain mingling with others, to give them piquancy;
+never alone. What, then, will be the next easiest method of giving
+interest to the fillet?
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LVIII.]
+
+§ XIII. Simply to make the incisions square instead of sharp, and to
+leave equal intervals of the square edge between them. Fig. LVIII. is
+one of the curved pieces of arch armor, with its edge thus treated; one
+side only being done at the bottom, to show the simplicity and ease of
+the work. This ornament gives force and interest to the edge of the
+arch, without in the least diminishing its quietness. Nothing was ever,
+nor could be ever invented, fitter for its purpose, or more easily cut.
+From the arch it therefore found its way into every position where the
+edge of a piece of stone projected, and became, from its constancy of
+occurrence in the latest Gothic as well as the earliest Byzantine, most
+truly deserving of the name of the "Venetian Dentil." Its complete
+intention is now, however, only to be seen in the pictures of Gentile
+Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio; for, like most of the rest of the
+mouldings of Venetian buildings, it was always either gilded or
+painted--often both, gold being laid on the faces of the dentils, and
+their recesses colored alternately red and blue.
+
+§ XIV. Observe, however, that the reason above given for the
+_universality_ of this ornament was by no means the reason of its
+_invention_. The Venetian dentil is a particular application (consequent
+on the incrusted character of Venetian architecture) of the general idea
+of dentil, which had been originally given by the Greeks, and realised
+both by them and by the Byzantines in many laborious forms, long before
+there was need of them for arch armor; and the lower half of Plate IX.
+will give some idea of the conditions which occur in the Romanesque of
+Venice, distinctly derived from the classical dentil; and of the gradual
+transition to the more convenient and simple type, the running-hand
+dentil, which afterwards became the characteristic of Venetian Gothic.
+No. 13[76] is the common dentiled cornice, which occurs repeatedly in
+St. Mark's; and, as late as the thirteenth century, a reduplication of
+it, forming the abaci of the capitals of the Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15
+is perhaps an earlier type; perhaps only one of more careless
+workmanship, from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca' Foscari: and it is
+interesting to compare it with fig. 14 from the Cathedral of Vienne, in
+South France. Fig. 17, from St. Mark's, and 18, from the apse of Murano,
+are two very early examples in which the future true Venetian dentil is
+already developed in method of execution, though the object is still
+only to imitate the classical one; and a rude imitation of the bead is
+joined with it in fig. 17. No. 16 indicates two examples of experimental
+forms: the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala, at Verona;
+the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the thirteenth century:
+19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly found in cast brick, and
+connecting the dentils with the dogteeth: 20 is a form introduced richly
+in the later Gothic, but of rare occurrence until the latter half of the
+thirteenth century. I shall call it the _gabled_ dentil. It is found in
+the greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several
+slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21, from the
+tomb of Pietro Cornaro, may serve as an example.
+
+§ XV. All the forms given in Plate IX. are of not unfrequent occurrence:
+varying much in size and depth, according to the expression of the work
+in which they occur; generally increasing in size in late work (the
+earliest dentils are seldom more than an inch or an inch and a half
+long: the fully developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as
+four or five in length, by one and a half in breadth); but they are all
+somewhat rare, compared to the true or armor dentil, above described. On
+the other hand, there are one or two unique conditions, which will be
+noted in the buildings where they occur.[77] The Ducal Palace furnishes
+three anomalies in the arch, dogtooth, and dentil: it has a hyperbolic
+arch, as noted above, Chap. X., § XV.; it has a double-fanged dogtooth
+in the rings of the spiral shafts on its angles; and, finally, it has a
+dentil with concave sides, of which the section and two of the blocks,
+real size, are given in Plate XIV. The labor of obtaining this difficult
+profile has, however, been thrown away; for the effect of the dentil at
+ten feet distance is exactly the same as that of the usual form: and the
+reader may consider the dogtooth and dentil in that plate as fairly
+representing the common use of them in the Venetian Gothic.
+
+§ XVI. I am aware of no other form of fillet decoration requiring
+notice: in the Northern Gothic, the fillet is employed chiefly to give
+severity or flatness to mouldings supposed to be too much rounded, and
+is therefore generally plain. It is itself an ugly moulding, and, when
+thus employed, is merely a foil for others, of which, however, it at
+last usurped the place, and became one of the most painful features in
+the debased Gothic both of Italy and the North.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [74] I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the
+    light among the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this
+    sketch of Prout's, and the character of the wild and broken leaves,
+    half dead, on the stone of the foreground.
+
+  [75] Vide the "Seven Lamps," p. 122.
+
+  [76] The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of
+    each; the part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that
+    which is cut into dentils left.
+
+  [77] As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or
+    Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil,
+    entirely covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the
+    outside of the duomo of Bergamo; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as
+    the handle of a mace often is with nails, with massy dogteeth or
+    nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli palace of Bologna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  THE ROLL AND RECESS.
+
+
+§ I. I have classed these two means of architectural effect together,
+because the one is in most cases the negative of the other, and is used
+to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light; recess alternating with
+roll, not only in lateral, but in successive order; not merely side by
+side with each other, but interrupted the one by the other in their own
+lines. A recess itself has properly no decoration; but its depth gives
+value to the decoration which flanks, encloses, or interrupts it, and
+the form which interrupts it best is the roll.
+
+§ II. I use the word roll generally for any mouldings which present to
+the eye somewhat the appearance of being cylindrical, and look like
+round rods. When upright, they are in appearance, if not in fact, small
+shafts; and are a kind of bent shaft, even when used in archivolts and
+traceries;--when horizontal, they confuse themselves with cornices, and
+are, in fact, generally to be considered as the best means of drawing an
+architectural line in any direction, the soft curve of their side
+obtaining some shadow at nearly all times of the day, and that more
+tender and grateful to the eye than can be obtained either by an
+incision or by any other form of projection.
+
+§ III. Their decorative power is, however, too slight for rich work, and
+they frequently require, like the angle and the fillet, to be rendered
+interesting by subdivision or minor ornament of their own. When the roll
+is small, this is effected, exactly as in the case of the fillet, by
+cutting pieces out of it; giving in the simplest results what is called
+the Norman billet moulding: and when the cuts are given in couples, and
+the pieces rounded into spheres and almonds, we have the ordinary Greek
+bead, both of them too well known to require illustration. The Norman
+billet we shall not meet with in Venice; the bead constantly occurs in
+Byzantine, and of course in Renaissance work. In Plate IX., Fig. 17,
+there is a remarkable example of its early treatment, where the cuts in
+it are left sharp.
+
+§ IV. But the roll, if it be of any size, deserves better treatment. Its
+rounded surface is too beautiful to be cut away in notches; and it is
+rather to be covered with flat chasing or inlaid patterns. Thus
+ornamented, it gradually blends itself with the true shaft, both in the
+Romanesque work of the North, and in the Italian connected schools; and
+the patterns used for it are those used for shaft decoration in general.
+
+§ V. But, as alternating with the recess, it has a decoration peculiar
+to itself. We have often, in the preceding chapters, noted the fondness
+of the Northern builders for deep shade and hollowness in their
+mouldings; and in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps," the changes
+are described which reduced the massive roll mouldings of the early
+Gothic to a series of recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of
+these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us: it was,
+indeed, endlessly varied; but needlessly, for the value of a recess is
+in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form. But it was not in
+mere wanton indulgence of their love of shade that the Flamboyant
+builders deepened the furrows of their mouldings: they had found a means
+of decorating those furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire
+frame-work of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect
+of this decoration; where the ornament ceases, the frame-work is meagre
+and mean: but the ornament is, in the best examples of the style,
+unceasing.
+
+§ VI. It is, in fact, an ornament formed by the ghosts or anatomies of
+the old shafts, left in the furrows which had taken their place. Every
+here and there, a fragment of a roll or shaft is left in the recess or
+furrow: a billet-moulding on a huge scale, but a billet-moulding reduced
+to a skeleton; for the fragments of roll are cut hollow, and worked into
+mere entanglement of stony fibres, with the gloom of the recess shown
+through them. These ghost rolls, forming sometimes pedestals, sometimes
+canopies, sometimes covering the whole recess with an arch of tracery,
+beneath which it runs like a tunnel, are the peculiar decorations of the
+Flamboyant Gothic.
+
+§ VII. Now observe, in all kinds of decoration, we must keep carefully
+under separate heads, the consideration of the changes wrought in the
+mere physical form, and in the intellectual purpose of ornament. The
+relations of the canopy to the statue it shelters, are to be considered
+altogether distinctly from those of the canopy to the building which it
+decorates. In its earliest conditions the canopy is partly confused with
+representations of miniature architecture: it is sometimes a small
+temple or gateway, sometimes a honorary addition to the pomp of a saint,
+a covering to his throne, or to his shrine; and this canopy is often
+expressed in bas-relief (as in painting), without much reference to the
+great requirements of the building. At other times it is a real
+protection to the statue, and is enlarged into a complete pinnacle,
+carried on proper shafts, and boldly roofed. But in the late northern
+system the canopies are neither expressive nor protective. They are a
+kind of stone lace-work, required for the ornamentation of the building,
+for which the statues are often little more than an excuse, and of which
+the physical character is, as above described, that of ghosts of
+departed shafts.
+
+§ VIII. There is, of course, much rich tabernacle work which will not
+come literally under this head, much which is straggling or flat in its
+plan, connecting itself gradually with the ordinary forms of independent
+shrines and tombs; but the general idea of all tabernacle work is marked
+in the common phrase of a "niche," that is to say a hollow intended for
+a statue, and crowned by a canopy; and this niche decoration only
+reaches its full development when the Flamboyant hollows are cut
+deepest, and when the manner and spirit of sculpture had so much lost
+their purity and intensity that it became desirable to draw the eye away
+from the statue to its covering, so that at last the canopy became the
+more important of the two, and is itself so beautiful that we are often
+contented with architecture from which profanity has struck the statues,
+if only the canopies are left; and consequently, in our modern
+ingenuity, even set up canopies where we have no intention of setting
+statues.
+
+§ IX. It is a pity that thus we have no really noble example of the
+effect of the statue in the recesses of architecture: for the Flamboyant
+recess was not so much a preparation for it as a gulf which swallowed it
+up. When statues were most earnestly designed, they were thrust forward
+in all kinds of places, often in front of the pillars, as at Amiens,
+awkwardly enough, but with manly respect to the purpose of the figures.
+The Flamboyant hollows yawned at their sides, the statues fell back into
+them, and nearly disappeared, and a flash of flame in the shape of a
+canopy rose as they expired.
+
+§ X. I do not feel myself capable at present of speaking with perfect
+justice of this niche ornament of the north, my late studies in Italy
+having somewhat destroyed my sympathies with it. But I once loved it
+intensely, and will not say anything to depreciate it now, save only
+this, that while I have studied long at Abbeville, without in the least
+finding that it made me care less for Verona, I never remained long in
+Verona without feeling some doubt of the nobility of Abbeville.
+
+§ XI. Recess decoration by leaf mouldings is constantly and beautifully
+associated in the north with niche decoration, but requires no special
+notice, the recess in such cases being used merely to give value to the
+leafage by its gloom, and the difference between such conditions and
+those of the south being merely that in the one the leaves are laid
+across a hollow, and in the other over a solid surface; but in neither
+of the schools exclusively so, each in some degree intermingling the
+method of the other.
+
+§ XII. Finally the recess decoration by the ball flower is very definite
+and characteristic, found, I believe, chiefly in English work. It
+consists merely in leaving a small boss or sphere, fixed, as it were, at
+intervals in the hollows; such bosses being afterwards carved into
+roses, or other ornamental forms, and sometimes lifted quite up out of
+the hollow, on projecting processes, like vertebrĉ, so as to make them
+more conspicuous, as throughout the decoration of the cathedral of
+Bourges.
+
+The value of this ornament is chiefly in the _spotted_ character which
+it gives to the lines of mouldings seen from a distance. It is very rich
+and delightful when not used in excess; but it would satiate and weary
+the eye if it were ever used in general architecture. The spire of
+Salisbury, and of St. Mary's at Oxford, are agreeable as isolated
+masses; but if an entire street were built with this spotty decoration
+at every casement, we could not traverse it to the end without disgust.
+It is only another example of the constant aim at piquancy of effect
+which characterised the northern builders; an ingenious but somewhat
+vulgar effort to give interest to their grey masses of coarse stone,
+without overtaking their powers either of invention or execution. We
+will thank them for it without blame or praise, and pass on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  THE BASE.
+
+
+§ I. We know now as much as is needful respecting the methods of minor
+and universal decorations, which were distinguished in Chapter XXII., §
+III., from the ornament which has special relation to particular parts.
+This local ornament, which, it will be remembered, we arranged in § II.
+of the same chapter under five heads, we have next, under those heads,
+to consider. And, first, the ornament of the bases, both of walls and
+shafts.
+
+It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that there are
+something in those divisions like the beginning, the several courses,
+and the close of a human life. And as, in all well-conducted lives, the
+hard work, and roughing, and gaining of strength come first, the honor
+or decoration in certain intervals during their course, but most of all
+in their close, so, in general, the base of the wall, which is its
+beginning of labor, will bear least decoration, its body more,
+especially those epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown
+or cornice most of all. Still, in some buildings, all these are
+decorated richly, though the last most; and in others, when the base is
+well protected and yet conspicuous, it may probably receive even more
+decoration than other parts.
+
+§ II. Now, the main things to be expressed in a base are its levelness
+and evenness. We cannot do better than construct the several members of
+the base, as developed in Fig. II., p. 55, each of a different colored
+marble, so as to produce marked level bars of color all along the
+foundation. This is exquisitely done in all the Italian elaborate wall
+bases; that of St. Anastasia at Verona is one of the most perfect
+existing, for play of color; that of Giotto's campanile is on the whole
+the most beautifully finished. Then, on the vertical portions, _a_, _b_,
+_c_, we may put what patterns in mosaic we please, so that they be not
+too rich; but if we choose rather to have sculpture (or _must_ have it
+for want of stones to inlay), then observe that all sculpture on bases
+must be in panels, or it will soon be worn away, and that a plain
+panelling is often good without any other ornament. The member _b_,
+which in St. Mark's is subordinate, and _c_, which is expanded into a
+seat, are both of them decorated with simple but exquisitely-finished
+panelling, in red and white or green and white marble; and the member
+_e_ is in bases of this kind very valuable, as an expression of a firm
+beginning of the substance of the wall itself. This member has been of
+no service to us hitherto, and was unnoticed in the chapters on
+construction; but it was expressed in the figure of the wall base, on
+account of its great value when the foundation is of stone and the wall
+of brick (coated or not). In such cases it is always better to add the
+course _e_, above the slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the
+common masonry of the wall.
+
+§ III. It is, however, with the member _d_, or Xb, that we are most
+seriously concerned; for this being the essential feature of all bases,
+and the true preparation for the wall or shaft, it is most necessary
+that here, if anywhere, we should have full expression of levelness and
+precision; and farther, that, if possible, the eye should not be
+suffered to rest on the points of junction of the stones, which would
+give an effect of instability. Both these objects are accomplished by
+attracting the eye to two rolls, separated by a deep hollow, in the
+member _d_ itself. The bold projections of their mouldings entirely
+prevent the attention from being drawn to the joints of the masonry, and
+besides form a simple but beautifully connected group of bars of shadow,
+which express, in their perfect parallelism, the absolute levelness of
+the foundation.
+
+§ IV. I need hardly give any perspective drawing of an arrangement which
+must be perfectly familiar to the reader, as occurring under nearly
+every column of the too numerous classical buildings all over Europe.
+But I may name the base of the Bank of England as furnishing a very
+simple instance of the group, with a square instead of a rounded hollow,
+both forming the base of the wall, and gathering into that of the shafts
+as they occur; while the bases of the pillars of the façade of the
+British Museum are as good examples as the reader can study on a larger
+scale.
+
+[Illustration: Plate X.
+               PROFILES OF BASES.]
+
+§ V. I believe this group of mouldings was first invented by the Greeks,
+and it has never been materially improved, as far as its peculiar
+purpose is concerned;[78] the classical attempts at its variation being
+the ugliest: one, the using a single roll of larger size, as may be seen
+in the Duke of York's column, which therefore looks as if it stood on a
+large sausage (the Monument has the same base, but more concealed by
+pedestal decoration): another, the using two rolls without the
+intermediate cavetto,--a condition hardly less awkward, and which may be
+studied to advantage in the wall and shaftbases of the Athenĉum
+Club-house: and another, the introduction of what are called fillets
+between the rolls, as may be seen in the pillars of Hanover Chapel,
+Regent Street, which look, in consequence, as if they were standing upon
+a pile of pewter collection plates. But the only successful changes have
+been mediĉval; and their nature will be at once understood by a glance
+at the varieties given on the opposite page. It will be well first to
+give the buildings in which they occur, in order.
+
+  1. Santa Fosca, Torcello.          | 14. Ca' Giustiniani, Venice.
+  2. North transept, St. Mark's,     | 15. Byzantine fragment, Venice.
+       Venice.                       | 16. St. Mark's, upper Colonnade.
+  3. Nave, Torcello.                 | 17. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
+  4. Nave, Torcello.                 | 18. Ca' Falier, Venice.
+  5. South transept, St. Mark's.     | 19. St. Zeno, Verona.
+  6. Northern portico, upper shafts, | 20. San Stefano, Venice.
+      St. Mark's.                    | 21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
+  7. Another of the same group.      | 22. Nave, Salisbury.
+  8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan. | 23. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
+  9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.| 24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral.
+ 10. Outside wall base, St. Mark's,  | 25. Notre Dame, Dijon.
+        Venice.                      | 26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral.
+ 11. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice.     | 27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy).
+ 12. Nave, Vienne, France.           | 28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral.
+ 13. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice.     |
+
+§ VI. Eighteen out of the twenty eight varieties are Venetian, being
+bases to which I shall have need of future reference; but the
+interspersed examples, 8, 9, 12, and 19, from Milan, Pavia, Vienne
+(France), and Verona, show the exactly correspondent conditions of the
+Romanesque base at the period, throughout the centre of Europe. The last
+five examples show the changes effected by the French Gothic architects:
+the Salisbury base (22) I have only introduced to show its dulness and
+vulgarity beside them; and 23, from Torcello, for a special reason, in
+that place.
+
+§ VII. The reader will observe that the two bases, 8 and 9, from the two
+most important Lombardic churches of Italy, St. Ambrogio of Milan and
+St. Michele of Pavia, mark the character of the barbaric base founded on
+pure Roman models, sometimes approximating to such models very closely;
+and the varieties 10, 11, 13, 16 are Byzantine types, also founded on
+Roman models. But in the bases 1 to 7 inclusive, and, still more
+characteristically, in 23 below, there is evidently an original element,
+a tendency to use the fillet and hollow instead of the roll, which is
+eminently Gothic; which in the base 3 reminds one even of Flamboyant
+conditions, and is excessively remarkable as occurring in Italian work
+certainly not later than the tenth century, taking even the date of the
+last rebuilding of the Duomo of Torcello, though I am strongly inclined
+to consider these bases portions of the original church. And I have
+therefore put the base 23 among the Gothic group to which it has so
+strong relationship, though, on the last supposition, five centuries
+older than the earliest of the five terminal examples; and it is still
+more remarkable because it reverses the usual treatment of the lower
+roll, which is in general a tolerably accurate test of the age of a
+base, in the degree of its projection. Thus, in the examples 2, 3, 4, 5,
+9, 10, 12, the lower roll is hardly rounded at all, and diametrically
+opposed to the late Gothic conditions, 24 to 28, in which it advances
+gradually, like a wave preparing to break, and at last is actually seen
+curling over with the long-backed rush of surf upon the shore. Yet the
+Torcello base resembles these Gothic ones both in expansion beneath and
+in depth of cavetto above.
+
+§ VIII. There can be no question of the ineffable superiority of these
+Gothic bases, in grace of profile, to any ever invented by the ancients.
+But they have all two great faults: They seem, in the first place, to
+have been designed without sufficient reference to the necessity of
+their being usually seen from above; their grace of profile cannot be
+estimated when so seen, and their excessive expansion gives them an
+appearance of flatness and separation from the shaft, as if they had
+splashed out under its pressure: in the second place their cavetto is so
+deeply cut that it has the appearance of a black fissure between the
+members of the base; and in the Lyons and Bourges shafts, 24 and 26, it
+is impossible to conquer the idea suggested by it, that the two stones
+above and below have been intended to join close, but that some pebbles
+have got in and kept them from fitting; one is always expecting the
+pebbles to be crushed, and the shaft to settle into its place with a
+thunder-clap.
+
+§ IX. For these reasons, I said that the profile of the pure classic
+base had hardly been materially improved; but the various conditions of
+it are beautiful or commonplace, in proportion to the variety of
+proportion among their lines and the delicacy of their curvatures; that
+is to say, the expression of characters like those of the abstract lines
+in Plate VII.
+
+The five best profiles in Plate X. are 10, 17, 19, 20, 21; 10 is
+peculiarly beautiful in the opposition between the bold projection of
+its upper roll, and the delicate leafy curvature of its lower; and this
+and 21 may be taken as nearly perfect types, the one of the steep, the
+other of the expansive basic profiles. The characters of all, however,
+are so dependent upon their place and expression, that it is unfair to
+judge them thus separately; and the precision of curvature is a matter
+of so small consequence in general effect, that we need not here pursue
+the subject farther.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LIX.]
+
+§ X. We have thus far, however, considered only the lines of moulding in
+the member X b, whether of wall or shaft base. But the reader will
+remember that in our best shaft base, in Fig. XII. (p. 78), certain
+props or spurs were applied to the slope of X b; but now that X b is
+divided into these delicate mouldings, we cannot conveniently apply the
+spur to its irregular profile; we must be content to set it against the
+lower roll. Let the upper edge of this lower roll be the curved line
+here, _a_, _d_, _e_, _b_, Fig. LIX., and _c_ the angle of the square
+plinth projecting beneath it. Then the spur, applied as we saw in Chap.
+VII., will be of some such form as the triangle _c e d_, Fig. LIX.
+
+§ XI. Now it has just been stated that it is of small importance whether
+the abstract lines of the profile of a base moulding be fine or not,
+because we rarely stoop down to look at them. But this triangular spur
+is nearly always seen from above, and the eye is drawn to it as one of
+the most important features of the whole base; therefore it is a point
+of immediate necessity to substitute for its harsh right lines (_c d_,
+_c e_) some curve of noble abstract character.
+
+§ XII. I mentioned, in speaking of the line of the salvia leaf at p.
+224, that I had marked off the portion of it, _x y_, because I thought
+it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards; and I promised the
+reader that as he had built, so he should decorate his edifice at his
+own free will. If, therefore, he likes the above triangular spur, _c d
+e_, by all means let him keep it; but if he be on the whole dissatisfied
+with it, I may be permitted, perhaps, to advise him to set to work like
+a tapestry bee, to cut off the little bit of line of salvia leaf _x y_,
+and try how he can best substitute it for the awkward lines _c d c e_.
+He may try it any way that he likes; but if he puts the salvia curvature
+inside the present lines, he will find the spur looks weak, and I think
+he will determine at last on placing it as I have done at _c d_, _c e_,
+Fig. LX. (If the reader will be at the pains to transfer the salvia leaf
+line with tracing paper, he will find it accurately used in this
+figure.) Then I merely add an outer circular line to represent the outer
+swell of the roll against which the spur is set, and I put another such
+spur to the opposite corner of the square, and we have the half base,
+Fig. LX., which is a general type of the best Gothic bases in existence,
+being very nearly that of the upper shafts of the Ducal Palace of
+Venice. In those shafts the quadrant _a b_, or the upper edge of the
+lower roll, is 2 feet 1-3/8 inches round, and the base of the spur _d
+e_, is 10 inches; the line _d e_ being therefore to _a b_ as 10 to
+25-3/8. In Fig. LX. it is as 10 to 24, the measurement being easier and
+the type somewhat more generally representative of the best, _i.e._
+broadest, spurs of Italian Gothic.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LX.]
+
+§ XIII. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothing magical in
+salvia leaves: the line I take from them happened merely to fall
+conveniently on the page, and might as well have been taken from
+anything else; it is simply its character of gradated curvature which
+fits it for our use. On Plate XI., opposite, I have given plans of the
+spurs and quadrants of twelve Italian and three Northern bases; these
+latter (13), from Bourges, (14) from Lyons, (15) from Rouen, are given
+merely to show the Northern disposition to break up bounding lines, and
+lose breadth in picturesqueness. These Northern bases look the prettiest
+in this plate, because this variation of the outline is nearly all the
+ornament they have, being cut very rudely; but the Italian bases above
+them are merely prepared by their simple outlines for far richer
+decoration at the next step, as we shall see presently. The Northern
+bases are to be noted also for another grand error: the projection of
+the roll beyond the square plinth, of which the corner is seen, in
+various degrees of advancement, in the three examples. 13 is the base
+whose profile is No. 26 in Plate X.; 14 is 24 in the same plate; and 15
+is 28.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XI.
+               PLANS OF BASES.]
+
+§ XIV. The Italian bases are the following; all, except 7 and 10, being
+Venetian: 1 and 2, upper colonnade, St. Mark's; 3, Ca' Falier; 4, lower
+colonnade, and 5, transept, St. Mark's; 6, from the Church of St. John
+and Paul; 7, from the tomb near St. Anastasia, Verona, described above
+(p. 142); 8 and 9, Fon daco de' Turchi, Venice; 10, tomb of Can Mastino
+della Scala, Verona; 11, San Stefano, Venice; 12, Ducal Palace, Venice,
+upper colonnade. The Nos. 3, 8, 9, 11 are the bases whose profiles are
+respectively Nos. 18, 11, 13, and 20 in Plate X. The flat surfaces of
+the basic plinths are here shaded; and in the lower corner of the square
+occupied by each quadrant is put, also shaded, the central profile of
+each spur, from its root at the roll of the base to its point; those of
+Nos. 1 and 2 being conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly,
+that I took no note of their profiles; but they would probably be as
+here given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of comparison,
+reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to shafts of
+very different size, 9 being some six or seven inches in diameter,
+and 6, three or four feet, the proportionate size of the roll varies
+accordingly, being largest, as in 9, where the base is smallest, and in
+6 and 12 the leaf profile is given on a larger scale than the plan, or
+its character could not have been exhibited.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XII.
+               DECORATION OF BASES.]
+
+§ XV. Now, in all these spurs, the reader will observe that the
+narrowest are for the most part the earliest. No. 2, from the upper
+colonnade of St. Mark's, is the only instance I ever saw of the double
+spur, as transitive between the square and octagon plinth; the truncated
+form, 1, is also rare and very ugly. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are the
+general conditions of the Byzantine spur; 8 is a very rare form of plan
+in Byzantine work, but proved to be so by its rude level profile; while
+7, on the contrary, Byzantine in plan, is eminently Gothic in the
+profile. 9 to 12 are from formed Gothic buildings, equally refined in
+their profile and plan.
+
+§ XVI. The character of the profile is indeed much altered by the
+accidental nature of the surface decoration; but the importance of the
+broad difference between the raised and flat profile will be felt on
+glancing at the examples 1 to 6 in Plate XII. The three upper examples
+are the Romanesque types, which occur as parallels with the Byzantine
+types, 1 to 3 of Plate XI. Their plans would be nearly the same; but
+instead of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws,
+as high as they are broad; and the third, from St. Michele of Pavia,
+appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a claw enforced by the
+transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio, Milan; 2 from Vienne, France.
+The 4th type, Plate XII., almost like the extremity of a man's foot, is
+a Byzantine form (perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St.
+Mark's; and the two next show the unity of the two principles, forming
+the perfect Italian Gothic types,--5, from tomb of Can Signorio della
+Scala, Verona; 6, from San Stefano, Venice (the base 11 of Plate XI., in
+perspective). The two other bases, 10 and 12 of Plate XI., are
+conditions of the same kind, showing the varieties of rise and fall in
+exquisite modulation; the 10th, a type more frequent at Verona than
+Venice, in which the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising
+out of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by
+sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work; a kind
+of band, or fillet, appears to hold, and even compress, the _centre_ of
+the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of St. Peter's, Oxford,
+which has also spurs at its angles; and long bands flow over the base of
+the angle shaft of the Ducal Palace of Venice, next the Porta della
+Carta.
+
+§ XVII. When the main contours of the base are once determined, its
+decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely given, in Plate
+XII., three examples to which I shall need to refer, hereafter. No. 9 is
+a very early and curious one; the decoration of the base 6 in Plate XI.,
+representing a leaf turned over and flattened down; or, rather, the idea
+of the turned leaf, worked as well as could be imagined on the flat
+contour of the spur. Then 10 is the perfect, but simplest possible
+development of the same idea, from the earliest bases of the upper
+colonnade of the Ducal Palace, that is to say, the bases of the sea
+façade; and 7 and 8 are its lateral profile and transverse section.
+Finally, 11 and 12 are two of the spurs of the later shafts of the same
+colonnade on the Piazzetta side (No. 12 of Plate XI.). No. 11 occurs on
+one of these shafts only, and is singularly beautiful. I suspect it to
+be earlier than the other, which is the characteristic base of the rest
+of the series, and already shows the loose, sensual, ungoverned
+character of fifteenth century ornament in the dissoluteness of its
+rolling.
+
+§ XVIII. I merely give these as examples ready to my hand, and necessary
+for future reference; not as in anywise representative of the variety of
+the Italian treatment of the general contour, far less of the endless
+caprices of the North. The most beautiful base I ever saw, on the whole,
+is a Byzantine one in the Baptistery of St. Mark's, in which the spur
+profile approximates to that of No. 10 in Plate XI.; but it is formed by
+a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two wings, as they half
+close, form the upper part of the spur, and the rise of it in the front
+is formed by exactly the action of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake:
+"quei drizzo, volando, suso il petto." But it requires noble management
+to confine such a fancy within such limits. The greater number of the
+best bases are formed of leaves; and the reader may amuse himself as he
+will by endless inventions of them, from types which he may gather among
+the weeds at the nearest roadside. The value of the vegetable form is
+especially here, as above noted, Chap. XX., § XXXII., its capability of
+unity with the mass of the base, and of being suggested by few lines;
+none but the Northern Gothic architects are able to introduce entire
+animal forms in this position with perfect success. There is a beautiful
+instance at the north door of the west front of Rouen; a lizard pausing
+and curling himself round a little in the angle; one expects him the
+next instant to lash round the shaft and vanish: and we may with
+advantage compare this base with those of Renaissance Scuola di San
+Rocca[79] at Venice, in which the architect, imitating the mediĉval
+bases, which he did not understand, has put an elephant, four inches
+higher, in the same position.
+
+§ XIX. I have not in this chapter spoken at all of the profiles which
+are given in Northern architecture to the projections of the lower
+members of the base, _b_ and _c_ in Fig. II., nor of the methods in
+which both these, and the rolls of the mouldings in Plate X., are
+decorated, especially in Roman architecture, with superadded chain work
+or chasing of various patterns. Of the first I have not spoken, because
+I shall have no occasion to allude to them in the following essay; nor
+of the second, because I consider them barbarisms. Decorated rolls and
+decorated ogee profiles, such, for instance, as the base of the Arc de
+l'Etoile at Paris, are among the richest and farthest refinements of
+decorative appliances; and they ought always to be reserved for jambs,
+cornices, and archivolts: if you begin with them in the base, you have
+no power of refining your decorations as you ascend, and, which is still
+worse, you put your most delicate work on the jutting portions of the
+foundation,--the very portions which are most exposed to abrasion. The
+best expression of a base is that of stern endurance,--the look of being
+able to bear roughing; or, if the whole building is so delicate that no
+one can be expected to treat even its base with unkindness,[80] then at
+least the expression of quiet, prefatory simplicity. The angle spur may
+receive such decoration as we have seen, because it is one of the most
+important features in the whole building; and the eye is always so
+attracted to it that it cannot be in rich architecture left altogether
+blank; the eye is stayed upon it by its position, but glides, and ought
+to glide, along the basic rolls to take measurement of their length: and
+even with all this added fitness, the ornament of the basic spur is
+best, in the long run, when it is boldest and simplest. The base above
+described, § XVIII., as the most beautiful I ever saw, was not for that
+reason the best I ever saw: beautiful in its place, in a quiet corner of
+a Baptistery sheeted with jasper and alabaster, it would have been
+utterly wrong, nay, even offensive, if used in sterner work, or repeated
+along a whole colonnade. The base No. 10 of Plate XII. is the richest
+with which I was ever perfectly satisfied for general service; and the
+basic spurs of the building which I have named as the best Gothic
+monument in the world (p. 141), have no ornament upon them whatever. The
+adaptation, therefore, of rich cornice and roll mouldings to the level
+and ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be
+one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance architects
+ever committed; and that nothing can afterwards redeem the effeminacy
+and vulgarity of the buildings in which it prominently takes place.
+
+§ XX. I have also passed over, without present notice, the fantastic
+bases formed by couchant animals, which sustain many Lombardic shafts.
+The pillars they support have independent bases of the ordinary kind;
+and the animal form beneath is less to be considered as a true base
+(though often exquisitely combined with it, as in the shaft on the
+south-west angle of the cathedral of Genoa) than as a piece of
+sculpture, otherwise necessary to the nobility of the building, and
+deriving its value from its special positive fulfilment of expressional
+purposes, with which we have here no concern. As the embodiment of a
+wild superstition, and the representation of supernatural powers, their
+appeal to the imagination sets at utter defiance all judgment based on
+ordinary canons of law; and the magnificence of their treatment atones,
+in nearly every case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should
+not admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a
+nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid; but by the
+Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life, we need not fear
+being led astray: the visions of a distempered fancy are not indeed
+permitted to replace the truth, or set aside the laws of science: but
+the imagination which is thoroughly under the command of the intelligent
+will,[81] has a dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by
+law; and we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons in
+the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry an excuse
+for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to be called upon, in other
+cases, to admire a systemless architecture, because it may happen to
+have sprung from an irrational religion.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [78] Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and
+    value of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of
+    the single or double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested
+    by the writer of the Essay on the Ĉsthetics of Gothic Architecture
+    in the British Quarterly for August, 1849:--"The Attic base
+    _recedes_ at the point where, if it suffered from superincumbent
+    weight, it would bulge out."
+
+  [79] I have put in Appendix 24, "Renaissance Bases," my memorandum
+    written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had
+    better delay referring to it, until we have completed our
+    examination of ornaments in shafts and capitals.
+
+  [80] Appendix 25, "Romanist Decoration of Bases."
+
+  [81] In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in
+    Appendix 8), this command of the will over its action is as distinct
+    as it is stern. The fancy is, in the early work of the nation,
+    visibly diseased; but never the will, nor the reason.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT.
+
+
+§ I. No subject has been more open ground of dispute among architects
+than the decoration of the wall veil, because no decoration appeared
+naturally to grow out of its construction; nor could any curvatures be
+given to its surface large enough to produce much impression on the eye.
+It has become, therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of
+various effects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned to
+the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may perhaps conclude, from what
+was advanced in the Fifth Chapter, that there is one kind of decoration
+which will, indeed, naturally follow on its construction. For it is
+perfectly natural that the different kinds of stone used in its
+successive courses should be of different colors; and there are many
+associations and analogies which metaphysically justify the introduction
+of horizontal bands of color, or of light and shade. They are, in the
+first place, a kind of expression of the growth or age of the wall, like
+the rings in the wood of a tree; then they are a farther symbol of the
+alternation of light and darkness, which was above noted as the source
+of the charm of many inferior mouldings: again, they are valuable as an
+expression of horizontal space to the imagination, space of which the
+conception is opposed, and gives more effect by its opposition, to the
+enclosing power of the wall itself (this I spoke of as probably the
+great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind): and again
+they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural courses of rocks,
+and beds of the earth itself. And to all these powerful imaginative
+reasons we have to add the merely ocular charm of interlineal opposition
+of color; a charm so great, that all the best colorists, without a
+single exception, depend upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial
+effects, some vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being
+made central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of
+Tintoret's great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised on the
+bars of blue, which cross the white turban of the executioner.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XIII.
+               WALL VEIL DECORATIONS.]
+
+§ II. There are, therefore, no ornaments more deeply suggestive in their
+simplicity than these alternate bars of horizontal colors; nor do I know
+any buildings more noble than those of the Pisan Romanesque, in which
+they are habitually employed; and certainly none so graceful, so
+attractive, so enduringly delightful in their nobleness. Yet, of this
+pure and graceful ornamentation, Professor Willis says, "a practice more
+destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived:" and
+modern architects have substituted for it the ingenious ornament of
+which the reader has had one specimen above, Fig. III., p. 61, and with
+which half the large buildings in London are disfigured, or else
+traversed by mere straight lines, as, for instance, the back of the
+Bank. The lines on the Bank may, perhaps, be considered typical of
+accounts; but in general the walls, if left destitute of them, would
+have been as much fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of
+white paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may have
+free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two examples of the old
+and the Renaissance ornament side by side on the opposite page. That on
+the right is Romanesque, from St. Pietro of Pistoja; that on the left,
+modern English, from the Arthur Club-house, St. James's Street.
+
+§ III. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark the
+division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled, and right when
+they are marked by color? First, because the color separation is a
+natural one. You build with different kinds of stone, of which,
+probably, one is more costly than another; which latter, as you cannot
+construct your building of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars.
+But the chiselling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and
+labor in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those
+monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building is
+_weaker_ than it was before, by just as much stone as has been cut away
+from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I have repeatedly urged,
+straight lines are ugly things as _lines_, but admirable as limits of
+colored spaces; and the joints of the stones, which are painful in
+proportion to their regularity, if drawn as lines, are perfectly
+agreeable when marked by variations of hue.
+
+§ IV. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling, is equally
+true of divisions of bricks by pointing. Nor, of course, is the mere
+horizontal bar the only arrangement in which the colors of brickwork or
+masonry can be gracefully disposed. It is rather one which can only be
+employed with advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold.
+When the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into
+chequered patterns. We shall have several interesting examples to study
+in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal Palace. The town of
+Moulins, in France, is one of the most remarkable on this side the Alps
+for its chequered patterns in bricks. The church of Christchurch,
+Streatham, lately built, though spoiled by many grievous errors (the
+iron work in the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the
+inhabitants of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the
+variety of effects which are possible with no other material than brick.
+
+§ V. We have yet to notice another effort of the Renaissance architects
+to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by what is called Rustication.
+There is sometimes an obscure trace of the remains of the imitation of
+something organic in this kind of work. In some of the better French
+eighteenth century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like
+a final degradation of Flamboyant leafage; and some of our modern
+English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of elephants
+for their type; but, for the most part, it resembles nothing so much as
+worm casts; nor these with any precision. If it did, it would not bring
+it within the sphere of our properly imitative ornamentation. I thought
+it unnecessary to warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of
+refuse or corruption; and that, while he might legitimately take the
+worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to study the
+worm cast or coprolite.
+
+§ VI. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rustication
+gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones. Not so; at least
+to any one who knows the look of a hard stone. You may, by rustication,
+make your good marble or granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by
+sand-eels, or like half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of
+stalactite, or like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own
+mud; but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do not
+think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth sheets of rock,
+glistening like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer like a brazen
+bell,--that is her preparation for first stories. She does rusticate
+sometimes: crumbly sand-stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red
+mud; dusty lime-stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities;
+spongy lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into ropy
+coils and bubbling hollows;--these she rusticates, indeed, when she
+wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them; but not when she needs
+to lay foundations with them. Then she seeks the polished surface and
+iron heart, not rough looks and incoherent substance.
+
+§ VII. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impossible to
+institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere
+inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief.
+The architect has perhaps more license in them, and more power of
+producing good effect with rude design than in any other features of the
+building; the chequer and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude
+bas-reliefs of the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate
+panelling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to be noted
+of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expression of firm and
+massive substance, and of broad surface, and that architecture instantly
+declined when linear design was substituted for massive, and the sense
+of weight of wall was lost in a wilderness of upright or undulating
+rods. Of the richest and most delicate wall veil decoration by inlaid
+work, as practised in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, I
+have given the reader two characteristic examples in Plates XX. and XXI.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXI.]
+
+§ VIII. There are, however, three spaces in which the wall veil,
+peculiarly limited in shape, was always felt to be fitted for surface
+decoration of the most elaborate kind; and in these spaces are found the
+most majestic instances of its treatment, even to late periods. One of
+these is the spandril space, or the filling between any two arches,
+commonly of the shape _a_, Fig. LXI.; the half of which, or the flank
+filling of any arch, is called a spandril. In Chapter XVII., on Filling
+of Apertures, the reader will find another of these spaces noted, called
+the tympanum, and commonly of the form _b_, Fig. LXI.: and finally, in
+Chapter XVIII., he will find the third space described, that between an
+arch and its protecting gable, approximating generally to the form _c_,
+Fig. LXI.
+
+§ IX. The methods of treating these spaces might alone furnish subject
+for three very interesting essays; but I shall only note the most
+essential points respecting them.
+
+(1.) The Spandril. It was observed in Chapter XII., that this portion of
+the arch load might frequently be lightened with great advantage by
+piercing it with a circle, or with a group of circles; and the roof of
+the Euston Square railroad station was adduced as an example. One of the
+spandril decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the "Seven Lamps,"
+Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these Euston Square
+spandrils, with its circles foliated.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XIV.
+               SPANDRIL DECORATION
+               THE DUCAL PALACE.]
+
+Sometimes the circle is entirely pierced; at other times it is merely
+suggested by a mosaic or light tracery on the wall surface, as in the
+plate opposite, which is one of the spandrils of the Ducal Palace at
+Venice. It was evidently intended that all the spandrils of this
+building should be decorated in this manner, but only two of them seem
+to have been completed.[82]
+
+§ X. The other modes of spandril filling may be broadly reduced to four
+heads. 1. Free figure sculpture, as in the Chapter-house of Salisbury,
+and very superbly along the west front of Bourges, the best Gothic
+spandrils I know. 2. Radiated foliage, more or less referred to the
+centre, or to the bottom of the spandril for its origin; single figures
+with expanded wings often answering the same purpose. 3. Trefoils; and
+4, ordinary wall decoration continued into the spandril space, as in
+Plate XIII., above, from St. Pietro at Pistoja, and in Westminster
+Abbey. The Renaissance architects introduced spandril fillings composed
+of colossal human figures reclining on the sides of the arch, in
+precarious lassitude; but these cannot come under the head of wall veil
+decoration.
+
+§ XI. (2.) The Tympanum. It was noted that, in Gothic architecture, this
+is for the most part a detached slab of stone, having no constructional
+relation to the rest of the building. The plan of its sculpture is
+therefore quite arbitrary; and, as it is generally in a conspicuous
+position, near the eye, and above the entrance, it is almost always
+charged with a series of rich figure sculptures, solemn in feeling and
+consecutive in subject. It occupies in Christian sacred edifices very
+nearly the position of the pediment in Greek sculpture. This latter is
+itself a kind of tympanum, and charged with sculpture in the same
+manner.
+
+§ XII. (3.) The Gable. The same principles apply to it which have been
+noted respecting the spandril, with one more of some importance. The
+chief difficulty in treating a gable lies in the excessive sharpness of
+its upper point. It may, indeed, on its outside apex, receive a finial;
+but the meeting of the inside lines of its terminal mouldings is
+necessarily both harsh and conspicuous, unless artificially concealed.
+The most beautiful victory I have ever seen obtained over this
+difficulty was by placing a sharp shield, its point, as usual,
+downwards, at the apex of the gable, which exactly reversed the
+offensive lines, yet without actually breaking them; the gable being
+completed behind the shield. The same thing is done in the Northern and
+Southern Gothic: in the porches of Abbeville and the tombs of Verona.
+
+§ XIII. I believe there is little else to be noted of general laws of
+ornament respecting the wall veil. We have next to consider its
+concentration in the shaft.
+
+Now the principal beauty of a shaft is its perfect proportion to its
+work,--its exact expression of necessary strength. If this has been
+truly attained, it will hardly need, in some cases hardly bear, more
+decoration than is given to it by its own rounding and taper curvatures;
+for, if we cut ornaments in intaglio on its surface, we weaken it; if we
+leave them in relief, we overcharge it, and the sweep of the line from
+its base to its summit, though deduced in Chapter VIII., from
+necessities of construction, is already one of gradated curvature, and
+of high decorative value.
+
+§ XIV. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that decorations are
+admissible on colossal and on diminutive shafts, which are wrong upon
+those of middle size. For, when the shaft is enormous, incisions or
+sculpture on its sides (unless colossal also), do not materially
+interfere with the sweep of its curve, nor diminish the efficiency of
+its sustaining mass. And if it be diminutive, its sustaining function is
+comparatively of so small importance, the injurious results of failure
+so much less, and the relative strength and cohesion of its mass so much
+greater, that it may be suffered in the extravagance of ornament or
+outline which would be unendurable in a shaft of middle size, and
+impossible in one of colossal. Thus, the shafts drawn in Plate XIII., of
+the "Seven Lamps," though given as examples of extravagance, are yet
+pleasing in the general effect of the arcade they support; being each
+some six or seven feet high. But they would have been monstrous, as
+well as unsafe, if they had been sixty or seventy.
+
+§ XV. Therefore, to determine the general rule for shaft decoration, we
+must ascertain the proportions representative of the mean bulk of
+shafts: they might easily be calculated from a sufficient number of
+examples, but it may perhaps be assumed, for our present general
+purpose, that the mean standard would be of some twenty feet in height,
+by eight or nine in circumference: then this will be the size on which
+decoration is most difficult and dangerous: and shafts become more and
+more fit subjects for decoration, as they rise farther above, or fall
+farther beneath it, until very small and very vast shafts will both be
+found to look blank unless they receive some chasing or imagery; blank,
+whether they support a chair or table on the one side, or sustain a
+village on the ridge of an Egyptian architrave on the other.
+
+§ XVI. Of the various ornamentation of colossal shafts, there are no
+examples so noble as the Egyptian; these the reader can study in Mr.
+Roberts' work on Egypt nearly as well, I imagine, as if he were beneath
+their shadow, one of their chief merits, as examples of method, being
+the perfect decision and visibility of their designs at the necessary
+distance: contrast with these the incrustations of bas-relief on the
+Trajan pillar, much interfering with the smooth lines of the shaft, and
+yet themselves untraceable, if not invisible.
+
+§ XVII. On shafts of middle size, the only ornament which has ever been
+accepted as right, is the Doric fluting, which, indeed, gave the effect
+of a succession of unequal lines of shade, but lost much of the repose
+of the cylindrical gradation. The Corinthian fluting, which is a mean
+multiplication and deepening of the Doric, with a square instead of a
+sharp ridge between each hollow, destroyed the serenity of the shaft
+altogether, and is always rigid and meagre. Both are, in fact, wrong in
+principle; they are an elaborate weakening[83] of the shaft, exactly
+opposed (as above shown) to the ribbed form, which is the result of a
+group of shafts bound together, and which is especially beautiful when
+special service is given to each member.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXII.]
+
+§ XVIII. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decoration may be
+wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that the form of the shaft
+be clearly visible. This I hold to be absolutely essential, and that
+barbarism begins wherever the sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply
+cut, as to break the contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity.
+Thus, in Plate XXI. (Appendix 8), the richly sculptured shaft of the
+lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and become a
+shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the building, though of
+some value as adding to its imaginative and fantastic character. Had all
+the shafts been like it, the façade would have been entirely spoiled;
+the inlaid pattern, on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft
+of the upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with
+its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid shaft
+ornaments of this noble church (another example of them is given in
+Plate XII. of the "Seven Lamps"). The same rule would condemn the
+Caryatid; which I entirely agree with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both
+for this and other reasons) one of the chief errors of the Greek
+schools; and, more decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft
+ornament, almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed,
+which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder joints, as
+in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many other buildings in
+London; or in rusticating portions of the shafts, or wrapping fleeces
+about them, as at the entrance of Burlington House, in Piccadilly; or
+tying drapery round them in knots, as in the new buildings above noticed
+(Chap. 20, § VII.), at Paris. But, within the limits thus defined, there
+is no feature capable of richer decoration than the shaft; the most
+beautiful examples of all I have seen, are the slender pillars,
+encrusted with arabesques, which flank the portals of the Baptistery and
+Duomo at Pisa, and some others of the Pisan and Lucchese churches; but
+the varieties of sculpture and inlaying, with which the small
+Romanesque shafts, whether Italian or Northern, are adorned when they
+occupy important positions, are quite endless, and nearly all admirable.
+Mr. Digby Wyatt has given a beautiful example of inlaid work so
+employed, from the cloisters of the Lateran, in his work on early
+mosaic; an example which unites the surface decoration of the shaft with
+the adoption of the spiral contour. This latter is often all the
+decoration which is needed, and none can be more beautiful; it has been
+spoken against, like many other good and lovely things, because it has
+been too often used in extravagant degrees, like the well-known twisting
+of the pillars in Raffaelle's "Beautiful gate." But that extravagant
+condition was a Renaissance barbarism: the old Romanesque builders kept
+their spirals slight and pure; often, as in the example from St. Zeno,
+in Plate XVII. below, giving only half a turn from the base of the shaft
+to its head, and nearly always observing what I hold to be an imperative
+law, that no twisted shaft shall be single, but composed of at least two
+distinct members, twined with each other. I suppose they followed their
+own right feeling in doing this, and had never studied natural shafts;
+but the type they _might_ have followed was caught by one of the few
+great painters who were not affected by the evil influence of the
+fifteenth century, Benozzo Gozzoli, who, in the frescoes of the Ricardi
+Palace, among stems of trees for the most part as vertical as stone
+shafts, has suddenly introduced one of the shape given in Fig. LXII.
+Many forest trees present, in their accidental contortions, types of
+most complicated spiral shafts, the plan being originally of a grouped
+shaft rising from several roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find
+models for every kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous,
+as he will find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the
+earth itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting; but the
+shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and silver, is
+fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined with
+grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of the rolling heaven, with
+flitting fancies of blue shadow and burning gold.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [82] Vide end of Appendix 20.
+
+  [83] Vide, however, their defence in the Essay above quoted, p. 251.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+  THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL.
+
+
+§ I. There are no features to which the attention of architects has been
+more laboriously directed, in all ages, than these crowning members of
+the wall and shaft; and it would be vain to endeavor, within any
+moderate limits, to give the reader any idea of the various kinds of
+admirable decoration which have been invented for them. But, in
+proportion to the effort and straining of the fancy, have been the
+extravagances into which it has occasionally fallen; and while it is
+utterly impossible severally to enumerate the instances either of its
+success or its error, it is very possible to note the limits of the one
+and the causes of the other. This is all that we shall attempt in the
+present chapter, tracing first for ourselves, as in previous instances,
+the natural channels by which invention is here to be directed or
+confined, and afterwards remarking the places where, in real practice,
+it has broken bounds.
+
+§ II. The reader remembers, I hope, the main points respecting the
+cornice and capital, established above in the Chapters on Construction.
+Of these I must, however, recapitulate thus much:--
+
+1. That both the cornice and capital are, with reference to the _slope_
+of their profile or bell, to be divided into two great orders; in one of
+which the ornament is convex, and in the other concave. (Ch. VI., § V.)
+
+2. That the capital, with reference to the method of twisting the
+cornice round to construct it, and to unite the circular shaft with the
+square abacus, falls into five general forms, represented in Fig. XXII.,
+p. 119.
+
+3. That the most elaborate capitals were formed by true or simple
+capitals with a common cornice added above their abacus. (Ch. IX., §
+XXIV.)
+
+We have then, in considering decoration, first to observe the treatment
+of the two great orders of the cornice; then their gathering into the
+five of the capital; then the addition of the secondary cornice to the
+capital when formed.
+
+§ III. The two great orders or families of cornice were above
+distinguished in Fig. V., p. 69.; and it was mentioned in the same place
+that a third family arose from their combination. We must deal with the
+two great opposed groups first.
+
+They were distinguished in Fig. V. by circular curves drawn on opposite
+sides of the same line. But we now know that in these smaller features
+the circle is usually the least interesting curve that we can use; and
+that it will be well, since the capital and cornice are both active in
+their expression, to use some of the more abstract natural lines. We
+will go back, therefore, to our old friend the salvia leaf; and taking
+the same piece of it we had before, _x y_, Plate VII., we will apply it
+to the cornice line; first within it, giving the concave cornice, then
+without, giving the convex cornice. In all the figures, _a_, _b_, _c_,
+_d_, Plate XV., the dotted line is at the same slope, and represents an
+average profile of the root of cornices (_a_, Fig. V., p. 69); the curve
+of the salvia leaf is applied to it in each case, first with its
+roundest curvature up, then with its roundest curvature down; and we
+have thus the two varieties, _a_ and _b_, of the concave family, and _c_
+and _d_, of the convex family.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XV.
+               CORNICE PROFILES.]
+
+§ IV. These four profiles will represent all the simple cornices in the
+world; represent them, I mean, as central types: for in any of the
+profiles an infinite number of slopes may be given to the dotted line of
+the root (which in these four figures is always at the same angle); and
+on each of these innumerable slopes an innumerable variety of curves may
+be fitted, from every leaf in the forest, and every shell on the shore,
+and every movement of the human fingers and fancy; therefore, if the
+reader wishes to obtain something like a numerical representation of the
+number of possible and beautiful cornices which may be based upon these
+four types or roots, and among which the architect has leave to
+choose according to the circumstances of his building and the method of
+its composition, let him set down a figure 1 to begin with, and write
+ciphers after it as fast as he can, without stopping, for an hour.
+
+§ V. None of the types are, however, found in perfection of curvature,
+except in the best work. Very often cornices are worked with circular
+segments (with a noble, massive effect, for instance, in St. Michele of
+Lucca), or with rude approximation to finer curvature, especially _a_,
+Plate XV., which occurs often so small as to render it useless to take
+much pains upon its curve. It occurs perfectly pure in the condition
+represented by 1 of the series 1-6, in Plate XV., on many of the
+Byzantine and early Gothic buildings of Venice; in more developed form
+it becomes the profile of the bell of the capital in the later Venetian
+Gothic, and in much of the best Northern Gothic. It also represents the
+Corinthian capital, in which the curvature is taken from the bell to be
+added in some excess to the nodding leaves. It is the most graceful of
+all simple profiles of cornice and capital.
+
+§ VI. _b_ is a much rarer and less manageable type: for this evident
+reason, that while _a_ is the natural condition of a line rooted and
+strong beneath, but bent out by superincumbent weight, or nodding over
+in freedom, _b_ is yielding at the base and rigid at the summit. It has,
+however, some exquisite uses, especially in combination, as the reader
+may see by glancing in advance at the inner line of the profile 14 in
+Plate XV.
+
+§ VII. _c_ is the leading convex or Doric type, as _a_ is the leading
+concave or Corinthian. Its relation to the best Greek Doric is exactly
+what the relation of _a_ is to the Corinthian; that is to say, the
+curvature must be taken from the straighter limb of the curve and added
+to the bolder bend, giving it a sudden turn inwards (as in the
+Corinthian a nod outwards), as the reader may see in the capital of the
+Parthenon in the British Museum, where the lower limb of the curve is
+_all but_ a right line.[84] But these Doric and Corinthian lines are
+mere varieties of the great families which are represented by the
+central lines _a_ and _c_, including not only the Doric capital, but all
+the small cornices formed by a slight increase of the curve of _c_,
+which are of so frequent occurrence in Greek ornaments.
+
+§ VIII. _d_ is the Christian Doric, which I said (Chap. I., § XX.) was
+invented to replace the antique: it is the representative of the great
+Byzantine and Norman families of convex cornice and capital, and, next
+to the profile _a_, the most important of the four, being the best
+profile for the convex capital, as _a_ is for the concave; _a_ being the
+best expression of an elastic line inserted vertically in the shaft, and
+_d_ of an elastic line inserted horizontally and rising to meet vertical
+pressure.
+
+If the reader will glance at the arrangements of boughs of trees, he
+will find them commonly dividing into these two families, _a_ and _d_:
+they rise out of the trunk and nod from it as _a_, or they spring with
+sudden curvature out from it, and rise into sympathy with it, as at _d_;
+but they only accidentally display tendencies to the lines _b_ or _c_.
+Boughs which fall as they spring from the tree also describe the curve
+_d_ in the plurality of instances, but reversed in arrangement; their
+junction with the stem being at the top of it, their sprays bending out
+into rounder curvature.
+
+§ IX. These then being the two primal groups, we have next to note the
+combined group, formed by the concave and convex lines joined in various
+proportions of curvature, so as to form together the reversed or ogee
+curve, represented in one of its most beautiful states by the glacier
+line _a_, on Plate VII. I would rather have taken this line than any
+other to have formed my third group of cornices by, but as it is too
+large, and almost too delicate, we will take instead that of the
+Matterhorn side, _e f_, Plate VII. For uniformity's sake I keep the
+slope of the dotted line the same as in the primal forms; and applying
+this Matterhorn curve in its four relative positions to that line, I
+have the types of the four cornices or capitals of the third family,
+_e_, _f_, _g_, _h_, on Plate XV.
+
+These are, however, general types only thus far, that their line is
+composed of one short and one long curve, and that they represent the
+four conditions of treatment of every such line; namely, the longest
+curve concave in _e_ and _f_, and convex in _g_ and _h_; and the point
+of contrary flexure set high in _e_ and _g_, and low in _f_ and _h_. The
+relative depth of the arcs, or nature of their curvature, cannot be
+taken into consideration without a complexity of system which my space
+does not admit.
+
+Of the four types thus constituted, _e_ and _f_ are of great importance;
+the other two are rarely used, having an appearance of weakness in
+consequence of the shortest curve being concave: the profiles _e_ and
+_f_, when used for cornices, have usually a fuller sweep and somewhat
+greater equality between the branches of the curve; but those here given
+are better representatives of the structure applicable to capitals and
+cornices indifferently.
+
+§ X. Very often, in the farther treatment of the profiles _e_ or _f_,
+another limb is added to their curve in order to join it to the upper or
+lower members of the cornice or capital. I do not consider this addition
+as forming another family of cornices, because the leading and effective
+part of the curve is in these, as in the others, the single ogee; and
+the added bend is merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below:
+still this group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of
+ornamentation that we must have it sufficiently represented. We shall
+obtain a type of it by merely continuing the line of the Matterhorn
+side, of which before we took only a fragment. The entire line _e_ to
+_g_ on Plate VII., is evidently composed of three curves of unequal
+lengths, which if we call the shortest 1, the intermediate one 2, and
+the longest 3, are there arranged in the order 1, 3, 2, counting
+upwards. But evidently we might also have had the arrangements 1, 2, 3,
+and 2, 1, 3, giving us three distinct lines, altogether independent of
+position, which being applied to one general dotted slope will each give
+four cornices, or twelve altogether. Of these the six most important are
+those which have the shortest curve convex: they are given in light
+relief from _k_ to _p_, Plate XV., and, by turning the page upside down,
+the other six will be seen in dark relief, only the little upright bits
+of shadow at the bottom are not to be considered as parts of them, being
+only admitted in order to give the complete profile of the more
+important cornices in light.
+
+§ XI. In these types, as in _e_ and _f_, the only general condition is,
+that their line shall be composed of three curves of different lengths
+and different arrangements (the depth of arcs and radius of curvatures
+being unconsidered). They are arranged in three couples, each couple
+being two positions of the same entire line; so that numbering the
+component curves in order of magnitude and counting upwards, they will
+read--
+
+  _k_ 1, 2, 3,
+  _l_ 3, 2, 1,
+  _m_ 1, 3, 2,
+  _n_ 2, 3, 1,
+  _o_ 2, 1, 3,
+  _p_ 3, 1, 2.
+
+_m_ and _n_, which are the _Matterhorn line_, are the most beautiful and
+important of all the twelve; _k_ and _l_ the next; _o_ and _p_ are used
+only for certain conditions of flower carving on the surface. The
+reverses (dark) of _k_ and _l_ are also of considerable service; the
+other four hardly ever used in good work.
+
+§ XII. If we were to add a fourth curve to the component series, we
+should have forty-eight more cornices: but there is no use in pursuing
+the system further, as such arrangements are very rare and easily
+resolved into the simpler types with certain arbitrary additions fitted
+to their special place; and, in most cases, distinctly separate from the
+main curve, as in the inner line of No. 14, which is a form of the type
+_e_, the longest curve, _i.e._, the lowest, having deepest curvature,
+and each limb opposed by a short contrary curve at its extremities, the
+convex limb by a concave, the concave by a convex.
+
+§ XIII. Such, then, are the great families of profile lines into
+which all cornices and capitals may be divided; but their best examples
+unite two such profiles in a mode which we cannot understand till we
+consider the further ornament with which the profiles are charged. And
+in doing this we must, for the sake of clearness, consider, first the
+nature of the designs themselves, and next the mode of cutting them.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XVI.
+               CORNICE DECORATION.]
+
+§ XIV. In Plate XVI., opposite, I have thrown together a few of the most
+characteristic mediĉval examples of the treatment of the simplest
+cornice profiles: the uppermost, _a_, is the pure root of cornices from
+St. Mark's. The second, _d_, is the Christian Doric cornice, here
+lettered _d_ in order to avoid confusion, its profile being _d_ of Plate
+XV. in bold development, and here seen on the left-hand side, truly
+drawn, though filled up with the ornament to show the mode in which the
+angle is turned. This is also from St. Mark's. The third, _b_, is _b_ of
+Plate XV., the pattern being inlaid in black because its office was in
+the interior of St. Mark's, where it was too dark to see sculptured
+ornament at the required distance. (The other two simple profiles, _a_
+and _c_ of Plate XV., would be decorated in the same manner, but require
+no example here, for the profile _a_ is of so frequent occurrence that
+it will have a page to itself alone in the next volume; and c may be
+seen over nearly every shop in London, being that of the common Greek
+egg cornice.) The fourth, _e_ in Plate XVI., is a transitional cornice,
+passing from Byzantine into Venetian Gothic: _f_ is a fully developed
+Venetian Gothic cornice founded on Byzantine traditions; and _g_ the
+perfect Lombardic-Gothic cornice, founded on the Pisan Romanesque
+traditions, and strongly marked with the noblest Northern element, the
+Lombardic vitality restrained by classical models. I consider it a
+perfect cornice, and of the highest order.
+
+§ XV. Now in the design of this series of ornaments there are two main
+points to be noted; the first, that they all, except _b_, are distinctly
+rooted in the lower part of the cornice, and spring to the top. This
+arrangement is constant in all the best cornices and capitals; and it is
+essential to the expression of the supporting power of both. It is
+exactly opposed to the system of _running_ cornices and _banded_[85]
+capitals, in which the ornament flows along them horizontally, or is
+twined round them, as the mouldings are in the early English capital,
+and the foliage in many decorated ones. Such cornices have arisen from a
+mistaken appliance of the running ornaments, which are proper to
+archivolts, jambs, &c., to the features which have definite functions of
+support. A tendril may nobly follow the outline of an arch, but must not
+creep along a cornice, nor swathe or bandage a capital; it is essential
+to the expression of these features that their ornament should have an
+elastic and upward spring; and as the proper profile for the curve is
+that of a tree bough, as we saw above, so the proper arrangement of its
+farther ornament is that which best expresses rooted and ascendant
+strength like that of foliage.
+
+There are certain very interesting exceptions to the rule (we shall see
+a curious one presently); and in the carrying out of the rule itself, we
+may see constant licenses taken by the great designers, and momentary
+violations of it, like those above spoken of, respecting other
+ornamental laws--violations which are for our refreshment, and for
+increase of delight in the general observance; and this is one of the
+peculiar beauties of the cornice _g_, which, rooting itself in strong
+central clusters, suffers some of its leaves to fall languidly aside, as
+the drooping outer leaves of a natural cluster do so often; but at the
+very instant that it does this, in order that it may not lose any of its
+expression of strength, a fruit-stalk is thrown up above the languid
+leaves, absolutely vertical, as much stiffer and stronger than the rest
+of the plant as the falling leaves are weaker. Cover this with your
+finger, and the cornice falls to pieces, like a bouquet which has been
+untied.
+
+§ XVI. There are some instances in which, though the real arrangement is
+that of a running stem, throwing off leaves up and down, the positions
+of the leaves give nearly as much elasticity and organisation to the
+cornice, as if they had been rightly rooted; and others, like _b_, where
+the reversed portion of the ornament is lost in the shade, and the
+general expression of strength is got by the lower member. This cornice
+will, nevertheless, be felt at once to be inferior to the rest; and
+though we may often be called upon to admire designs of these kinds,
+which would have been exquisite if not thus misplaced, the reader will
+find that they are both of rare occurrence, and significative of
+declining style; while the greater mass of the banded capitals are heavy
+and valueless, mere aggregations of confused sculpture, swathed round
+the extremity of the shaft, as if she had dipped it into a mass of
+melted ornament, as the glass-blower does his blow-pipe into the metal,
+and brought up a quantity adhering glutinously to its extremity. We have
+many capitals of this kind in England: some of the worst and heaviest in
+the choir of York. The later capitals of the Italian Gothic have the
+same kind of effect, but owing to another cause: for their structure is
+quite pure, and based on the Corinthian type: and it is the branching
+form of the heads of the leaves which destroys the effect of their
+organisation. On the other hand, some of the Italian cornices which are
+actually composed by running tendrils, throwing off leaves into oval
+interstices, are so massive in their treatment, and so marked and firm
+in their vertical and arched lines, that they are nearly as suggestive
+of support as if they had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice
+of this kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (Plate VI. in the "Seven
+Lamps," and XXI. here), and with exquisite propriety; for that cornice
+is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a foundation to that
+which is above it, and therefore unites the strength and elasticity of
+the lines proper to the cornice with the submission and prostration of
+those proper to the foundation.
+
+§ XVII. This, then, is the first point needing general notice in the
+designs in Plate XVI. The second is the difference between the freedom
+of the Northern and the sophistication of the classical cornices, in
+connection with what has been advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, _a_,
+_d_, and _b_, are of the same date, but they show a singular difference
+in the workman's temper: that at _b_ is a single copy of a classical
+mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it, which are,
+in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman egg and arrow
+mouldings. But the cornices _a_ and _d_ are copies of nothing of the
+kind: the idea of them has indeed been taken from the Greek honeysuckle
+ornament, but the chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or
+Byzantine, in temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists: this work is
+as energetic as its original; energetic, not in the quantity of work,
+but in the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil, may cover
+large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or accumulate his
+dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it is gathered weariness
+still. The man who cut those two uppermost cornices had no time to
+spare: did as much cornice as he could in half an hour; but would not
+endure the slightest trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an
+edge. His work is absolutely unreproveable; keen, and true, as Nature's
+own; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every line of
+it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in him: we shall see
+something come of that cornice: The fellow who inlaid the other (_b_),
+will stay where he is for ever; and when he has inlaid one leaf up, will
+inlay another down,--and so undulate up and down to all eternity: but
+the man of _a_ and _d_ will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in
+handicrafts, nor stubbornness in stone.
+
+§ XVIII. But there is something else noticeable in those two cornices,
+besides the energy of them: as opposed either to _b_, or the Greek
+honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are _natural_ designs. The Greek egg
+and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in its lines, but
+utterly absurd in meaning. Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at
+least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows,
+nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are
+all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness of
+nothing,--pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those
+Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the
+tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far
+as that work will go, it has consistent intention; with the fewest
+possible incisions, and those of the easiest shape, they suggest the
+true image, of clusters of leaves, each leaf with its central depression
+from root to point, and that distinctly visible at almost any distance
+from the eye, and in almost any light.
+
+§ XIX. Here, then, are two great new elements visible; energy and
+naturalism:--Life, with submission to the laws of God, and love of his
+works; this is Christianity, dealing with her classical models. Now look
+back to what I said in Chap. 1. § XX. of this dealing of hers, and
+invention of the new Doric line; then to what is above stated (§ VIII.)
+respecting that new Doric, and the boughs of trees; and now to the
+evidence in the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see
+how the whole is beginning to come together.
+
+§ XX. We said that something would come of these two cornices, _a_ and
+_d_. In _e_ and _f_ we see that something _has_ come of them: _e_ is
+also from St. Mark's, and one of the earliest examples in Venice of the
+transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic cornice. It is already
+singularly developed; flowers have been added between the clusters of
+leaves, and the leaves themselves curled over: and observe the
+well-directed thought of the sculptor in this curling;--the old
+incisions are retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the
+proofs of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand
+for the _under_ surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns over, on
+the top of it you see true _ribs_. Look at the upper and under surface
+of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps we are making.
+
+§ XXI. The fifth example (_f_) was cut in 1347; it is from the tomb of
+Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and Paul, and it exhibits
+the character of the central Venetian Gothic fully developed. The lines
+are all now soft and undulatory, though elastic; the sharp incisions
+have become deeply-gathered folds; the hollow of the leaf is expressed
+completely beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised
+into several lobes, and their ribs delicately drawn above. (The flower
+between is only accidentally absent; it occurs in most cornices of the
+time.)
+
+But in both these cornices the reader will notice that while the
+naturalism of the sculpture is steadily on the increase, the classical
+formalism is still retained. The leaves are accurately numbered, and
+sternly set in their places; they are leaves in office, and dare not
+stir nor wave. They have the shapes of leaves, but not the functions,
+"having the form of knowledge, but denying the power thereof." What is
+the meaning of this?
+
+§ XXII. Look back to the XXXIIIrd paragraph of the first chapter, and
+you will see the meaning of it. These cornices are the Venetian
+Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element struggling with the
+Formalism of the Papacy,--the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its
+principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means
+Apostolic succession, and I don't know how much more, and is already
+preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, and the
+Renaissance.[86]
+
+§ XXIII. Now look to the last cornice (_g_). That is Protestantism,--a
+slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism, in those falling
+leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The forms all broken through,
+and sent heaven knows where, but the root held fast; and the strong sap
+in the branches; and, best of all, good fruit ripening and opening
+straight towards heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the
+leaves lie in the dust.
+
+Now, observe. The cornice _f_ represents Heathenism and Papistry,
+animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature. The good in it, the
+life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are
+Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the
+Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk's
+dress,--Christianity before the Reformation. The cornice _g_ has the
+Lombardic life element in its fulness, with only some color and shape of
+Classicalism mingled with it--the good of classicalism; as much method
+and Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The
+continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root, the
+simplicity of the great profile,--all these are the healthy classical
+elements retained: the rest is reformation, new strength, and recovered
+liberty.
+
+§ XXIV. There is one more point about it especially noticeable. The
+leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character, but they are
+of no particular species: and after being something like cabbage-leaves
+in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end.
+Now I don't know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a
+classical character;--it is eminently characteristic of Southern work;
+and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would
+have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in
+one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or
+bad element, I am not sure;--whether it is the last trace of Centaurism
+and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative
+purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has
+been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working
+of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law
+in its members warring against the law of its mind.
+
+§ XXV. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both
+of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question
+proposed in § XIII., and observe the modifications of form of profile
+which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to §
+XIII., we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in
+the abstract;--the modes in which they have been derived from each other
+in actual practice require to be followed in their turn. How the Greek
+Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine,
+and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediĉval
+ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the
+first type of the concave cornice _a_ in Plate XV.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXIII.]
+
+§ XXVI. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly pure, but
+in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a meagreness in its
+junction with the wall beneath it, where it was set as here at _a_, Fig.
+LXIII., which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a
+bar of shadow. There were two ways of getting this bar: one by a
+projecting roll at the foot of the cornice (_b_, Fig. LXIII.), the other
+by slipping the whole cornice a little forward (_c_. Fig. LXIII.). From
+these two methods arise two groups of cornices and capitals, which we
+shall pursue in succession.
+
+§ XXVII. First group. With the roll at the base (_b_, Fig. LXIII.). The
+chain of its succession is represented from 1 to 6, in Plate XV.: 1 and
+2 are the steps already gained, as in Fig. LXIII.; and in them the
+profile of cornice used is _a_ of Plate XV., or a refined condition of
+_b_ of Fig. V., p. 69, above. Now, keeping the same refined profile,
+substitute the condition of it, _f_ of Fig. V. (and there accounted
+for), above the roll here, and you have 3, Plate XV. This superadded
+abacus was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle; but you
+know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your simplest
+chamfer on it (_a_ or _b_, Fig. LIII., page 287, above), but on the
+visible side only, and you have fig. 4, Plate XV. (the top stone being
+made deeper that you may have room to chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is
+the profile of Lombardic and Venetian early capitals and cornices, by
+tens of thousands; and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with
+this only difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the
+top of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through a
+series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a diviner:--but
+how slowly! a stone dial which marches but 45 degrees in three
+centuries, and through the intermediate condition 5 arrives at 6, and so
+stays.
+
+In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same height in
+order to make the comparison more easy; the depth chosen is about
+intermediate between that which is customary in cornices on the one
+hand, which are often a little shorter, and capitals on the other, which
+are often a little deeper.[87] And it is to be noted that the profiles 5
+and 6 establish themselves in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in
+cornices to the latest times.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXIV.]
+
+§ XXVIII. Second group (c, Fig. LXIII.). If the lower angle, which was
+quickly felt to be hard, be rounded off, we have the form _a_, Fig.
+LXIV. The front of the curved line is then decorated, as we have seen;
+and the termination of the decorated surface marked by an incision, as
+in an ordinary chamfer, as at _b_ here. This I believe to have been the
+simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee cornices; but they are
+farther complicated by the curves given to the leafage which flows over
+them. In the ordinary Greek cornices, and in _a_ and _d_ of Plate XVI.,
+the decoration is _incised_ from the outside profile, without any
+suggestion of an interior surface of a different contour. But in the
+leaf cornices which follow, the decoration is represented as _overlaid_
+on one of the early profiles, and has another outside contour of its
+own; which is, indeed, the true profile of the cornice, but beneath
+which, more or less, the simpler profile is seen or suggested, which
+terminates all the incisions of the chisel. This under profile will
+often be found to be some condition of the type _a_ or _b_, Fig. LXIV.;
+and the leaf profile to be another ogee with its fullest curve up
+instead of down, lapping over the cornice edge above, so that the entire
+profile might be considered as made up of two ogee curves laid, like
+packed herrings, head to tail. Figures 8 and 9 of Plate XV. exemplify
+this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a heavier contour, doubtless composed in the
+same manner, but of which I had not marked the innermost profile, and
+which I have given here only to complete the series which, from 7 to 12
+inclusive, exemplifies the gradual restriction of the leaf outline, from
+its boldest projection in the cornice to its most modest service in the
+capital. This change, however, is not one which indicates difference of
+age, but merely of office and position: the cornice 7 is from the tomb
+of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1350) in St. Mark's, 8 from a canopy over a
+door of about the same period, 9 from the tomb of the Dogaressa Agnese
+Venier (1411), 10 from that of Pietro Cornaro (1361),[88] and 11 from
+that of Andrea Morosini (1347), all in the church of San Giov. and
+Paola, all these being cornice profiles; and, finally, 12 from a capital
+of the Ducal Palace, of fourteen century work.
+
+§ XXIX. Now the reader will doubtless notice that in the three examples,
+10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from that of 7, 8, or 9. This
+difference is peculiarly significant. I have always desired that the
+reader should theoretically consider the capital as a concentration of
+the cornice; but in practice it often happens that the cornice is, on
+the contrary, an unrolled capital; and one of the richest early forms of
+the Byzantine cornice (not given in Plate XV., because its separate
+character and importance require examination apart) is nothing more than
+an unrolled continuation of the lower range of acanthus leaves on the
+Corinthian capital. From this cornice others appear to have been
+derived, like _e_ in Plate XVI., in which the acanthus outline has
+become confused with that of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the
+centre of the Corinthian capital introduced between them; and thus their
+forms approach more and more to those derived from the cornice itself.
+Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, Plate XV., the profile
+is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice derived from a capital;
+while, if the leaf have the contour of 7 or 8, the profile is either
+actually of a cornice or of a capital derived from a cornice. Where the
+Byzantines use the acanthus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan
+water-leaf; but the connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly
+the same.
+
+§ XXX. Thus far, however, we have considered the characters of profile
+which are common to the cornice and capital both. We have now to note
+what farther decorative features or peculiarities belong to the capital
+itself, or result from the theoretical gathering of the one into the
+other.
+
+Look back to Fig. XXII., p. 110. The five types there given, represented
+the five different methods of concentration of the root of cornices, _a_
+of Fig. V. Now, as many profiles of cornices as were developed in Plate
+XV. from this cornice root, there represented by the dotted slope, so
+many may be applied to each of the five types in Fig. XXII.,--applied
+simply in _a_ and _b_, but with farther modifications, necessitated by
+their truncations or spurs, in _c_, _d_, and _e_.
+
+Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such length and
+slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition comes into effect
+described in Chapter IX. § XXIV., and any one of the cornices in Plate
+XV. may become the _abacus_ of a capital formed out of any other, or
+out of itself. The infinity of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well
+be supposed, be exhibited or catalogued in the space at present
+permitted to us: but the reader, once master of the principle, will
+easily be able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples
+that may occur to him, and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise, put
+before him a few of those which he will meet with most frequently in his
+Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points, not hitherto touched
+upon, in the disposition of the abacus.
+
+§ XXXI. In Plate XVII. the capital at the top, on the left hand, is the
+rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian Doric cornice, _d_ of
+Plate XV. The shaft is octagonal, and the capital is not cut to fit it,
+but is square at the base; and the curve of its profile projects on two
+of its sides more than on the other two, so as to make the abacus
+oblong, in order to carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of
+the upper lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward stretching
+of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to have done, is very
+remarkable. There is here no second superimposed abacus.
+
+§ XXXII. The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the simple but
+perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which the first example
+fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried is exactly the same in size
+and shape; but instead of being trusted to a single shaft, it has two of
+smaller area (compare Chap. VIII., § XIII.), and all the expansion
+necessary is now gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out
+of one stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle,
+and nothing can be simpler or purer; it is composed of 2, in Plate XV.,
+used for the capital itself, with _c_ of Fig. LXIII. used for the
+abacus; the reader could hardly have a neater little bit of syntax for a
+first lesson. If the section be taken through the side of the bell, the
+capital profile is the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V., with the added
+roll. This capital is somewhat remarkable in having its sides perfectly
+straight, some slight curvature being usual on so bold a scale; but it
+is all the better as a first example, the method of reduction being
+of order _d_, in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and with a concave cut, as in
+Fig. XXI., p. 109. These two capitals are from the cloister of the duomo
+of Verona.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XVII.
+               CAPITALS CONCAVE GROUP.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXV.]
+
+§ XXXIII. The lowermost figure in Plate XVII. represents an exquisitely
+finished example of the same type, from St. Zeno of Verona. Above, at 2,
+in Plate II., the plan of the shafts was given, but I inadvertently
+reversed their position: in comparing that plan with Plate XVII., Plate
+II. must be held upside down. The capitals, with the band connecting
+them, are all cut out of one block; their profile is an adaptation of 4
+of Plate XV., with a plain headstone superimposed. This method of
+reduction is that of order _d_ in Fig. XXII., but the peculiarity of
+treatment of their truncation is highly interesting. Fig. LXV.
+represents the plans of the capitals at the base, the shaded parts being
+the bells: the open line, the roll with its connecting band. The bell of
+the one, it will be seen, is the exact reverse of that of the other: the
+angle truncations are, in both, curved horizontally as well as
+uprightly; but their curve is convex in the one, and in the other
+concave. Plate XVII. will show the effect of both, with the farther
+incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one with the concave
+truncation, which join with the rest of its singularly bold and keen
+execution in giving the impression of its rather having been cloven
+into its form by the sweeps of a sword, than by the dull travail of a
+chisel. Its workman was proud of it, as well he might be: he has written
+his name upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as
+kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, ADAMINUS DE
+SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT.
+
+§ XXXIV. The reader will easily understand that the gracefulness of this
+kind of truncation, as he sees it in Plate XVII., soon suggested the
+idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline, and laying four healing
+leaves, as it were, upon the wounds which the sword had made. These four
+leaves, on the truncations of the capital, correspond to the four leaves
+which we saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the
+base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one of the
+most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic workmen ever invented;
+represented by two perfect types in the capitals of the Piazzetta
+columns of Venice. But this pure group is an isolated one; it remains in
+the first simplicity of its conception far into the thirteenth century,
+while around it rise up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old
+Corinthian, and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant
+growth among the primal four. The varieties of their grouping we shall
+enumerate hereafter: one general characteristic of them all must be
+noted here.
+
+§ XXXV. The reader has been told repeatedly[89] that there are two, and
+only two, real orders of capitals, originally represented by the
+Corinthian and the Doric; and distinguished by the concave or convex
+contours of their bells, as shown by the dotted lines at _e_, Fig. V.,
+p. 65. And hitherto, respecting the capital, we have been exclusively
+concerned with the methods in which these two families of simple
+contours have gathered themselves together, and obtained reconciliation
+to the abacus above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph
+introduces us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the
+chiselling of which the characters described above, § XXVIII., which
+are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and divide the
+families of the capital.
+
+§ XXXVI. Whatever the nature of the ornament be, it must clearly have
+relief of some kind, and must present projecting surfaces separated by
+incisions. But it is a very material question whether the contour,
+hitherto broadly considered as that of the entire bell, shall be that of
+the _outside_ of the projecting and relieved ornaments, or of the
+_bottoms of the incisions_ which divide them; whether, that is to say,
+we shall first cut out the bell of our capital quite smooth, and then
+cut farther into it, with incisions, which shall leave ornamental forms
+in relief, or whether, in originally cutting the contour of the bell, we
+shall leave projecting bits of stone, which we may afterwards work into
+the relieved ornament.
+
+§ XXXVII. Now, look back to Fig. V., p. 65. Clearly, if to ornament the
+already hollowed profile, _b_, we cut deep incisions into it, we shall
+so far weaken it at the top, that it will nearly lose all its supporting
+power. Clearly, also, if to ornament the already bulging profile _c_ we
+were to leave projecting pieces of stone outside of it, we should nearly
+destroy all its relation to the original sloping line X, and produce an
+unseemly and ponderous mass, hardly recognizable as a cornice profile.
+It is evident, on the other hand, that we can afford to cut into this
+profile without fear of destroying its strength, and that we can afford
+to leave projections outside of the other, without fear of destroying
+its lightness. Such is, accordingly, the natural disposition of the
+sculpture, and the two great families of capitals are therefore
+distinguished, not merely by their concave and convex contours, but by
+the ornamentation being left outside the bell of the one, and cut into
+the bell of the other; so that, in either case, the ornamental portions
+will fall _between the dotted lines_ at _e_, Fig. V., and the pointed
+oval, or vesica piscis, which is traced by them, may be called the Limit
+of ornamentation.
+
+§ XXXVIII. Several distinctions in the quantity and style of the
+ornament must instantly follow from this great distinction in its
+position. First, in its quantity. For, observe: since in the Doric
+profile, _c_ of Fig. V., the contour itself is to be composed of the
+surface of the ornamentation, this ornamentation must be close and
+united enough to form, or at least suggest, a continuous surface; it
+must, therefore, be rich in quantity and close in aggregation; otherwise
+it will destroy the massy character of the profile it adorns, and
+approximate it to its opposite, the concave. On the other hand, the
+ornament left projecting from the concave, must be sparing enough, and
+dispersed enough, to allow the concave bell to be clearly seen beneath
+it; otherwise it will choke up the concave profile, and approximate it
+to its opposite, the convex.
+
+§ XXXIX. And, secondly, in its style. For, clearly, as the sculptor of
+the concave profile must leave masses of rough stone prepared for his
+outer ornament, and cannot finish them at once, but must complete the
+cutting of the smooth bell beneath first, and then return to the
+projecting masses (for if he were to finish these latter first, they
+would assuredly, if delicate or sharp, be broken as he worked on; since,
+I say, he must work in this foreseeing and predetermined method, he is
+sure to reduce the system of his ornaments to some definite symmetrical
+order before he begins); and the habit of conceiving beforehand all that
+he has to do, will probably render him not only more orderly in its
+arrangement, but more skilful and accurate in its execution, than if he
+could finish all as he worked on. On the other hand, the sculptor of the
+convex profile has its smooth surface laid before him, as a piece of
+paper on which he can sketch at his pleasure; the incisions he makes in
+it are like touches of a dark pencil; and he is at liberty to roam over
+the surface in perfect freedom, with light incisions or with deep;
+finishing here, suggesting there, or perhaps in places leaving the
+surface altogether smooth. It is ten to one, therefore, but that, if he
+yield to the temptation, he becomes irregular in design, and rude in
+handling; and we shall assuredly find the two families of capitals
+distinguished, the one by its symmetrical, thoroughly organised, and
+exquisitely executed ornament, the other by its rambling, confused, and
+rudely chiselled ornament: But, on the other hand, while we shall
+often have to admire the disciplined precision of the one, and as often
+to regret the irregular rudeness of the other, we shall not fail to find
+balancing qualities in both. The severity of the disciplinarian capital
+represses the power of the imagination; it gradually degenerates into
+Formalism; and the indolence which cannot escape from its stern demand
+of accurate workmanship, seeks refuge in copyism of established forms,
+and loses itself at last in lifeless mechanism. The license of the
+other, though often abused, permits full exercise to the imagination:
+the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the niceties of chiselling,
+wanders over its orbed field in endless fantasy; and, when generous as
+well as powerful, repays the liberty which has been granted to it with
+interest, by developing through the utmost wildness and fulness of its
+thoughts, an order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of
+the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is vaster.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XVIII.
+               CAPITALS CONVEX GROUP.]
+
+§ XL. And now the reader shall judge whether I had not reason to cast
+aside the so-called Five orders of the Renaissance architects, with
+their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that there were only two real
+orders, and that there could never be more.[90] For we now find that
+these two great and real orders are representative of the two great
+influences which must for ever divide the heart of man: the one of
+Lawful Discipline, with its perfection and order, but its danger of
+degeneracy into Formalism; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor
+and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness.
+
+§ XLI. I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of the most
+elaborate developments of either order; they will be better given on a
+larger scale: but the examples in Plate XVII. and XVIII. represent the
+two methods of ornament in their earliest appliance. The two lower
+capitals in Plate XVII. are a pure type of the concave school; the two
+in the centre of Plate XVIII., of the convex. At the top of Plate XVIII.
+are two Lombardic capitals; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua,
+that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan. They both
+have the concave angle truncation; but being of date prior to the time
+when the idea of the concave bell was developed, they are otherwise left
+square, and decorated with the surface ornament characteristic of the
+convex school. The relation of the designs to each other is interesting;
+the cross being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly
+relieved in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the
+southern portico of St. Mark's; the shafts having been of different
+lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally intended for their
+present place, they have double abaci, of which the uppermost is the
+cornice running round the whole façade. The zigzagged capital is highly
+curious, and in its place very effective and beautiful, although one of
+the exceptions which it was above noticed that we should sometimes find
+to the law stated in § XV. above.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXVI.]
+
+§ XLII. The lower capital, which is also of the true convex school,
+exhibits one of the conditions of the spurred type, _e_ of Fig. XXII.,
+respecting which one or two points must be noticed.
+
+If we were to take up the plan of the simple spur, represented at _e_ in
+Fig. XXII., p. 110, and treat it, with the salvia leaf, as we did the
+spur of the base, we should have for the head of our capital a plan like
+Fig. LXVI., which is actually that of one of the capitals of the Fondaco
+de' Turchi at Venice; with this only difference, that the intermediate
+curves between the spurs would have been circular: the reason they are
+not so, here, is that the decoration, instead of being confined to the
+spur, is now spread over the whole mass, and contours are therefore
+given to the intermediate curves which fit them for this ornament; the
+inside shaded space being the head of the shaft, and the outer, the
+abacus. The reader has in Fig. LXVI. a characteristic type of the plans
+of the spurred capitals, generally preferred by the sculptors of the
+convex school, but treated with infinite variety, the spurs often being
+cut into animal forms, or the incisions between them multiplied, for
+richer effect; and in our own Norman capital the type _c_ of Fig. XXII.
+is variously subdivided by incisions on its slope, approximating in
+general effect to many conditions of the real spurred type, _e_, but
+totally differing from them in principle.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXVII.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXVIII.]
+
+§ XLIII. The treatment of the spur in the concave school is far more
+complicated, being borrowed in nearly every case from the original
+Corinthian. Its plan may be generally represented by Fig. LXVII. The
+spur itself is carved into a curling tendril or concave leaf, which
+supports the projecting angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides
+fall back behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other
+ornament in their centres. The mediĉval architects often put another
+square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded portion of Fig.
+LXVII., and some massy conditions of this form, elaborately ornamented,
+are very beautiful; but it is apt to become rigid and effeminate, as
+assuredly it is in the original Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and
+meagre in its upper tendrils and abacus.
+
+§ XLIV. The lowest capital in Plate XVIII. is from St. Mark's, and
+singular in having double spurs; it is therefore to be compared with
+the doubly spurred base, also from St Mark's, in Plate XI. In other
+respects it is a good example of the union of breadth of mass with
+subtlety of curvature, which characterises nearly all the spurred
+capitals of the convex school. Its plan is given in Fig. LXVIII.: the
+inner shaded circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the
+bottom of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded
+portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a ship's bow,
+with the Doric profile; the surfaces so obtained are then charged with
+arborescent ornament.
+
+§ XLV. I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of the
+treatment of the spur, because I am afraid of confusing the reader's
+mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his conception of the
+differences between the two great orders, which it has been my principal
+object to develope throughout this chapter. If all my readers lived in
+London, I could at once fix this difference in their minds by a simple,
+yet somewhat curious illustration. In many parts of the west end of
+London, as, for instance, at the corners of Belgrave Square, and the
+north side of Grosvenor Square, the Corinthian capitals of newly-built
+houses are put into cages of wire. The wire cage is the exact form of
+the typical capital of the convex school; the Corinthian capital,
+within, is a finished and highly decorated example of the concave. The
+space between the cage and capital is the limit of ornamentation.
+
+§ XLVI. Those of my readers, however, to whom this illustration is
+inaccessible, must be content with the two profiles, 13 and 14, on Plate
+XV. If they will glance along the line of sections from 1 to 6, they
+will see that the profile 13 is their final development, with a
+superadded cornice for its abacus. It is taken from a capital in a very
+important ruin of a palace, near the Rialto of Venice, and hereafter to
+be described; the projection, outside of its principal curve, is the
+profile of its _superadded_ leaf ornamentation; it may be taken as one
+of the simplest, yet a perfect type of the concave group.
+
+§ XLVII. The profile 14 is that of the capital of the main shaft of the
+northern portico of St. Mark's, the most finished example I ever met
+with of the convex family, to which, in spite of the central inward bend
+of its profile, it is marked as distinctly belonging, by the bold convex
+curve at its root, springing from the shaft in the line of the Christian
+Doric cornice, and exactly reversing the structure of the other profile,
+which rises from the shaft, like a palm leaf from its stem. Farther, in
+the profile 13, the innermost line is that of the bell; but in the
+profile 14, the outermost line is that of the bell, and the inner line
+is the limit of the incisions of the chisel, in undercutting a
+reticulated veil of ornament, surrounding a flower like a lily; most
+ingeniously, and, I hope, justly, conjectured by the Marchese Selvatico
+to have been intended for an imitation of the capitals of the temple of
+Solomon, which Hiram made, with "nets of checker work, and wreaths of
+chain work for the chapiters that were on the top of the pillars ... and
+the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in
+the porch." (1 Kings, vii. 17, 19.)
+
+§ XLVIII. On this exquisite capital there is imposed an abacus of the
+profile with which we began our investigation long ago, the profile _a_
+of Fig. V. This abacus is formed by the cornice already given, _a_, of
+Plate XVI.: and therefore we have, in this lovely Venetian capital, the
+summary of the results of our investigation, from its beginning to its
+close: the type of the first cornice; the decoration of it, in its
+emergence from the classical models; the gathering into the capital; the
+superimposition of the secondary cornice, and the refinement of the bell
+of the capital by triple curvature in the two limits of chiselling. I
+cannot express the exquisite refinements of the curves on the small
+scale of Plate XV.; I will give them more accurately in a larger
+engraving; but the scale on which they are here given will not prevent
+the reader from perceiving, and let him note it thoughtfully, that the
+outer curve of the noble capital is the one which was our first example
+of associated curves; that I have had no need, throughout the whole of
+our inquiry, to refer to any other ornamental line than the three which
+I at first chose, the simplest of those which Nature set by chance
+before me; and that this lily, of the delicate Venetian marble, has but
+been wrought, by the highest human art, into the same line which the
+clouds disclose, when they break from the rough rocks of the flank of
+the Matterhorn.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [84] In very early Doric it was an absolute right line; and that
+    capital is therefore derived from the pure cornice root, represented
+    by the dotted line.
+
+  [85] The word banded is used by Professor Willis in a different
+    sense; which I would respect, by applying it in his sense always to
+    the Impost, and in mine to the capital itself. (This note is not for
+    the general reader, who need not trouble himself about the matter.)
+
+  [86] The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the
+    one side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes,
+    as here, I have to declare its lifelessness, at other times (Chap.
+    XXV., § XVII.) its lasciviousness. There is, of course, no
+    contradiction in this: but the reader might well ask how I knew the
+    change from the base 11 to the base 12, in Plate XII., to be one
+    from temperance to luxury; and from the cornice _f_ to the cornice
+    _g_, in Plate XVI., to be one from formalism to vitality. I know it,
+    both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell
+    at length hereafter, and by the context of the works of the time.
+    But the outward signs might in both ornaments be the same,
+    distinguishable only as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of
+    both. The blush of shame cannot always be told from the blush of
+    indignation.
+
+  [87] The reader must always remember that a cornice, in becoming a
+    capital, must, if not originally bold and deep, have depth added to
+    its profile, in order to reach the just proportion of the lower
+    member of the shaft head; and that therefore the small Greek egg
+    cornices are utterly incapable of becoming capitals till they have
+    totally changed their form and depth. The Renaissance architects,
+    who never obtained hold of a right principle but they made it worse
+    than a wrong one by misapplication, caught the idea of turning the
+    cornice into a capital, but did not comprehend the necessity of the
+    accompanying change of depth. Hence we have pilaster heads formed of
+    small egg cornices, and that meanest of all mean heads of shafts,
+    the coarse Roman Doric profile chopped into a small egg and arrow
+    moulding, both which may be seen disfiguring half the buildings in
+    London.
+
+  [88] I have taken these dates roughly from Selvatico; their absolute
+    accuracy to within a year or two, is here of no importance.
+
+  [89] Chap. I. § XIX., Appendix 7: and Chap. VI. § V.
+
+  [90] Chap. I., § XIX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE.
+
+
+[Illustration: Plate XIX.
+               ARCHIVOLT DECORATION.
+               AT VERONA.]
+
+§ I. If the windows and doors of some of our best northern Gothic
+buildings were built up, and the ornament of their archivolts concealed,
+there would often remain little but masses of dead wall and unsightly
+buttress; the whole vitality of the building consisting in the graceful
+proportions or rich mouldings of its apertures. It is not so in the
+south, where, frequently, the aperture is a mere dark spot on the
+variegated wall; but there the column, with its horizontal or curved
+architrave, assumes an importance of another kind, equally dependent
+upon the methods of lintel and archivolt decoration. These, though in
+their richness of minor variety they defy all exemplification, may be
+very broadly generalized.
+
+Of the mere lintel, indeed, there is no specific decoration, nor can be;
+it has no organism to direct its ornament, and therefore may receive any
+kind and degree of ornament, according to its position. In a Greek
+temple, it has meagre horizontal lines; in a Romanesque church, it
+becomes a row of upright niches, with an apostle in each; and may become
+anything else at the architect's will. But the arch head has a natural
+organism, which separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly
+definable.
+
+§ II. In speaking of the arch-line and arch masonry, we considered the
+arch to be cut straight through the wall; so that, if half built, it
+would have the appearance at _a_, Fig. LXIX. But in the chapter on Form
+of Apertures, we found that the side of the arch, or jamb of the
+aperture, might often require to be bevelled, so as to give the section
+_b_, Fig. LXIX. It is easily conceivable that when two ranges of
+voussoirs were used, one over another, it would be easier to leave
+those beneath, of a smaller diameter, than to bevel them to accurate
+junction with those outside. Whether influenced by this facility, or by
+decorative instinct, the early northern builders often substitute for
+the bevel the third condition, _c_, of Fig. LXIX.; so that, of the three
+forms in that figure, _a_ belongs principally to the south, _c_ to the
+north, and _b_ indifferently to both.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXIX.]
+
+§ III. If the arch in the northern building be very deep, its depth will
+probably be attained by a succession of steps, like that in _c_; and the
+richest results of northern archivolt decoration are entirely based on
+the aggregation of the ornament of these several steps; while those of
+the south are only the complete finish and perfection of the ornament of
+one. In this ornament of the single arch, the points for general note
+are very few.
+
+§ IV. It was, in the first instance, derived from the classical
+architrave,[91] and the early Romanesque arches are nothing but such an
+architrave, bent round. The horizontal lines of the latter become
+semicircular, but their importance and value remain exactly the same;
+their continuity is preserved across all the voussoirs, and the joints
+and functions of the latter are studiously concealed. As the builders
+get accustomed to the arch, and love it better, they cease to be ashamed
+of its structure: the voussoirs begin to show themselves confidently,
+and fight for precedence with the architrave lines; and there is an
+entanglement of the two structures, in consequence, like the circular
+and radiating lines of a cobweb, until at last the architrave lines get
+worsted, and driven away outside of the voussoirs; being permitted to
+stay at all only on condition of their dressing themselves in mediĉval
+costume, as in the plate opposite.
+
+§ V. In other cases, however, before the entire discomfiture of the
+architrave, a treaty of peace is signed between the adverse parties on
+these terms: That the architrave shall entirely dismiss its inner three
+meagre lines, and leave the space of them to the voussoirs, to display
+themselves after their manner; but that, in return for this concession,
+the architrave shall have leave to expand the small cornice which
+usually terminates it (the reader had better look at the original form
+in that of the Erechtheum, in the middle of the Elgin room of the
+British Museum) into bolder prominence, and even to put brackets under
+it, as if it were a roof cornice, and thus mark with a bold shadow the
+terminal line of the voussoirs. This condition is seen in the arch from
+St. Pietro of Pistoja, Plate XIII., above.
+
+§ VI. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly determined, and
+victorious, the architrave cornice is compelled to relinquish its
+classical form, and take the profile of a Gothic cornice or dripstone;
+while, in other cases, as in much of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced
+to disappear altogether. But the voussoirs then concede, on the other
+hand, so much of their dignity as to receive a running ornament of
+foliage or animals, like a classical frieze, and continuous round the
+arch. In fact, the contest between the adversaries may be seen running
+through all the early architecture of Italy: success inclining sometimes
+to the one, sometimes to the other, and various kinds of truce or
+reconciliation being effected between them: sometimes merely formal,
+sometimes honest and affectionate, but with no regular succession in
+time. The greatest victory of the voussoir is to annihilate the cornice,
+and receive an ornament of its own outline, and entirely limited by its
+own joints: and yet this may be seen in the very early apse of Murano.
+
+§ VII. The most usual condition, however, is that unity of the two
+members above described, § V., and which may be generally represented by
+the archivolt section _a_, Fig. LXX.; and from this descend a family of
+Gothic archivolts of the highest importance. For the cornice, thus
+attached to the arch, suffers exactly the same changes as the level
+cornice, or capital; receives, in due time, its elaborate ogee profile
+and leaf ornaments, like Fig. 8 or 9 of Plate XV.; and, when the shaft
+loses its shape, and is lost in the later Gothic jamb, the archivolt has
+influence enough to introduce this ogee profile in the jamb also,
+through the banded impost: and we immediately find ourselves involved in
+deep successions of ogee mouldings in sides of doors and windows, which
+never would have been thought of, but for the obstinate resistance of
+the classical architrave to the attempts of the voussoir at its
+degradation or banishment.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXX.]
+
+§ VIII. This, then, will be the first great head under which we shall in
+future find it convenient to arrange a large number of archivolt
+decorations. It is the distinctively Southern and Byzantine form, and
+typically represented by the section _a_, of Fig. LXX.; and it is
+susceptible of almost every species of surface ornament, respecting
+which only this general law may be asserted: that, while the outside or
+vertical surface may properly be decorated, and yet the soffit or under
+surface left plain, the soffit is never to be decorated, and the outer
+surface left plain. Much beautiful sculpture is, in the best Byzantine
+buildings, half lost by being put under soffits; but the eye is led to
+discover it, and even to demand it, by the rich chasing of the outside
+of the voussoirs. It would have been an hypocrisy to carve them
+externally only. But there is not the smallest excuse for carving the
+soffit, and not the outside; for, in that case, we approach the building
+under the idea of its being perfectly plain; we do not look for the
+soffit decoration, and, of course, do not see it: or, if we do, it is
+merely to regret that it should not be in a better place. In the
+Renaissance architects, it may, perhaps, for once, be considered a
+merit, that they put their bad decoration systematically in the places
+where we should least expect it, and can seldomest see it:--Approaching
+the Scuola di San Rocco, you probably will regret the extreme plainness
+and barrenness of the window traceries; but, if you will go very close
+to the wall beneath the windows, you may, on sunny days, discover a
+quantity of panel decorations which the ingenious architect has
+concealed under the soffits.
+
+The custom of decorating the arch soffit with panelling is a Roman
+application of the Greek roof ornament, which, whatever its intrinsic
+merit (compare Chap. XXIX. § IV.), may rationally be applied to waggon
+vaults, as of St. Peter's, and to arch soffits under which one walks.
+But the Renaissance architects had not wit enough to reflect that people
+usually do not walk through windows.
+
+§ IX. So far, then, of the Southern archivolt: In Fig. LXIX., above, it
+will be remembered that _c_ represents the simplest form of the
+Northern. In the farther development of this, which we have next to
+consider, the voussoirs, in consequence of their own negligence or
+over-confidence, sustain a total and irrecoverable defeat. That
+archivolt is in its earliest conditions perfectly pure and
+undecorated,--the simplest and rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when
+it falls on the pier, and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire
+section of masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the
+crosslet shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern
+design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and fixed
+development of this type of archivolt than for any other architectural
+transition with which I am acquainted. But there it is, pure and firmly
+established, as early as the building of St. Michele of Pavia; and we
+have thenceforward only to observe what comes of it.
+
+§ X. We find it first, as I said, perfectly barren; cornice and
+architrave altogether ignored, the existence of such things practically
+denied, and a plain, deep-cut recess with a single mighty shadow
+occupying their place. The voussoirs, thinking their great adversary
+utterly defeated, are at no trouble to show themselves; visible enough
+in both the upper and under archivolts, they are content to wait the
+time when, as might have been hoped, they should receive a new
+decoration peculiar to themselves.
+
+§ XI. In this state of paralysis, or expectation, their flank is turned
+by an insidious chamfer. The edges of the two great blank archivolts are
+felt to be painfully conspicuous; all the four are at once beaded or
+chamfered, as at _b_, Fig. LXX.; a rich group of deep lines, running
+concentrically with the arch, is the result on the instant, and the fate
+of the voussoirs is sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle,
+and unconditionally; the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover
+the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from grouped
+shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable richness of the
+fully developed Gothic jamb and arch; farther complicated in the end by
+the addition of niches to their recesses, as above described.
+
+§ XII. The voussoirs, in despair, go over to the classical camp, in hope
+of receiving some help or tolerance from their former enemies. They
+receive it indeed: but as traitors should, to their own eternal
+dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at the joints, or rusticated, or
+cut into masks and satyrs' heads, and so set forth and pilloried in the
+various detestable forms of which the simplest is given above in Plate
+XIII. (on the left); and others may be seen in nearly every large
+building in London, more especially in the bridges; and, as if in pure
+spite at the treatment they had received from the archivolt, they are
+now not content with vigorously showing their lateral joints, but shape
+themselves into right-angled steps at their heads, cutting to pieces
+their limiting line, which otherwise would have had sympathy with that
+of the arch, and fitting themselves to their new friend, the Renaissance
+Ruled Copy-book wall. It had been better they had died ten times over,
+in their own ancient cause, than thus prolonged their existence.
+
+§ XIII. We bid them farewell in their dishonor, to return to our
+victorious chamfer. It had not, we said, obtained so easy a conquest,
+unless by the help of certain forms of the grouped shaft. The chamfer
+was quite enough to decorate the archivolts, if there were no more than
+two; but if, as above noticed in § III., the archivolt was very deep,
+and composed of a succession of such steps, the multitude of chamferings
+were felt to be weak and insipid, and instead of dealing with the
+outside edges of the archivolts, the group was softened by introducing
+solid shafts in their dark inner angles. This, the manliest and best
+condition of the early northern jamb and archivolt, is represented in
+section at fig. 12 of Plate II.; and its simplest aspect in Plate V.,
+from the Broletto of Como,--an interesting example, because there the
+voussoirs being in the midst of their above-described southern contest
+with the architrave, were better prepared for the flank attack upon them
+by the shaft and chamfer, and make a noble resistance, with the help of
+color, in which even the shaft itself gets slightly worsted, and cut
+across in several places, like General Zach's column at Marengo.
+
+§ XIV. The shaft, however, rapidly rallies, and brings up its own
+peculiar decorations to its aid; and the intermediate archivolts receive
+running or panelled ornaments, also, until we reach the exquisitely rich
+conditions of our own Norman archivolts, and of the parallel Lombardic
+designs, such as the entrance of the Duomo, and of San Fermo, at Verona.
+This change, however, occupies little time, and takes place principally
+in doorways, owing to the greater thickness of wall, and depth of
+archivolt; so that we find the rich shafted succession of ornament, in
+the doorway and window aperture, associated with the earliest and rudest
+double archivolt, in the nave arches, at St. Michele of Pavia. The nave
+arches, therefore, are most usually treated by the chamfer, and the
+voussoirs are there defeated much sooner than by the shafted
+arrangements, which they resist, as we saw, in the south by color; and
+even in the north, though forced out of their own shape, they take that
+of birds' or monsters' heads, which for some time peck and pinch the
+rolls of the archivolt to their hearts' content; while the Norman zigzag
+ornament allies itself with them, each zigzag often restraining itself
+amicably between the joints of each voussoir in the ruder work, and even
+in the highly finished arches, distinctly presenting a concentric or
+sunlike arrangement of lines; so much so, as to prompt the conjecture,
+above stated, Chap. XX. § XXVI., that all such ornaments were intended
+to be typical of light issuing from the orb of the arch. I doubt the
+intention, but acknowledge the resemblance; which perhaps goes far to
+account for the never-failing delightfulness of this zigzag decoration.
+The diminution of the zigzag, as it gradually shares the defeat of the
+voussoir, and is at last overwhelmed by the complicated, railroad-like
+fluency of the later Gothic mouldings, is to me one of the saddest
+sights in the drama of architecture.
+
+§ XV. One farther circumstance is deserving of especial note in Plate
+V., the greater depth of the voussoirs at the top of the arch. This has
+been above alluded to as a feature of good construction, Chap. XI., §
+III.; it is to be noted now as one still more valuable in decoration:
+for when we arrive at the deep succession of concentric archivolts, with
+which northern portals, and many of the associated windows, are headed,
+we immediately find a difficulty in reconciling the outer curve with the
+inner. If, as is sometimes the case, the width of the group of
+archivolts be twice or three times that of the inner aperture, the inner
+arch may be distinctly pointed, and the outer one, if drawn with
+concentric arcs, approximate very nearly to a round arch. This is
+actually the case in the later Gothic of Verona; the outer line of the
+archivolt having a hardly perceptible point, and every inner arch of
+course forming the point more distinctly, till the innermost becomes a
+lancet. By far the nobler method, however, is that of the pure early
+Italian Gothic; to make every outer arch a _magnified fac-simile_ of the
+innermost one, every arc including the same number of degrees, but
+degrees of a larger circle. The result is the condition represented in
+Plate V., often found in far bolder development; exquisitely springy and
+elastic in its expression, and entirely free from the heaviness and
+monotony of the deep northern archivolts.
+
+§ XVI. We have not spoken of the intermediate form, _b_, of Fig. LXIX.
+(which its convenience for admission of light has rendered common in
+nearly all architectures), because it has no transitions peculiar to
+itself: in the north it sometimes shares the fate of the outer
+architrave, and is channelled into longitudinal mouldings; sometimes
+remains smooth and massy, as in military architecture, or in the simpler
+forms of domestic and ecclesiastical. In Italy it receives surface
+decoration like the architrave, but has, perhaps, something of peculiar
+expression in being placed between the tracery of the window within, and
+its shafts and tabernacle work without, as in the Duomo of Florence: in
+this position it is always kept smooth in surface, and inlaid (or
+painted) with delicate arabesques; while the tracery and the tabernacle
+work are richly sculptured. The example of its treatment by colored
+voussoirs, given in Plate XIX., may be useful to the reader as a kind of
+central expression of the aperture decoration of the pure Italian
+Gothic;--aperture decoration proper; applying no shaft work to the
+jambs, but leaving the bevelled opening unenriched; using on the outer
+archivolt the voussoirs and concentric architrave in reconcilement (the
+latter having, however, some connection with the Norman zigzag); and
+beneath them, the pure Italian two-pieced and mid-cusped arch, with rich
+cusp decoration. It is a Veronese arch, probably of the thirteenth
+century, and finished with extreme care; the red portions are all in
+brick, delicately cast: and the most remarkable feature of the whole is
+the small piece of brick inlaid on the angle of each stone voussoir,
+with a most just feeling, which every artist will at once understand,
+that the color ought not to be let go all at once.
+
+§ XVII. We have traced the various conditions of treatment in the
+archivolt alone; but, except in what has been said of the peculiar
+expression of the voussoirs, we might throughout have spoken in the same
+terms of the jamb. Even a parallel to the expression of the voussoir may
+be found in the Lombardic and Norman divisions of the shafts, by zigzags
+and other transverse ornamentation, which in the end are all swept away
+by the canaliculated mouldings. Then, in the recesses of these and of
+the archivolts alike, the niche and statue decoration develops itself;
+and the vaulted and cavernous apertures are covered with incrustations
+of fretwork, and with every various application of foliage to their
+fantastic mouldings.
+
+§ XVIII. I have kept the inquiry into the proper ornament of the
+archivolt wholly free from all confusion with the questions of beauty in
+tracery; for, in fact, all tracery is a mere multiplication and
+entanglement of small archivolts, and its cusp ornament is a minor
+condition of that proper to the spandril. It does not reach its
+completely defined form until the jamb and archivolt have been divided
+into longitudinal mouldings; and then the tracery is formed by the
+innermost group of the shafts or fillets, bent into whatever forms or
+foliations the designer may choose; but this with a delicacy of
+adaptation which I rather choose to illustrate by particular examples,
+of which we shall meet with many in the course of our inquiry, than to
+delay the reader by specifying here. As for the conditions of beauty in
+the disposition of the tracery bars, I see no hope of dealing with the
+subject fairly but by devoting, if I can find time, a separate essay to
+it--which, in itself, need not be long, but would involve, before it
+could be completed, the examination of the whole mass of materials
+lately collected by the indefatigable industry of the English architects
+who have devoted their special attention to this subject, and which are
+of the highest value as illustrating the chronological succession or
+mechanical structure of tracery, but which, in most cases, touch on
+their ĉsthetic merits incidentally only. Of works of this kind, by far
+the best I have met with is Mr. Edmund Sharpe's, on Decorated Windows,
+which seems to me, as far as a cursory glance can enable me to judge, to
+exhaust the subject as respects English Gothic; and which may be
+recommended to the readers who are interested in the subject, as
+containing a clear and masterly enunciation of the general principles by
+which the design of tracery has been regulated, from its first
+development to its final degradation.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [91] The architrave is properly the horizontal piece of stone laid
+    across the tops of the pillars in Greek buildings, and commonly
+    marked with horizontal lines, obtained by slight projections of its
+    surface, while it is protected above in the richer orders, by a
+    small cornice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+  THE ROOF.
+
+
+§ I. The modes of decoration hitherto considered, have been common to
+the exteriors and interiors of all noble buildings; and we have taken no
+notice of the various kinds of ornament which require protection from
+weather, and are necessarily confined to interior work. But in the case
+of the roof, the exterior and interior treatments become, as we saw in
+construction, so also in decoration, separated by broad and bold
+distinctions. One side of a wall is, in most cases, the same as another,
+and if its structure be concealed, it is mostly on the inside; but, in
+the roof, the anatomical structure, out of which decoration should
+naturally spring, is visible, if at all, in the interior only: so that
+the subject of internal ornament becomes both wide and important, and
+that of external, comparatively subordinate.
+
+§ II. Now, so long as we were concerned principally with the outside of
+buildings, we might with safety leave expressional character out of the
+question for the time, because it is not to be expected that all persons
+who pass the building, or see it from a distance, shall be in the temper
+which the building is properly intended to induce; so that ornaments
+somewhat at variance with this temper may often be employed externally
+without painful effect. But these ornaments would be inadmissible in the
+interior, for those who enter will for the most part either be in the
+proper temper which the building requires, or desirous of acquiring it.
+(The distinction is not rigidly observed by the mediĉval builders, and
+grotesques, or profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in
+bosses, crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor
+ornament: but we do not find the interior wall covered with hunting and
+battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.) And thus the interior
+expression of the roof or ceiling becomes necessarily so various, and
+the kind and degree of fitting decoration so dependent upon particular
+circumstances, that it is nearly impossible to classify its methods, or
+limit its application.
+
+§ III. I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching rather
+the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as regards
+interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs are necessarily
+divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams;--surfaces, flat or carved;
+ribs, traversing these in the directions where main strength is
+required; or beams, filling the hollow of the dark gable with the
+intricate roof-tree, or supporting the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs
+and beams are simply and unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty
+about decoration; the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye
+is satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in plain
+waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when the ceiling is
+flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their services may receive
+ornamentation independent of their structure. I have never myself seen a
+flat ceiling satisfactorily decorated, except by painting: there is much
+good and fanciful panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it
+always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceilings of
+Venice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal Palace, have in their
+vast panellings some of the noblest paintings (on stretched canvas)
+which the world possesses: and this is all very well for the ceiling;
+but one would rather have the painting in a better place, especially
+when the rain soaks through its canvas, as I have seen it doing through
+many a noble Tintoret. On the whole, flat ceilings are as much to be
+avoided as possible; and, when necessary, perhaps a panelled
+ornamentation with rich colored patterns is the most satisfying, and
+loses least of valuable labor. But I leave the question to the reader's
+thought, being myself exceedingly undecided respecting it: except only
+touching one point--that a blank ceiling is not to be redeemed by a
+decorated ventilator.
+
+§ IV. I have a more confirmed opinion, however, respecting the
+decoration of curved surfaces. The majesty of a roof is never, I think,
+so great, as when the eye can pass undisturbed over the course of all
+its curvatures, and trace the dying of the shadows along its smooth and
+sweeping vaults. And I would rather, myself, have a plain ridged Gothic
+vault, with all its rough stones visible, to keep the sleet and wind out
+of a cathedral aisle, than all the fanning and pendanting and foliation
+that ever bewildered Tudor weight. But mosaic or fresco may of course be
+used as far as we can afford or obtain them; for these do not break the
+curvature. Perhaps the most solemn roofs in the world are the apse
+conchas of the Romanesque basilicas, with their golden ground and severe
+figures. Exactly opposed to these are the decorations which disturb the
+serenity of the curve without giving it interest, like the vulgar
+panelling of St. Peter's and the Pantheon; both, I think, in the last
+degree detestable.
+
+§ V. As roofs internally may be divided into surfaces and ribs,
+externally they may be divided into surfaces, and points, or ridges;
+these latter often receiving very bold and distinctive ornament. The
+outside surface is of small importance in central Europe, being almost
+universally low in slope, and tiled throughout Spain, South France, and
+North Italy: of still less importance where it is flat, as a terrace; as
+often in South Italy and the East, mingled with low domes: but the
+larger Eastern and Arabian domes become elaborate in ornamentation: I
+cannot speak of them with confidence; to the mind of an inhabitant of
+the north, a roof is a guard against wild weather; not a surface which
+is forever to bask in serene heat, and gleam across deserts like a
+rising moon. I can only say, that I have never seen any drawing of a
+richly decorated Eastern dome that made me desire to see the original.
+
+§ VI. Our own northern roof decoration is necessarily simple. Colored
+tiles are used in some cases with quaint effect; but I believe the
+dignity of the building is always greater when the roof is kept in an
+undisturbed mass, opposing itself to the variegation and richness of the
+walls. The Italian round tile is itself decoration enough, a deep and
+rich fluting, which all artists delight in; this, however, is fitted
+exclusively for low pitch of roofs. On steep domestic roofs, there is no
+ornament better than may be obtained by merely rounding, or cutting to
+an angle, the lower extremities of the flat tiles or shingles, as in
+Switzerland: thus the whole surface is covered with an appearance of
+scales, a fish-like defence against water, at once perfectly simple,
+natural, and effective at any distance; and the best decoration of
+sloping stone roofs, as of spires, is a mere copy of this scale armor;
+it enriches every one of the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral of
+Coutances, and of many Norman and early Gothic buildings. Roofs covered
+or edged with lead have often patterns designed upon the lead, gilded
+and relieved with some dark color, as on the house of Jaques Coeur at
+Bourges; and I imagine the effect of this must have been singularly
+delicate and beautiful, but only traces of it now remain. The northern
+roofs, however, generally stand in little need of surface decoration,
+the eye being drawn to the fantastic ranges of their dormer windows, and
+to the finials and fringes on their points and ridges.
+
+§ VII. Whether dormer windows are legitimately to be classed as
+decorative features, seems to me to admit of doubt. The northern spire
+system is evidently a mere elevation and exaggeration of the domestic
+turret with its look-out windows, and one can hardly part with the
+grotesque lines of the projections, though nobody is to be expected to
+live in the spire: but, at all events, such windows are never to be
+allowed in places visibly inaccessible, or on less than a natural and
+serviceable scale.
+
+§ VIII. Under the general head of roof-ridge and point decoration, we
+may include, as above noted, the entire race of fringes, finials, and
+crockets. As there is no use in any of these things, and as they are
+visible additions and parasitical portions of the structure, more
+caution is required in their use than in any other features of ornament,
+and the architect and spectator must both be in felicitous humor before
+they can be well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally
+most admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most power; and I
+think there is almost always a certain spirit of playfulness in them,
+adverse to the grandest architectural effects, or at least to be kept in
+severe subordination to the serener character of the prevalent lines.
+But as they are opposed to the seriousness of majesty on the one hand,
+so they are to the weight of dulness on the other; and I know not any
+features which make the contrast between continental domestic
+architecture, and our own, more humiliatingly felt, or which give so
+sudden a feeling of new life and delight, when we pass from the streets
+of London to those of Abbeville or Rouen, as the quaint points and
+pinnacles of the roof gables and turrets. The commonest and heaviest
+roof may be redeemed by a spike at the end of it, if it is set on with
+any spirit; but the foreign builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar
+feeling in this, and gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of
+its back, and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like
+the dorsal fins and spines of a fish: but our spikes have a dull,
+screwed on, look; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machinery; and
+our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if they were meant to
+catch ashes out of the London smoke-clouds.
+
+§ IX. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be considered in
+architecture, what points and flashes of light are in the color of
+painting, or of nature. There are some landscapes whose best character
+is sparkling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of
+brilliancy, or embracing it,--as on the fields of summer sea, or summer
+land:
+
+  "Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold,
+   And on the dews that drench the furze,
+   And on the silvery gossamers,
+   _That twinkle into green and gold_."
+
+And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst of a
+jewellery of light; but, for the most part, it is better to avoid
+breaking up either lines or masses by too many points, and to make the
+few points used exceedingly precious. So the best crockets and finials
+are set, like stars, along the lines, and at the points, which they
+adorn, with considerable intervals between them, and exquisite delicacy
+and fancy of sculpture in their own designs; if very small, they may
+become more frequent, and describe lines by a chain of points; but their
+whole value is lost if they are gathered into bunches or clustered into
+tassels and knots; and an over-indulgence in them always marks lowness
+of school. In Venice, the addition of the finial to the arch-head is the
+first sign of degradation; all her best architecture is entirely without
+either crockets or finials; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be
+classed, with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to
+the diminution or expansion of the crocket. The absolutely perfect use
+of the crocket is found, I think, in the tower of Giotto, and in some
+other buildings of the Pisan school. In the North they generally err on
+one side or other, and are either florid and huge, or mean in outline,
+looking as if they had been pinched out of the stonework, as throughout
+the entire cathedral of Amiens; and are besides connected with the
+generally spotty system which has been spoken of under the head of
+archivolt decoration.
+
+§ X. Employed, however, in moderation, they are among the most
+delightful means of delicate expression; and the architect has more
+liberty in their individual treatment than in any other feature of the
+building. Separated entirely from the structural system, they are
+subjected to no shadow of any other laws than those of grace and
+chastity; and the fancy may range without rebuke, for materials of their
+design, through the whole field of the visible or imaginable creation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+  THE VESTIBULE.
+
+
+§ I. I have hardly kept my promise. The reader has decorated but little
+for himself as yet; but I have not, at least, attempted to bias his
+judgment. Of the simple forms of decoration which have been set before
+him, he has always been left free to choose; and the stated restrictions
+in the methods of applying them have been only those which followed on
+the necessities of construction previously determined. These having been
+now defined, I do indeed leave my reader free to build; and with what a
+freedom! All the lovely forms of the universe set before him, whence to
+choose, and all the lovely lines that bound their substance or guide
+their motion; and of all these lines,--and there are myriads of myriads
+in every bank of grass and every tuft of forest; and groups of them
+divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every several
+member of bird and beast,--of all these lines, for the principal forms
+of the most important members of architecture, I have used but Three!
+What, therefore, must be the infinity of the treasure in them all! There
+is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of
+cathedrals, but suppose we were satisfied with less exhaustive
+appliance, and built a score of cathedrals, each to illustrate a single
+flower? that would be better than trying to invent new styles, I think.
+There is quite difference of style enough, between a violet and a
+harebell, for all reasonable purposes.
+
+§ II. Perhaps, however, even more strange than the struggle of our
+architects to invent new styles, is the way they commonly speak of this
+treasure of natural infinity. Let us take our patience to us for an
+instant, and hear one of them, not among the least intelligent:--
+
+  "It is not true that all natural forms are beautiful. We may hardly
+  be able to detect this in Nature herself; but when the forms are
+  separated from the things, and exhibited alone (by sculpture or
+  carving), we then see that they are not all fitted for ornamental
+  purposes; and indeed that very few, perhaps none, are so fitted
+  without correction. Yes, I say _correction_, for though it is the
+  highest aim of every art to imitate nature, this is not to be done by
+  imitating any natural form, but by _criticising_ and _correcting_
+  it,--criticising it by Nature's rules gathered from all her works,
+  but never completely carried out by her in any one work; correcting
+  it, by rendering it more natural, _i.e._ more conformable to the
+  general tendency of Nature, according to that noble maxim recorded of
+  Raffaelle, 'that the artist's object was to make things not as Nature
+  makes them, but as she WOULD make them;' as she ever tries to make
+  them, but never succeeds, though her aim may be deduced from a
+  comparison of her efforts; just as if a number of archers had aimed
+  unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were then
+  removed, we could by the examination of their arrow marks point out
+  the most probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty of
+  being nearer to it than any of their shots."[92]
+
+§ III. I had thought that, by this time, we had done with that stale,
+second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying of Raffaelle's; or that
+at least, in these days of purer Christian light, men might have begun
+to get some insight into the meaning of it: Raffaelle was a painter of
+humanity, and assuredly there is something the matter with humanity, a
+few _dovrebbe's_, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us heard
+of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments, conjecture that
+we are not quite what God, or nature, would have us to be. Raffaelle
+_had_ something to mend in Humanity: I should have liked to have seen
+him mending a daisy!--or a pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard seed,
+or any other of God's slightest works. If he had accomplished that, one
+might have found for him more respectable employment,--to set the stars
+in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously scattered as they are,
+and to be of all manner of shapes and sizes,--except the ideal shape,
+and the proper size); or to give us a corrected view of the ocean; that,
+at least, seems a very irregular and improveable thing; the very
+fishermen do not know, this day, how far it will reach, driven up before
+the west wind:--perhaps Some One else does, but that is not our
+business. Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,--of the great
+irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is not out of time.
+One,--two:--here comes a well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at
+the top, but, on the whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, and up
+as far as this grey pebble; now stand by and watch! Another:--Ah,
+careless wave! why couldn't you have kept your crest on? it is all gone
+away into spray, striking up against the cliffs there--I thought as
+much--missed the mark by a couple of feet! Another:--How now, impatient
+one! couldn't you have waited till your friend's reflux was done with,
+instead of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly manner? You go
+for nothing. A fourth, and a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder
+slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave;
+not so fast; not so fast; where are you coming to?--By our architectural
+word, this is too bad; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you
+in our face besides; and a wave which we had some hope of, behind there,
+broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white table-cloth of
+foam all the way to the shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off
+it! Alas, for these unhappy arrow shots of Nature; she will never hit
+her mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them, into the
+ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. Let us send for a Greek
+architect to do it for her. He comes--the great Greek architect, with
+measure and rule. Will he not also make the weight for the winds? and
+weigh out the waters by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a
+way for the lightning of the thunder? He sets himself orderly to his
+work, and behold! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing into
+which the great Greek architect improves the sea--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Greek: Thalatta, thalatta]: Was it this, then, that they wept to see
+from the sacred mountain--those wearied ones?
+
+§ IV. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and were not also the
+leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort, as far as may be
+without mark of sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it be
+pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our
+foreheads, that we might be known one from the other?
+
+§ V. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art? Have we only to
+copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We
+have work to do upon it; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so
+feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve,
+but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable,
+in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long
+contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then
+set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating
+it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one does not
+improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower
+visible; and then the human being has to make its power upon his own
+heart visible also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has
+raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And
+sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange
+lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown: ways specially
+directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which he had to choose
+instruments out of the wide armory of God. All this he may do: and in
+this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written,
+as well as the created word, "rightly _dividing_ the word of truth." Out
+of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather and set forth
+things new and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are
+before him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such
+illustration and enforcement as may be in his power, and to crown them
+with the history of what, by them, God has done for his soul. And, in
+doing this, is he improving the Word of God? Just such difference as
+there is between the sense in which a minister may be said to improve a
+text, to the people's comfort, and the sense in which an atheist might
+declare that he could improve the Book, which, if any man shall add
+unto, there shall be added unto him the plagues that are written
+therein; just such difference is there between that which, with respect
+to Nature, man is, in his humbleness, called upon to do, and that which,
+in his insolence, he imagines himself capable of doing.
+
+§ VI. Have no fear, therefore, reader, in judging between nature and
+art, so only that you love both. If you can love one only, then let it
+be Nature; you are safe with her: but do not then attempt to judge the
+art, to which you do not care to give thought, or time. But if you love
+both, you may judge between them fearlessly; you may estimate the last,
+by its making you remember the first, and giving you the same kind of
+joy. If, in the square of the city, you can find a delight, finite,
+indeed, but pure and intense, like that which you have in a valley among
+the hills, then its art and architecture are right; but if, after fair
+trial, you can find no delight in them, nor any instruction like that of
+nature, I call on you fearlessly to condemn them.
+
+We are forced, for the sake of accumulating our power and knowledge, to
+live in cities; but such advantage as we have in association with each
+other is in great part counterbalanced by our loss of fellowship with
+nature. We cannot all have our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to
+meditate in at eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as
+far as may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us
+with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness,
+like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate imagery of
+the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures now far
+away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a
+London Street,--if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or
+one ray of true and gentle pleasure,--if there is in your heart a true
+delight in its grim railings and dark casements, and wasteful finery of
+shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses,--it is well: promote the
+building of more like them. But if they never taught you anything, and
+never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they
+have any mysterious goodness nor occult sublimity. Have done with the
+wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy: for,
+as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is
+better than the wood pavement, cut into hexagons; and as surely as you
+know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland are better than the
+choke-damp of the vault, or the gas-light of the ball-room, you may
+know, as I told you that you should, that the good architecture, which
+has life, and truth, and joy in it, is better than the bad architecture,
+which has death, dishonesty, and vexation of heart in it, from the
+beginning to the end of time.
+
+§ VII. And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your
+gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of
+Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the East.
+
+It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine festoons
+full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their
+clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the
+Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches
+to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows
+slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that
+neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous
+banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant
+into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged
+into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the
+dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen
+trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did
+at first. Presently you pass one of the much vaunted "villas on the
+Brenta:" a glaring, spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with
+painted architraves like picture-frames, and a court-yard paved with
+pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the feverish
+sunshine, but fenced from the high road, for magnificence sake, with
+goodly posts and chains; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese
+variations, painted red and green; a third composed for the greater
+part of dead-wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it, each with a
+pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad perspective; and a
+fourth, with stucco figures set on the top of its garden-wall: some
+antique, like the kind to be seen at the corner of the New Road, and
+some of clumsy grotesque dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This
+is the architecture to which her studies of the Renaissance have
+conducted modern Italy.
+
+§ VIII. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense white the walls
+of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change horses. Another dreary
+stage among the now divided branches of the Brenta, forming irregular
+and half-stagnant canals; with one or two more villas on the other side
+of them, but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have
+recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin, black, and
+rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull water, with what
+were once small gardens beside them, kneaded into mud, and with blighted
+fragments of gnarled hedges and broken stakes for their fencing; and
+here and there a few fragments of marble steps, which have once given
+them graceful access from the water's edge, now settling into the mud in
+broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green weed. At last the
+road turns sharply to the north, and there is an open space, covered
+with bent grass, on the right of it: but do not look that way.
+
+§ IX. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of the little inn
+at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade. The table is (always, I
+think) covered with a cloth of nominal white and perennial grey, with
+plates and glasses at due intervals, and small loaves of a peculiar
+white bread, made with oil, and more like knots of flour than bread. The
+view from its balcony is not cheerful: a narrow street, with a solitary
+brick church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some
+coventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco about their
+windows; and, between them and the street, a ditch with some slow
+current in it, and one or two small houses beside it, one with an arbor
+of roses at its door, as in an English tea-garden; the air, however,
+about us having in it nothing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and
+crabs, warmed by the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is
+much vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain
+wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage: we appease their
+rivalry with our best patience, and follow them down the narrow street.
+
+§ X. We have but walked some two hundred yards when we come to a low
+wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side
+down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black
+with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,--it is covered with the
+black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be
+real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at
+first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat
+and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any
+water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks only two or
+three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a
+stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as
+if they were dragged by upon a painted scene.
+
+Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the
+side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose
+patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows
+keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In
+front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west,
+the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen
+purple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon,
+feebly defined against the afternoon sky,--the Alps of Bassano. Forward
+still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate
+angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in
+ugly rents towards the water,--the bastions of the fort of Malghera.
+Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable.
+The silver beak cleaves it fast,--it widens: the rank grass of the
+banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an
+expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we
+might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm
+southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing
+but what seems a low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to
+let the tide through it;--this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above
+all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there rises, out of
+the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings,
+which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be
+the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale,
+and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line;
+but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black
+smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the
+belfry of a church.
+
+It is Venice.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [92] Garbett on Design, p. 74.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+  1. FOUNDATION OF VENICE.
+
+I find the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any: the
+following sentence from De Monaci may perhaps interest the reader.
+
+"God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and whose ways are
+past finding out, willing both to save the innocent blood, and that a
+great power, beneficial to the whole world, should arise in a spot
+strange beyond belief, moved the chief men of the cities of the Venetian
+province (which from the border of Pannonia, extended as far as the
+Adda, a river of Lombardy), both in memory of past, and in dread of
+future distress, to establish states upon the nearer islands of the
+inner gulphs of the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they
+might retreat for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de
+Glauconibus, and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalburtus
+Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua, by the
+command of their King and the desire of the citizens, laid the
+foundations of the new commonwealth, under good auspices, on the island
+of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to the mouth of the deep river
+now called the Brenta, in the year of Our Lord, as many writers assure
+us, four hundred and twenty-one, on the 25th day of March."[93]
+
+It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice was
+founded by good Christians: "La qual citade è stada hedificada da veri e
+boni Christiani:" which information I found in the MS. copy of the
+Zancarol Chronicle, in the library of St. Mark's.
+
+Finally the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded by
+Sansovino, will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice: "Fu
+interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce VENETIA voglia dire _VENI
+ETIAM_, cioè, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante volte verrai,
+sempre vedrai nuove cose, enuove bellezze."
+
+
+  2. POWER OF THE DOGES.
+
+The best authorities agree in giving the year 697 as that of the
+election of the first doge, Paul Luke Anafeste. He was elected in a
+general meeting of the commonalty, tribunes, and clergy, at Heraclea,
+"divinis rebus procuratis," as usual, in all serious work, in those
+times. His authority is thus defined by Sabellico, who was not likely to
+have exaggerated it:--"Penes quem decus omne imperii ac majestas esset:
+cui jus concilium cogendi quoties de republica aliquid referri
+oporteret; qui tribunos annuos in singulas insulas legeret, a quibus ad
+Ducem esset provocatio. Cĉterum, si quis dignitatem, ecclesiam,
+sacerdotumve cleri populique suffragio esset adeptus, ita demum id ratum
+haberetur si dux ipse auctor factus esset." (Lib. I.) The last clause is
+very important, indicating the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the
+popular and ducal (or patrician) powers, which, throughout her career,
+was one of the most remarkable features in the policy of Venice. The
+appeal from the tribunes to the doge is also important; and the
+expression "decus omne imperii," if of somewhat doubtful force, is at
+least as energetic as could have been expected from an historian under
+the influence of the Council of Ten.
+
+
+  3. SERRAR DEL CONSIGLIO.
+
+The date of the decree which made the right of sitting in the grand
+council hereditary, is variously given; the Venetian historians
+themselves saying as little as they can about it. The thing was
+evidently not accomplished at once, several decrees following in
+successive years: the Council of Ten was established without any doubt
+in 1310, in consequence of the conspiracy of Tiepolo. The Venetian
+verse, quoted by Mutinelli (Annali Urbani di Venezia, p. 153), is worth
+remembering.
+
+  "Del mille tresento e diese
+   A mezzo el mese delle ceriese
+   Bagiamonte passò el ponte
+   E per esso fo fatto el Consegio di diese."
+
+The reader cannot do better than take 1297 as the date of the beginning
+of the change of government, and this will enable him exactly to divide
+the 1100 years from the election of the first doge into 600 of monarchy
+and 500 of aristocracy. The coincidence of the numbers is somewhat
+curious; 697 the date of the establishment of the government, 1297 of
+its change, and 1797 of its fall.
+
+
+  4. S. PIETRO DI CASTELLO.
+
+It is credibly reported to have been founded in the seventh century, and
+(with somewhat less of credibility) in a place where the Trojans,
+conducted by Antenor, had, after the destruction of Troy, built "un
+castello, chiamato prima Troja, poscia Olivolo, interpretato, luogo
+pieno." It seems that St. Peter appeared in person to the Bishop of
+Heraclea, and commanded him to found in his honor, a church in that spot
+of the rising city on the Rialto: "ove avesse veduto una mandra di buoi
+e di pecore pascolare unitamente. Questa fu la prodigiosa origine della
+Chiesa di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso
+Participazio IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della Nuova
+citta." (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di Venezia. Padua,
+1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen and sheep feeding together,
+we need St. Peter, I think, to tell us. The title of Bishop of Castello
+was first taken in 1091: St. Mark's was not made the cathedral church
+till 1807. It may be thought hardly fair to conclude the small
+importance of the old St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the
+wretched modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken of
+as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in the older
+building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sansovino; who only
+says that when it was destroyed by fire (as everything in Venice was, I
+think, about three times in a century), in the reign of Vital Michele,
+it was rebuilt "with good thick walls, maintaining, _for all that_, the
+order of its arrangement taken from the Greek mode of building." This
+does not seem the description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a
+highly ornate cathedral. The present church is among the least
+interesting in Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea
+on a small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a
+wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level of
+lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended
+before its mildewed façade and solitary tower.
+
+
+  5. PAPAL POWER IN VENICE.
+
+I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-eighth book
+of Daru for some account of the restraints to which the Venetian clergy
+were subjected. I have not myself been able to devote any time to the
+examination of the original documents bearing on this matter, but the
+following extract from a letter of a friend, who will not at present
+permit me to give his name, but who is certainly better conversant
+with the records of the Venetian State than any other Englishman, will
+be of great value to the general reader:--
+
+"In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth century,
+churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and declared ineligible
+to civil employment; and in the same year, 1410, the Council of Ten,
+with the Giunta, decreed that whenever in the state's councils matters
+concerning ecclesiastical affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk
+of Venetian beneficed clergymen were to be expelled; and, in the year
+1434, the RELATIONS of churchmen were declared ineligible to the post of
+ambassador at Rome.
+
+"The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their territories to
+bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope by the senate, which
+elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at the end of the sixteenth
+century, to be liable to examination by his Holiness, as an act of
+confirmation of installation; but of course, everything depended on the
+relative power at any given time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few
+days after the accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the
+Signory, cap in hand, to ALLOW him to confer the archbishopric of Zara
+on a dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six years
+later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of Cambrai, that
+furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara on Cipico WITHOUT
+asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite Abbey of Vangadizza, in the
+Polesine, fell vacant through the death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose
+family it had been since some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome
+received the news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow,
+requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he heard from
+the senate. The pope talked of 'poor cardinals' and of his nephew, but
+made no positive reply; and, as Francesco Contarini was withdrawing,
+said to him: 'My Lord ambassador, with this opportunity we will inform
+you that, to our very great regret, we understand that the chiefs of the
+Ten mean to turn sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close
+the church doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain
+hours. This is precisely the sacristan's office; we don't know why their
+lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to interfere in
+this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and
+even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there not the patriarch,
+who is at any rate your own; why not apply to him, who could remedy
+these irregularities? These are matters which cause us very notable
+displeasure; we say so that they may be written and known: it is decided
+by the councils and canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms
+any resolve against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without
+incurring censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon's correspondent]
+may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our
+predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that
+we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and
+let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may
+take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas à Becket, whose festival is
+celebrated this very day, suffered martyrdom for the ecclesiastical
+liberty; it is our duty likewise to support and defend it.' Contarini
+says: 'This remonstrance was delivered with some marks of anger, which
+induced me to tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords
+chiefs of the Ten is in our country supreme; that it does not do its
+business unadvisedly, or condescend to unworthy matters; and that,
+therefore, should those Lords have come to any public declaration of
+their will, it must be attributed to orders anterior, and to immemorial
+custom and authority, recollecting that, on former occasions likewise,
+similar commissions were given to prevent divers incongruities;
+wherefore an upright intention, such as this, ought not to be taken in
+any other sense than its own, especially as the parishes of Venice were
+in her own gift,' &c. &c. The pope persisted in bestowing the abbacy on
+his nephew, but the republic would not give possession, and a compromise
+was effected by its being conferred on the Venetian Matteo Priuli, who
+allowed the cardinal five thousand ducats per annum out of its revenues.
+A few years before this, this very same pope excommunicated the State,
+because she had imprisoned two churchmen for heinous crimes; the strife
+lasted for more than a year, and ended through the mediation of Henry
+IV., at whose suit the prisoners were delivered to the French
+ambassador, who made them over to a papal commissioner.
+
+"In January, 1484, a tournament was in preparation on St. Mark's Square:
+some murmurs had been heard about the distribution of the prizes having
+been pre-arranged, without regard to the 'best man.' One of the chiefs
+of the Ten was walking along Rialto on the 28th January, when a young
+priest, twenty-two years old, a sword-cutlers son, and a Bolognese, and
+one of Perugia, both men-at-arms under Robert Sansoverino, fell upon a
+clothier with drawn weapons. The chief of the Ten desired they might be
+seized, but at the moment the priest escaped; he was, however,
+subsequently retaken, and in that very evening hanged by torch-light
+between the columns with the two soldiers. Innocent VIII. was less
+powerful than Paul IV.; Venice weaker in 1605 than in 1484.
+
+"* * * The exclusion from the Grand Council, whether at the end of the
+fourteenth or commencement of the following century, of the Venetian
+ecclesiastics, (as induced either by the republic's acquisitions on the
+main land then made, and which, through the rich benefices they
+embraced, might have rendered an ambitious churchman as dangerous in the
+Grand Council as a victorious condottiere; or from dread of their
+allegiance being divided between the church and their country, it being
+acknowledged that no man can serve two masters,) did not render them
+hostile to their fatherland, whose interests were, with very few
+exceptions, eagerly fathered by the Venetian prelates at Rome, who, in
+their turn, received all honor at Venice, where state receptions given
+to cardinals of the houses of Correr, Grimani, Cornaro, Pisani,
+Contarini, Zeno, Delfino, and others, vouch for the good understanding
+that existed between the 'Papalists' and their countrymen. The Cardinal
+Grimani was instrumental in detaching Julius II. from the league of
+Cambrai; the Cardinal Cornaro always aided the state to obtain anything
+required of Leo X.; and, both before and after their times, all
+Venetians that had a seat in the Sacred College were patriots rather
+than pluralists: I mean that they cared more for Venice than for their
+benefices, admitting thus the soundness of that policy which denied them
+admission into the Grand Council."
+
+To this interesting statement, I shall add, from the twenty-eighth book
+of Daru, two passages, well deserving consideration by us English in
+present days:
+
+"Pour être parfaitement assurée contre les envahissements de la
+puissance ecclésiastique, Venise commença par lui ôter tout prétexte
+d'intervenir dans les affaires de l'Etat; elle resta invariablement
+fidèle au dogme. Jamais aucune des opinions nouvelles n'y prit la
+moindre faveur; jamais aucun hérésiarque ne sortit de Venise. Les
+conciles, les disputes, les guerres de religion, se passèrent sans
+qu'elle y prit jamais la moindre part. Inébranlable dans sa foi, elle ne
+fut pas moins invariable dans son système de tolérance. Non seulement
+ses sujets de la religion grecque conservèrent l'exercise de leur culte,
+leurs évêques et leurs prêtres; mais les Protestantes, les Arméniens,
+les Mahomitans, les Juifs, toutes les religions, toutes les sectes qui
+se trouvaient dans Venise, avaient des temples, et la sépulture dans les
+églises n'était point refusé aux hérétiques. Une police vigilante
+s'appliquait avec le même soin à éteindre les discordes, et à empêcher
+les fanatiques et les novateurs de troubler l'Etat."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Si on considère que c'est dans un temps où presque toutes les nations
+tremblaient devant la puissance pontificale, que les Vénitiens surent
+tenir leur clergé dans la dépendance, et braver souvent les censures
+ecclésiastiques et les interdits, sans encourir jamais aucun reproche
+sur la pureté de leur foi, on sera forcé de reconnaître que cette
+république avait dévancé de loin les autres peuples dans cette partie de
+la science du gouvernement. La fameuse maxime, 'Siamo veneziani, poi
+christiani,' n'était qu'une formule énergique qui ne prouvait point
+quils voulussent placer l'intérêt de la religion après celui de l'Etat,
+mais qui annonçait leur invariable résolution de ne pas souffrir qu'un
+pouvoir étranger portât atteinte aux droits de la république.
+
+"Dans toute la durée de son existence, an milieu des revers comme dans
+la prospérité cet inébranlable gouvernement ne fit qu'une seule fois des
+concessions à la cour de Borne, et ce fut pour détacher le Pape Jules
+II. de la ligue de Cambrai.
+
+"Jamais il ne se relâcha du soin de tenir le clergé dans une nullité
+absolue relativement aux affaires politiques; on peut en juger par la
+conduite qu'il tint avec l'ordre religieux le plus redoutable et le plus
+accoutumé à s'immiscer dans les secrets de l'Etat et dans les intérêts
+temporels."
+
+The main points, next stated, respecting the Jesuits are, that the
+decree which permitted their establishment in Venice required formal
+renewal every three years; that no Jesuit could stay in Venice more than
+three years; that the slightest disobedience to the authority of the
+government was instantly punished by imprisonment; that no Venetian
+could enter the order without express permission from the government;
+that the notaries were forbidden to sanction any testamentary disposal
+of property to the Jesuits; finally, that the heads of noble families
+were forbidden to permit their children to be educated in the Jesuits'
+colleges, on pain of degradation from their rank.
+
+Now, let it be observed that the enforcement of absolute exclusion of
+the clergy from the councils of the state, dates exactly from the period
+which I have marked for the commencement of the decline of the Venetian
+power. The Romanist is welcome to his advantage in this fact, if
+advantage it be; for I do not bring forward the conduct of the senate of
+Venice, as Daru does, by way of an example of the general science of
+government. The Venetians accomplished therein what we ridiculously call
+a separation of "Church and State" (as if the State were not, in all
+Christendom, necessarily also the Church[94]), but _ought_ to call a
+separation of lay and clerical officers. I do not point out this
+separation as subject of praise, but as the witness borne by the
+Venetians against the principles of the Papacy. If they were to blame,
+in yielding to their fear of the ambitious spirit of Rome so far as to
+deprive their councils of all religious element, what excuse are we to
+offer for the state, which, with Lords Spiritual of her own faith
+already in her senate, permits the polity of Rome to be represented by
+lay members? To have sacrificed religion to mistaken policy, or
+purchased security with ignominy, would have been no new thing in the
+world's history; but to be at once impious and impolitic, and seek for
+danger through dishonor, was reserved for the English parliament of
+1829.
+
+I am glad to have this opportunity of referring to, and farther
+enforcing, the note on this subject which, not without deliberation, I
+appended to the "Seven Lamps;" and of adding to it the following
+passage, written by my father in the year 1839, and published in one of
+the journals of that year:--a passage remarkable as much for its
+intrinsic value, as for having stated, twelve years ago, truths to which
+the mind of England seems but now, and that slowly, awakening.
+
+"We hear it said, that it cannot be merely the Roman religion that
+causes the difficulty [respecting Ireland], for we were once all Roman
+Catholics, and nations abroad of this faith are not as the Irish. It is
+totally overlooked, that when we were so, our government was despotic,
+and fit to cope with this dangerous religion, as most of the Continental
+governments yet are. In what Roman Catholic state, or in what age of
+Roman Catholic England, did we ever hear of such agitation as now exists
+in Ireland by evil men taking advantage of an anomalous state of
+things--Roman Catholic ignorance in the people, Protestant toleration in
+the government? We have yet to feel the tremendous difficulty in which
+Roman Catholic emancipation has involved us. Too late we discover that a
+Roman Catholic is wholly incapable of being safely connected with the
+British constitution, as it now exists, _in any near relation_. The
+present constitution is no longer fit for Catholics. It is a creature
+essentially Protestant, growing with the growth, and strengthening with
+the strength, of Protestantism. So entirely is Protestantism interwoven
+with the whole frame of our constitution and laws, that I take my stand
+on this, against all agitators in existence, that the Roman religion is
+totally incompatible with the British constitution. We have, in trying
+to combine them, got into a maze of difficulties; we are the worse, and
+Ireland none the better. It is idle to talk of municipal reform or
+popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is
+not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a
+Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population
+and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an
+industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot
+convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to wear the mild
+restraints of a Protestant Government. It was, moreover, a strange logic
+that begot the idea of admitting Catholics to administer any part of our
+laws or constitution. It was admitted by all that, by the very act of
+abandoning the Roman religion, we became a free and enlightened people.
+It was only by throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that we
+attained to the freedom of thought which has advanced us in the scale of
+society. We are so much advanced by adopting and adhering to a reformed
+religion, that to prove our liberal and unprejudiced views, we throw
+down the barriers betwixt the two religions, of which the one is the
+acknowledged cause of light and knowledge, the other the cause of
+darkness and ignorance. We are so much altered to the better by leaving
+this people entirely, and giving them neither part nor lot amongst us,
+that it becomes proper to mingle again with them. We have found so much
+good in leaving them, that we deem it the best possible reason for
+returning to be among them. No fear of their Church again shaking us,
+with all our light and knowledge. It is true, the most enlightened
+nations fell under the spell of her enchantments, fell into total
+darkness and superstition; but no fear of us--we are too well informed!
+What miserable reasoning! infatuated presumption! I fear me, when the
+Roman religion rolled her clouds of darkness over the earlier ages, that
+she quenched as much light, and knowledge, and judgment as our modern
+Liberals have ever displayed. I do not expect a statesman to discuss the
+point of Transubstantiation betwixt Protestant and Catholic, nor to
+trace the narrow lines which divide Protestant sectarians from each
+other; but can any statesman that shall have taken even a cursory
+glance at the face of Europe, hesitate a moment on the choice of the
+Protestant religion? If he unfortunately knew nothing of its being the
+true one in regard to our eternal interests, he is at least bound to see
+whether it be not the best for the worldly prosperity of a people. He
+may be but moderately imbued with pious zeal for the salvation of a
+kingdom, but at least he will be expected to weigh the comparative
+merits of religion, as of law or government; and blind, indeed, must he
+be if he does not discern that, in neglecting to cherish the Protestant
+faith, or in too easily yielding to any encroachments on it, he is
+foregoing the use of a state engine more powerful than all the laws
+which the uninspired legislators of the earth have ever promulgated, in
+promoting the happiness, the peace, prosperity, and the order, the
+industry, and the wealth, of a people; in forming every quality valuable
+or desirable in a subject or a citizen; in sustaining the public mind at
+that point of education and information that forms the best security for
+the state, and the best preservative for the freedom of a people,
+whether religious or political."
+
+[Illustration: Plate XX.
+               WALL VEIL DECORATION.
+               CA' TREVISAN.]
+
+
+  6. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS.
+
+There having been three principal styles of architecture in Venice,--the
+Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renaissance, it will be shown,
+in the sequel, that the Renaissance itself is divided into three
+correspondent families: Renaissance engrafted on Byzantine, which is
+earliest and best; Renaissance engrafted on Gothic, which is second, and
+second best; Renaissance on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and
+worst of all. The palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine
+are those noticed by Commynes: they are characterized by an
+ornamentation very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with,
+early Byzantine work; namely, groups of colored marble circles inclosed
+in interlacing bands. I have put on the opposite page one of these
+ornaments, from the Ca' Trevisan, in which a most curious and delicate
+piece of inlaid design is introduced into a band which is almost exactly
+copied from the church of Theotocos at Constantinople, and correspondent
+with others in St. Mark's. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the
+treatment of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower
+compartment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are
+visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch
+plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded wings.
+Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices "of every clean fowl and of
+every clean beast." The color is given with green and white marbles, the
+dove relieved on a ground of greyish green, and all is exquisitely
+finished.
+
+In Plate I., p. 13, the upper figure is from the same palace (Ca'
+Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If we take
+five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter being two-thirds
+of the diameter next above it, and arrange the circles so proportioned,
+in contact with each other, in the manner shown in the plate, we shall
+find that an increase quite imperceptible in the diameter of the circles
+in the angles, will enable us to inscribe the whole in a square. The
+lines so described will then run in the centre of the white bands. I
+cannot be certain that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan
+design, because it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at
+its measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide with
+the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in Plate I. is from the
+front of the Ca' Dario, and probably struck the eye of Commynes in its
+first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, considers both the Ca' Trevisan
+(which once belonged to Bianca Cappello) and the Ca' Dario, as buildings
+of the sixteenth century. I defer the discussion of the question at
+present, but have, I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca'
+Dario to have been built about 1486, and the Ca' Trevisan not much
+later.
+
+
+  7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDERS.
+
+Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general importance is
+that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was taken (Vitruvius says)
+from a woman's hair, curled; but its lateral processes look more like
+rams' horns: be that as it may, it is a mere piece of agreeable
+extravagance, and if, instead of rams' horns, you put ibex horns, or
+cows' horns, or an ass's head at once, you will have ibex orders, or ass
+orders, or any number of other orders, one for every head or horn. You
+may have heard of another order, the Composite, which is Ionic and
+Corinthian mixed, and is one of the worst of ten thousand forms
+referable to the Corinthian as their head: it may be described as a
+spoiled Corinthian. And you may have also heard of another order, called
+Tuscan (which is no order at all, but a spoiled Doric): and of another
+called Roman Doric, which is Doric more spoiled, both which are simply
+among the most stupid variations ever invented upon forms already known.
+I find also in a French pamphlet upon architecture,[95] as applied to
+shops and dwelling houses, a sixth order, the "Ordre Français," at least
+as good as any of the three last, and to be hailed with acclamation,
+considering whence it comes, there being usually more tendency on the
+other side of the channel to the confusion of "orders" than their
+multiplication: but the reader will find in the end that there are in
+very deed only two orders, of which the Greek, Doric, and Corinthian are
+the first examples, and _they_ not perfect, nor in anywise sufficiently
+representative of the vast families to which they belong; but being the
+first and the best known, they may properly be considered as the types
+of the rest. The essential distinctions of the two great orders he will
+find explained in §§ XXXV. and XXXVI. of Chap. XXVII., and in the
+passages there referred to; but I should rather desire that these
+passages might be read in the order in which they occur.
+
+
+  8. THE NORTHERN ENERGY.
+
+I have sketched above, in the First Chapter, the great events of
+architectural history in the simplest and fewest words I could; but this
+indraught of the Lombard energies upon the Byzantine rest, like a wild
+north wind descending into a space of rarified atmosphere, and
+encountered by an Arab simoom from the south, may well require from us
+some farther attention; for the differences in all these schools are
+more in the degrees of their impetuosity and refinement (these
+qualities being, in most cases, in inverse ratio, yet much united by the
+Arabs) than in the style of the ornaments they employ. The same leaves,
+the same animals, the same arrangement, are used by Scandinavians,
+ancient Britons, Saxons, Normans, Lombards, Romans, Byzantines, and
+Arabians; all being alike descended through classic Greece from Egypt
+and Assyria, and some from Phoenicia. The belts which encompass the
+Assyrian bulls, in the hall of the British Museum, are the same as the
+belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian tumuli; their method of
+ornamentation is the same as that of the gate of Mycenĉ, and of the
+Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of Milan, and of the church of Theotocos
+at Constantinople; the essential differences among the great schools are
+their differences of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it
+is absurd to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and
+Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is
+irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard temper, and
+Byzantine temper.
+
+Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools, it appears
+to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distinguished from the
+Byzantine by their energy and love of excitement, but the Lombard stands
+alone in his love of jest: Neither an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in
+his architecture; the Lombard has great difficulty in ever being
+thoroughly serious; thus they represent three conditions of humanity,
+one in perfect rest, the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace
+and dignity; the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a
+restless fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not
+burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of enjoying
+jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lombard in the
+South, showing itself, however, in endless invention, with a refreshing
+firmness and order directing the whole of it. The excitement is greatest
+in the earliest times, most of all shown in St. Michele of Pavia; and I
+am strongly disposed to connect much of its peculiar manifestations with
+the Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially his
+carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times seems to have been exactly
+what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous
+imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of
+northern mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him
+pacing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on
+the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you have the
+Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply of vegetables,
+and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement diminishes; it is still
+strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons and Rouen; it dies away
+gradually in the later Gothic, and is quite extinct in the fifteenth
+century.
+
+I think I shall best illustrate this general idea by simply copying the
+entries in my diary which were written when, after six months' close
+study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came again to the Lombard work of
+Verona and Pavia. There are some other points alluded to in these
+entries not pertaining to the matter immediately in hand; but I have
+left them, as they will be of use hereafter.
+
+"(Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the Duomo here with
+St. Mark's, the first thing that strikes one is the low relief, the
+second, the greater motion and spirit, with infinitely less grace and
+science. With the Byzantine, however rude the cutting, every line is
+lovely, and the animals or men are placed in any attitudes which secure
+ornamental effect, sometimes impossible ones, always severe, restrained,
+or languid. With the Romanesque workmen all the figures show the effort
+(often successful) to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much
+fighting, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally,
+straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces and
+drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is graceful,
+fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,--the mark of a
+school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to them, and never
+likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but with an exquisite sense of
+beauty, and much solemn religious faith.
+
+"If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark's is Byzantine, the law is
+somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged in every trade,
+and in the preparation of viands of all kinds; a crowded kind of London
+Christmas scene, interleaved (literally) by the superb balls of leafage,
+unique in sculpture; but even this is strongly opposed to the wild war
+and chase passion of the Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as
+sharp, precise, and accurate, as that of St. Mark's is careless. The
+Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together; and,
+in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months
+in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect _feeling_
+here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface
+ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more
+chaste, pure, or solemn."
+
+I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of St.
+Zeno;[96] the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt above
+them is to our present purpose:
+
+"It is covered by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting
+subject:--two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a
+fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the
+foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is
+delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the
+arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there.
+Several capital hunts with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in
+them; the leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with
+the edges outwards, sharp, and deep cut: snails and frogs filling up the
+intervals, as if suspended in the air, with some saucy puppies on their
+hind legs, two or three nondescript beasts; and, finally, on the centre
+of one of the arches on the south side, an elephant and castle,--a very
+strange elephant, yet cut as if the carver had seen one."
+
+Observe this elephant and castle; we shall meet with him farther north.
+
+"These sculptures of St. Zeno are, however, quite quiet and tame
+compared with those of St. Michele of Pavia, which are designed also in
+a somewhat gloomier mood; significative, as I think, of indigestion.
+(Note that they are much earlier than St. Zeno; of the seventh century
+at latest. There is more of nightmare, and less of wit in them.) Lord
+Lindsay has described them admirably, but has not said half enough; the
+state of mind represented by the west front is more that of a feverish
+dream, than resultant from any determined architectural purpose, or even
+from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One capital is
+covered with a mass of grinning heads, other heads grow out of two
+bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures are all fighting, or
+devouring, or struggling which shall be uppermost, and yet in an
+ineffectual way, as if they would fight for ever, and come to no
+decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs did I notice, nor a single
+peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely Byzantine), but mermaids with
+_two_ tails (the sculptor having perhaps seen double at the time),
+strange, large fish, apes, stags (bulls?), dogs, wolves, and horses,
+griffins, eagles, long-tailed birds (cocks?), hawks, and dragons,
+without end, or with a dozen of ends, as the case may be; smaller birds,
+with rabbits, and small nondescripts, filling the friezes. The actual
+leaf, which is used in the best Byzantine mouldings at Venice, occurs in
+parts of these Pavian designs. But the Lombard animals are all _alive_,
+and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring: the Byzantine birds
+peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with their
+noses. The cinque cento birds in Venice hold it up daintily, like
+train-bearers; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at it hungrily and
+naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it like tigers, and tear it
+off with writhing lips and glaring eyes. They are exactly like Jip with
+the bit of geranium, worrying imaginary cats in it."
+
+The notice of the leaf in the above extract is important,--it is the
+vine-leaf; used constantly both by Byzantines and Lombards, but by the
+latter with especial frequency, though at this time they were hardly
+able to indicate what they meant. It forms the most remarkable
+generality of the St. Michele decoration; though, had it not luckily
+been carved on the façade, twining round a stake, and with grapes, I
+should never have known what it was meant for, its general form being a
+succession of sharp lobes, with incised furrows to the point of each.
+But it is thrown about in endless change; four or five varieties of it
+might be found on every cluster of capitals: and not content with this,
+the Lombards hint the same form even in their griffin wings. They love
+the vine very heartily.
+
+In St. Michele of Lucca we have perhaps the noblest instance in Italy of
+the Lombard spirit in its later refinement. It is some four centuries
+later than St. Michele of Pavia, and the method of workmanship is
+altogether different. In the Pavian church, nearly all the ornament is
+cut in a coarse sandstone, in bold relief: a darker and harder stone (I
+think, not serpentine, but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of
+ages that I could not be certain) is used for the capitals of the
+western door, which are especially elaborate in their sculpture;--two
+devilish apes, or apish devils, I know not which, with bristly
+moustaches and edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands
+impertinently on their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes
+near them; but all is pure bossy sculpture; there is no inlaying, except
+of some variegated tiles in the shape of saucers set concave (an
+ornament used also very gracefully in St. Jacopo of Bologna): and the
+whole surface of the church is enriched with the massy reliefs, well
+preserved everywhere above the reach of human animals, but utterly
+destroyed to some five or six feet from the ground; worn away into large
+cellular hollows and caverns, some almost deep enough to render the
+walls unsafe, entirely owing to the uses to which the recesses of the
+church are dedicated by the refined and high-minded Italians. But St.
+Michele of Lucca is wrought entirely in white marble and green
+serpentine; there is hardly any relieved sculpture except in the
+capitals of the shafts and cornices, and all the designs of wall
+ornament are inlaid with exquisite precision--white on dark ground; the
+ground being cut out and filled with serpentine, the figures left in
+solid marble. The designs of the Pavian church are encrusted on the
+walls; of the Lucchese, incorporated with them; small portions of real
+sculpture being introduced exactly where the eye, after its rest on the
+flatness of the wall, will take most delight in the piece of substantial
+form. The entire arrangement is perfect beyond all praise, and the
+morbid restlessness of the old designs is now appeased. Geometry seems
+to have acted as a febrifuge, for beautiful geometrical designs are
+introduced amidst the tumult of the hunt; and there is no more seeing
+double, nor ghastly monstrosity of conception; no more ending of
+everything in something else; no more disputing for spare legs among
+bewildered bodies; no more setting on of heads wrong side foremost. The
+fragments have come together: we are out of the Inferno with its weeping
+down the spine; we are in the fair hunting-fields of the Lucchese
+mountains (though they had their tears also),--with horse, and hound,
+and hawk; and merry blast of the trumpet.--Very strange creatures to be
+hunted, in all truth; but still creatures with a single head, and that
+on their shoulders, which is exactly the last place in the Pavian church
+where a head is to be looked for.
+
+My good friend Mr. Cockerell wonders, in one of his lectures, why I give
+so much praise to this "crazy front of Lucca." But it is not crazy; not
+by any means. Altogether sober, in comparison with the early Lombard
+work, or with our Norman. Crazy in one sense it is: utterly neglected,
+to the breaking of its old stout heart; the venomous nights and salt
+frosts of the Maremma winters have their way with it--"Poor Tom's a
+cold!" The weeds that feed on the marsh air, have twisted themselves
+into its crannies; the polished fragments of serpentine are spit and
+rent out of their cells, and lie in green ruins along its ledges; the
+salt sea winds have eaten away the fair shafting of its star window into
+a skeleton of crumbling rays. It cannot stand much longer; may Heaven
+only, in its benignity, preserve it from restoration, and the sands of
+the Serchio give it honorable grave.
+
+In the "Seven Lamps," Plate VI., I gave a faithful drawing of one of its
+upper arches, to which I must refer the reader; for there is a marked
+piece of character in the figure of the horseman on the left of it. And
+in making this reference, I would say a few words about those much
+abused plates of the "Seven Lamps." They are black, they are overbitten,
+they are hastily drawn, they are coarse and disagreeable; how
+disagreeable to many readers I venture not to conceive. But their truth
+is carried to an extent never before attempted in architectural drawing.
+It does not in the least follow that because a drawing is delicate, or
+looks careful, it has been carefully drawn from the thing represented;
+in nine instances out of ten, careful and delicate drawings are made at
+home. It is not so easy as the reader, perhaps, imagines, to finish a
+drawing altogether on the spot, especially of details seventy feet from
+the ground; and any one who will try the position in which I have had to
+do some of my work--standing, namely, on a cornice or window sill,
+holding by one arm round a shaft, and hanging over the street (or canal,
+at Venice), with my sketch-book supported against the wall from which I
+was drawing, by my breast, so as to leave my right hand free--will not
+thenceforward wonder that shadows should be occasionally carelessly
+laid in, or lines drawn with some unsteadiness. But, steady, or infirm,
+the sketches of which those plates in the "Seven Lamps" are fac-similes,
+were made from the architecture itself, and represent that architecture
+with its actual shadows at the time of day at which it was drawn, and
+with every fissure and line of it as they now exist; so that when I am
+speaking of some new point, which perhaps the drawing was not intended
+to illustrate, I can yet turn back to it with perfect certainty that if
+anything be found in it bearing on matters now in hand, I may depend
+upon it just as securely as if I had gone back to look again at the
+building.
+
+It is necessary that my readers should understand this thoroughly, and I
+did not before sufficiently explain it; but I believe I can show them
+the use of this kind of truth, now that we are again concerned with this
+front of Lucca. They will find a drawing of the entire front in Gally
+Knight's "Architecture of Italy." It may serve to give them an idea of
+its general disposition, and it looks very careful and accurate; but
+every bit of the ornament on it is _drawn out of the artist's head_.
+There is not _one line_ of it that exists on the building. The reader
+will therefore, perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more
+value, upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its
+delicate fiction.[97]
+
+[Illustration: Plate XXI.
+               WALL VEIL DECORATION.]
+
+As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church somewhat
+more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favorite church should
+suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had this, as far as might be,
+fac-similied by line engraving (Plate XXI.). It represents the southern
+side of the lower arcade of the west front; and may convey some idea of
+the exquisite finish and grace of the whole; but the old plate, in the
+"Seven Lamps," gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a
+more faithful impression of the present aspect of the work, and
+especially of the seats of the horsemen; the limb straight, and well
+down on the stirrup (the warrior's seat, observe, not the jockey's),
+with a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice
+under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn; it was
+supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, however, the reader has
+lost the thread of my story while I have been recommending my veracity
+to him. I was insisting upon the healthy tone of this Lucca work as
+compared with the old spectral Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian
+church ride without stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here:
+civilisation had done its work; there was reaping of corn in the Val
+d'Arno, though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north,
+though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone, and its
+rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more meat-eating,
+then, I think). I do not know a more interesting group of cathedrals
+than that of Lyons, Vienne, and Valencia: a more interesting indeed,
+generally, than beautiful; but there is a row of niches on the west
+front of Lyons, and a course of panelled decoration about its doors,
+which is, without exception, the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic
+I ever beheld, and with which I know nothing that is even comparable,
+except the work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the "Seven
+Lamps," p. 159; work of about the same date, and exactly the same plan;
+quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished in
+execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote down hastily,
+and in their own course, the subjects of some of the quatrefoils of
+Lyons; of which I here give the reader the sequence:--
+
+   1. Elephant and castle; less graphic than the St. Zeno one.
+
+   2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards, hoofed; the
+        head has a horn behind, with drapery over it, which ends in
+        another head.
+
+   3. A boar hunt; the boar under a tree, very spirited.
+
+   4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own tail,
+        which ends in a head.
+
+   5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way.
+
+   6. St. Peter awakened by the angel in prison; full of spirit, the
+        prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch, the angel eager, St.
+        Peter startled, and full of motion.
+
+   7. St. Peter led out by the angel.
+
+   8. The miraculous draught of fishes; fish and all, in the small
+        space.
+
+   9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nautilus
+        shells, with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends of their
+        horns.
+
+  10. A man with an axe striking at a dog's head, which comes out of
+        a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches into a stem
+        with two large leaves.
+
+  11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian; his body very full of arrows.
+
+  12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker cage.
+
+  13. Noah building the ark on shores.
+
+  14. A vine leaf with a dragon's head and tail, the one biting the
+        other.
+
+  15. A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil.
+
+  16. An eel or muraena growing into a bunch of flowers, which turns
+        into two wings.
+
+  17. A sprig of hazel, with nuts, thrown all around the quatrefoils
+        with a squirrel in centre, apparently attached to the tree only
+        by its enormous tail, richly furrowed into hair, and nobly
+        sweeping.
+
+  18. Four hares fastened together by the ears, galloping in a circle.
+        Mingled with these grotesques are many _sword_ and _buckler_
+        combats, the bucklers being round and conical like a hat; I
+        thought the first I noticed, carried by a man at full gallop on
+        horseback, had been a small umbrella.
+
+This list of subjects may sufficiently illustrate the feverish character
+of the Northern Energy; but influencing the treatment of the whole there
+is also the Northern love of what is called the Grotesque, a feeling
+which I find myself, for the present, quite incapable either of
+analysing or defining, though we all have a distinct idea attached to
+the word: I shall try, however, in the next volume.
+
+
+  9. WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE NORTH.
+
+I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the origin of the vaulting
+shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirmations of it in
+Dahl's work on the wooden churches of Norway. The inside view of the
+church of Borgund shows the timber construction of one shaft run up
+through a crossing architrave, and continued into the clerestory; while
+the church of Urnes is in the exact form of a basilica; but the wall
+above the arches is formed of planks, with a strong upright above each
+capital. The passage quoted from Stephen Eddy's Life of Bishop Wilfrid,
+at p. 86 of Churton's "Early English Church," gives us one of the
+transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches. "At Ripon
+he built a new church of _polished stone_, with columns variously
+ornamented, and porches." Mr. Churton adds: "It was perhaps in bad
+imitation of the marble buildings he had seen in Italy, that he washed
+the walls of this original York Minster, and made them 'whiter than
+snow.'"
+
+
+  10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA.
+
+The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess themselves of the
+body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church by the caliph for
+the _sake of its marbles_: the Arabs and Venetians, though bitter
+enemies, thus building on the same models; these in reverence for the
+destroyed church, and those with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat
+prolix account of the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above
+quoted) the main points are, that "il Califa de' Saraceni, per
+fabbricarsi un Palazzo presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle
+Chiese d' Cristiani si togliessero i più scelti marmi;" and that the
+Venetians, "videro sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un
+Cristiano per aver infranto un marmo." I heartily wish that the same
+kind of punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin.
+
+
+  11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE.
+
+I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me to be
+suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the second volume of
+"Modern Painters," as compared with the first, induced, I believe, this
+suspicion, very justifiably, in the minds of many of its readers. The
+difference resulted, however, from the simple fact, that the first was
+written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and
+time;--the second, after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in
+inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my
+opinions remaining then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the
+subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther doubt of
+them may be entertained by any who may think them worth questioning, I
+shall here, once for all, express them in the plainest and fewest words
+I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner is not only the greatest (professed)
+landscape painter who ever lived, but that he has in him as much as
+would have furnished all the rest with such power as they had; and that
+if we put Nicolo Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the
+group, he would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others,
+by uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough stated.
+And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year 1845, the best;
+and believe that those persons who only like his early pictures do not,
+in fact, like him at all. They do _not_ like that which is essentially
+_his_. They like that in which he resembles other men; which he had
+learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson; that which is indeed his
+own, they do not care for. Not that there is not much of his own in his
+early works; they are all invaluable in their way; but those persons who
+can find no beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot
+distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier
+pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his pictures
+painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his
+entire power is best represented by such pictures as the Temeraire, the
+Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others, painted exactly at the time when
+the public and the press were together loudest in abuse of him.
+
+  Turner. Tintoret.
+  Massaccio.
+  John Bellini.
+  Albert Durer.
+  Giorgione.
+  Paul Veronese.
+  Titian.
+  Rubens.
+  Correggio.
+  Orcagna.
+  Benozzo Gozzoli.
+  Giotto.
+  Raffaelle.
+  Perugino.
+
+I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above, _professed_
+landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should hardly have put
+Gainsborough. The landscape of the great figure painters is often
+majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret's especially shows exactly
+the same power and feeling as Turner's. If with Turner I were to rank
+the historical painters as landscapists, estimating rather the power
+they show, than the actual value of the landscape they produced, I
+should class those, whose landscapes I have studied, in some such order
+as this at the side of the page:--associating with the landscape of
+Perugino that of Francia and Angelico, and the other severe painters of
+religious subjects. I have put Turner and Tintoret side by side, not
+knowing which is, in landscape, the greater; I had nearly associated in
+the same manner the noble names of John Bellini and Albert Durer; but
+Bellini must be put first, for his profound religious peace yet not
+separated from the other, if but that we might remember his kindness to
+him in Venice; and it is well we should take note of it here, for it
+furnishes us with a most interesting confirmation of what was said in
+the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the religious
+painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in Jackson's "Essay
+on Wood-engraving," from Albert Durer's Diary:
+
+"I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me not to eat or
+drink with their painters, of whom several are my enemies, and copy my
+picture in the church, and others of mine, wherever they can find them,
+and yet they blame them, _and say they are not according to ancient art,
+and therefore not good_. Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me
+highly to several gentlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing:
+he called on me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for
+him, for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all surprised
+that I should be so much thought of by a person of his reputation: he is
+very old, but is still the best painter of them all."
+
+A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance painters,
+side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon to leave them to
+their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen in perfection, envying,
+stealing, and lying, but without wit enough to lie to purpose.
+
+
+  12. ROMANIST MODERN ART.
+
+It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism should be
+deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and picturesqueness
+have given it over the weak sentimentalism of the English people; I call
+it a miserable influence, for of all motives to sympathy with the Church
+of Rome, this I unhesitatingly class as the basest: I can, in some
+measure, respect the other feelings which have been the beginnings of
+apostasy; I can respect the desire for unity which would reclaim the
+Romanist by love, and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the
+proselyte to priestly power; I say I can respect these feelings, though
+I cannot pardon unprincipled submission to them, nor enough wonder at
+the infinite fatuity of the unhappy persons whom they have
+betrayed:--Fatuity, self-inflicted, and stubborn in resistance to God's
+Word and man's reason!--to talk of the authority of the Church, as if
+the Church were anything else than the whole company of Christian men,
+or were ever spoken of in Scripture[98] as other than a company to be
+taught and fed, not to teach and feed.--Fatuity! to talk of a separation
+of Church and State, as if a Christian state, and every officer therein,
+were not necessarily a part of the Church,[99] and as if any state
+officer could do his duty without endeavoring to aid and promote
+religion, or any clerical officer do his duty without seeking for such
+aid and accepting it:--Fatuity! to seek for the unity of a living body
+of truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in wood,
+and thence to expect anything else than plague, and consumption by worms
+undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as fatuity! to ask for any better
+interpreter of God's Word than God, or to expect knowledge of it in any
+other way than the plainly ordered way: if _any_ man will do he shall
+know. But of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the
+Romanist Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by broken
+glass; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine of an
+organ-pipe; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on priests'
+petticoats; jangled into a change of conscience by the chimes of a
+belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark as this, no
+imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible. I had hardly
+believed that it was a thing possible, though vague stories had been
+told me of the effect, on some minds, of mere scarlet and candles, until
+I came on this passage in Pugin's "Remarks on articles in the
+Rambler":--
+
+"Those who have lived in want and privation are the best qualified to
+appreciate the blessings of plenty; thus, those who have been devout and
+sincere members of the separated portion of the English Church; who have
+prayed, and hoped, and loved, through all the poverty of the maimed
+rites which it has retained--to them does the realisation of all their
+longing desires appear truly ravishing. * * * Oh! then, what delight!
+what joy unspeakable! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them,
+in all its pristine life and glory!--the stoups are filled to the brim;
+the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred imagery and
+rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced, sustained by
+sculptured shafts, the relics of the saints repose beneath, the body of
+Our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated stone; the lamps of the
+sanctuary burn bright; the saintly portraitures in the glass windows
+shine all gloriously; and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the
+cope chests are filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax, and
+chrismatory are there, and thurible, and cross."
+
+One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one should have
+thought; but he has been brought forward, and partly received, as an
+example of the effect of ceremonial splendor on the mind of a great
+architect. It is very necessary, therefore, that all those who have felt
+sorrow at this should know at once that he is not a great architect,
+but one of the smallest possible or conceivable architects; and that by
+his own account and setting forth of himself. Hear him:--
+
+"I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so unfortunate as
+myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine things, studying fine
+things, designing fine things, and realising very poor ones. I have
+never had the chance of producing a single fine ecclesiastical building,
+except my own church, where I am both paymaster and architect; but
+everything else, either for want of adequate funds or injudicious
+interference and control, or some other contingency, is more or less a
+failure. * * *
+
+"St. George's was spoilt by the very instructions laid down by the
+committee, that it was to hold 3000 people on the floor at a limited
+price; in consequence, height, proportion, everything, was sacrificed to
+meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by the style being
+restricted to lancet,--a period well suited to a Cistercian abbey in a
+secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the centre of a crowded
+town. * * *
+
+"Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being reduced on the
+original estimate; to effect this, which was a great sum in proportion
+to the entire cost, the area of the church was contracted, the walls
+lowered, tower and spire reduced, the thickness of walls diminished, and
+stone arches omitted." (Remarks, &c., by A. Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850.)
+
+Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a pediment, and
+Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a clay platter; but
+Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral? Let his ineffableness
+be assured of this, once for all, that no difficulty or restraint ever
+happened to a man of real power, but his power was the more manifested
+in the contending with, or conquering it; and that there is no field so
+small, no cranny so contracted, but that a great spirit can house and
+manifest itself therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can
+gather itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there
+was in you, had it been Buonarroti's own, you had room enough for it in
+a single niche: you might have put the whole power of it into two feet
+cube of Caen stone. St. George's was not high enough for want of money?
+But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded,
+laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that
+you sunk the tracery of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in
+parsimony that you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of
+diseased crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the
+belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which nobody can
+ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in mere incapability of better
+things.
+
+I am sorry to have to speak thus of any living architect; and there is
+much in this man, if he were rightly estimated, which one might both
+regard and profit by. He has a most sincere love for his profession, a
+heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes and piscinas; and though he will
+never design so much as a pix or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better
+than most of the experimental architects of the day. Employ him by all
+means, but on small work. Expect no cathedrals from him; but no one, at
+present, can design a better finial. That is an exceedingly beautiful
+one over the western door of St. George's; and there is some spirited
+impishness and switching of tails in the supporting figures at the
+imposts. Only do not allow his good designing of finials to be employed
+as an evidence in matters of divinity, nor thence deduce the
+incompatibility of Protestantism and art. I should have said all that I
+have said above, of artistical apostasy, if Giotto had been now living
+in Florence, and if art were still doing all that it did once for Rome.
+But the grossness of the error becomes incomprehensible as well as
+unpardonable, when we look to what level of degradation the human
+intellect has sunk at this instant in Italy. So far from Romanism now
+producing anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has been
+given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance half so
+grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art wherever the Romanist
+priesthood gets possession of it. It amounts to absolute infatuation.
+The noblest pieces of mediĉval sculpture in North Italy, the two
+griffins at the central (west) door of the cathedral of Verona, were
+daily permitted to be brought into service, when I was there in the
+autumn of 1849, by a washerwoman living in the Piazza, who tied her
+clothes-lines to their beaks: and the shafts of St. Mark's at Venice
+were used by a salesman of common caricatures to fasten his prints upon
+(Compare Appendix 25); and this in the face of the continually passing
+priests: while the quantity of noble art annually destroyed in
+altarpieces by candle-droppings, or perishing by pure brutality of
+neglect, passes all estimate. I do not know, as I have repeatedly
+stated, how far the splendor of architecture, or other art, is
+compatible with the honesty and usefulness of religious service. The
+longer I live, the more I incline to severe judgment in this matter, and
+the less I can trust the sentiments excited by painted glass and colored
+tiles. But if there be indeed value in such things, our plain duty is to
+direct our strength against the superstition which has dishonored them;
+there are thousands who might possibly be benefited by them, to whom
+they are now merely an offence, owing to their association with
+idolatrous ceremonies. I have but this exhortation for all who love
+them,--not to regulate their creeds by their taste in colors, but to
+hold calmly to the right, at whatever present cost to their imaginative
+enjoyment; sure that they will one day find in heavenly truth a brighter
+charm than in earthly imagery, and striving to gather stones for the
+eternal building, whose walls shall be salvation, and whose gates shall
+be praise.
+
+
+  13. MR. FERGUSSON'S SYSTEM.
+
+The reader may at first suppose this division of the attributes of
+buildings into action, voice, and beauty, to be the same division as Mr.
+Fergusson's, now well known, of their merits, into technic, ĉsthetic and
+phonetic.
+
+But there is no connection between the two systems; mine, indeed, does
+not profess to be a system, it is a mere arrangement of my subject, for
+the sake of order and convenience in its treatment: but, as far as it
+goes, it differs altogether from Mr. Fergusson's in these two following
+respects:--
+
+The action of a building, that is to say its standing or consistence,
+depends on its good construction; and the first part of the foregoing
+volume has been entirely occupied with the consideration of the
+constructive merit of buildings: but construction is not their only
+technical merit. There is as much of technical merit in their
+expression, or in their beauty, as in their construction. There is no
+more mechanical or technical admirableness in the stroke of the painter
+who covers them with fresco, than in the dexterity of the mason who
+cements their stones: there is just as much of what is technical in
+their beauty, therefore, as in their construction; and, on the other
+hand, there is often just as much intellect shown in their construction
+as there is in either their expression or decoration. Now Mr. Fergusson
+means by his "Phonetic" division, whatever expresses intellect: my
+constructive division, therefore, includes part of his phonetic: and my
+expressive and decorative divisions include part of his technical.
+
+Secondly, Mr. Fergusson tries to make the same divisions fit the
+_subjects_ of art, and art itself; and therefore talks of technic,
+ĉsthetic, and phonetic, _arts_, (or, translating the Greek,) of artful
+arts, sensitive arts, and talkative arts; but I have nothing to do with
+any division of the arts, I have to deal only with the merits of
+_buildings_. As, however, I have been led into reference to Mr.
+Fergusson's system, I would fain say a word or two to effect Mr.
+Fergusson's extrication from it. I hope to find in him a noble ally,
+ready to join with me in war upon affectation, falsehood, and prejudice,
+of every kind: I have derived much instruction from his most interesting
+work, and I hope for much more from its continuation; but he must
+disentangle himself from his system, or he will be strangled by it;
+never was anything so ingeniously and hopelessly wrong throughout; the
+whole of it is founded on a confusion of the instruments of man with his
+capacities.
+
+Mr. Fergusson would have us take--
+
+  "First, man's muscular action or power." (Technics.)
+
+  "Secondly, those developments of sense _by_ which _he does!!_ as much
+    as by his muscles." (Ĉsthetics.)
+
+  "Lastly, his intellect, or to confine this more correctly to its
+    external action, _his power of speech!!!_" (Phonetics.)
+
+Granting this division of humanity correct, or sufficient, the writer
+then most curiously supposes that he may arrange the arts as if there
+were some belonging to each division of man,--never observing that every
+art must be governed by, and addressed to, one division, and executed by
+another; executed by the muscular, addressed to the sensitive or
+intellectual; and that, to be an art at all, it must have in it work of
+the one, and guidance from the other. If, by any lucky accident, he had
+been led to arrange the arts, either by their objects, and the things to
+which they are addressed, or by their means, and the things by which
+they are executed, he would have discovered his mistake in an instant.
+As thus:--
+
+  These arts are addressed to the,--Muscles!!
+                                    Senses,
+                                    Intellect;
+                   or executed by,--Muscles,
+                                    Senses!!
+                                    Intellect.
+
+Indeed it is true that some of the arts are in a sort addressed to the
+muscles, surgery for instance; but this is not among Mr. Fergusson's
+technic, but his politic, arts! and all the arts may, in a sort, be said
+to be performed by the senses, as the senses guide both muscles and
+intellect in their work: but they guide them as they receive
+information, or are standards of accuracy, but not as in themselves
+capable of action. Mr. Fergusson is, I believe, the first person who has
+told us of senses that act or do, they having been hitherto supposed
+only to sustain or perceive. The weight of error, however, rests just as
+much in the original division of man, as in the endeavor to fit the arts
+to it. The slight omission of the soul makes a considerable difference
+when it begins to influence the final results of the arrangement.
+
+Mr. Fergusson calls morals and religion "Politick arts" (as if religion
+were an art at all! or as if both were not as necessary to individuals
+as to societies); and therefore, forming these into a body of arts by
+themselves, leaves the best of the arts to do without the soul and the
+moral feeling as rest they may. Hence "expression," or "phonetics," is
+of intellect only (as if men never expressed their _feelings!_); and
+then, strangest and worst of all, intellect is entirely resolved into
+talking! There can be no intellect but it must talk, and all talking
+must be intellectual. I believe people do sometimes talk without
+understanding; and I think the world would fare ill if they never
+understood without talking. The intellect is an entirely silent faculty,
+and has nothing to do with parts of speech any more than the moral part
+has. A man may feel and know things without expressing either the
+feeling or knowledge; and the talking is a _muscular_ mode of
+communicating the workings of the intellect or heart--muscular, whether
+it be by tongue or by sign, or by carving or writing, or by expression
+of feature; so that to divide a man into muscular and talking parts, is
+to divide him into body in general, and tongue in particular, the
+endless confusion resulting from which arrangement is only less
+marvellous in itself, than the resolution with which Mr. Fergusson has
+worked through it, and in spite of it, up to some very interesting and
+suggestive truths; although starting with a division of humanity which
+does not in the least raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has
+his muscular, ĉsthetic, and talking part as much as man, only he talks
+with his tail, and says, "I am angry with you, and should like to bite
+you," more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could,
+were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between the brute
+and man is not so much that the one has fewer means of expression than
+the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to express, and that we do not
+understand its expressions. Animals can talk to one another intelligibly
+enough when they have anything to say, and their captains have words of
+command just as clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in
+watching the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being,
+a melancholy sense of its dumbness; but the fault is still in its
+intelligence, more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to
+systematise its cries or signs, and form them into language.
+
+But there is no end to the fallacies and confusions of Mr. Fergusson's
+arrangement. It is a perfect entanglement of gun-cotton, and explodes
+into vacuity wherever one holds a light to it. I shall leave him to do
+so with the rest of it for himself, and should perhaps have left it to
+his own handling altogether, but for the intemperateness of the spirit
+with which he has spoken on a subject perhaps of all others demanding
+gentleness and caution. No man could more earnestly have desired the
+changes lately introduced into the system of the University of Oxford
+than I did myself: no man can be more deeply sensible than I of grievous
+failures in the practical working even of the present system: but I
+believe that these failures may be almost without exception traced to
+one source, the want of evangelical, and the excess of rubrical religion
+among the tutors; together with such rustinesses and stiffnesses as
+necessarily attend the continual operation of any intellectual machine.
+The fault is, at any rate, far less in the system than in the
+imperfection of its administration; and had it been otherwise, the terms
+in which Mr. Fergusson speaks of it are hardly decorous in one who can
+but be imperfectly acquainted with its working. They are sufficiently
+answered by the structure of the essay in which they occur; for if the
+high powers of mind which its author possesses had been subjected to the
+discipline of the schools, he could not have wasted his time on the
+development of a system which their simplest formulĉ of logic would have
+shown him to be untenable.
+
+Mr. Fergusson will, however, find it easier to overthrow his system than
+to replace it. Every man of science knows the difficulty of arranging a
+_reasonable_ system of classification, in any subject, by any one group
+of characters; and that the best classifications are, in many of their
+branches, convenient rather than reasonable: so that, to any person who
+is really master of his subject, many different modes of classification
+will occur at different times; one of which he will use rather than
+another, according to the point which he has to investigate. I need only
+instance the three arrangements of minerals, by their external
+characters, and their positive or negative bases, of which the first is
+the most useful, the second the most natural, the third the most simple;
+and all in several ways unsatisfactory.
+
+But when the subject becomes one which no single mind can grasp, and
+which embraces the whole range of human occupation and enquiry, the
+difficulties become as great, and the methods as various, as the uses to
+which the classification might be put; and Mr. Fergusson has entirely
+forgotten to inform us what is the object to which his arrangements are
+addressed. For observe: there is one kind of arrangement which is based
+on the rational connection of the sciences or arts with one another; an
+arrangement which maps them out like the rivers of some great country,
+and marks the points of their junction, and the direction and force of
+their united currents; and this without assigning to any one of them a
+superiority above another, but considering them all as necessary members
+of the noble unity of human science and effort. There is another kind of
+classification which contemplates the order of succession in which they
+might most usefully be presented to a single mind, so that the given
+mind should obtain the most effective and available knowledge of them
+all: and, finally, the most usual classification contemplates the powers
+of mind which they each require for their pursuit, the objects to which
+they are addressed, or with which they are concerned; and assigns to
+each of them a rank superior or inferior, according to the nobility of
+the powers they require, or the grandeur of the subjects they
+contemplate.
+
+Now, not only would it be necessary to adopt a different classification
+with respect to each of these great intentions, but it might be found so
+even to vary the order of the succession of sciences in the case of
+every several mind to which they were addressed; and that their rank
+would also vary with the power and specific character of the mind
+engaged upon them. I once heard a very profound mathematician
+remonstrate against the impropriety of Wordsworth's receiving a pension
+from government, on the ground that he was "only a poet." If the study
+of mathematics had always this narrowing effect upon the sympathies, the
+science itself would need to be deprived of the rank usually assigned to
+it; and there could be no doubt that, in the effect it had on the mind
+of this man, and of such others, it was a very contemptible science
+indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is
+necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every
+order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no
+one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and
+others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general
+meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them:
+thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of all the sciences,
+has been raised to unjust dignity by Johnson.[100] And the subject is
+farther complicated by the question of usefulness; for many of the arts
+and sciences require considerable intellectual power for their pursuit,
+and yet become contemptible by the slightness of what they accomplish:
+metaphysics, for instance, exercising intelligence of a high order, yet
+useless to the mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet,
+as it has become so by the want of the true intelligence which its
+inquiries need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it
+may in future vindicate for itself a higher rank than a man of common
+sense usually concedes to it.
+
+Nevertheless, the mere attempt at arrangement must be useful, even where
+it does nothing more than develop difficulties. Perhaps the greatest
+fault of men of learning is their so often supposing all other branches
+of science dependent upon or inferior to their own best beloved branch;
+and the greatest deficiency of men comparatively unlearned, their want
+of perception of the connection of the branches with each other. He who
+holds the tree only by the extremities, can perceive nothing but the
+separation of its sprays. It must always be desirable to prove to those
+the equality of rank, to these the closeness of sequence, of what they
+had falsely supposed subordinate or separate. And, after such candid
+admission of the co-equal dignity of the truly noble arts and sciences,
+we may be enabled more justly to estimate the inferiority of those which
+indeed seem intended for the occupation of inferior powers and narrower
+capacities. In Appendix 14, following, some suggestions will be found as
+to the principles on which classification might be based; but the
+arrangement of all the arts is certainly not a work which could with
+discretion be attempted in the Appendix to an essay on a branch of one
+of them.
+
+
+  14. DIVISIONS OF HUMANITY.
+
+The reader will probably understand this part of the subject better if
+he will take the trouble briefly to consider the actions of the mind and
+body of man in the sciences and arts, which give these latter the
+relations of rank usually attributed to them.
+
+It was above observed (Appendix 13) that the arts were generally ranked
+according to the nobility of the powers they require, that is to say,
+the quantity of the being of man which they engaged or addressed. Now
+their rank is not a very important matter as regards each other, for
+there are few disputes more futile than that concerning the respective
+dignity of arts, all of which are necessary and honorable. But it is a
+very important matter as regards themselves; very important whether
+they are practised with the devotion and regarded with the respect
+which are necessary or due to their perfection. It does not at all
+matter whether architecture or sculpture be the nobler art; but it
+matters much whether the thought is bestowed upon buildings, or the
+feeling is expressed in statues, which make either deserving of our
+admiration. It is foolish and insolent to imagine that the art which we
+ourselves practise is greater than any other; but it is wise to take
+care that in our own hands it is as noble as we can make it. Let us take
+some notice, therefore, in what degrees the faculties of man may be
+engaged in his several arts: we may consider the entire man as made up
+of body, soul, and intellect (Lord Lindsay, meaning the same thing, says
+inaccurately--sense, intellect, and spirit--forgetting that there is a
+moral sense as well as a bodily sense, and a spiritual body as well as a
+natural body, and so gets into some awkward confusion, though right in
+the main points). Then, taking the word soul as a short expression of
+the moral and responsible part of being, each of these three parts has a
+passive and active power. The body has senses and muscles; the soul,
+feeling and resolution; the intellect, understanding and imagination.
+The scheme may be put into tabular form, thus:--
+
+              Passive or Receptive Part.    Active or Motive Part.
+  Body                  Senses.                  Muscles.
+  Soul                  Feeling.                 Resolution.
+  Intellect             Understanding.           Imagination.
+
+In this scheme I consider memory a part of understanding, and conscience
+I leave out, as being the voice of God in the heart, inseparable from
+the system, yet not an essential part of it. The sense of beauty I
+consider a mixture of the Senses of the body and soul.
+
+Now all these parts of the human system have a reciprocal action on one
+another, so that the true perfection of any of them is not possible
+without some relative perfection of the others, and yet any one of the
+parts of the system may be brought into a morbid development,
+inconsistent with the perfection of the others. Thus, in a healthy
+state, the acuteness of the senses quickens that of the feelings, and
+these latter quicken the understanding, and then all the three quicken
+the imagination, and then all the four strengthen the resolution; while
+yet there is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid
+feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd
+and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the
+understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine,
+the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a
+delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost health
+of the muscular system, as in the quick sight and hearing of an active
+savage: another false delicacy of the senses, in the Sybarite,
+consequent on their over indulgence, until the doubled rose-leaf is
+painful; and this inconsistent with muscular perfection. Again; there is
+a perfection of muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in
+that of the fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles
+are guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil:
+another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acuteness of
+sense, as in the effort of battle, in which a soldier does not perceive
+his wounds. So that it is never so much the question, what is the
+solitary perfection of a given part of the man, as what is its balanced
+perfection in relation to the whole of him: and again, the perfection of
+any single power is not merely to be valued by the mere rank of the
+power itself, but by the harmony which it indicates among the other
+powers. Thus, for instance, in an archer's glance along his arrow, or a
+hunter's raising of his rifle, there is a certain perfection of sense
+and finger which is the result of mere practice, of a simple bodily
+perfection; but there is a farther value in the habit which results from
+the resolution and intellect necessary to the forming of it: in the
+hunter's raising of his rifle there is a quietness implying far more
+than mere practice,--implying courage, and habitual meeting of danger,
+and presence of mind, and many other such noble characters. So also in a
+musician's way of laying finger on his instrument, or a painter's
+handling of his pencil, there are many qualities expressive of the
+special sensibilities of each, operating on the production of the habit,
+besides the sensibility operating at the moment of action. So that there
+are three distinct stages of merit in what is commonly called mere
+bodily dexterity: the first, the dexterity given by practice, called
+command of tools or of weapons; the second stage, the dexterity or
+grace given by character, as the gentleness of hand proceeding from
+modesty or tenderness of spirit, and the steadiness of it resulting from
+habitual patience coupled with decision, and the thousand other
+characters partially discernible, even in a man's writing, much more in
+his general handiwork; and, thirdly, there is the perfection of action
+produced by the operation of _present_ strength, feeling, or
+intelligence on instruments thus _previously_ perfected, as the handling
+of a great painter is rendered more beautiful by his immediate care and
+feeling and love of his subject, or knowledge of it, and as physical
+strength is increased by strength of will and greatness of heart.
+Imagine, for instance, the difference in manner of fighting, and in
+actual muscular strength and endurance, between a common soldier, and a
+man in the circumstances of the Horatii, or of the temper of Leonidas.
+
+Mere physical skill, therefore, the mere perfection and power of the
+body as an instrument, is manifested in three stages:
+
+  First, Bodily power by practice;
+  Secondly, Bodily power by moral habit;
+  Thirdly, Bodily power by immediate energy;
+
+and the arts will be greater or less, cĉteris paribus, according to the
+degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith's work at his
+anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting, and riding, admit
+something of the second; while the fine arts admit (merely through the
+channel of the bodily dexterities) an expression almost of the whole
+man.
+
+Nevertheless, though the higher arts _admit_ this higher bodily
+perfection, they do not all _require_ it in equal degrees, but can
+dispense with it more and more in proportion to their dignity. The arts
+whose chief element is bodily dexterity, may be classed together as arts
+of the third order, of which the highest will be those which admit most
+of the power of moral habit and energy, such as riding and the
+management of weapons; and the rest may be thrown together under the
+general title of handicrafts, of which it does not much matter which are
+the most honorable, but rather, which are the most necessary and least
+injurious to health, which it is not our present business to examine.
+Men engaged in the practice of these are called artizans, as opposed to
+artists, who are concerned with the fine arts.
+
+The next step in elevation of art is the addition of the intelligences
+which have no connection with bodily dexterity; as, for instance, in
+hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals and their places of
+abode; in architecture, of mathematics; in painting, of harmonies of
+color; in music, of those of sound; all this pure science being joined
+with readiness of expedient in applying it, and with shrewdness in
+apprehension of difficulties, either present or probable.
+
+It will often happen that intelligence of this kind is possessed without
+bodily dexterity, or the need of it; one man directing and another
+executing, as for the most part in architecture, war, and seamanship.
+And it is to be observed, also, that in proportion to the dignity of the
+art, the bodily dexterities needed even in its subordinate agents become
+less important, and are more and more replaced by intelligence; as in
+the steering of a ship, the bodily dexterity required is less than in
+shooting or fencing, but the intelligence far greater: and so in war,
+the mere swordsmanship and marksmanship of the troops are of small
+importance in comparison with their disposition, and right choice of the
+moment of action. So that arts of this second order must be estimated,
+not by the quantity of bodily dexterity they require, but by the
+quantity and dignity of the knowledge needed in their practice, and by
+the degree of subtlety needed in bringing such knowledge into play. War
+certainly stands first in the general mind, not only as the greatest of
+the arts which I have called of the second order, but as the greatest of
+all arts. It is not, however, easy to distinguish the respect paid to
+the Power, from that rendered to the Art of the soldier; the honor of
+victory being more dependent, in the vulgar mind, on its results, than
+its difficulties. I believe, however, that taking into consideration the
+greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be practised, the
+multitude of circumstances to be known and regarded in it, and the
+subtleties both of apprehension and stratagem constantly demanded by it,
+as well as the multiplicity of disturbing accidents and doubtful
+contingencies against which it must make provision on the instant, it
+must indeed rank as far the first of the arts of the second order; and
+next to this great art of killing, medicine being much like war in its
+stratagems and watchings against its dark and subtle death-enemy.
+
+Then the arts of the first order will be those in which the Imaginative
+part of the intellect and the Sensitive part of the soul are joined: as
+poetry, architecture, and painting; these forming a kind of cross, in
+their part of the scheme of the human being, with those of the second
+order, which wed the Intelligent part of the intellect and Resolute part
+of the soul. But the reader must feel more and more, at every step, the
+impossibility of classing the arts themselves, independently of the men
+by whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may be made
+noble by the quantity of human strength and being which a great man will
+pour into it; and an art, great in itself, be made mean by the meanness
+of the mind occupied in it. I do not intend, when I call painting an art
+of the first, and war an art of the second, order, to class Dutch
+landscape painters with good soldiers; but I mean, that if from such a
+man as Napoleon we were to take away the honor of all that he had done
+in law and civil government, and to give him the reputation of his
+soldiership only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that
+of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But I will
+not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all the arts
+of the first order it would be found that all that a man has, or is, or
+can be, he can fully express in them, and give to any of them, and find
+it not enough.
+
+
+  15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS.
+
+The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader to form of
+architecture, may in some sort also be formed of painting, owing to the
+close connection between execution and expression in the latter; as
+between structure and expression in the former. We ought to be able to
+tell good painting by a side glance as we pass along a gallery; and,
+until we can do so, we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all: not
+that I class this easily visible excellence of painting with the great
+expressional qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have
+again and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall
+always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among some of the
+more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the business of a
+painter is to _paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, Veronese
+and Rubens for instance, who were painters, par excellence, and in whom
+the expressional qualities are subordinate. Now it is well, when we have
+strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as
+the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of
+small account, the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed,
+for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a
+just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was
+wrong of him to paint. He had much better put his morality into sermons,
+and his poetry into verse, than into a language of which he was not
+master. And this mastery of the language is that of which we should be
+cognizant by a glance of the eye; and if that be not found, it is wasted
+time to look farther: the man has mistaken his vocation, and his
+expression of himself will be cramped by his awkward efforts to do what
+he was not fit to do. On the other hand, if the man be a painter indeed,
+and have the gift of colors and lines, what is in him will come from his
+hand freely and faithfully; and the language itself is so difficult and
+so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the man is great, and
+that his works are worth reading. So that I have never yet seen the case
+in which this true artistical excellence, visible by the eye-glance, was
+not the index of some true expressional worth in the work. Neither have
+I ever seen a good expressional work without high artistical merit: and
+that this is ever denied is only owing to the narrow view which men are
+apt to take both of expression and of art; a narrowness consequent on
+their own especial practice and habits of thought. A man long trained to
+love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns in proud and ineffable
+disgust from the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return
+across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten,
+that while Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was
+different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;--wild seas to be
+banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be
+drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful
+breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick walls
+against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands and gross
+stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and
+Christmas feasts, which were to be the reward of it; rough affections,
+and sluggish imagination; fleshy, substantial, ironshod humanities, but
+humanities still; humanities which God had his eye upon, and which won,
+perhaps, here and there, as much favor in his sight as the wasted
+aspects of the whispering monks of Florence (Heaven forbid it should not
+be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and
+reapers still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens'
+masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human
+rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and
+education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He
+had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those
+of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister
+breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in
+missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in
+him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court,
+knight's camp, or peasant's cottage. On the other hand, a man trained
+here in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow
+that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico. But he
+is just as wrong as the other. Fra Angelico is as true a master of the
+art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that necessary for his.
+We have been taught in England to think there can be no virtue but in a
+loaded brush and rapid hand; but if we can shake our common sense free
+of such teaching, we shall understand that there is art also in the
+delicate point and in the hand which trembles as it moves; not because
+it is more liable to err, but because there is more danger in its error,
+and more at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a
+colorist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and beautiful,
+that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-play and
+brilliancy of it: However closely it may be surrounded by other works of
+the same school, glowing with enamel and gold, Angelico's may be told
+from them at a glance, like so many huge pieces of opal lying among
+common marbles. So again with Giotto; the Arena chapel is not only the
+most perfect expressional work, it is the prettiest piece of wall
+decoration and fair color, in North Italy.
+
+Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the technical and
+expressional parts of architecture;--not a true or entire
+correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the building must
+be also best; but so much of correspondence as that good building is
+necessary to good expression, comes before it, and is to be primarily
+looked for: and the more, because the manner of building is capable of
+being determinately estimated and classed; but the expressional
+character not so: we can at once determine the true value of technical
+qualities, we can only approximate to the value of expressional
+qualities: and besides this, the looking for the technical qualities
+first will enable us to cast a large quantity of rubbish aside at once,
+and so to narrow the difficult field of inquiry into expression: we
+shall get rid of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, and Renaissance
+Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one great rubbish
+heap; and shall not need to trouble ourselves about their expression, or
+anything else concerning them. Then taking the buildings which have been
+rightly put together, and which show common sense in their structure, we
+may look for their farther and higher excellences; but on those which
+are absurd in their first steps we need waste no time.
+
+
+  16. STRENGTH OF SHAFTS.
+
+I could have wished, before writing this chapter, to have given more
+study to the difficult subject of the strength of shafts of different
+materials and structure; but I cannot enter into every inquiry which
+general criticism might suggest, and this I believe to be one which
+would have occupied the reader with less profit than many others: all
+that is necessary for him to note is, that the great increase of
+strength gained by a tubular form in iron shafts, of given solid
+contents, is no contradiction to the general principle stated in the
+text, that the strength of materials is most available when they are
+most concentrated. The strength of the tube is owing to certain
+properties of the arch formed by its sides, not to the dispersion of its
+materials: and the principle is altogether inapplicable to stone shafts.
+No one would think of building a pillar of a succession of sandstone
+rings; however strong it might be, it would be still stronger filled up,
+and the substitution of such a pillar for a solid one of the same
+contents would lose too much space; for a stone pillar, even when solid,
+must be quite as thick as is either graceful or convenient, and in
+modern churches is often too thick as it is, hindering sight of the
+preacher, and checking the sound of his voice.
+
+
+  17. ANSWER TO MR. GARBETT.
+
+Some three months ago, and long after the writing of this passage, I met
+accidentally with Mr. Garbett's elementary Treatise on Design. (Weale,
+1850.) If I had cared about the reputation of originality, I should have
+been annoyed--and was so, at first, on finding Mr. Garbett's
+illustrations of the subject exactly the same as mine, even to the
+choice of the elephant's foot for the parallel of the Doric pillar: I
+even thought of omitting, or rewriting, great part of the chapter, but
+determined at last to let it stand. I am striving to speak plain truths
+on many simple and trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of
+what I say has been said before, and am quite willing to give up all
+claim to originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any
+one cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not
+as mine, but as the truth, which may be all the world's, if they look
+for it. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frank Howard promised at some
+discussion respecting the "Seven Lamps," reported in the "Builder," to
+pluck all my borrowed feathers off me; but I did not see the end of the
+discussion, and do not know to this day how many feathers I have left:
+at all events the elephant's foot must belong to Mr. Garbett, though,
+strictly speaking, neither he nor I can be quite justified in using it,
+for an elephant in reality stands on tiptoe; and this is by no means the
+expression of a Doric shaft. As, however, I have been obliged to speak
+of this treatise of Mr. Garbett's, and desire also to recommend it as of
+much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is impossible
+for me to pass altogether without notice, as if unanswerable, several
+passages in which the writer has objected to views stated in the "Seven
+Lamps." I should at any rate have noticed the passage quoted above,
+(Chap. 30th,) which runs counter to the spirit of all I have ever
+written, though without referring to me; but the references to the
+"Seven Lamps" I should not have answered, unless I had desired,
+generally, to recommend the book, and partly also, because they may
+serve as examples of the kind of animadversion which the "Seven Lamps"
+had to sustain from architects, very generally; which examples being
+once answered, there will be little occasion for my referring in future
+to other criticisms of the kind.
+
+The first reference to the "Seven Lamps" is in the second page, where
+Mr. Garbett asks a question, "Why are not convenience and stability
+enough to constitute a fine building?"--which I should have answered
+shortly by asking another, "Why we have been made men, and not bees nor
+termites:" but Mr. Garbett has given a very pretty, though partial,
+answer to it himself, in his 4th to 9th pages,--an answer which I
+heartily beg the reader to consider. But, in page 12, it is made a grave
+charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament
+interchangeably. I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one day,
+will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to head his pages
+thus:--"Beauty not dependent on ornament, _or superfluous_ features."
+What right has he to assume that ornament, rightly so called, ever was,
+or can be, superfluous? I have said before, and repeatedly in other
+places, that the most beautiful things are the most useless; I never
+said superfluous. I said useless in the well-understood and usual sense,
+as meaning, inapplicable to the service of the body. Thus I called
+peacocks and lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome
+(taking Juvenal's word for it), and that dried lilies made bad hay: but
+I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the world could get
+on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer, I suppose the peacock's
+blue eyes to be very useless to him; not dangerous indeed, as to their
+first master, but of small service, yet I do not think there is a
+superfluous eye in all his tail; and for lilies, though the great King
+of Israel was not "arrayed" like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us
+which are their superfluous leaves? Is there no Diogenes among lilies?
+none to be found content to drink dew, but out of silver? The fact is, I
+never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament meant a
+thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off, at
+architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little more
+than many women do of the other kind of ornament--the only true
+kind,--St. Peter's kind,--"Not that outward adorning, but the inner--of
+the heart." I do not mean that architects cannot conceive this better
+ornament, but they do not understand that it is the _only_ ornament;
+that _all_ architectural ornament is this, and nothing but this; that a
+noble building never has any extraneous or superfluous ornament; that
+all its parts are necessary to its loveliness, and that no single atom
+of them could be removed without harm to its life. You do not build a
+temple and then dress it.[101] You create it in its loveliness, and
+leave it, as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well
+adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words ornament and
+beauty interchangeably, in order that architects may understand this: I
+assume that their building is to be a perfect creature capable of
+nothing less than it has, and needing nothing more. It may, indeed,
+receive additional decoration afterwards, exactly as a woman may
+gracefully put a bracelet on her arm, or set a flower in her hair: but
+that additional decoration is _not_ the _architecture_. It is of
+curtains, pictures, statues, things that may be taken away from the
+building, and not hurt it. What has the architect to do with these? He
+has only to do with what is part of the building itself, that is to say,
+its own inherent beauty. And because Mr. Garbett does not understand or
+acknowledge this, he is led on from error to error; for we next find him
+endeavoring to define beauty as distinct from ornament, and saying that
+"Positive beauty may be produced by a studious collation of whatever
+will display design, order, and congruity." (p. 14.) Is that so? There
+is a highly studious collation of whatever will display design, order,
+and congruity, in a skull, is there not?--yet small beauty. The nose is
+a decorative feature,--yet slightly necessary to beauty, it seems to me;
+now, at least, for I once thought I must be wrong in considering a skull
+disagreeable. I gave it fair trial: put one on my bed-room
+chimney-piece, and looked at it by sunrise every morning, and by
+moonlight every night, and by all the best lights I could think of, for
+a month, in vain. I found it as ugly at last as I did at first. So,
+also, the hair is a decoration, and its natural curl is of little use;
+but can Mr. Garbett conceive a bald beauty; or does he prefer a wig,
+because that is a "_studious_ collation" of whatever will produce
+design, order, and congruity? So the flush of the cheek is a
+decoration,--God's painting of the temple of his spirit,--and the
+redness of the lip; and yet poor Viola thought it beauty truly blent;
+and I hold with her.
+
+I have answered enough to this count.
+
+The second point questioned is my assertion, "Ornament cannot be
+overcharged if it is good, and is always overcharged when it is bad." To
+which Mr. Garbett objects in these terms: "I must contend, on the
+contrary, that the very best ornament may be overcharged by being
+misplaced."
+
+A short sentence with two mistakes in it.
+
+First. Mr. Garbett cannot get rid of his unfortunate notion that
+ornament is a thing to be manufactured separately, and fastened on. He
+supposes that an ornament may be called good in itself, in the
+stonemason's yard or in the ironmonger's shop: Once for all, let him put
+this idea out of his head. We may say of a thing, considered separately,
+that it is a pretty thing; but before we can say it is a good ornament,
+we must know what it is to adorn, and how. As, for instance, a ring of
+gold is a pretty thing; it is a good ornament on a woman's finger; not a
+good ornament hung through her under lip. A hollyhock, seven feet high,
+would be a good ornament for a cottage-garden; not a good ornament for a
+lady's head-dress. Might not Mr. Garbett have seen this without my
+showing? and that, therefore, when I said "_good_" ornament, I said
+"well-placed" ornament, in one word, and that, also, when Mr. Garbett
+says "it may be overcharged by being misplaced," he merely says it may
+be overcharged by being _bad_.
+
+Secondly. But, granted that ornament _were_ independent of its position,
+and might be pronounced good in a separate form, as books are good, or
+men are good.--Suppose I had written to a student in Oxford, "You cannot
+have too many books, if they be good books;" and he had answered me,
+"Yes, for if I have many, I have no place to put them in but the
+coal-cellar." Would that in anywise affect the general principle that
+he could not have too many books?
+
+Or suppose he had written, "I must not have too many, they confuse my
+head." I should have written back to him: "Don't buy books to put in the
+coal-hole, nor read them if they confuse your head; you cannot have too
+many, if they be good: but if you are too lazy to take care of them, or
+too dull to profit by them, you are better without them."
+
+Exactly in the same tone, I repeat to Mr. Garbett, "You cannot have too
+much ornament, if it be good: but if you are too indolent to arrange it,
+or too dull to take advantage of it, assuredly you are better without
+it."
+
+The other points bearing on this question have already been stated in
+the close of the 21st chapter.
+
+The third reference I have to answer, is to my repeated assertion, that
+the evidence of manual labor is one of the chief sources of value in
+ornament, ("Seven Lamps," p. 49, "Modern Painters," § 1, Chap. III.,) to
+which objection is made in these terms: "We must here warn the reader
+against a remarkable error of Ruskin. The value of ornaments in
+architecture depends _not in the slightest degree_ on the _manual labor_
+they contain. If it did, the finest ornaments ever executed would be the
+stone chains that hang before certain Indian rock-temples." Is that so?
+Hear a parallel argument. "The value of the Cornish mines depends not in
+the slightest degree on the quantity of copper they contain. If it did,
+the most valuable things ever produced would be copper saucepans." It is
+hardly worth my while to answer this; but, lest any of my readers should
+be confused by the objection, and as I hold the fact to be of great
+importance, I may re-state it for them with some explanation.
+
+Observe, then, the appearance of labor, that is to say, the evidence of
+the past industry of man, is always, in the abstract, intensely
+delightful: man being meant to labor, it is delightful to see that he
+_has_ labored, and to read the record of his active and worthy
+existence.
+
+The evidence of labor becomes painful only when it is a _sign of Evil
+greater, as Evil, than the labor is great, as Good_. As, for instance,
+if a man has labored for an hour at what might have been done by another
+man in a moment, this evidence of his labor is also evidence of his
+weakness; and this weakness is greater in rank of evil, than his
+industry is great in rank of good.
+
+Again, if a man have labored at what was not worth accomplishing, the
+signs of his labor are the signs of his folly, and his folly dishonors
+his industry; we had rather he had been a wise man in rest than a fool
+in labor.
+
+Again, if a man have labored without accomplishing anything, the signs
+of his labor are the signs of his disappointment; and we have more
+sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure in sympathy with his
+work.
+
+Now, therefore, in ornament, whenever labor replaces what was better
+than labor, that is to say, skill and thought; wherever it substitutes
+itself for these, or _negatives these by its existence_, then it is
+positive evil. Copper is an evil when it alloys gold, or poisons food:
+not an evil, as copper; good in the form of pence, seriously
+objectionable when it occupies the room of guineas. Let Danaë cast it
+out of her lap, when the gold comes from heaven; but let the poor man
+gather it up carefully from the earth.
+
+Farther, the evidence of labor is not only a good when added to other
+good, but the utter absence of it destroys good in human work. It is
+only good for God to create without toil; that which man can create
+without toil is worthless: machine ornaments are no ornaments at all.
+Consider this carefully, reader: I could illustrate it for you
+endlessly; but you feel it yourself every hour of your existence. And if
+you do not know that you feel it, take up, for a little time, the trade
+which of all manual trades has been most honored: be for once a
+carpenter. Make for yourself a table or a chair, and see if you ever
+thought any table or chair so delightful, and what strange beauty there
+will be in their crooked limbs.
+
+I have not noticed any other animadversions on the "Seven Lamps" in Mr.
+Garbett's volume; but if there be more, I must now leave it to his own
+consideration, whether he may not, as in the above instances, have made
+them incautiously: I may, perhaps, also be permitted to request other
+architects, who may happen to glance at the preceding pages, not
+immediately to condemn what may appear to them false in general
+principle. I must often be found deficient in technical knowledge; I
+may often err in my statements respecting matters of practice or of
+special law. But I do not write thoughtlessly respecting principles; and
+my statements of these will generally be found worth reconnoitring
+before attacking. Architects, no doubt, fancy they have strong grounds
+for supposing me wrong when they seek to invalidate my assertions. Let
+me assure them, at least, that I mean to be their friend, although they
+may not immediately recognise me as such. If I could obtain the public
+ear, and the principles I have advocated were carried into general
+practice, porphyry and serpentine would be given to them instead of
+limestone and brick; instead of tavern and shop-fronts they would have
+to build goodly churches and noble dwelling-houses; and for every
+stunted Grecism and stucco Romanism, into which they are now forced to
+shape their palsied thoughts, and to whose crumbling plagiarisms they
+must trust their doubtful fame, they would be asked to raise whole
+streets of bold, and rich, and living architecture, with the certainty
+in their hearts of doing what was honorable to themselves, and good for
+all men.
+
+Before I altogether leave the question of the influence of labor on
+architectural effect, the reader may expect from me a word or two
+respecting the subject which this year must be interesting to all--the
+applicability, namely, of glass and iron to architecture in general, as
+in some sort exemplified by the Crystal Palace.
+
+It is thought by many that we shall forthwith have great part of our
+architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of beauty will result
+from the studied employment of these materials.
+
+It may be told in a few words how far this is possible; how far
+eternally impossible.
+
+There are two means of delight in all productions of art--color and
+form.
+
+The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art are those of
+works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect. The best and
+noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by the touch of the
+human hand on an opaque surface, upon which it can command any tint
+required, without subjection to alteration by fire or other mechanical
+means. No color is so noble as the color of a good painting on canvas or
+gesso.
+
+This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most part, in
+architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of the natural
+colors of stones, which are far nobler than any abstract hues producible
+by human art.
+
+The delight which we receive from glass painting is one altogether
+inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by over indulgence.
+Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise some palaces like
+Aladdin's with colored glass for jewels, which shall be new in the annals
+of human splendor, and good in their place; but not if they superseded
+nobler edifices.
+
+Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent bodies: but
+form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque bodies, without
+lustre.
+
+This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or refined
+form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless matter. You cannot
+see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfection, even of a cameo or
+bronze. You cannot perfectly see the form of a humming-bird, on account
+of its burnishing; but you can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble
+work in form can ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous
+glass or enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its
+form: therefore you can never have any noble architecture in transparent
+or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however, opaque; and both it and
+opaque enamel may, perhaps, be rendered quite lustreless; and, therefore,
+fit to receive noble form.
+
+Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel made fine in
+paste or grain, and you may have an architecture as noble as cast or
+struck architecture even can be: as noble, therefore, as coins can be, or
+common cast bronzes, and such other multiplicable things;[102]--eternally
+separated from all good and great things by a gulph which not all the
+tubular bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries cast
+into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass one inch of.
+All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a
+piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if
+unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better
+thing, is _art which proceeds from an individual mind, working through
+instruments which assist, but do not supersede, the muscular action of
+the human hand, upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most
+securely retain, the impressions of such human labor_.
+
+And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of the
+quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly expressed
+upon it for ever:--
+
+First, of thought and moral purpose;
+
+Secondly, of technical skill;
+
+Thirdly, of bodily industry.
+
+The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is
+very great. So far it is good.
+
+The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single and very
+admirable thought of Mr. Paxton's, probably not a bit brighter than
+thousands of thoughts which pass through his active and intelligent
+brain every hour,--that it might be possible to build a greenhouse
+larger than ever greenhouse was built before. This thought, and some
+very ordinary algebra, are as much as all that glass can represent of
+human intellect. "But one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this
+intolerable deal of sack." Alas!
+
+  "The earth hath bubbles as the water hath:
+   And this is of them."
+
+
+  18. EARLY ENGLISH CAPITALS.
+
+The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capitals is,
+indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exaggerated force of
+effect, like the "_black_ touches" of second-rate draughtsmen, which I
+have noticed as characteristic of nearly all northern work, associated
+with the love of the grotesque: but the main section of the capital is
+indeed a dripstone rolled round, as above described; and dripstone
+sections are continually found in northern work, where not only they
+cannot increase force of effect, but are entirely invisible except on
+close examination; as, for instance, under the uppermost range of stones
+of the foundation of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base
+of All Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye. I much doubt
+if any of the Fellows be aware of its existence.
+
+Many readers will be surprised and displeased by the disparagement of
+the early English capital. That capital has, indeed, one character of
+considerable value; namely, the boldness with which it stops the
+mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them from the shaft,
+contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their vertical lines.
+Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its place, not
+unpleasing; and we English love it from association, it being always
+found in connection with our purest and loveliest Gothic arches, and
+never in multitudes large enough to satiate the eye with its form. The
+reader who sits in the Temple church every Sunday, and sees no
+architecture during the week but that of Chancery Lane, may most
+justifiably quarrel with me for what I have said of it. But if every
+house in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane were Gothic, and all had early
+English capitals, I would answer for his making peace with me in a
+fortnight.
+
+
+  19. TOMBS NEAR ST. ANASTASIA.
+
+Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to me, and I
+have taken no pains to discover; their value being not in any evidence
+they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic merit as examples of
+composition. Two of them are within the gate, one on the top of it, and
+this latter is on the whole the best, though all are beautiful; uniting
+the intense northern energy in their figure sculpture with the most
+serene classical restraint in their outlines, and unaffected, but
+masculine simplicity of construction.
+
+I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page 154,
+in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but I shall
+always express the same points by the same letters, whenever I have to
+give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the reader need
+never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base or span of the centre
+arch will always be _a b_; its vertex will always be V; the points of
+the cusps will be _c c_; _p p_ will be the bases of perpendiculars let
+fall from V and _c_ on _a b_; and _d_ the base of a perpendicular from
+the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then _a b_ will always be a span
+of the arch, V _p_ its perpendicular height, V _a_ the chord of its side
+arcs, _d c_ the depth of its cusps, _c c_ the horizontal interval
+between the cusps, _a c_ the length of the chord of the lower arc of the
+cusp, V _c_ the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp,
+(whether continuous or not,) and _c p_ the length of a perpendicular
+from the point of the cusp on _a b_.
+
+Of course we do not want all these measures for a single arch, but it
+often happens that some of them are attainable more easily than others;
+some are often unattainable altogether, and it is necessary therefore to
+have expressions for whichever we may be able to determine.
+
+V _p_ or V _a_, _a b_, and _d c_ are always essential; then either _a c_
+and V _c_ or _c c_ and _c p_: when I have my choice, I always take _a
+b_, V _p_, _d c_, _c c_, and _c p_, but _c p_ is not to be generally
+obtained so accurately as the cusp arcs.
+
+The measures of the present arch are:
+
+           Ft.  In.
+  _a b_,    3 ,, 8
+  V _p_,    4 ,, 0
+  V _c_,    2 ,, 4-1/2
+  _a c_,    2 ,, 0-1/4
+  _d c_,    0 ,, 3-1/2
+
+
+                   20. SHAFTS OF DUCAL PALACE.
+
+The shortness of the thicker ones at the angles is induced by the
+greater depth of the enlarged capitals: thus the 36th shaft is 10 ft.
+4-1/3 in. in circumference at its base, and 10 ,, 0-1/2[103] in
+circumference under the fillet of its capital; but it is only 6 ,,
+1-3/4 high, while the minor intermediate shafts, of which the thickest
+is 7 ,, 8 round at the base, and 7 ,, 4 under capital, are yet on the
+average 7 ,, 7 high. The angle shaft towards the sea (the 18th) is
+nearly of the proportions of the 36th, and there are three others, the
+15th, 24th, and 26th, which are thicker than the rest, though not so
+thick as the angle ones. The 24th and 26th have both party walls to
+bear, and I imagine the 15th must in old time have carried another,
+reaching across what is now the Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+
+They measure respectively round at the base,
+
+  The 15th, 8 ,, 2
+      24th, 9 ,, 6-1/2
+      26th, 8 ,, 0-1/2
+
+The other pillars towards the sea, and those to the 27th inclusive of
+the Piazzetta, are all seven feet round at the base, and then there is a
+most curious and delicate crescendo of circumference to the 36th, thus:
+
+  The 28th, 7 ,, 3   The 33rd, 7 ,, 6
+      29th, 7 ,, 4       34th, 7 ,, 8
+      30th, 7 ,, 6       35th, 7 ,, 8
+      31st, 7 ,, 7       36th, 10 ,, 4-1/3
+      32nd, 7 ,, 5
+
+The shafts of the upper arcade, which are above these thicker columns,
+are also thicker than their companions, measuring on the average, 4 ,,
+8-1/2 in circumference, while those of the sea façade, except the 29th,
+average 4 ,, 7-1/2 in circumference. The 29th, which is of course above
+the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in circumference, which little
+piece of evidence will be of no small value to us by-and-by. The 35th
+carries the angle of the palace, and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which
+comes above the 24th and carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran
+Consiglio, is strengthened by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over
+the 26th, is 5 ,, 4-1/2 round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it
+carries the party wall of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room
+containing part of St. Mark's library, coming between the two saloons;
+a room which, in remembrances of the help I have received in all my
+inquiries from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant, I
+shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as "Mr. Lorenzi's."[104]
+
+I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades of the
+Ducal Palace, those which refer to Plate XIV., which represents one of
+its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower arcade was intended to have
+been occupied by an ornament resembling the one given in that plate. The
+mass of the building being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches
+is left within the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the
+slabs of fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the
+design was ever completed, or the marbles have been since removed, but
+there are now only two spandrils retaining their fillings, and vestiges
+of them in a third. The two complete spandrils are on the sea façade,
+above the 3rd and 10th capitals (_vide_ method of numbering, Chap. I.,
+page 30); that is to say, connecting the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the
+9th with the 10th. The latter is the one given in Plate XIV. The white
+portions of it are all white marble, the dental band surrounding the
+circle is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and
+never found in Venice to my recollection, except in work at least
+anterior to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with the
+three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner disc is green
+serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating leaves are grey marble.
+The three triangles are equilateral. The two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each
+side, and the lower 1 ,, 2.
+
+The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10-1/2; its field is slightly
+raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at A, on the left.
+A _a_ is part of the red marble field; _a b_ the section of the dentil
+moulding let into it; _b c_ the entire breadth of the rayed zone,
+represented on the other side of the spandril by the line C _f_; _c d_
+is the white marble band let in, with the dogtooth on the face of it;
+_b c_ is 7-3/4 inches across; _c d_ 3-3/4; and at B are given two joints
+of the dentil (mentioned above, in the chapter on dentils, as unique in
+Venice) of their actual size. At C is given one of the inlaid leaves;
+its measure being (in inches) C _f_ 7-3/4; C _h_ 3/4; _f g_ 3/4; _f e_
+4-3/4, the base of the smaller leaves being of course _f e_ - _f g_ = 4.
+The pattern which occupies the other spandril is similar, except that
+the field _b c_, instead of the intersecting arcs, has only triangles of
+grey marble, arranged like rays, with their bases towards the centre.
+There being twenty round the circle, the reader can of course draw them
+for himself; they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their
+points, and being in contact at their bases: it has lost its central
+boss. The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, through
+which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colors (another
+proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are certainly,
+in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with purple, and the
+grey seem warmed with green.
+
+A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the 21st capital;
+but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted in the other
+spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the slight meagreness in
+the effect of the lower story, which is almost the only fault of the
+building.
+
+This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a marked
+characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages, and is
+carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already
+distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in Appendix 6.
+Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have already an example in Plate
+I. In Plate VII. we have an earlier condition of it, one of the discs
+being there sculptured, the others surrounded by sculptured bands: here
+we have, on the Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because
+likest to the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament
+among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr. Donaldson's
+restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus, this ornament is
+conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly on the Arabian
+buildings of Cairo.
+
+
+  21. ANCIENT REPRESENTATIONS OF WATER.
+
+I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an enquiry into the
+effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and especially the Greek,
+mind, and knowing that my friend, Mr. C. Newton, had devoted much
+thought to the elucidation of the figurative and symbolic language of
+ancient art, I asked him to draw up for me a few notes of the facts
+which he considered most interesting, as illustrative of its methods of
+representing nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the
+representation of water; because this is one of the natural objects
+whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment, for it is
+one of universal interest, and of more closely similar aspect in all
+parts of the world than any other. Waves, currents, and eddies are much
+liker each other, everywhere, than either land or vegetation. Rivers and
+lakes, indeed, differ widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from
+the angry Northern ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot
+of Nubian palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterranean
+is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway moss.
+
+Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with the following
+data. One or two of the types which he describes have been already
+noticed in the main text; but it is well that the reader should again
+contemplate them in the position which they here occupy in a general
+system. I recommend his special attention to Mr. Newton's definitions of
+the terms "figurative" and "symbolic," as applied to art, in the
+beginning of the paper.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian, Assyrian,
+Greek, and Roman races, water is, for the most part, represented
+conventionally rather than naturally.
+
+By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect an imitation
+of nature as the technical means of art will allow: on the other hand,
+representation is said to be conventional, either when a confessedly
+inadequate imitation is accepted in default of a better, or when
+imitation is not attempted at all, and it is agreed that other modes of
+representation, those by figures or by symbols, shall be its substitute
+and equivalent.
+
+In figurative representation there is always _impersonation_; the
+sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is conceived to
+be actuated by a will, and invested with such mental attributes as
+constitute personality.
+
+The sensible _symbol_, whether borrowed from organic or from inorganic
+nature, is not a personification at all, but the conventional sign or
+equivalent of some object or notion, to which it may perhaps bear no
+visible resemblance, but with which the intellect or the imagination has
+in some way associated it.
+
+For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a woman crowned
+with towers; here the artist has selected for the expression of his idea
+a human form animated with a will and motives of action analogous to
+those of humanity generally. Or, again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a
+figurative representation of a river, and, in the conception of the
+artist, this animal form may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind.
+
+This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality is
+embodied is changed.
+
+Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea; a man ploughing
+with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman colony. In neither of
+these instances is there impersonation. The dolphin is not invested,
+like the figure of Neptune, with any of the attributes of the human
+mind; it has animal instincts, but no will; it represents to us its
+native element, only as a part may be taken for a whole.
+
+Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female figure,
+_personify_, but rather _typifies_ the town, standing as the visible
+representation of a real event, its first foundation. To our mental
+perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems no more than
+man; there is no blending of his personal nature with the impersonal
+nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes from the one to the
+other.
+
+Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the symbolic,
+are three distinct kinds of representation, they are constantly combined
+in one composition, as we shall see in the following examples, cited
+from the art of successive races in chronological order.
+
+In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the
+conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two frescoes from
+tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170: the subject of the first of these is
+an oblong pond, ground-plan and elevation being strangely confused in
+the design. In this pond water is represented by parallel zigzag lines,
+in which fish are swimming about. On the surface are birds and lotos
+flowers; the herbage at the edge of the pond is represented by a border
+of symmetrical fan-shaped flowers; the field beyond by rows of trees,
+arranged round the sides of the pond at right angles to each other, and
+in defiance of all laws of perspective.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXXI.]
+
+In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river with
+papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag lines arranged
+vertically and in parallel lines, so as to resemble herring-bone
+masonry, thus. There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, and in
+both each fish is drawn very distinctly, not as it would appear to the
+eye viewed through water. The mode of representing this element in
+Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic writing,
+where the sign of water is a zigzag line; this line is, so to speak, a
+picture of water written in short hand. In the Egyptian Pantheon there
+was but one aquatic deity, the god of the Nile; his type is, therefore,
+the only figurative representation of water in Egyptian art. (Birch,
+"Gallery of British Museum Antiquities," Pl. 13.) In Assyrian sculpture
+we have very curious conventionally imitative representations of water.
+On several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men are seen
+crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses swimming
+(see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is represented by masses
+of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses of hair, and terminating in
+curls or volutes; these wavy lines express the general character of a
+deep and rapid current, like that of the Tigris. Fish are but sparingly
+introduced, the idea of surface being sufficiently expressed by the
+floating figures and boats. In the representation of these there is the
+same want of perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just
+cited.
+
+In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been discovered, the god
+Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish's tail. Of the character
+and attributes of this deity we know but little.
+
+The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag line, occurs
+on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a war galley (see
+Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably struck in Assyria, not
+long after the conquest of it by the Persians.
+
+In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more varied. Two
+conventional imitations, the wave moulding and the Mĉander, are well
+known. Both are probably of the most remote antiquity; both have been
+largely employed as an architectural ornament, and subordinately as a
+decoration of vases, costume, furniture and implements. In the wave
+moulding we have a conventional representation of the small crisping
+waves which break upon the shore of the Mediterranean, the sea of the
+Greeks.
+
+Their regular succession, and equality of force and volume, are
+generalised in this moulding, while the minuter varieties which
+distinguish one wave from another are merged in the general type. The
+character of ocean waves is to be "for ever changing, yet the same for
+ever;" it is this eternity of recurrence which the early artist has
+expressed in this hieroglyphic.
+
+With this profile representation of water may be compared the sculptured
+waves out of which the head and arms of Hyperion are rising in the
+pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room, No. (65) 91, Museum Marbles, vi.
+pl. 1). Phidias has represented these waves like a mass of overlapping
+tiles, thus generalising their rippling movement. In the Mĉander pattern
+the graceful curves of nature are represented by angles, as in the
+Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representation of
+the labyrinth on the coins of the Cnossus is rectangular; on later coins
+we find the curvilinear form introduced.
+
+In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and the Mĉander
+are sometimes used singly for the idea of water, but more frequently
+combined with figurative representation. The number of aquatic deities
+in the Greek Pantheon led to the invention of a great variety of
+beautiful types. Some of these are very well known. Everybody is
+familiar with the general form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the
+Nymphs and River Gods; but the modes in which these types were combined
+with conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful
+study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty of the
+language of art formed out of these elements.
+
+This class of representations may be divided into two principal groups,
+those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh water.
+
+The power of the ocean and the great features of marine scenery are
+embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus and the Nereids, that is to
+say, in human forms moving through the liquid element in chariots, or on
+the back of dolphins, or who combine the human form with that of the
+fish-like Tritons. The sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called
+Hippocamps, being composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a
+horse, the legs terminating in web-feet: this union seems to express
+speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise the
+movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here selected to show
+how these types were combined with symbols and conventional imitation.
+
+In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenormant et De
+Witte, Mon. Céram., i. pl. 27), of which the subject is, Europa crossing
+the sea on the back of the bull. In this design the sea is represented
+by a variety of expedients. First, the swimming action of the bull
+suggests the idea of the liquid medium through which he moves. Behind
+him stands Nereus, his staff held perpendicularly in his hand; the top
+of his staff comes nearly to the level of the bull's back, and is
+probably meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards the
+surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is
+another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is
+indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini.
+
+On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archéol., iii. pl. 50), we
+have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the fulness of details
+with which it is made out.
+
+This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling,
+that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under
+consideration. The mosaic lines the floor and sides of a bath, and, as
+was commonly the case in the baths of the ancients, serves as a
+figurative representation of the water it contained.
+
+On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and islands on
+which fishermen stand; on the floor are fish, crabs, and shrimps.
+
+These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the sea: the
+same symbols of the submarine world appear on many other ancient
+designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon upheaves the island of Cos
+to overwhelm the Giant Polydotes, the island is represented as an
+immense mass of rock; the parts which have been under water are
+indicated by a dolphin, a shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water
+by a goat and a serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5).
+
+Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the types, for
+instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted without
+being viewed in relation to the whole context of mythography to which
+they belong. If we find, for example, on one coin of Tarentum a shell,
+on another a dolphin, on a third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder
+of the town, riding on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this
+latter group expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on
+the coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of the
+greater design, having been detached from it, as we may detach words
+from sentences.
+
+The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have cited
+above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms of expression.
+We have, for instance, on coins several representations of ancient
+harbors.
+
+Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern Messina
+in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor to a sickle, and
+on the coins of the town we find a curved object, within the area of
+which is a dolphin. On this curve are four square elevations placed at
+equal distances. It has been conjectured that these projections are
+either towers or the large stones to which galleys were moored still to
+be seen in ancient harbors (see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p.
+40). With this archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some
+examples of the Roman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at
+Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, Pl. II., No.
+30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two recumbent
+male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the foot of the rock a
+stream is flowing: this is a representation of the rock of the Acropolis
+of Corinth: the female figure is a statue of Aphrodite, whose temple
+surmounted the rock. The stream is the fountain Pirene. The two
+recumbent figures are impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and
+Cenchreia, between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon. ii.,
+c. 16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two
+harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of a nymph.
+
+On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a semicircular
+form, the whole arc being marked with small equal divisions, to denote
+the archways under which the ancient galleys were drawn, _subductĉ_; at
+the either horn or extremity of the harbor is a temple; in the centre of
+the mouth, a statue of Neptune. (Millingen, Médailles Inéd., Pl. II.,
+No. 19. Compare also Millingen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831,
+pp. 50-61, Pl. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246; and the
+harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in which there is a
+representation of the Roman fleet and a reclining figure of Neptune.)
+
+In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent water
+naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785), of which the
+subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is rendered by wavy lines
+drawn in black on a red ground, and something like the effect of light
+playing on the surface of the water is given. On each side of the ship
+are shapeless masses of rock on which the Sirens stand.
+
+One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of the sea
+is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful body, terminating
+in two barking dogs and two serpent tails. Sometimes drowning men, the
+_rari nantes in gurgite vasto_, appear caught up in the coils of these
+tails. Below are dolphins. Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show
+the manner in which she twists the course of ships. For varieties of her
+type see Monum. dell'Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Tavv. 52-3.
+
+The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the following
+heads--rivers, lakes, fountains.
+
+There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very
+frequently employed in ancient mythography.
+
+In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form combined with
+that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic coin of Metapontum in
+Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen, Ancient Coins of Greek Cities
+and Kings,) the river Achelous is represented with the figure of a man
+with a shaggy beard and bull's horns and ears. On a vase of the best
+period of Greek art (Brit. Mus. No. 789; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of
+Lit., New Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented
+with a satyr's head and long bull's horns on the forehead; his form,
+human to the waist, terminates in a fish's tail; his hair falls down his
+back; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a combination of
+the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles, in the commencement
+of the Trachiniĉ.
+
+                  [Greek: Achelôon legô,
+  os m' en trisin morphaisin exêtei patros,
+  phoitôn enargês auros allot' aiolos,
+  drakôn heliktos, allot' andreiô kytei
+  bouprôros, ek de daskiou geneiados
+  krounoi dierrhainonto krênaiou potou].
+
+In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is united at the
+waist with the shoulders of a bull's body, in which it terminates. This
+occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No. 452.) On the coins of Oeniadĉ
+in Acarnia, and on those of Ambracia, all of the period after Alexander
+the Great, the Achelous has a bull's body, and head with a human face.
+In this variety of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in
+the first variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion
+of the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears to
+the human head. On the analogy between these, varieties in the type of
+the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses of the marine
+goddess Thetis are represented, see Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb. ii. pp.
+106-113. It is probable that, in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and
+also of the Achelous, the singular combinations and transformations are
+intended to express the changeful nature of the element water.
+
+Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are represented by
+this combination of the bull and human form, which maybe called, for
+convenience, the Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the
+archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually
+represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the
+hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in
+Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the
+head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always represented
+standing, never reclining.
+
+The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium, in Magna
+Grĉcia, has been considered, with great probability, a representation of
+this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which are of a very early period,
+the head of the bull is turned round; on those of Thurium, he stoops his
+head, butting: the first of these actions has been thought to symbolise
+the winding course of the river, the second, its headlong current. On
+the coins of Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the
+adjunct of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The
+ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles. This
+probably represents the river bank. Two bulls' head occur on the coins
+of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Burgon that
+the two rivers of the place are expressed under this type.
+
+The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining
+position, though probably not so much employed in earlier Greek art as
+the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar to us, from its
+subsequent adoption in Roman mythography. The earliest example we have
+of a reclining river-god is in the figure in the Elgin Room commonly
+called the Ilissus, but more probably the Cephissus. This occupied one
+angle in the western pediment of the Parthenon; the other Athenian
+river, the Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a
+male and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed,
+is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.
+
+It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition first led
+the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position. The head of
+the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether he had bull's
+horns, like the Sicilian figures already described. His form is
+youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him there is a flow like
+that of waves, but the idea of water is not suggested by any other
+symbol. When we compare this figure with that of the Nile (Visconti,
+Mus. Pio Clem., i., Pl. 38), and the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre,
+both of which are of the Roman period, we see how in these later types
+the artist multiplied symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the
+original simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in
+the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal bearded
+figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the vegetable
+produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are sixteen naked boys, who
+represent the sixteen cubits, the height to which the river rose in a
+favorable year. The statue is placed on a basement divided into three
+compartments, one above another. In the uppermost of these, waves are
+flowing over in one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the
+other two compartments are the animals and plants of the river; the
+bas-reliefs on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated
+symbolic panorama of the Nile.
+
+The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the base are, in
+two compartments, scenes taken from the early Roman myths; flocks,
+herds, and other objects on the banks of the river. (Visconti, Mus. P.
+Cl. i., Pl. 39; Millin, Galerie Mythol., i. p. 77, Pl. 74, Nos. 304,
+308.)
+
+In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two interesting
+representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these we have, within
+a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full face, with dishevelled
+hair, and with a dolphin on either side; on the reverse a female figure
+sailing on a swan, below which a wave moulding, and above, a dolphin.
+
+On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with the
+youthful head of a river-god, inscribed "Hipparis" on the obverse. On
+some smaller coins we have the swan flying over the rippling waves,
+which are represented by the wave moulding. When we examine the chart of
+Sicily, made by the Admiralty survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a
+lake through which the river Hipparis flows.
+
+We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented both
+their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan flying over the
+waves would represent a lake; the figure associated with it being no
+doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place: the head, in a circle of
+wave pattern, may express that part of the river which flows through the
+lake.
+
+Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing from a
+lion's head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., taf.
+CXXXIV.), where Hercules stands, receiving a shower-bath from a hot
+spring at Thermĉ in Sicily. On the coins of Syracuse the fountain
+Arethusa is represented by a female head seen to the front; the flowing
+lines of her dishevelled hair suggest, though they do not directly
+imitate, the bubbling action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which
+it rises is symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type
+presents a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle
+of wave pattern described above.
+
+These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek
+mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind of figurative
+and symbolic language is employed, but there is a constant tendency to
+multiply accessories and details, as we have shown in the later
+representations of harbors and river-gods cited above. In these crowded
+compositions the eye is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has
+to examine; the language of art becomes more copious but less terse and
+emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the
+refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias.
+
+Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures,
+generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and
+leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian
+cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted
+female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a
+youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms,
+and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Müller
+(Denkmäler d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind
+in the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.
+
+On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representations of the
+Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in their military
+expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured wavy lines, in which
+boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli, Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this
+rude conventional imitation is combined with a figure. In a recess in
+the river bank is a reclining river-god, terminating at the waist. This
+is either meant for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the
+river, and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have
+here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation.
+
+On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav. 15) a storm of
+rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius, who has a vast
+outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the Townley collection, in
+the British Museum, is a Roman helmet found at Ribchester in Lancashire,
+with a mask or vizor attached. The helmet is richly embossed with
+figures in a battle scene; round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair
+in the forehead is so treated as to give the idea of waves washing the
+base of the turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of
+a town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great battle
+was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant. London, iv., Pl.
+1-4).
+
+In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori, Inscript.
+Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female figures, one of whom is
+certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the earth; another, Thetis, or the
+sea; the centre of the three seems to represent Aphrodite associated, as
+on the coins of Camarina, with the element of fresh water.
+
+This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an arched veil.
+Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows a tall water plant,
+and below the swan other water plants, and a stork seated on a _hydria_,
+or pitcher, from which water is flowing. The swan, the stork, the water
+plants, and the _hydria_ must all be regarded as symbols of fresh water,
+the latter emblem being introduced to show that the element is fit for
+the use of man.
+
+Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures of nymphs
+reclining with urns, or standing holding before them a large shell.
+
+One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is the mosaic
+of Palestrina (Barthélemy, in Bartoli, Peint. Antiques) which may be
+described as a kind of rude panorama of some district of Upper Egypt, a
+bird's-eye view, half man, half picture, in which the details are
+neither adjusted to a scale, nor drawn according to perspective, but
+crowded together, as they would be in an ancient bas-relief.
+
+
+  22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION.
+
+I do not mean what I have here said of the Inventive power of the Arab
+to be understood as in the least applying to the detestable
+ornamentation of the Alhambra.[105] The Alhambra is no more
+characteristic of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of Gothic: it is a
+late building, a work of the Spanish dynasty in its last decline, and
+its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to be transferred to patterns
+of carpets or bindings of books, together with their marbling, and
+mottling, and other mechanical recommendations. The Alhambra ornament
+has of late been largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment
+of Regent Street and Oxford Street.
+
+
+  23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER.
+
+Let B A C, Fig. LXXII., be the original angle of the wall. Inscribe
+within it a circle, _p_ Q N _p_, of the size of the bead required,
+touching A B, A C, in _p_, _p_; join _p_, _p_, and draw B C parallel to
+it, touching the circle.
+
+Then the lines B C, _p p_ are the limits of the possible chamfers
+constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the line Q _q_,
+N _d_, _r u_, _g c_, &c., or from any other point chosen as a centre in
+the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers in straight lines,
+as _a b_, _e f_. There are, of course, an infinite number of chamfers to
+be struck between B C and _p p_, from every point in Q A produced to
+infinity; thus we have infinity multiplied into infinity to express the
+number of possible chamfers of this species, which are peculiarly
+Italian chamfers; together with another singly infinite group of the
+straight chamfers, _a b_, _e f_, &c., of which the one formed by the
+line _a b_, passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal
+early Gothic chamfer of Venice.
+
+Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A _l_ or A _m_,
+radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken, from which, with
+any radii not greater than the distance between such points and Q, an
+infinite number of curves may be struck, such as _t u_, _r s_, N _n_
+(all which are here struck from centres on the line A C). These lines
+represent the great class of the northern chamfers, of which the number
+is infinity raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N _n_
+(for northern) represents the average condition; the shallower chamfers
+of the same group, _r s_, _t u_, &c., occurring often in Italy. The
+lines _r u_, _t u_, and _a b_ may be taken approximating to the most
+frequent conditions of the southern chamfer.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXXII.]
+
+It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give a
+relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the North and
+South; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invariably fall within the
+line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or inclined to A C at an
+angle greater than A C Q, and often perpendicular to it; but never
+inclined to it at an angle less than A C Q.
+
+
+  24. RENAISSANCE BASES.
+
+The following extract from my note-book refers also to some features of
+late decoration of shafts.
+
+"The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting examples of
+Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars are surrounded each by a
+wreath, one of vine, another of laurel, another of oak, not indeed
+arranged with the fantasticism of early Gothic; but, especially the
+laurel, reminding one strongly of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as
+beautiful, of Veronese and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and
+richly interlaced--the last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work--and
+the vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as
+those of the Noah,[106] though more injured by time. The capitals are
+far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more masculine
+in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of support, though of
+course showing the tendency to error in this respect; and finally, at
+the angles of the pure Attic bases, on the square plinth, are set
+couchant animals; one, an elephant four inches high, very curiously and
+cleverly cut, and all these details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy,
+and affection quite worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the
+marked fault of being utterly detached from the architecture. The
+wreaths round the columns look as if they would drop off the next
+moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect of mice
+who had got there by accident: one feels them ridiculously diminutive,
+and utterly useless."
+
+The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to there being
+no other groups of figures near them, to accustom the eye to the
+proportion, and to the needless choice of the largest animals,
+elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position so completely
+insignificant, and to be expressed on so contemptible a scale,--not in a
+bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture, but as independent figures.
+The whole building is a most curious illustration of the appointed fate
+of the Renaissance architects,--to caricature whatever they imitated,
+and misapply whatever they learned.
+
+
+  25. ROMANIST DECORATION OF BASES.
+
+I have spoken above (Appendix 12) of the way in which the Roman Catholic
+priests everywhere suffer their churches to be desecrated. But the worst
+instances I ever saw of sacrilege and brutality, daily permitted in the
+face of all men, were the uses to which the noble base of St. Mark's was
+put, when I was last in Venice. Portions of nearly all cathedrals may be
+found abandoned to neglect; but this base of St. Mark's is in no obscure
+position. Full fronting the western sun--crossing the whole breadth of
+St. Mark's Place--the termination of the most noble square in the
+world--the centre of the most noble city--its purple marbles were, in
+the winter of 1849, the customary _gambling tables_ of the idle children
+of Venice; and the parts which flank the Great Entrance, that very
+entrance where "Barbarossa flung his mantle off," were the counters of a
+common bazaar for children's toys, carts, dolls, and small pewter spoons
+and dishes, German caricatures and books of the Opera, mixed with those
+of the offices of religion; the caricatures being fastened with twine
+round the porphyry shafts of the church. One Sunday, the 24th of
+February, 1850, the book-stall being somewhat more richly laid out than
+usual, I noted down the titles of a few of the books in the order in
+which they lay, and I give them below. The irony conveyed by the
+juxtaposition of the three in Italics appears too shrewd to be
+accidental; but the fact was actually so.
+
+Along the edge of the white plinth were a row of two kinds of books,
+
+  Officium Beatĉ Virg. M.; and Officium Hebdomadĉ sanctĉ, juxta Formam
+    Missalis et Breviarii Romani sub Urbano VIII. correcti.
+
+Behind these lay, side by side, the following:
+
+  Don Desiderio. Dramma Giocoso per Musica.
+  Breve Esposizione della Carattere di vera Religione.
+
+On the top of this latter, keeping its leaves open,
+
+  La Figlia del Reggimento. Melodramma comica.
+  _Carteggio di Madama la Marchesa di Pompadour, ossia
+     raccolta di Lettere scritte della Medesima._
+  _Istruzioni di morale Condotta per le Figlie._
+  _Francesca di Rimini. Dramma per Musica._
+
+Then, a little farther on, after a mass of plays:--
+
+  Orazioni a Gesu Nazareno e a Maria addolorata.
+  Semiramide; Melodramma tragico da rappresentarsi nel Gran Teatro
+    il Fenice.
+  Modo di orare per l'Acquisto del S. Giubileo, conceduto a tutto il
+    Mondo Cattolico da S. S. Gregorio XVI.
+  Le due illustre Rivali, Melodramma in Tre Atti, da rappresentarsi
+    nel nuovo Gran Teatro il Fenice.
+  Il Cristiano secondo il Cuore di Gesu, per la Pratica delle sue
+    Virtu.
+  Traduzione dell'Idioma Italiana.
+  La chiava Chinese; Commedia del Sig. Abate Pietro Chiari.
+  La Pelarina; Intermezzo de Tre Parti per Musica.
+  Il Cavaliero e la Dama; Commedia in Tre Atti in Prosa.
+
+I leave these facts without comment. But this being the last piece of
+Appendix I have to add to the present volume, I would desire to close
+its pages with a question to my readers--a statistical question, which,
+I doubt not, is being accurately determined for us all elsewhere, and
+which, therefore, it seems to me, our time would not be wasted in
+determining for ourselves.
+
+There has now been peace between England and the continental powers
+about thirty-five years, and during that period the English have visited
+the continent at the rate of many thousands a year, staying there, I
+suppose, on the average, each two or three months; nor these an inferior
+kind of English, but the kind which ought to be the best--the noblest
+born, the best taught, the richest in time and money, having more
+leisure, knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation.
+These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the condition of
+the states in which the Papal religion is professed, and being, at the
+same time, the most enlightened section of a great Protestant nation,
+would have been animated with some desire to dissipate the Romanist
+errors, and to communicate to others the better knowledge which they
+possessed themselves. I doubt not but that He who gave peace upon the
+earth, and gave it by the hand of England, expected this much of her,
+and has watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they
+crossed the sea, and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and
+of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller nor
+his courier were at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but that such
+accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and that a day will
+come when they will be made clearly legible to us, and when we shall see
+added together, on one side of the account book, a great sum, the
+certain portion, whatever it may be, of this thirty-five years'
+spendings of the rich English, accounted for in this manner:--
+
+To wooden spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at Geneva, and
+elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell cameos and bits of mosaic
+bought at Rome, so much; to coral horns and lava brooches bought at
+Naples, so much; to glass beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa,
+so much; to pictures, and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much;
+to avant-couriers and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so
+much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights, so
+much; to ball-dresses and general vanities, so much. This, I say, will
+be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other will be written:
+
+To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland, and
+Piedmont, so much.
+
+Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in time?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [93] Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I.
+
+  [94] Compare Appendix 12.
+
+  [95] L'Artiste en Bâtiments, par Louis Berteaux: Dijon, 1848. My
+    printer writes at the side of the page a note, which I insert with
+    thanks:--"This is not the first attempt at a French order. The
+    writer has a Treatise by Sebastian Le Clerc, a great man in his
+    generation, which contains a Roman order, a Spanish order, which the
+    inventor appears to think very grand, and a _new_ French order
+    nationalised by the Gallic cock crowing and clapping its wings in
+    the capital."
+
+  [96] The lower group in Plate XVII.
+
+  [97] One of the upper stories is also in Gally Knight's plate
+    represented as merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in
+    reality, covered with as delicate inlaying as the rest. The whole
+    front is besides out of proportion, and out of perspective, at once;
+    and yet this work is referred to as of authority, by our architects.
+    Well may our architecture fall from its place among the fine arts,
+    as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted
+    to the Greek architecture, which is _utterly useless_ to us--or
+    worse. _One_ most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our
+    English abbeys,--Mr. E. Sharpe's "Architectural Parallels"--almost a
+    model of what I should like to see done for the Gothic of all
+    Europe.
+
+  [98] Except in the single passage "tell it unto the Church," which
+    is simply the _extension_ of what had been commanded before, i.e.,
+    tell the fault first "between thee and him," then taking "with thee
+    one or two more," then, to all Christian men capable of hearing the
+    cause: if he refuse to hear their common voice, "let him be unto
+    thee as a heathen man and publican:" (But consider how Christ
+    treated both.)
+
+  [99] One or two remarks on this subject, some of which I had
+    intended to have inserted here, and others in Appendix 5, I have
+    arranged in more consistent order, and published in a separate
+    pamphlet, "Notes on the Construction of Sheep-folds," for the
+    convenience of readers interested in other architecture than that of
+    Venetian palaces.
+
+  [100] Not, however, by Johnson's _testimony_: Vide Adventurer, No.
+    39. "Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,--the
+    low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, _digesting
+    dictionaries_, or accumulating compilations."
+
+  [101] We have done so--theoretically; just as one would reason on
+    the human form from the bones outwards: but the Architect of human
+    form frames all at once--bone and flesh.
+
+  [102] Of course mere multiplicability, as of an engraving, does not
+    diminish the intrinsic value of the work; and if the casts of
+    sculpture could be as sharp as the sculpture itself, they would hold
+    to it the relation of value which engravings hold to paintings. And,
+    if we choose to have our churches all alike, we might cast them all
+    in bronze--we might actually coin churches, and have mints of
+    Cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the century to put
+    milled edges for mouldings, and have a popular currency of religious
+    subjects: a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not heard
+    this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the
+    results which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere
+    mechanical applications of glass and iron.
+
+  [103] I shall often have occasion to write measures in the current
+    text, therefore the reader will kindly understand that whenever they
+    are thus written, 2 ,, 2, with double commas between, the first
+    figures stand for English feet, the second for English inches.
+
+  [104] I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my
+    kind friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, for help given me in a thousand ways
+    during my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages
+    elucidatory of my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark's library.
+
+  [105] I have not seen the building itself, but Mr. Owen Jones's work
+    may, I suppose, be considered as sufficiently representing it for
+    all purposes of criticism.
+
+  [106] The sculpture of the Drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace,
+    of which we shall have much to say hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
+
+
+Footnote [31] 'Greek porticos' changed to 'Greek porticoes'.
+
+Page 42: '§ XL. It is not' corrected to '§ XI. It is not'.
+
+Page 161: Added 'r' to 'timbe' in 'long stone or piece of timbe'.
+
+Page 180: 'XII. 2. Inlet' corrected to '§ XII. 2. Inlet'.
+
+Page 237: 'rererence' changed to 'reference' in 'How is ornament to be
+  treated with rererence'.
+
+Page 247: '§ XIV. Now this is' corrected to '§ XIX. Now this is'.
+
+Page 273: 'no' changed to 'not' in 'a peculiar look, which I can no
+  otherwise describe'.
+
+Page 333: comma changed to period at the paragraph ending with
+  'separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly definable'.
+
+Page 370: 'two-thsrds' corrected to 'two-thirds'.
+
+Page 397: 'bodly' corrected to 'bodily' in 'merely through the channel
+  of the bodly dexterities'.
+
+Page 398: 'calld' corrected to 'called' in 'Men engaged in the practice
+  of these are calld artizans'.
+
+Page 401: 'necesary' corrected to 'necessary' in 'as Rubens was of that
+  necesary for his'.
+
+Page 406: Space placement corrected in 'I found it a sugly at last' to
+  'I found it as ugly at last'.
+
+Page 423: 'Milligen' corrected to 'Millingen' in 'Compare also Milligen,
+  Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings'.
+
+Page 433: space between 'rappresent' and 'arsi' removed in 'Tre Atti, da
+  rappresent arsi'.
+
+Page 433: 'del' corrected to 'dell' in 'Traduzione del' Idioma
+  Italiana'.
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3), by
+John Ruskin</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3)</p>
+<p>Author: John Ruskin</p>
+<p>Release Date: December 27, 2009  [eBook #30754]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STONES OF VENICE, VOLUME I (OF 3)***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Marius Masi, Juliet Sutherland,<br />
+    and the<br />
+    Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #ddddee; color: #000000; " summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr>
+<td style="width:25%; vertical-align:top">
+Transcriber's note:
+</td>
+<td class="norm">
+A few typographical errors have been corrected. They
+appear in the text <span class="correction" title="explanation will pop up">like this</span>, and the
+explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked
+passage. <br /><br />
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr><td style="width:25%; vertical-align:top">
+Linked volumes
+</td>
+<td class="norm">
+The index of this three-volume work is in Volume III, with links to
+all three volumes; and some footnotes are linked between volumes.
+These links are designed to work when the book is read on line. For
+information on the downloading of all three interlinked volumes so
+that the links work on your own computer, see the
+<a name="tn" id="tn"></a><a href="#tntag">Transcriber's Note</a>
+at the end of this book.
+</td> </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h3>Links to</h3>
+<h3><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30755/30755-h/30755-h.htm">Volume II</a></h3>
+<h3><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30756/30756-h/30756-h.htm">Volume III</a></h3>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>THE COMPLETE WORKS</h3>
+
+<h5>OF</h5>
+
+<h3>JOHN RUSKIN</h3>
+
+<h4>VOLUME VII</h4>
+<hr class="short" />
+<h4>STONES OF VENICE</h4>
+
+<h4>VOLUME I</h4>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <img src="images/img001.jpg" width="650" height="402" alt="VENICE" title="VENICE" /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">VENICE<br />
+                      <span style="font-size: 80%; ">FROM A PAINTING BY</span><br />
+                      J. M. W. TURNER
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<table class="allbctr" style="width: 60%; " summary="Front page">
+<tr>  <td class="pd" style="border-bottom: black 1px solid; " colspan="2"><h5>Library Edition</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-top: 3em; " colspan="2"><h3>THE COMPLETE WORKS</h3> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td colspan="2"><h6>OF</h6> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-bottom: 5em; " colspan="2"><h2>JOHN RUSKIN</h2> </td> </tr>
+
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-bottom: 5em; " colspan="2"><h5>STONES OF VENICE<br />
+<span class="sc">Volumes I-II</span><br /></h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="border-top: black 1px solid; padding-top: 1.5em; " colspan="2"><h3>NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION</h3> </td> </tr>
+<tr>  <td><h3 style="text-align: left; padding-left: 3em; ">NEW YORK</h3></td>
+      <td><h3 style="text-align: right; padding-right: 3em; ">CHICAGO</h3></td> </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<h2>THE</h2>
+<h2>STONES OF VENICE</h2>
+
+<h3>VOLUME I.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE FOUNDATIONS</h3>
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageiii"></a>iii</span></p>
+
+<h3>PREFACE.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p><span class="sc">In</span> the course of arranging the following essay, I put many
+things aside in my thoughts to be said in the Preface, things
+which I shall now put aside altogether, and pass by; for when
+a book has been advertised a year and a half, it seems best to
+present it with as little preface as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Thus much, however, it is necessary for the reader to
+know, that, when I planned the work, I had materials by me,
+collected at different times of sojourn in Venice during the
+last seventeen years, which it seemed to me might be arranged
+with little difficulty, and which I believe to be of value as
+illustrating the history of Southern Gothic. Requiring,
+however, some clearer assurance respecting certain points of
+chronology, I went to Venice finally in the autumn of 1849,
+not doubting but that the dates of the principal edifices of
+the ancient city were either ascertained, or ascertainable without
+extraordinary research. To my consternation, I found
+that the Venetian antiquaries were not agreed within a century
+as to the date of the building of the façades of the Ducal
+Palace, and that nothing was known of any other civil edifice
+of the early city, except that at some time or other it had been
+fitted up for somebody&rsquo;s reception, and been thereupon fresh
+painted. Every date in question was determinable only by
+internal evidence, and it became necessary for me to examine
+not only every one of the older palaces, stone by stone, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageiv"></a>iv</span>
+every fragment throughout the city which afforded any clue
+to the formation of its styles. This I did as well as I could,
+and I believe there will be found, in the following pages, the
+only existing account of the details of early Venetian architecture
+on which dependence can be placed, as far as it goes. I
+do not care to point out the deficiencies of other works on this
+subject; the reader will find, if he examines them, either that
+the buildings to which I shall specially direct his attention
+have been hitherto undescribed, or else that there are great
+discrepancies between previous descriptions and mine: for
+which discrepancies I may be permitted to give this single and
+sufficient reason, that my account of every building is based
+on personal examination and measurement of it, and that my
+taking the pains so to examine what I had to describe, was a
+subject of grave surprise to my Italian friends. The work of
+the Marchese Selvatico is, however, to be distinguished with
+respect; it is clear in arrangement, and full of useful, though
+vague, information; and I have found cause to adopt, in great
+measure, its views of the chronological succession of the
+edifices of Venice. I shall have cause hereafter to quarrel
+with it on other grounds, but not without expression of gratitude
+for the assistance it has given me. Fontana&rsquo;s &ldquo;Fabbriche
+di Venezia&rdquo; is also historically valuable, but does not attempt
+to give architectural detail. Cicognara, as is now generally
+known, is so inaccurate as hardly to deserve mention.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it is not easy to be accurate in an account of anything,
+however simple. Zoologists often disagree in their
+descriptions of the curve of a shell, or the plumage of a bird,
+though they may lay their specimen on the table, and examine
+it at their leisure; how much greater becomes the likelihood
+of error in the description of things which must be in
+many parts observed from a distance, or under unfavorable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagev"></a>v</span>
+circumstances of light and shade; and of which many of the
+distinctive features have been worn away by time. I believe
+few people have any idea of the cost of truth in these things;
+of the expenditure of time necessary to make sure of the
+simplest facts, and of the strange way in which separate observations
+will sometimes falsify each other, incapable of reconcilement,
+owing to some imperceptible inadvertency. I am
+ashamed of the number of times in which I have had to say,
+in the following pages, &ldquo;I am not sure,&rdquo; and I claim for them
+no authority, as if they were thoroughly sifted from error,
+even in what they more confidently state. Only, as far as my
+time, and strength, and mind served me, I have endeavored
+down to the smallest matters, to ascertain and speak the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the subject without many and most discouraging
+difficulties, peculiar to itself. As far as my inquiries have extended,
+there is not a building in Venice, raised prior to the
+sixteenth century, which has not sustained essential change in
+one or more of its most important features. By far the
+greater number present examples of three or four different
+styles, it may be successive, it may be accidentally associated;
+and, in many instances, the restorations or additions have
+gradually replaced the entire structure of the ancient fabric, of
+which nothing but the name remains, together with a kind of
+identity, exhibited in the anomalous association of the modernized
+portions: the Will of the old building asserted through
+them all, stubbornly, though vainly, expressive; superseded
+by codicils, and falsified by misinterpretation; yet animating
+what would otherwise be a mere group of fantastic masque, as
+embarrassing to the antiquary, as to the mineralogist, the
+epigene crystal, formed by materials of one substance modelled
+on the perished crystals of another. The church of St. Mark&rsquo;s
+itself, harmonious as its structure may at first sight appear, is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagevi"></a>vi</span>
+an epitome of the changes of Venetian architecture from the
+tenth to the nineteenth century. Its crypt, and the line of
+low arches which support the screen, are apparently the earliest
+portions; the lower stories of the main fabric are of the
+eleventh and twelfth centuries, with later Gothic interpolations;
+the pinnacles are of the earliest fully developed Venetian
+Gothic (fourteenth century); but one of them, that on
+the projection at the eastern extremity of the Piazzetta de
+Leoni, is of far finer, and probably earlier workmanship than
+all the rest. The southern range of pinnacles is again inferior
+to the northern and western, and visibly of later date. Then
+the screen, which most writers have described as part of the
+original fabric, bears its date inscribed on its architrave, 1394,
+and with it are associated a multitude of small screens, balustrades,
+decorations of the interior building, and probably the
+rose window of the south transept. Then come the interpolated
+traceries of the front and sides; then the crocketings
+of the upper arches, extravagances of the incipient Renaissance:
+and, finally, the figures which carry the waterspouts on
+the north side&mdash;utterly barbarous seventeenth or eighteenth
+century work&mdash;connect the whole with the plastered restorations
+of the year 1844 and 1845. Most of the palaces in Venice
+have sustained interpolations hardly less numerous; and those
+of the Ducal Palace are so intricate, that a year&rsquo;s labor would
+probably be insufficient altogether to disentangle and define
+them. I therefore gave up all thoughts of obtaining a perfectly
+clear chronological view of the early architecture; but
+the dates necessary to the main purposes of the book the reader
+will find well established; and of the evidence brought forward
+for those of less importance, he is himself to judge.
+Doubtful estimates are never made grounds of argument; and
+the accuracy of the account of the buildings themselves, for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagevii"></a>vii</span>
+which alone I pledge myself, is of course entirely independent
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner, as the statements briefly made in the
+chapters on construction involve questions so difficult and so general,
+that I cannot hope that every expression referring to them
+will be found free from error: and as the conclusions to which
+I have endeavored to lead the reader are thrown into a form
+the validity of which depends on that of each successive step,
+it might be argued, if fallacy or weakness could be detected in
+one of them, that all the subsequent reasonings were valueless.
+The reader may be assured, however, that it is not so; the
+method of proof used in the following essay being only one
+out of many which were in my choice, adopted because it
+seemed to me the shortest and simplest, not as being the
+strongest. In many cases, the conclusions are those which
+men of quick feeling would arrive at instinctively; and I then
+sought to discover the reasons of what so strongly recommended
+itself as truth. Though these reasons could every one of
+them, from the beginning to the end of the book, be proved
+insufficient, the truth of its conclusions would remain the same.
+I should only regret that I had dishonored them by an ill-grounded
+defence; and endeavor to repair my error by a better
+one.</p>
+
+<p>I have not, however, written carelessly; nor should I in
+any wise have expressed doubt of the security of the following
+argument, but that it is physically impossible for me, being
+engaged quite as much with mountains, and clouds, and trees,
+and criticism of painting, as with architecture, to verify, as I
+should desire, the expression of every sentence bearing upon
+empirical and technical matters. Life is not long enough; nor
+does a day pass by without causing me to feel more bitterly
+the impossibility of carrying out to the extent which I should
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageviii"></a>viii</span>
+desire, the separate studies which general criticism continually
+forces me to undertake. I can only assure the reader, that he
+will find the certainty of every statement I permit myself to
+make, increase with its importance; and that, for the security
+of the final conclusions of the following essay, as well as for
+the resolute veracity of its account of whatever facts have
+come under my own immediate cognizance, I will pledge myself
+to the uttermost.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary, to the accomplishment of the purpose of
+the work (of which account is given in the First Chapter), that
+I should establish some canons of judgment, which the general
+reader should thoroughly understand, and, if it pleased him,
+accept, before we took cognizance, together, of any architecture
+whatsoever. It has taken me more time and trouble to do this
+than I expected; but, if I have succeeded, the thing done will
+be of use for many other purposes than that to which it is now
+put. The establishment of these canons, which I have called
+&ldquo;the Foundations,&rdquo; and some account of the connection of
+Venetian architecture with that of the rest of Europe, have
+filled the present volume. The second will, I hope, contain all
+I have to say about Venice itself.</p>
+
+<p>It was of course inexpedient to reduce drawings of crowded
+details to the size of an octavo volume,&mdash;I do not say impossible,
+but inexpedient; requiring infinite pains on the part of
+the engraver, with no result except farther pains to the beholder.
+And as, on the other hand, folio books are not easy
+reading, I determined to separate the text and the unreducible
+plates. I have given, with the principal text, all the illustrations
+absolutely necessary to the understanding of it, and, in
+the detached work, such additional text as has special reference
+to the larger illustrations.</p>
+
+<p>A considerable number of these larger plates were at first
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageix"></a>ix</span>
+intended to be executed in tinted lithography; but, finding the
+result unsatisfactory, I have determined to prepare the principal
+subjects for mezzotinting,&mdash;a change of method requiring
+two new drawings to be made of every subject; one a carefully
+penned outline for the etcher, and then a finished drawing
+upon the etching. This work does not proceed fast, while I
+am also occupied with the completion of the text; but the
+numbers of it will appear as fast as I can prepare them.</p>
+
+<p>For the illustrations of the body of the work itself, I have
+used any kind of engraving which seemed suited to the subjects&mdash;line
+and mezzotint, on steel, with mixed lithographs
+and woodcuts, at considerable loss of uniformity in the appearance
+of the volume, but, I hope, with advantage, in rendering
+the character of the architecture it describes. And both in
+the plates and the text I have aimed chiefly at clear intelligibility;
+that any one, however little versed in the subject, might
+be able to take up the book, and understand what it meant
+forthwith. I have utterly failed of my purpose, if I have not
+made all the essential parts of the essay intelligible to the least
+learned, and easy to the most desultory readers, who are likely
+to take interest in the matter at all. There are few passages
+which even require so much as an acquaintance with the elements
+of Euclid, and these may be missed, without harm to
+the sense of the rest, by every reader to whom they may
+appear mysterious; and the architectural terms necessarily employed
+(which are very few) are explained as they occur, or in
+a note; so that, though I may often be found trite or tedious,
+I trust that I shall not be obscure. I am especially anxious to
+rid this essay of ambiguity, because I want to gain the ear of
+all kinds of persons. Every man has, at some time of his life,
+personal interest in architecture. He has influence on the
+design of some public building; or he has to buy, or build, or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagex"></a>x</span>
+alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge
+of other arts be general or not; men may live without buying
+pictures or statues: but, in architecture, all must in some way
+commit themselves; they <i>must</i> do mischief, and waste their
+money, if they do not know how to turn it to account.
+Churches, and shops, and warehouses, and cottages, and small
+row, and place, and terrace houses, must be built, and lived in,
+however joyless or inconvenient. And it is assuredly intended
+that all of us should have knowledge, and act upon our knowledge,
+in matters with which we are daily concerned, and not
+to be left to the caprice of architects or mercy of contractors.
+There is not, indeed, anything in the following essay bearing
+on the special forms and needs of modern buildings; but the
+principles it inculcates are universal; and they are illustrated
+from the remains of a city which should surely be interesting
+to the men of London, as affording the richest existing examples
+of architecture raised by a mercantile community, for
+civil uses, and domestic magnificence.</p>
+
+<p class="f90"><span class="sc">Denmark Hill</span>, <i>February</i>, 1851.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexi"></a>xi</span></p>
+
+<h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="80%" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr> <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><span class="sc f80">page</span> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Preface, </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#pageiii">iii</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Quarry,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page001">1</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Virtues of Architecture,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page036">36</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Six Divisions of Architecture,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page047">47</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Wall Base,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page052">52</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Wall Veil,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page058">58</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Wall Cornice,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page063">63</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Pier Base,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page071">71</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Shaft,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page084">84</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Capital,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page105">105</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexii"></a>xii</span> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Arch Line,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page122">122</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Arch Masonry,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page132">132</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Arch Load,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page144">144</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Roof,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page148">148</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Roof Cornice,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page155">155</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Buttress,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page166">166</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Form of Aperture,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page174">174</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Filling of Aperture,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page183">183</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVIII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Protection of Aperture,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page195">195</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIX.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Superimposition,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page200">200</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XX.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Material of Ornament,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page211">211</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXI.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Treatment of Ornament,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page236">236</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexiii"></a>xiii</span> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Angle,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page259">259</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Angle,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page259">259</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Edge and Fillet,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page267">267</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIV.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Roll and Recess,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page276">276</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXV.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Base,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page281">281</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVI.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Wall Veil and Shaft,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page294">294</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Cornice and Capital,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page305">305</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVIII.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Archivolt and Aperture,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page333">333</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIX.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Roof,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page343">343</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXX.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp">The Vestibule,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page349">349</a> </td> </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<h5>APPENDIX.</h5>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="80%" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">1.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Foundation of Venice,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page359">359</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">2.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Power of the Doges,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page360">360</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">3.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Serrar del Consiglio,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page360">360</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">4.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Pietro di Castello,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page361">361</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexiv"></a>xiv</span> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">5.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Papal Power in Venice,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page362">362</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">6.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Renaissance Ornament,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page369">369</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">7.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Varieties of the Orders,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page370">370</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">8.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">The Northern Energy,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page371">371</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">9.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Wooden Churches of the North,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page381">381</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">10.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Church of Alexandria, </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page381">381</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">11.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Renaissance Landscape,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page381">381</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">12.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Romanist Modern Art,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page384">384</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">13.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Mr. Fergusson&rsquo;s System,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page388">388</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">14.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Divisions of Humanity,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page394">394</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">15.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Instinctive Judgments,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page399">399</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">16.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Strength of Shafts,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page402">402</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">17.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Answer to Mr. Garbett,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page403">403</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">18.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Early English Capitals,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page411">411</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">19.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Tombs near St. Anastasia,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page412">412</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">20.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Shafts of the Ducal Palace,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page413">413</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">21.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Ancient Representations of Water,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page417">417</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">22.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Arabian Ornamentation,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page429">429</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">23.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Varieties of Chamfer,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page429">429</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">24.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Renaissance Bases,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page431">431</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2" style="width: 1.5em; ">25.</td>
+     <td class="tc3">Romanist Decoration of Bases,</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page432">432</a> </td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexv"></a>xv</span></p>
+
+<h3>LIST OF PLATES.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="90%" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1" style="width: 3em; ">&nbsp;</td>
+      <td class="tc2" style="width: 1em; ">&nbsp;</td>
+      <td class="tc3">&nbsp;</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><span style="font-size: 75%; ">Facing Page</span></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">Plate</td>
+      <td class="tc2">1.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Wall Veil Decoration, Ca&rsquo; Trevisan and Ca&rsquo; Dario,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page013">13</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">2.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Plans of Piers,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page100">100</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">3.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Arch Masonry,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page134">134</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">4.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Arch Masonry,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page137">137</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">5.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Arch Masonry, Bruletto of Como,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page141">141</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">6.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Types of Towers,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page207">207</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">7.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Abstracts Lines,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page222">222</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">8.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Decorations by Disks, Ca&rsquo; Badoari,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page241">241</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">9.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Edge Decoration,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page268">268</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">10.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Profiles of Bases,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page283">283</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">11.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Plans of Bases,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page288">288</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">12.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Decorations of Bases,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page289">289</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">13.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Wall Veil Decorations,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page295">295</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">14.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Spandril Decorations, Ducal Palace,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page298">298</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">15.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Cornice Profiles,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page306">306</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">16.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Cornice Decorations,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page311">311</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">17.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Capitals&mdash;Concave,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page323">323</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">18.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Capitals&mdash;Convex,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page327">327</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">19.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Archivolt Decoration, Verona,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page333">333</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">20.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Wall Veil Decoration, Ca&rsquo; Trevisan,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page369">369</a></td>  </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td class="tc1">"</td>
+      <td class="tc2">21.</td>
+      <td class="tc3">Wall Veil Decoration, San Michele, Lucca,</td>
+      <td class="tc4"><a href="#page378">378</a></td>  </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexvi"></a>xvi</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page001"></a>1</span></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE</h4>
+
+<h2>STONES OF VENICE.</h2>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="chap_1" id="chap_1"></a>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE QUARRY.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">Since</span> the first dominion of men was asserted over the
+ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set
+upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England.
+Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains;
+of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which inherits their greatness,
+if it forget their example, may be led through prouder
+eminence to less pitied destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have
+been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever
+uttered by the Prophets of Israel against the cities of the
+stranger. But we read them as a lovely song; and close our
+ears to the sternness of their warning: for the very depth of
+the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget,
+as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine
+and the sea, that they were once &ldquo;as in Eden, the garden of
+God.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less
+in endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the
+final period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea,
+so weak&mdash;so quiet,&mdash;so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we
+might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the
+mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the
+Shadow.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page002"></a>2</span></p>
+
+<p>I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it
+be for ever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning
+which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining
+waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the <span class="sc">Stones of
+Venice</span>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
+which might be derived from a faithful study of the history
+of this strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite
+of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable
+outline,&mdash;barred with brightness and shade, like the
+far away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sand-bank
+are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which we
+have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but
+their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far
+as they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far
+higher kind than that usually belonging to architectural investigations.
+I may, perhaps, in the outset, and in few words,
+enable the general reader to form a clearer idea of the importance
+of every existing expression of Venetian character
+through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which
+the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have
+gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was
+so during a period less than the half of her existence, and that
+including the days of her decline; and it is one of the first
+questions needing severe examination, whether that decline
+was owing in any wise to the change in the form of her government,
+or altogether, as assuredly in great part, to changes,
+in the character of the persons of whom it was composed.</p>
+
+<p>The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six
+years, from the first establishment of a consular government
+on the island of the Rialto,<a name="FnAnchor_1" href="#Footnote_1"><span class="sp">1</span></a> to the moment when the
+General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the
+Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page003"></a>3</span>
+Hundred and Seventy-six<a name="FnAnchor_2" href="#Footnote_2"><span class="sp">2</span></a> years were passed in a nominal subjection
+to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in
+an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears
+to have been entrusted to tribunes,<a name="FnAnchor_3" href="#Footnote_3"><span class="sp">3</span></a> chosen, one by the inhabitants
+of each of the principal islands. For six hundred years,<a name="FnAnchor_4" href="#Footnote_4"><span class="sp">4</span></a>
+during which the power of Venice was continually on the increase,
+her government was an elective monarchy, her King or
+doge possessing, in early times at least, as much independent
+authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
+gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of
+its prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
+magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the
+image of a king, lasted for five hundred years, during which
+Venice reaped the fruits of her former energies, consumed
+them,&mdash;and expired.</p>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the
+Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first
+of nine hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation
+being marked by what was called the &ldquo;Serrar del Consiglio;&rdquo;
+that is to say, the final and absolute distinction of the
+nobles from the commonalty, and the establishment of the
+government in their hands to the exclusion alike of the influence
+of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
+doge on the other.</p>
+
+<p>Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us
+with the most interesting spectacle of a people struggling out
+of anarchy into order and power; and then governed, for the
+most part, by the worthiest and noblest man whom they could
+find among them,<a name="FnAnchor_5" href="#Footnote_5"><span class="sp">5</span></a> called their Doge or Leader, with an aristocracy
+gradually and resolutely forming itself around him,
+out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page004"></a>4</span>
+owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and
+wealth of some among the families of the fugitives from the
+older Venetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and
+heroism, into a separate body.</p>
+
+<p>This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest
+achievements, and the circumstances which determined her
+character and position among European powers; and within
+its range, as might have been anticipated, we find the names of
+all her hero princes,&mdash;of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo Falier,
+Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.</p>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty
+years, the most eventful in the career of Venice&mdash;the central
+struggle of her life&mdash;stained with her darkest crime, the murder
+of Carrara&mdash;disturbed by her most dangerous internal
+sedition, the conspiracy of Falier&mdash;oppressed by her most fatal
+war, the war of Chiozza&mdash;and distinguished by the glory of
+her two noblest citizens (for in this period the heroism of her
+citizens replaces that of her monarchs), Vittor Pisani and Carlo
+Zeno.</p>
+
+<p>I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the
+death of Carlo Zeno, 8th May, 1418;<a name="FnAnchor_6" href="#Footnote_6"><span class="sp">6</span></a> the <i>visible</i> commencement
+from that of another of her noblest and wisest children,
+the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later.
+The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with pestilence and
+war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were made
+by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace, significant
+as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at
+Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice,
+the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to
+the Turk: in the same year was established the Inquisition of
+State,<a name="FnAnchor_7" href="#Footnote_7"><span class="sp">7</span></a> and from this period her government takes the perfidious
+and mysterious form under which it is usually conceived.
+In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page005"></a>5</span>
+shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai
+marks the period usually assigned as the commencement of the
+decline of the Venetian power;<a name="FnAnchor_8" href="#Footnote_8"><span class="sp">8</span></a> the commercial prosperity of
+Venice in the close of the fifteenth century blinding her historians
+to the previous evidence of the diminution of her internal
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence
+between the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical
+powers, and the diminution of the prosperity of the state. But
+this is the very question at issue; and it appears to me quite
+undetermined by any historian, or determined by each in accordance
+with his own prejudices. It is a triple question:
+first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of individual
+ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of
+the Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of
+the oligarchy itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than
+the cause, of national enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I
+rather think, the history of Venice might not be written
+almost without reference to the construction of her senate or
+the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a people
+eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
+disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to
+live nobly or to perish:&mdash;for a thousand years they fought for
+life; for three hundred they invited death: their battle was
+rewarded, and their call was heard.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and,
+at many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual
+heroism; and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes
+(oftenest) her king, sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen.
+To him no matter, nor to her: the real question is, not so
+much what names they bore, or with what powers they were
+entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
+masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of
+distress, impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page006"></a>6</span>
+of the change from the time when she could find saviours
+among those whom she had cast into prison, to that when the
+voices of her own children commanded her to sign covenant
+with Death.<a name="FnAnchor_9" href="#Footnote_9"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. On this collateral question I wish the reader&rsquo;s mind
+to be fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will
+give double interest to every detail: nor will the interest be
+profitless; for the evidence which I shall be able to deduce
+from the arts of Venice will be both frequent and irrefragable,
+that the decline of her political prosperity was exactly coincident
+with that of domestic and individual religion.</p>
+
+<p>I say domestic and individual; for&mdash;and this is the second
+point which I wish the reader to keep in mind&mdash;the most
+curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of
+religion in private life, and its deadness in public policy.
+Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other
+states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to last, like a
+masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her
+commercial interest,&mdash;this the one motive of all her important
+political acts, or enduring national animosities. She could
+forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her commerce;
+she calculated the glory of her conquests by their
+value, and estimated their justice by their facility. The fame
+of success remains, when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised
+to be reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by
+the noblest of her princes, and whose results added most to her
+military glory, was one in which while all Europe around her
+was wasted by the fire of its devotion, she first calculated the
+highest price she could exact from its piety for the armament
+she furnished, and then, for the advancement of her own private
+interests, at once broke her faith<a name="FnAnchor_10" href="#Footnote_10"><span class="sp">10</span></a> and betrayed her religion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page007"></a>7</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we
+shall be struck again and again by the evidences of the most
+noble individual feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed
+in hypocrisy, though they could not blind him to the importance
+of the conquest of Zara. The habit of assigning to religion
+a direct influence over all <i>his own</i> actions, and all the
+affairs of <i>his own</i> daily life, is remarkable in every great
+Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor
+are instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens
+reaches the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the
+guide of its course where the scales of expediency are doubtfully
+balanced. I sincerely trust that the inquirer would be
+disappointed who should endeavor to trace any more immediate
+reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III.
+against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the
+character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was
+provoked by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of
+Venice is shown only in her hastiest councils; her worldly
+spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has time to calculate
+the probabilities of advantage, or when they are sufficiently
+distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection
+of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable
+throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies
+by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but
+symbolised by a very singular circumstance in the building of
+the city itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in
+which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But the
+principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the
+palace of her prince, and called the &ldquo;Chiesa Ducale.&rdquo; The
+patriarchal church,<a name="FnAnchor_11" href="#Footnote_11"><span class="sp">11</span></a> inconsiderable in size and mean in decoration,
+stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group,
+and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the
+greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city.
+Nor is it less worthy of remark, that the two most important
+temples of Venice, next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page008"></a>8</span>
+magnificence, not to national effort, but to the energy of the
+Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast
+organization of those great societies on the mainland of Italy,
+and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his
+generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,<a name="FnAnchor_12" href="#Footnote_12"><span class="sp">12</span></a> who
+now rests beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and
+whose life is not satirized by the images of the Virtues which
+a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his tomb.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights
+in which we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful
+history of the Rivo Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep
+and constant tone of individual religion characterising the
+lives of the citizens of Venice in her greatness; we find this
+spirit influencing them in all the familiar and immediate concerns
+of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct even of
+their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
+simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation
+with which a man of the world at present admits (even if it
+be so in reality) that religious feeling has any influence over
+the minor branches of his conduct. And we find as the natural
+consequence of all this, a healthy serenity of mind and
+energy of will expressed in all their actions, and a habit of
+heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
+motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness
+of this spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent,
+and with its failure her decline, and that with a closeness
+and precision which it will be one of the collateral objects of
+the following essay to demonstrate from such accidental evidence
+as the field of its inquiry presents. And, thus far, all
+is natural and simple. But the stopping short of this religious
+faith when it appears likely to influence national action, correspondent
+as it is, and that most strikingly, with several characteristics
+of the temper of our present English legislature, is
+a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious interest
+and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page009"></a>9</span>
+of my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for
+the treatment of which I must be content to furnish materials
+in the light I may be able to throw upon the private tendencies
+of the Venetian character.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. There is, however, another most interesting feature
+in the policy of Venice which will be often brought before us;
+and which a Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its
+irreligion; namely, the magnificent and successful struggle
+which she maintained against the temporal authority of the
+Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid survey of her
+career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama to
+which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable
+scene in the portico of St. Mark&rsquo;s,<a name="FnAnchor_13" href="#Footnote_13"><span class="sp">13</span></a> the central expression in
+most men&rsquo;s thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical
+power; it is true that the proudest thoughts of Venice,
+as well as the insignia of her prince, and the form of her chief
+festival, recorded the service thus rendered to the Roman
+Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more than
+balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement
+V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge,
+likening them to Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a
+stronger evidence of the great tendencies of the Venetian
+government than the umbrella of the doge or the ring of the
+Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted out
+the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics
+from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page010"></a>10</span>
+mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome,
+and of her defiance of it.</p>
+
+<p>To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the
+Romanist will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant
+their success.<a name="FnAnchor_14" href="#Footnote_14"><span class="sp">14</span></a> The first may be silenced by a reference to the
+character of the policy of the Vatican itself; and the second by
+his own shame, when he reflects that the English legislature
+sacrificed their principles to expose themselves to the very
+danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed theirs to avoid.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting
+the Venetian government, the singular unity of the families
+composing it,&mdash;unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable
+when contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily
+revolutions, the restless successions of families and parties in
+power, which fill the annals of the other states of Italy. That
+rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or enmity
+conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be
+anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so
+severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears usually unmingled
+with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance
+in which private passion sought its gratification through public
+danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the
+public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with
+reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like
+a branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office
+was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a
+watch-tower only: from first to last, while the palaces of the
+other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart,
+and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and
+the bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a
+war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian
+imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of lilies.<a name="FnAnchor_15" href="#Footnote_15"><span class="sp">15</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page011"></a>11</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
+general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people.
+I would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of
+the manner in which the testimony of Art bears upon these
+questions, and of the aspect which the arts themselves assume
+when they are regarded in their true connexion with the history
+of the state.</p>
+
+<p>1st. Receive the witness of Painting.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the
+Fall of Venice as far back as 1418.</p>
+
+<p>Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480.
+John Bellini, and his brother Gentile, two years older than he,
+close the line of the sacred painters of Venice. But the most
+solemn spirit of religious faith animates their works to the last.
+There is no religion in any work of Titian&rsquo;s: there is not even
+the smallest evidence of religious temper or sympathies either
+in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred
+subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric,&mdash;composition
+and color. His minor works are generally
+made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in
+the church of the Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form
+a link of connexion between the portraits of various members
+of the Pesaro family who surround her.</p>
+
+<p>Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious
+man and Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives
+of the school of painters contemporary with them;
+and the difference in their artistic feeling is a consequence not
+so much of difference in their own natural characters as in their
+early education: Bellini was brought up in faith; Titian in
+formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion
+of Venice had expired.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. The <i>vital</i> religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
+observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator
+still were painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling
+before the Madonna or St. Mark; a confession of faith made
+universal by the pure gold of the Venetian sequin. But observe
+the great picture of Titian&rsquo;s in the ducal palace, of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page012"></a>12</span>
+Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a
+curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait
+of one of Titian&rsquo;s least graceful female models: Faith had
+become carnal. The eye is first caught by the flash of the
+Doge&rsquo;s armor. The heart of Venice was in her wars, not in
+her worship.</p>
+
+<p>The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious
+than that of Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the
+sacred subjects which it approaches, and sometimes forgets
+itself into devotion; but the principle of treatment is altogether
+the same as Titian&rsquo;s: absolute subordination of the religious
+subject to purposes of decoration or portraiture.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from
+the works of Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,&mdash;that
+the fifteenth century had taken away the religious heart of
+Venice.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
+Architecture will be our task through many a page to come;
+but I must here give a general idea of its heads.</p>
+
+<p>Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in
+1495, says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs
+qui est l&rsquo;honneur d&rsquo;Italie que d&rsquo;estre au meillieu; et me
+menerent au long de la grant rue, qu&rsquo;ilz appellent le Canal
+Grant, et est bien large. Les gallees y passent à travers et y ay
+ven navire de quatre cens tonneaux ou plus pres des maisons:
+et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit en tout le monde, et
+la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les maisons sont
+fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les anciennes
+toutes painctes; les aultres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes ont
+le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d&rsquo;Istrie, à cent mils
+de là, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine
+sur le devant.... C&rsquo;est la plus triumphante cité
+que j&rsquo;aye jamais vene et qui plus faict d&rsquo;honneur à ambassadeurs
+et estrangiers, et qui plus saigement se gouverne, et où
+le service de Dieu est le plus sollempnellement faict: et encores
+qu&rsquo;il y peust bien avoir d&rsquo;aultres faultes, si je croy que Dieu
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page013"></a>13</span>
+les a en ayde pour la reverence qu&rsquo;ilz portent au service de
+l&rsquo;Eglise.&rdquo;<a name="FnAnchor_16" href="#Footnote_16"><span class="sp">16</span></a></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">I.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_1"><img src="images/img013.jpg" width="340" height="650" alt="Wall-Veil-Decoration." title="Wall-Veil-Decoration." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">Wall-Veil-Decoration.<br />
+                      <span class="f80">CA&rsquo;TREVISAN CA&rsquo;DARIO.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
+Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion
+of Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still
+remained with some glimmering of life in them, and were the
+evidence of what the real life had been in former times. But
+observe, secondly, the impression instantly made on Commynes&rsquo;
+mind by the distinction between the elder palaces and those
+built &ldquo;within this last hundred years; which all have their
+fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles
+away, and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine
+upon their fronts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of
+the palaces which so struck the French ambassador.<a name="FnAnchor_17" href="#Footnote_17"><span class="sp">17</span></a> He was
+right in his notice of the distinction. There had indeed come
+a change over Venetian architecture in the fifteenth century;
+and a change of some importance to us moderns: we English
+owe to it our St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
+to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of architecture,
+never since revived. But that the reader may understand
+this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea
+of the connexion of the architecture of Venice with that of the
+rest of Europe, from its origin forwards.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. All European architecture, bad and good, old and
+new, is derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and
+perfected from the East. The history of architecture is nothing
+but the tracing of the various modes and directions of this derivation.
+Understand this, once for all: if you hold fast this
+great connecting clue, you may string all the types of successive
+architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The Doric
+and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque,
+massy-capitaled buildings&mdash;Norman, Lombard, Byzantine,
+and what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page014"></a>14</span>
+of all Gothic, Early English, French, German, and Tuscan.
+Now observe: those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave
+the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft
+and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from
+the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from
+Ismael, Abraham, and Shem.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. There is high probability that the Greek received
+his shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this
+earlier derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary
+that he should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin,
+when the form of the shaft was first perfected. But it may be
+incidentally observed, that if the Greeks did indeed receive
+their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the earth
+have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture:
+and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or
+bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the
+spiritualisation of both.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian,
+are the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps,
+heard of five orders; but there are only two real orders, and
+there never can be any more until doomsday. On one of these
+orders the ornament is convex: those are Doric, Norman, and
+what else you recollect of the kind. On the other the ornament
+is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English, Decorated,
+and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
+form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or
+root of both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms
+and grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species.<a name="FnAnchor_18" href="#Footnote_18"><span class="sp">18</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders,
+was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular
+result, until they begun to bring the arch into extensive
+practical service; except only that the Doric capital was spoiled
+in endeavors to mend it, and the Corinthian much varied and
+enriched with fanciful, and often very beautiful imagery.
+And in this state of things came Christianity: seized upon the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page015"></a>15</span>
+arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented
+a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all
+over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as
+were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she
+could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression
+of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful&mdash;but
+very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, and yet
+radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which
+flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the
+Bosphorus and the Ĉgean and the Adriatic Sea, and then
+gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
+Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form&mdash;a
+strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it
+expressed; and so would have remained for ever,&mdash;so <i>does</i>
+remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.<a name="FnAnchor_19" href="#Footnote_19"><span class="sp">19</span></a> But rough
+wakening was ordained for it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXI</span>. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided
+into two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at
+Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early
+Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, carried
+to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is
+distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for
+the present, to class these two branches of art together in his
+mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same;
+that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence
+of the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down
+from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen
+who could be found&mdash;Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece;
+and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term
+of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the
+refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but
+which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the
+fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms.
+And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page016"></a>16</span>
+branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking
+aspects more or less refined, according to its proximity to the
+seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor
+and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that
+vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking
+into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed
+and incapable of advance or change.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXII</span>. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal.
+While in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under
+their immediate influence, this Roman art of pure descent was
+practised in all its refinement, an impure form of it&mdash;a patois
+of Romanesque&mdash;was carried by inferior workmen into distant
+provinces; and still ruder imitations of this patois were executed
+by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the empire.
+But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
+and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended
+art was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines
+a barbarous and borrowed art was organising itself into strength
+and consistency. The reader must therefore consider the history
+of the work of the period as broadly divided into two
+great heads: the one embracing the elaborately languid succession
+of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the imitations
+of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of
+early organisation, on the edges of the empire, or included in
+its now merely nominal extent.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIII</span>. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not
+susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the
+Alps, appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the
+Ostrogoths, with the enervated Italians, and give physical
+strength to the mass with which they mingle, without materially
+affecting its intellectual character. But others, both south
+and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the
+beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice
+creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west
+the influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the
+Greeks. Two nations, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent
+to us the force of derived mind on either side. As the central
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page017"></a>17</span>
+power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light gather into their
+fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done their
+work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a glittering
+sepulchre, the living light rose upon both horizons, and
+the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over its
+golden paralysis.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIV</span>. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood
+and system to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom;
+that of the Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim
+the spirituality of worship. The Lombard covered every
+church which he built with the sculptured representations
+of bodily exercises&mdash;hunting and war.<a name="FnAnchor_20" href="#Footnote_20"><span class="sp">20</span></a> The Arab banished
+all imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed
+from their minarets, &ldquo;There is no god but God.&rdquo; Opposite
+in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence
+of energy, they came from the North and from the South, the
+glacier torrent and the lava stream: they met and contended
+over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very centre of
+the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the
+opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman
+wreck, is <span class="sc">Venice</span>.</p>
+
+<p>The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in
+exactly equal proportions&mdash;the Roman, Lombard, and Arab.
+It is the central building of the world.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXV</span>. The reader will now begin to understand something
+of the importance of the study of the edifices of a city which
+includes, within the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the
+field of contest between the three pre-eminent architectures of
+the world:&mdash;each architecture expressing a condition of religion;
+each an erroneous condition, yet necessary to the correction of
+the others, and corrected by them.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVI</span>. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work,
+to mark the various modes in which the northern and southern
+architectures were developed from the Roman: here I must
+pause only to name the distinguishing characteristics of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page018"></a>18</span>
+great families. The Christian Roman and Byzantine work is
+round-arched, with single and well-proportioned shafts; capitals
+imitated from classical Roman; mouldings more or less so; and
+large surfaces of walls entirely covered with imagery, mosaic,
+and paintings, whether of scripture history or of sacred symbols.</p>
+
+<p>The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features,
+the Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but
+the Arab rapidly introduces characters half Persepolitan, half
+Egyptian, into the shafts and capitals: in his intense love of
+excitement he points the arch and writhes it into extravagant
+foliations; he banishes the animal imagery, and invents an ornamentation
+of his own (called Arabesque) to replace it: this not
+being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates it on
+features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
+of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains
+the dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite
+refinement.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVII</span>. The changes effected by the Lombard are more
+curious still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more
+than its decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as
+I said, the whole of that of the northern barbaric nations. And
+this I believe was, at first, an imitation in wood of the Christian
+Roman churches or basilicas. Without staying to examine the
+whole structure of a basilica, the reader will easily understand
+thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles, the nave
+much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from
+the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces
+of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the
+upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a
+gabled wooden roof.</p>
+
+<p>These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone;
+but in the wooden work of the North, they must necessarily
+have been made of horizontal boards or timbers attached to
+uprights on the top of the nave pillars, which were themselves
+also of wood.<a name="FnAnchor_21" href="#Footnote_21"><span class="sp">21</span></a> Now, these uprights were necessarily thicker
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page019"></a>19</span>
+than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square pilasters
+above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and civilisation
+increased, these wooden structures were changed into
+stone; but they were literally petrified, retaining the form
+which had been made necessary by their being of wood. The
+upright pilaster above the nave pier remains in the stone edifice,
+and is the first form of the great distinctive feature of Northern
+architecture&mdash;the vaulting shaft. In that form the Lombards
+brought it into Italy, in the seventh century, and it remains to
+this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of Pavia.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVIII</span>. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the
+clerestory walls, additional members were added for its support
+to the nave piers. Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for
+a single pillar, gave the first idea of the grouped shaft. Be
+that as it may, the arrangement of the nave pier in the form of
+a cross accompanies the superimposition of the vaulting shaft;
+together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts in doorways
+and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
+Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards,
+may be described as rough but majestic work, round-arched,
+with grouped shafts, added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery
+of active life and fantastic superstitions.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIX</span>. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following
+one of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever
+they had flowed; but without influencing, I think, the Southern
+nations beyond the sphere of their own presence. But the
+lava stream of the Arab, even after it ceased to flow, warmed
+the whole of the Northern air; and the history of Gothic architecture
+is the history of the refinement and spiritualisation of
+Northern work under its influence. The noblest buildings of
+the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque) Gothic,
+and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools themselves,
+under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics
+of the North are the original forms of the architecture which
+the Lombards brought into Italy, changing under the less direct
+influence of the Arab.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXX</span>. Understanding thus much of the formation of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page020"></a>20</span>
+great European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the
+succession of architectures in Venice herself. From what I
+said of the central character of Venetian art, the reader is not,
+of course, to conclude that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian
+elements met together and contended for the mastery at the
+same period. The earliest element was the pure Christian
+Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at Venice;
+for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
+settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend
+from the mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it
+was not until the beginning of the ninth century that it became
+the seat of government; while the cathedral of Torcello, though
+Christian Roman in general form, was rebuilt in the eleventh
+century, and shows evidence of Byzantine workmanship in
+many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the church
+of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice,
+and the crypt of St. Mark&rsquo;s, forms a distinct group of buildings,
+in which the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and
+which is probably very sufficiently representative of the earliest
+architecture on the islands.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXI</span>. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809,
+and the body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty
+years later. The first church of St. Mark&rsquo;s was, doubtless,
+built in imitation of that destroyed at Alexandria, and from
+which the relics of the saint had been obtained. During the
+ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the architecture of Venice
+seems to have been formed on the same model, and is almost
+identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs,<a name="FnAnchor_22" href="#Footnote_22"><span class="sp">22</span></a> it being quite
+immaterial whether the reader chooses to call both Byzantine
+or both Arabic; the workmen being certainly Byzantine, but
+forced to the invention of new forms by their Arabian masters,
+and bringing these forms into use in whatever other parts of
+the world they were employed.</p>
+
+<p>To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with
+vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page021"></a>21</span>
+the first division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining
+of it consist of three noble churches (those of Torcello,
+Murano, and the greater part of St. Mark&rsquo;s), and about ten or
+twelve fragments of palaces.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXII</span>. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
+much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more
+slender, and the arches consistently pointed, instead of round;
+certain other changes, not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking
+place in the capitals and mouldings. This style is almost
+exclusively secular. It was natural for the Venetians to imitate
+the beautiful details of the Arabian dwelling-house, while
+they would with reluctance adopt those of the mosque for
+Christian churches.</p>
+
+<p>I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style.
+It appears in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner,
+but outlives it. Its position is, however, fixed by the central
+date, 1180, that of the elevation of the granite shafts of the
+Piazetta, whose capitals are the two most important pieces of
+detail in this transitional style in Venice. Examples of its application
+to domestic buildings exist in almost every street of
+the city, and will form the subject of the second division of the
+following essay.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIII</span>. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons
+in art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab
+work in Venice). But their especial dread and hatred of the
+Lombards appears to have long prevented them from receiving
+the influence of the art which that people had introduced on
+the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice of
+the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primitive
+condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical
+architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab
+forms, which were attaining perfection upon the continent,
+and would probably, if left to itself, have been soon
+merged in the Venetian-Arab school, with which it had from
+the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found difficult to
+distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to have
+been built under this early Gothic influence. The churches of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page022"></a>22</span>
+San Giacopo dell&rsquo;Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine,
+and one or two more, furnish the only important examples
+of it. But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and
+Dominicans introduced from the continent their morality and
+their architecture, already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed
+from Lombardic and Northern (German?) forms; and the influence
+of the principles exhibited in the vast churches of St.
+Paul and the Frari began rapidly to affect the Venetian-Arab
+school. Still the two systems never became united; the Venetian
+policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian
+artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture
+of the city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one
+an ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common
+to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies
+in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings; the
+other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed
+from the Venetian-Arab by the influence of the Dominican and
+Franciscan architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon
+the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the Franciscan
+work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the <i>distinctive</i>
+architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the churches
+of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the ecclesiastical
+side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal
+Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the
+third division of the essay.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIV</span>. Now observe. The transitional (or especially
+Arabic) style of the Venetian work is centralised by the date
+1180, and is transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends
+in its purity from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning
+of the fifteenth century; that is to say, over the precise
+period which I have described as the central epoch of the
+life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year 1418; Foscari
+became doge five years later, and in his reign the first
+marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change
+which Philippe de Commynes notices as above, the change to
+which London owes St. Paul&rsquo;s, Rome St. Peter&rsquo;s, Venice and
+Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be their noblest,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page023"></a>23</span>
+and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has
+since practised.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXV</span>. This change appears first in a loss of truth and
+vitality in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare
+&ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; chap. ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern
+or northern, were corrupted at once: the German and
+French lost themselves in every species of extravagance; the
+English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a strait-waistcoat
+of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the mainland
+into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia
+and the Cathedral of Como (a style sometimes ignorantly called
+Italian Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the
+Porta della Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark&rsquo;s. This corruption
+of all architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded
+with, and marked the state of religion over all Europe,&mdash;the
+peculiar degradation of the Romanist superstition, and of public
+morality in consequence, which brought about the Reformation.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVI</span>. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great
+divisions of adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England,
+Rationalists in France and Italy; the one requiring the purification
+of religion, the other its destruction. The Protestant
+kept the religion, but cast aside the heresies of Rome, and with
+them her arts, by which last rejection he injured his own character,
+cramped his intellect in refusing to it one of its noblest
+exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It may be a
+serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
+been a consequence of this error.</p>
+
+<p>The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion.
+This rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance,
+marked by a return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and
+hallow them for Christianity, but to rank itself under them as
+an imitator and pupil. In Painting it is headed by Giulio
+Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in Architecture by Sansovino
+and Palladio.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVII</span>. Instant degradation followed in every direction,&mdash;a
+flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at
+first, then perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page024"></a>24</span>
+the representations of Christian subjects, which had become
+blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci.
+Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without
+innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon
+the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets
+with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level
+of abused intellect; the base school of landscape<a name="FnAnchor_23" href="#Footnote_23"><span class="sp">23</span></a> gradually
+usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into
+prurient pedantry,&mdash;the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the
+confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of
+Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the
+patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and
+fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and
+morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together
+into one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution
+in France, and the condition of art in England (saved by
+her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of George
+II.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVIII</span>. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore
+done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance
+landscape painting. But the harm which has been
+done by Claude and the Poussins is as nothing when compared
+to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi, and Sansovino.
+Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in
+their works being purchased at high prices: their real influence
+is very slight, and they may be left without grave indignation
+to their poor mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting
+stranded conversation. Not so the Renaissance architecture.
+Raised at once into all the magnificence of which it was capable
+by Michael Angelo, then taken up by men of real intellect and
+imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, and
+Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its influence on
+the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
+are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page025"></a>25</span>
+regard it with slight attention; but all men are concerned
+with architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious
+business with it. It does not much matter that an individual
+loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but
+it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred
+thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor is it
+merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have
+to regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in
+it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant
+evils of modern times&mdash;over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism;
+the one destroying the healthfulness of general society,
+the other rendering our schools and universities useless to
+a large number of the men who pass through them.</p>
+
+<p>Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her
+fall the most corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her
+strength the centre of the pure currents of Christian architecture,
+so she is in her decline the source of the Renaissance.
+It was the originality and splendor of the palaces of Vicenza
+and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of
+Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and
+graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
+than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers
+into the grave.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIX</span>. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that
+effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance.
+Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert
+them nowhere else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose
+of the following essay. I shall not devote a fourth section to
+Palladio, nor weary the reader with successive chapters of vituperation;
+but I shall, in my account of the earlier architecture,
+compare the forms of all its leading features with those into
+which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and pause, in
+the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as
+I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend
+upon two distinct kinds of evidence:&mdash;the first, the testimony
+borne by particular incidents and facts to a want of
+thought or of feeling in the builders; from which we may conclude
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page026"></a>26</span>
+that their architecture must be bad:&mdash;the second, the
+sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite in the reader,
+of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of the first
+kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
+be immediately useful in fixing in the readers mind the epoch
+above indicated for the commencement of decline.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XL</span>. I must again refer to the importance which I have
+above attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso
+Mocenigo. The tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a
+Florentine; but it is of the same general type and feeling as all
+the Venetian tombs of the period, and it is one of the last
+which retains it. The classical element enters largely into its
+details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet unaffected. Like
+all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a sarcophagus
+with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful but
+tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness,
+of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and
+bonnet&mdash;his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow&mdash;his
+hands are simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated,
+the features large, but so pure and lordly in their natural
+chiselling, that they must have looked like marble even in their
+animation. They are deeply worn away by thought and
+death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the skin
+gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
+eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled
+by the light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and
+sharp-pointed: all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust
+marking like light the stern angles of the cheek and brow.</p>
+
+<p>This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by
+one of the most intelligent of the recent writers who represent
+the popular feeling respecting Venetian art.</p>
+
+<p class="quote">&ldquo;Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel) sarcophagus
+in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be called
+one of the last links which connect the declining art of the Middle Ages
+with that of the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We will not stay to
+particularise the defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
+which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will we make any
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page027"></a>27</span>
+remarks upon those which stand in the niches above the pavilion, because
+we consider them unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Florentine
+school, which was then with reason considered the most notable in
+Italy.&rdquo;<a name="FnAnchor_24" href="#Footnote_24"><span class="sp">24</span></a></p>
+
+<p>It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it
+might have been better to have paused a moment beside that
+noble image of a king&rsquo;s mortality.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLI</span>. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and
+Paolo, is another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin.
+This doge died in 1478, after a short reign of two years, the
+most disastrous in the annals of Venice. He died of a pestilence
+which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried to the
+shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by
+sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in
+the blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the
+most costly tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLII</span>. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue
+of one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence
+beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil
+the force of Italian superlative by translation.</p>
+
+<p class="quote">&ldquo;Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di proporzioni,
+a quella squisitezza d&rsquo;ornamenti, a quel certo sapore antico che senza ombra
+d&rsquo;imitazione traspare da tutta l&rsquo;opera&rdquo;&mdash;&amp;c. &ldquo;Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito
+di squisiti intagli s&rsquo;alza uno stylobate&rdquo;&mdash;&amp;c. &ldquo;Sotto le colonne, il predetto
+stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novità di
+pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un fregio il più gentile che veder si
+possa&rdquo;&mdash;&amp;c. &ldquo;Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno l&rsquo;<i>arca dove</i> sta chiuso il
+doge; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione,&rdquo; &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of
+which the above specimens may suffice; but there is not a
+word of the statue of the dead from beginning to end. I am
+myself in the habit of considering this rather an important part
+of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it here, because
+Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is unanimously
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page028"></a>28</span>
+declared the chef d&rsquo;&oelig;uvre of Renaissance sepulchral
+work, and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico)</p>
+
+<p class="quote">&ldquo;Il vertice a cui l&rsquo;arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del scalpello,"&mdash;"The
+very culminating point to which the Venetian arts attained by ministry
+of the chisel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and
+cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in
+Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be
+found in the sacristan&rsquo;s keeping. I was struck at first by the
+excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the
+hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown off the middle of
+the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo
+hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its
+veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy
+of the veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth.
+The Vendramin hand is far more laboriously cut, but its blunt
+and clumsy contour at once makes us feel that all the care has
+been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely
+bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as
+the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had
+been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
+wretched effigy had only <i>one</i> hand, and was a mere block on
+the inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features,
+is made monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of
+the forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the other left smooth;
+one side only of the doge&rsquo;s cap is chased; one cheek only is
+finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides;
+finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost
+lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked
+out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
+work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from
+one side.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLIII</span>. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one; and
+I do not blame&mdash;I should, on the contrary, have praised&mdash;the
+sculptor for regulating his treatment of it by its position; if
+that treatment had not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page029"></a>29</span>
+only half a face, a monstrous mask, when we demanded true
+portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such utter coldness of
+feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of intellectual
+and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast, could
+have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man&rsquo;s
+countenance&mdash;unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by
+the solemnities of death&mdash;could have stayed his hand, as he
+reached the bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the
+last veins of it at so much the zecchin?</p>
+
+<p>I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect
+that much talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by
+the sculptor of this base and senseless lie. The whole monument
+is one wearisome aggregation of that species of ornamental
+flourish, which, when it is done with a pen, is called penmanship,
+and when done with a chisel, should be called chiselmanship;
+the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys
+sprawling on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and
+dragged along the sea by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.</p>
+
+<p>But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the
+whole matter. This lying monument to a dishonored doge,
+this culminating pride of the Renaissance art of Venice, is at
+least veracious, if in nothing else, in its testimony to the character
+of its sculptor. <i>He was banished from Venice for forgery</i>
+in 1487.<a name="FnAnchor_25" href="#Footnote_25"><span class="sp">25</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLIV</span>. I have more to say about this convict&rsquo;s work hereafter;
+but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet
+more interesting piece of evidence, which I promised.</p>
+
+<p>The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards
+the sea, the other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and,
+as far as the seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is
+work of the early part of the fourteenth century, some of it
+perhaps even earlier; while the rest of the Piazzetta side is of
+the fifteenth. The difference in age has been gravely disputed
+by the Venetian antiquaries, who have examined many documents
+on the subject, and quoted some which they never examined.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page030"></a>30</span>
+I have myself collated most of the written documents,
+and one document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries
+never thought of referring,&mdash;the masonry of the palace itself.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLV</span>. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth
+arch from the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of
+comparatively small stones up to that point; the fifteenth century
+work instantly begins with larger stones, &ldquo;brought from
+Istria, a hundred miles away.&rdquo;<a name="FnAnchor_26" href="#Footnote_26"><span class="sp">26</span></a> The ninth shaft from the sea
+in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which is above it, in
+the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth century
+shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and
+carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe,
+reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta
+della Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo
+beside whose tomb you have been standing; at his
+instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his successor,
+Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it is
+only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of which, however,
+the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not
+only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower
+shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper
+and lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in
+the sea façade being purely Giottesque, correspondent with
+Giotto&rsquo;s work in the Arena Chapel at Padua, while the costume
+on the other capitals is Renaissance-Classic: and the lions&rsquo;
+heads between the arches change at the same point. And there
+are a multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels,
+with which I shall not at present trouble the reader.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLVI</span>. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424
+(remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was
+obliged to follow the principal forms of the older palace. But
+he had not the wit to invent new capitals in the same style; he
+therefore clumsily copied the old ones. The palace has seventeen
+main arches on the sea façade, eighteen on the Piazzetta
+side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six pillars;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page031"></a>31</span>
+and these pillars I shall always number from right to left, from
+the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next
+the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because
+I thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So
+counted, the 1st, the 18th, and the 36th, are the great supports
+of the angles of the palace; and the first of the fifteenth century
+series, being, as above stated, the 9th from the sea on the
+Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series, and will always
+in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above twenty-six
+indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth
+century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.</p>
+
+<p>Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the
+7th; the 29th, from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the
+31st, from the 8th; the <span class="correction" title="originally 33d">33rd</span>, from the 12th; and the 34th,
+from the 11th; the others being dull inventions of the 15th
+century, except the 36th, which is very nobly designed.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLVII</span>. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion
+of the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is
+in the copy of the ninth capital, which was decorated (being,
+like the rest, octagonal) with figures of the eight Virtues:&mdash;Faith,
+Hope, Charity, Justice, Temperance, Prudence, Humility
+(the Venetian antiquaries call it Humanity!), and Fortitude.
+The Virtues of the fourteenth century are somewhat
+hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of
+apples (perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who
+stretches his arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital.
+Fortitude tears open a lion&rsquo;s jaws; Faith lays her hand
+on her breast, as she beholds the Cross; and Hope is praying,
+while above her a hand is seen emerging from sunbeams&mdash;the
+hand of God (according to that of Revelations, &ldquo;The Lord God
+giveth them light&rdquo;); and the inscription above is, &ldquo;Spes optima
+in Deo.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLVIII</span>. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect
+chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the
+Virtues have lost their hard features and living expression;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page032"></a>32</span>
+they have now all got Roman noses, and have had their hair
+curled. Their actions and emblems are, however, preserved
+until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but she is praying
+to the sun only: <i>The hand of God is gone.</i></p>
+
+<p>Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which
+had then become dominant in the world, forgetting to see
+God&rsquo;s hand in the light He gave; so that in the issue, when
+that light opened into the Reformation, on the one side, and
+into full knowledge of ancient literature on the other, the one
+was arrested and the other perverted?</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLIX</span>. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on
+which I shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character
+in the Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority
+of the work itself is not so easy, for in this I have to
+appeal to judgments which the Renaissance work has itself distorted.
+I felt this difficulty very forcibly as I read a slight review
+of my former work, &ldquo;The Seven Lamps,&rdquo; in &ldquo;The
+Architect:&rdquo; the writer noticed my constant praise of St.
+Mark&rsquo;s: &ldquo;Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building!
+We,&rdquo; said the Architect, &ldquo;think it a very ugly building.&rdquo; I
+was not surprised at the difference of opinion, but at the thing
+being considered so completely a subject of opinion. My opponents
+in matters of painting always assume that there <i>is</i>
+such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it:
+but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply
+set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at
+present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can
+speak with rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings:
+he may with obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence
+to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter could be
+otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity of
+partizanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that
+there <i>was</i> a law in this matter: that good architecture might
+be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad; that the
+opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly visible;
+and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about
+the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page033"></a>33</span>
+debating about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it.
+I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it were
+conclusive; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base
+work, and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference
+to style or national feeling; that it must sanction the design of
+all truly great nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab;
+that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all foolish
+nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European:
+and that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural
+inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to
+establish such a law, in full belief that men are intended, without
+excessive difficulty, and by use of their general common
+sense, to know good things from bad; and that it is only because
+they will not be at the pains required for the discernment,
+that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries
+and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped;
+the reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required,
+and the foolish things fell aside, and took themselves
+away so soon as they were looked in the face. I had then,
+with respect to Venetian architecture, the choice, either to establish
+each division of law in a separate form, as I came to the
+features with which it was concerned, or else to ask the reader&rsquo;s
+patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first,
+and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which
+we might together make retrospective appeal. I thought this
+the best, though perhaps the dullest way; and in these first
+following pages I have therefore endeavored to arrange those
+foundations of criticism, on which I shall rest in my account of
+Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple enough to be
+intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture
+before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them
+will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant
+at a simplicity on which the whole argument depends
+for its usefulness. From that which appears a mere truism
+when first stated, they will find very singular consequences
+sometimes following,&mdash;consequences altogether unexpected,
+and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page034"></a>34</span>
+on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done;
+for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a
+criterion of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as
+architecture, and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of
+its attainment than dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite
+them, therefore, to a fair trial, being certain that even if I
+should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to induce in my
+reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at least receive
+his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which
+may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference.
+And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the
+Stones of Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering
+of her marble, poison more subtle than ever was betrayed
+by the rending of her crystal; and if thus I am enabled to
+show the baseness of the schools of architecture and nearly
+every other art, which have for three centuries been predominant
+in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be serviceable
+for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I
+have hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the Protestant had
+despised the arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But
+what has the Romanist done meanwhile? He boasts that it
+was the papacy which raised the arts; why could it not support
+them when it was left to its own strength? How came
+it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and
+to oppose no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the
+once faithfully conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration?
+Shall we not rather find that Romanism, instead of
+being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself capable of
+a single great conception since the separation of Protestantism
+from its side?<a name="FnAnchor_27" href="#Footnote_27"><span class="sp">27</span></a> So long as, corrupt though it might be, no
+clear witness had been borne against it, so that it still included
+in its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts
+were noble. But the witness was borne&mdash;the error made apparent;
+and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony or forsake
+the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an intellectual
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page035"></a>35</span>
+palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any
+further use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has
+made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers
+their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these
+are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we
+enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit
+ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to
+look upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted
+forms of her palaces, as we should on the capricious towering
+of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank into the deep of
+night; or whether, rather, we shall not behold in the brightness
+of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence
+of her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface
+it, as they fulfilled&mdash;&ldquo;God has numbered thy kingdom, and
+finished it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1" href="#FnAnchor_1"><span class="fn">1</span></a> <a href="#app_1">Appendix 1</a>, &ldquo;Foundation of Venice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2" href="#FnAnchor_2"><span class="fn">2</span></a> <a href="#app_2">Appendix 2</a>, &ldquo;Power of the Doges.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3" href="#FnAnchor_3"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Sismondi, Hist. des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4" href="#FnAnchor_4"><span class="fn">4</span></a> <a href="#app_3">Appendix 3</a>, &ldquo;Serrar del Consiglio.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5" href="#FnAnchor_5"><span class="fn">5</span></a> &ldquo;Ha saputo trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano,
+ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, <i>un ottimo solo</i>.&rdquo;
+(<i>Sansovino.</i>) Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6" href="#FnAnchor_6"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_7" href="#FnAnchor_7"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery of the
+statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_8" href="#FnAnchor_8"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as before
+to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right of appointing
+the clergy of their territories.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_9" href="#FnAnchor_9"><span class="fn">9</span></a> The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority of
+512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_10" href="#FnAnchor_10"><span class="fn">10</span></a> By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince.
+(Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_11" href="#FnAnchor_11"><span class="fn">11</span></a> <a href="#app_4">Appendix 4</a>, &ldquo;San Pietro di Castello.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_12" href="#FnAnchor_12"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, § <span class="scs">V</span>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13" href="#FnAnchor_13"><span class="fn">13</span></a></p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poem">
+            <p><span style="padding-left: 6em; ">&ldquo;In that temple porch,</span></p>
+<p>(The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)</p>
+<p>Did <span class="sc">Barbarossa</span> fling his mantle off,</p>
+<p>And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot</p>
+<p>Of the proud Pontiff&mdash;thus at last consoled</p>
+<p>For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake</p>
+<p>On his stone pillow.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers&rsquo; &ldquo;Italy&rdquo; has, I believe,
+now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries, and will
+never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the spirit of
+Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all else that has
+been written of her.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_14" href="#FnAnchor_14"><span class="fn">14</span></a> At least, such success as they had. Vide <a href="#app_5">Appendix 5</a>, &ldquo;The Papal
+Power in Venice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_15" href="#FnAnchor_15"><span class="fn">15</span></a> The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no exception to this
+statement, as far as it regards the city itself. They are little more than a
+semblance of precaution against the attack of a foreign enemy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_16" href="#FnAnchor_16"><span class="fn">16</span></a> Mémoires de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_17" href="#FnAnchor_17"><span class="fn">17</span></a> <a href="#app_6">Appendix 6</a>, &ldquo;Renaissance Ornaments.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_18" href="#FnAnchor_18"><span class="fn">18</span></a> <a href="#app_7">Appendix 7</a>, &ldquo;Varieties of the Orders.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_19" href="#FnAnchor_19"><span class="fn">19</span></a> The reader will find the <i>weak</i> points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly
+seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most delightful
+book of travels I ever opened,&mdash;Curzon&rsquo;s &ldquo;Monasteries of the Levant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_20" href="#FnAnchor_20"><span class="fn">20</span></a> <a href="#app_8">Appendix 8</a>, &ldquo;The Northern Energy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_21" href="#FnAnchor_21"><span class="fn">21</span></a> <a href="#app_9">Appendix 9</a>, &ldquo;Wooden Churches of the North.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_22" href="#FnAnchor_22"><span class="fn">22</span></a> <a href="#app_10">Appendix 10</a>, &ldquo;Church of Alexandria.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_23" href="#FnAnchor_23"><span class="fn">23</span></a> <a href="#app_11">Appendix 11</a>, &ldquo;Renaissance Landscape.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_24" href="#FnAnchor_24"><span class="fn">24</span></a> Selvatico, &ldquo;Architettura di Venezia,&rdquo; p. 147.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_25" href="#FnAnchor_25"><span class="fn">25</span></a> Selvatico, p. 221.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_26" href="#FnAnchor_26"><span class="fn">26</span></a> The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different quality.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_27" href="#FnAnchor_27"><span class="fn">27</span></a> <a href="#app_12">Appendix 12</a>, &ldquo;Romanist Modern Art.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page036"></a>36</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_2"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> address ourselves, then, first to the task of determining
+some law of right which we may apply to the architecture
+of all the world and of all time; and by help of which,
+and judgment according to which, we may easily pronounce
+whether a building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb-line,
+whether it be perpendicular.</p>
+
+<p>The first question will of course <span class="correction" title="originally be,">be:</span> What are the possible
+Virtues of architecture?</p>
+
+<p>In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two
+kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well:
+then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which
+last is itself another form of duty.</p>
+
+<p>Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches,&mdash;acting
+and talking:&mdash;acting, as to defend us from weather or
+violence; talking, as the duty of monuments or tombs, to
+record facts and express feelings; or of churches, temples,
+public edifices, treated as books of history, to tell such history
+clearly and forcibly.</p>
+
+<p>We have thus, altogether, three great branches of architectural
+virtue, and we require of any building,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="negind">1. That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do
+in the best way.</p>
+
+<p class="negind">2. That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to
+say in the best words.</p>
+
+<p class="negind">3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, whatever
+it has to do or say.<a name="FnAnchor_28" href="#Footnote_28"><span class="sp">28</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page037"></a>37</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is evident
+that we can establish no general laws. First, because it
+is not a virtue required in all buildings; there are some which
+are only for covert or defence, and from which we ask no conversation.
+Secondly, because there are countless methods of
+expression, some conventional, some natural: each conventional
+mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be no
+subject of general laws. Every natural mode is instinctively
+employed and instinctively understood, wherever there is true
+feeling; and this instinct is above law. The choice of conventional
+methods depends on circumstances out of calculation,
+and that of natural methods on sensations out of control;
+so that we can only say that the choice is right, when we feel
+that the means are effective; and we cannot always say that
+it is wrong when they are not so.</p>
+
+<p>A building which recorded the Bible history by means of a
+series of sculptural pictures, would be perfectly useless to a
+person unacquainted with the Bible beforehand; on the other
+hand, the text of the Old and New Testaments might be
+written on its walls, and yet the building be a very inconvenient
+kind of book, not so useful as if it had been adorned
+with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, again, the power of
+exciting emotion must vary or vanish, as the spectator becomes
+thoughtless or cold; and the building may be often
+blamed for what is the fault of its critic, or endowed with a
+charm which is of its spectator&rsquo;s creation. It is not, therefore,
+possible to make expressional character any fair criterion of
+excellence in buildings, until we can fully place ourselves in
+the position of those to whom their expression was originally
+addressed, and until we are certain that we understand every
+symbol, and are capable of being touched by every association
+which its builders employed as letters of their language. I
+shall continually endeavor to put the reader into such sympathetic
+temper, when I ask for his judgment of a building;
+and in every work I may bring before him I shall point out,
+as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its expression; nay,
+I must even depend on such peculiarities for much of my best
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page038"></a>38</span>
+evidence respecting the character of the builders. But I cannot
+legalize the judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it
+if it be refused. I can neither force the reader to feel this
+architectural rhetoric, nor compel him to confess that the
+rhetoric is powerful, if it have produced no impression on his
+own mind.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for incidental
+notice only. But their other two virtues are proper
+subjects of law,&mdash;their performance of their common and
+necessary work, and their conformity with universal and
+divine canons of loveliness: respecting these there can be no
+doubt, no ambiguity. I would have the reader discern them
+so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he may, by a glance
+of the eye, distinguish the noble from the ignoble work. He
+can do this, if he permit free play to his natural instincts;
+and all that I have to do for him is to remove from those
+instincts the artificial restraints which prevent their action,
+and to encourage them to an unaffected and unbiassed choice
+between right and wrong.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. We have, then, two qualities of buildings for subjects
+of separate inquiry: their action, and aspect, and the sources
+of virtue in both; that is to say, Strength and Beauty, both
+of these being less admired in themselves, than as testifying
+the intelligence or imagination of the builder.</p>
+
+<p>For we have a worthier way of looking at human than at
+divine architecture: much of the value both of construction
+and decoration, in the edifices of men, depends upon our
+being led by the thing produced or adorned, to some contemplation
+of the powers of mind concerned in its creation or
+adornment. We are not so led by divine work, but are content
+to rest in the contemplation of the thing created. I wish
+the reader to note this especially: we take pleasure, or <i>should</i>
+take pleasure, in architectural construction altogether as the
+manifestation of an admirable human intelligence; it is not
+the strength, not the size, not the finish of the work which
+we are to venerate: rocks are always stronger, mountains
+always larger, all natural objects more finished; but it is the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page039"></a>39</span>
+intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming physical
+difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and subject
+of our praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is
+less the actual loveliness of the thing produced, than the
+choice and invention concerned in the production, which are
+to delight us; the love and the thoughts of the workman more
+than his work: his work must always be imperfect, but his
+thoughts and affections may be true and deep.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must insist
+upon at somewhat greater length, for I would fain do away
+with some of the ungrateful coldness which we show towards
+the good builders of old time. In no art is there closer connection
+between our delight in the work, and our admiration
+of the workman&rsquo;s mind, than in architecture, and yet we rarely
+ask for a builder&rsquo;s name. The patron at whose cost, the monk
+through whose dreaming, the foundation was laid, we remember
+occasionally; never the man who verily did the work.
+Did the reader ever hear of William of Sens as having had
+anything to do with Canterbury Cathedral? or of Pietro
+Basegio as in anywise connected with the Ducal Palace of
+Venice? There is much ingratitude and injustice in this;
+and therefore I desire my reader to observe carefully how
+much of his pleasure in building is derived, or should be
+derived, from admiration of the intellect of men whose names
+he knows not.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. The two virtues of architecture which we can justly
+weigh, are, we said, its strength or good construction, and its
+beauty or good decoration. Consider first, therefore, what
+you mean when you say a building is well constructed or well
+built; you do not merely mean that it answers its purpose,&mdash;this
+is much, and many modern buildings fail of this much;
+but if it be verily well built, it must answer this purpose in
+the simplest way, and with no over-expenditure of means.
+We require of a light-house, for instance, that it shall stand
+firm and carry a light; if it do not this, assuredly it has been
+ill built; but it may do it to the end of time, and yet not be
+well built. It may have hundreds of tons of stone in it more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page040"></a>40</span>
+than were needed, and have cost thousands of pounds more
+than it ought. To pronounce it well or ill built, we must
+know the utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best
+arrangements of stone for encountering them, and the quickest
+ways of effecting such arrangements: then only, so far as such
+arrangements have been chosen, and such methods used, is it
+well built. Then the knowledge of all difficulties to be met,
+and of all means of meeting them, and the quick and true
+fancy or invention of the modes of applying the means to the
+end, are what we have to admire in the builder, even as he is
+seen through this first or inferior part of his work. Mental
+power, observe: not muscular nor mechanical, nor technical,
+nor empirical,&mdash;pure, precious, majestic, massy intellect; not
+to be had at vulgar price, nor received without thanks, and
+without asking from whom.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Suppose, for instance, we are present at the building
+of a bridge: the bricklayers or masons have had their centring
+erected for them, and that centring was put together
+by a carpenter, who had the line of its curve traced for him
+by the architect: the masons are dexterously handling and
+fitting their bricks, or, by the help of machinery, carefully
+adjusting stones which are numbered for their places. There
+is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of hand
+something admirable; but this is not what I ask the reader
+to admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor
+anything that he can presently see and understand, but the
+choice of the curve, and the shaping of the numbered stones,
+and the appointment of that number; there were many things
+to be known and thought upon before these were decided.
+The man who chose the curve and numbered the stones, had
+to know the times and tides of the river, and the strength of
+its floods, and the height and flow of them, and the soil of the
+banks, and the endurance of it, and the weight of the stones
+he had to build with, and the kind of traffic that day by day
+would be carried on over his bridge,&mdash;all this specially, and all
+the great general laws of force and weight, and their working;
+and in the choice of the curve and numbering of stones are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page041"></a>41</span>
+expressed not only his knowledge of these, but such ingenuity
+and firmness as he had, in applying special means to overcome
+the special difficulties about his bridge. There is no saying
+how much wit, how much depth of thought, how much fancy,
+presence of mind, courage, and fixed resolution there may
+have gone to the placing of a single stone of it. This is what
+we have to admire,&mdash;this grand power and heart of man in
+the thing; not his technical or empirical way of holding the
+trowel and laying mortar.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Now there is in everything properly called art this
+concernment of the intellect, even in the province of the art
+which seems merely practical. For observe: in this bridge-building
+I suppose no reference to architectural principles;
+all that I suppose we want is to get safely over the river; the
+man who has taken us over is still a mere bridge-builder,&mdash;a
+<i>builder</i>, not an architect: he may be a rough, artless, feelingless
+man, incapable of doing any one truly fine thing all his
+days. I shall call upon you to despise him presently in a sort,
+but not as if he were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a
+great man, infinite in memory, indefatigable in labor, exhaustless
+in expedient, unsurpassable in quickness of thought.
+Take good heed you understand him before you despise him.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. But why is he to be in anywise despised? By no
+means despise him, unless he happen to be without a soul,<a name="FnAnchor_29" href="#Footnote_29"><span class="sp">29</span></a>
+or at least to show no signs of it; which possibly he may not
+in merely carrying you across the river. He may be merely
+what Mr. Carlyle rightly calls a human beaver after all; and
+there may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater than
+a complication of animal faculties, an intricate bestiality,&mdash;nest
+or hive building in its highest development. You need something
+more than this, or the man is despicable; you need that
+virtue of building through which he may show his affections
+and delights; you need its beauty or decoration.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. Not that, in reality, one division of the man is more
+human than another. Theologists fall into this error very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page042"></a>42</span>
+fatally and continually; and a man from whom I have learned
+much, Lord Lindsay, has hurt his noble book by it, speaking
+as if the spirit of the man only were immortal, and were
+opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the senses; whereas
+all the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal, immortal or
+mortal, according to the degree of their sanctification; and
+there is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine
+when it is once given to God, and no part of him which is
+not mortal by the second death, and brutal before the first,
+when it is withdrawn from God. For to what shall we trust
+for our distinction from the beasts that perish? To our
+higher intellect?&mdash;yet are we not bidden to be wise as the
+serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant?&mdash;or to our
+affections? nay; these are more shared by the lower animals
+than our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave of his
+beloved, and leaves it,&mdash;a dog had stayed. Humanity and
+immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the
+body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the
+thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it,&mdash;but in the dedication
+of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last
+day.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs correction" title="corrected from XL">XI</span>. It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections,
+which man leaves upon his work, are indeed more ennobling
+than the signs of his intelligence; but it is the balance of
+both whose expression we need, and the signs of the government
+of them all by Conscience; and Discretion, the daughter
+of Conscience. So, then, the intelligent part of man being
+eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure of his
+work, his affectionate part is to be shown in its decoration;
+and, that decoration may be indeed lovely, two things are
+needed: first, that the affections be vivid, and honestly shown;
+secondly, that they be fixed on the right things.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements in
+wrong order. Logically I have; practically I have not: for
+it is necessary first to teach men to speak out, and say what
+they like, truly; and, in the second place, to teach them
+which of their likings are ill set, and which justly. If a man
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page043"></a>43</span>
+is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he will not tell you
+what he likes, you can make nothing of him. Only get him
+to feel quickly and to speak plainly, and you may set him
+right. And the fact is, that the great evil of all recent
+architectural effort has not been that men liked wrong things:
+but that they either cared nothing about any, or pretended
+to like what they did not. Do you suppose that any modern
+architect likes what he builds, or enjoys it? Not in the least.
+He builds it because he has been told that such and such
+things are fine, and that he <i>should</i> like them. He pretends
+to like them, and gives them a false relish of vanity. Do you
+seriously imagine, reader, that any living soul in London likes
+triglyphs?<a name="FnAnchor_30" href="#Footnote_30"><span class="sp">30</span></a>&mdash;or gets any hearty enjoyment out of pediments?<a name="FnAnchor_31" href="#Footnote_31"><span class="sp">31</span></a>
+You are much mistaken. Greeks did: English
+people never did,&mdash;never will. Do you fancy that the architect
+of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had any
+particular satisfaction in putting the blank triangle over the
+archway, instead of a useful garret window? By no manner
+of means. He had been told it was right to do so, and
+thought he should be admired for doing it. Very few faults
+of architecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are almost
+always hypocrisies.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the decoration
+is that it should indicate strong liking, and that
+honestly. It matters not so much what the thing is, as that
+the builder should really love it and enjoy it, and say so
+plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns;
+so he has covered his porch with hawthorn,&mdash;it is a perfect
+Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try
+to gather it forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The
+old Lombard architects liked hunting; so they covered their
+work with horses and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page044"></a>44</span>
+yards long. The base Renaissance architects of Venice liked
+masquing and fiddling; so they covered their work with
+comic masks and musical instruments. Even that was better
+than our English way of liking nothing, and professing to like
+triglyphs.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. But the second requirement in decoration, is a sign
+of our liking the right thing. And the right thing to be liked
+is God&rsquo;s work, which He made for our delight and contentment
+in this world. And all noble ornamentation is the expression
+of man&rsquo;s delight in God&rsquo;s work.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. So, then, these are the two virtues of building: first,
+the signs of man&rsquo;s own good work; secondly, the expression
+of man&rsquo;s delight in better work than his own. And these are
+the two virtues of which I desire my reader to be able quickly
+to judge, at least in some measure; to have a definite opinion
+up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point he cannot form
+one. When the science of the building is great, great science
+is of course required to comprehend it; and, therefore, of difficult
+bridges, and light-houses, and harbor walls, and river
+dykes, and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly
+formed. But of common buildings, built in common circumstances,
+it is very possible for every man, or woman, or child,
+to form judgment both rational and rapid. Their necessary,
+or even possible, features are but few; the laws of their construction
+are as simple as they are interesting. The labor of
+a few hours is enough to render the reader master of their
+main points; and from that moment he will find in himself a
+power of judgment which can neither be escaped nor deceived,
+and discover subjects of interest where everything before had
+appeared barren. For though the laws are few and simple,
+the modes of obedience to them are not so. Every building
+presents its own requirements and difficulties; and every good
+building has peculiar appliances or contrivances to meet them.
+Understand the laws of structure, and you will feel the special
+difficulty in every new building which you approach; and you
+will know also, or feel instinctively,<a name="FnAnchor_32" href="#Footnote_32"><span class="sp">32</span></a> whether it has been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page045"></a>45</span>
+wisely met or otherwise. And an enormous number of buildings,
+and of styles of buildings, you will be able to cast aside
+at once, as at variance with these constant laws of structure,
+and therefore unnatural and monstrous.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to
+consult your own natural choice and liking. There is a right
+and wrong in it; but you will assuredly like the right if you
+suffer your natural instinct to lead you. Half the evil in this
+world comes from people not knowing what they do like, not
+deliberately setting themselves to find out what they really
+enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance:
+they don&rsquo;t know <i>that</i>,&mdash;they rather think they like keeping it;
+and they <i>do</i> keep it under this false impression, often to their
+great discomfort. Every body likes to do good; but not one
+in a hundred finds <i>this</i> out. Multitudes think they like to do
+evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God
+made the world.</p>
+
+<p>So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs some little
+care to try experiments upon yourself: it needs deliberate
+question and upright answer. But there is no difficulty to be
+overcome, no abstruse reasoning to be gone into; only a little
+watchfulness needed, and thoughtfulness, and so much honesty
+as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all men, that
+you enjoy things, though great authorities say you should not.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true humility,
+a trust that you have been so created as to enjoy what
+is fitting for you, and a willingness to be pleased, as it was
+intended you should be. It is the child&rsquo;s spirit, which we are
+then most happy when we most recover; only wiser than
+children in that we are ready to think it subject of thankfulness
+that we can still be pleased with a fair color or a dancing
+light. And, above all, do not try to make all these pleasures
+reasonable, nor to connect the delight which you take in ornament
+with that which you take in construction or usefulness.
+They have no connection; and every effort that you make to
+reason from one to the other will blunt your sense of beauty,
+or confuse it with sensations altogether inferior to it. You
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page046"></a>46</span>
+were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things
+which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased
+by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to
+other account than mere delight. Remember that the most
+beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks
+and lilies for instance; at least I suppose this quill I hold in
+my hand writes better than a peacock&rsquo;s would, and the peasants
+of Vevay, whose fields in spring time are as white with
+lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me the hay
+was none the better for them.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. Our task therefore divides itself into two branches,
+and these I shall follow in succession. I shall first consider
+the construction of buildings, dividing them into their really
+necessary members or features; and I shall endeavor so to
+lead the reader forward from the foundation upwards, as that
+he may find out for himself the best way of doing everything,
+and having so discovered it, never forget it. I shall give him
+stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and trowels, and the
+ground, and then ask him to build; only helping him, as I can,
+if I find him puzzled. And when he has built his house or
+church, I shall ask him to ornament it, and leave it to him to
+choose the ornaments as I did to find out the construction: I
+shall use no influence with him whatever, except to counteract
+previous prejudices, and leave him, as far as may be, free.
+And when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his
+forms of decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence
+in what he has done. I shall assure him that no one
+in the world could, so far, have done better, and require him
+to condemn, as futile or fallacious, whatever has no resemblance
+to his own performances.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_28" href="#FnAnchor_28"><span class="fn">28</span></a> <a href="#app_13">Appendix 13</a>, &ldquo;Mr. Fergusson&rsquo;s System.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_29" href="#FnAnchor_29"><span class="fn">29</span></a> <a href="#app_14">Appendix 14</a>, &ldquo;Divisions of Humanity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_30" href="#FnAnchor_30"><span class="fn">30</span></a> Triglyph. Literally, &ldquo;Three Cut.&rdquo; The awkward upright ornament
+with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be seen everywhere at the
+tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and modern.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_31" href="#FnAnchor_31"><span class="fn">31</span></a> Pediment. The triangular space above Greek <span class="correction" title="originally porticos">porticoes</span>, as on the
+Mansion House or Royal Exchange.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_32" href="#FnAnchor_32"><span class="fn">32</span></a> <a href="#app_15">Appendix 15</a>: &ldquo;Instinctive Judgments.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page047"></a>47</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_3" id="chap_3"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">The</span> practical duties of buildings are twofold.</p>
+
+<p>They have either (1), to hold and protect something; or
+(2), to place or carry something.</p>
+
+<p class="negind">1. Architecture of Protection. This is architecture intended
+to protect men or their possessions from violence of
+any kind, whether of men or of the elements. It will
+include all churches, houses, and treasuries; fortresses,
+fences, and ramparts; the architecture of the hut and
+sheepfold; of the palace and the citadel: of the dyke,
+breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when
+of living creatures, is to be understood as including
+commodiousness and comfort of habitation, wherever
+these are possible under the given circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class="negind">2. Architecture of Position. This is architecture intended
+to carry men or things to some certain places, or to
+hold them there. This will include all bridges, aqueducts,
+and road architecture; light-houses, which have
+to hold light in appointed places; chimneys to carry
+smoke or direct currents of air; staircases; towers,
+which are to be watched from or cried from, as in
+mosques, or to hold bells, or to place men in positions
+of offence, as ancient moveable attacking towers, and
+most fortress towers.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. Protective architecture has to do one or all of three
+things: to wall a space, to roof it, and to give access to it, of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page048"></a>48</span>
+persons, light, and air; and it is therefore to be considered
+under the three divisions of walls, roofs, and apertures.</p>
+
+<p>We will take, first, a short, general view of the connection
+of these members, and then examine them in detail: endeavoring
+always to keep the simplicity of our first arrangement
+in view; for protective architecture has indeed no other members
+than these, unless flooring and paving be considered
+architecture, which it is only when the flooring is also a roof;
+the laying of the stones or timbers for footing being pavior&rsquo;s
+or carpenter&rsquo;s work, rather than architect&rsquo;s; and, at all events,
+work respecting the well or ill doing of which we shall hardly
+find much difference of opinion, except in points of ĉsthetics.
+We shall therefore concern ourselves only with the construction
+of walls, roofs, and apertures.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. 1. <i>Walls.</i>&mdash;A wall is an even and united fence,
+whether of wood, earth, stone, or metal. When meant for
+purposes of mere partition or enclosure, it remains a wall
+proper: but it has generally also to sustain a certain vertical
+or lateral pressure, for which its strength is at first increased
+by some general addition to its thickness; but if the pressure
+becomes very great, it is gathered up into <i>piers</i> to resist vertical
+pressure, and supported by <i>buttresses</i> to resist lateral
+pressure.</p>
+
+<p>If its functions of partition or enclosure are continued, together
+with that of resisting vertical pressure, it remains as a
+wall veil between the piers into which it has been partly gathered;
+but if it is required only to resist the vertical or roof
+pressure, it is gathered up into piers altogether, loses its wall
+character, and becomes a group or line of piers.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, if the lateral pressure be slight, it may
+retain its character of a wall, being supported against the
+pressure by buttresses at intervals; but if the lateral pressure
+be very great, it is supported against such pressure by a continuous
+buttress, loses its wall character, and becomes a dyke
+or rampart.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. We shall have therefore (A) first to get a general idea
+of a wall, and of right construction of walls; then (B) to see
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page049"></a>49</span>
+how this wall is gathered into piers; and to get a general idea
+of piers and the right construction of piers; then (C) to see
+how a wall is supported by buttresses, and to get a general idea
+of buttresses and the right construction of buttresses. This is
+surely very simple, and it is all we shall have to do with walls
+and their divisions.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. I.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_1"><img src="images/img049.jpg" width="500" height="484" alt="Fig. I." title="Fig. I." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. 2. <i>Roofs.</i>&mdash;A roof is the covering of a space, narrow
+or wide. It will be most conveniently studied by first considering
+the forms in which it may be carried over a narrow
+space, and then expanding these on a wide plan; only there
+is some difficulty here in the nomenclature, for an arched roof
+over a narrow space has (I believe) no name, except that
+which belongs properly to the piece of stone or wood composing
+such a roof, namely, lintel. But the reader will have no
+difficulty in understanding that he is first to consider roofs on
+the section only, thinking how best to construct a narrow bar
+or slice of them, of whatever form; as, for instance, <i>x</i>, <i>y</i>, or
+<i>z</i>, over the plan or area <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_1">Fig. I.</a> Having done this, let him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page050"></a>50</span>
+imagine these several divisions, first moved along (or set side
+by side) over a rectangle, <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_1">Fig. I.</a>, and then revolved round a
+point (or crossed at it) over a polygon, <i>c</i>, or circle, <i>d</i>, and he will
+have every form of simple roof: the arched section giving successively
+the vaulted roof and dome, and the gabled section
+giving the gabled roof and spire.</p>
+
+<p>As we go farther into the subject, we shall only have to
+add one or two forms to the sections here given, in order to
+embrace all the <i>uncombined</i> roofs in existence; and we shall
+not trouble the reader with many questions respecting cross-vaulting,
+and other modes of their combination.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Now, it also happens, from its place in buildings, that
+the sectional roof over a narrow space will need to be considered
+before we come to the expanded roof over a broad one.
+For when a wall has been gathered, as above explained, into
+piers, that it may better bear vertical pressure, it is generally
+necessary that it should be expanded again at the top into a
+continuous wall before it carries the true roof. Arches or
+lintels are, therefore, thrown from pier to pier, and a level
+preparation for carrying the real roof is made above them.
+After we have examined the structure of piers, therefore, we
+shall have to see how lintels or arches are thrown from pier to
+pier, and the whole prepared for the superincumbent roof; this
+arrangement being universal in all good architecture prepared
+for vertical pressures: and we shall then examine the condition
+of the great roof itself. And because the structure of the
+roof very often introduces certain lateral pressures which have
+much to do with the placing of buttresses, it will be well to do
+all this before we examine the nature of buttresses, and, therefore,
+between parts (B) and (C) of the above plan, § <span class="scs">IV</span>. So
+now we shall have to study: (A) the construction of walls;
+(B) that of piers; (C) that of lintels or arches prepared for
+roofing; (D) that of roofs proper; and (E) that of buttresses.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. 3. <i>Apertures.</i>&mdash;There must either be intervals between
+the piers, of which intervals the character will be determined
+by that of the piers themselves, or else doors or windows
+in the walls proper. And, respecting doors or windows,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page051"></a>51</span>
+we have to determine three things: first, the proper shape of
+the entire aperture; secondly, the way in which it is to be
+filled with valves or glass; and thirdly, the modes of protecting
+it on the outside, and fitting appliances of convenience to
+it, as porches or balconies. And this will be our division F;
+and if the reader will have the patience to go through these
+six heads, which include every possible feature of protective
+architecture, and to consider the simple necessities and fitnesses
+of each, I will answer for it, he shall never confound
+good architecture with bad any more. For, as to architecture
+of position, a great part of it involves necessities of construction
+with which the spectator cannot become generally
+acquainted, and of the compliance with which he is therefore
+never expected to judge,&mdash;as in chimneys, light-houses, &amp;c.:
+and the other forms of it are so closely connected with those
+of protective architecture, that a few words in <a href="#chap_19">Chap. XIX.</a> respecting
+staircases and towers, will contain all with which the
+reader need be troubled on the subject.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page052"></a>52</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_4"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE WALL BASE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">Our</span> first business, then, is with Wall, and to find out
+wherein lies the true excellence of the &ldquo;Wittiest Partition.&rdquo;
+For it is rather strange that, often as we speak of a &ldquo;dead&rdquo;
+wall, and that with considerable disgust, we have not often,
+since Snout&rsquo;s time, heard of a living one. But the common
+epithet of opprobrium is justly bestowed, and marks a right
+feeling. A wall has no business to be dead. It ought to have
+members in its make, and purposes in its existence, like an organized
+creature, and to answer its ends in a living and energetic
+way; and it is only when we do not choose to put any
+strength nor organization into it, that it offends us by its deadness.
+Every wall ought to be a &ldquo;sweet and lovely wall.&rdquo; I
+do not care about its having ears; but, for instruction and exhortation,
+I would often have it to &ldquo;hold up its fingers.&rdquo; What
+its necessary members and excellences are, it is our present
+business to discover.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. A wall has been defined to be an even and united
+fence of wood, earth, stone, or metal. Metal fences, however,
+seldom, if ever, take the form of walls, but of railings; and,
+like all other metal constructions, must be left out of our
+present investigation; as may be also walls composed merely
+of light planks or laths for purposes of partition or inclosure.
+Substantial walls, whether of wood or earth (I use the word
+earth as including clay, baked or unbaked, and stone), have,
+in their perfect form, three distinct members;&mdash;the Foundation,
+Body or Veil, and Cornice.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. The foundation is to the wall what the paw is to an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page053"></a>53</span>
+animal. It is a long foot, wider than the wall, on which the
+wall is to stand, and which keeps it from settling into the
+ground. It is most necessary that this great element of
+security should be visible to the eye, and therefore made a
+part of the structure above ground. Sometimes, indeed, it
+becomes incorporated with the entire foundation of the building,
+a vast table on which walls or piers are alike set: but
+even then, the eye, taught by the reason, requires some additional
+preparation or foot for the wall, and the building is
+felt to be imperfect without it. This foundation we shall call
+the Base of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. The body of the wall is of course the principal mass
+of it, formed of mud or clay, of bricks or stones, of logs or
+hewn timber; the condition of structure being, that it is of
+equal thickness everywhere, below and above. It may be
+half a foot thick, or six feet thick, or fifty feet thick; but if
+of equal thickness everywhere, it is still a wall proper: if to
+its fifty feet of proper thickness there be added so much as
+an inch of thickness in particular parts, that added thickness
+is to be considered as some form of buttress or pier, or other
+appliance.<a name="FnAnchor_33" href="#Footnote_33"><span class="sp">33</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In perfect architecture, however, the walls are generally
+kept of moderate thickness, and strengthened by piers or
+buttresses; and the part of the wall between these, being
+generally intended only to secure privacy, or keep out the
+slighter forces of weather, may be properly called a Wall
+Veil. I shall always use this word &ldquo;Veil&rdquo; to signify the even
+portion of a wall, it being more expressive than the term
+Body.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. When the materials with which this veil is built are
+very loose, or of shapes which do not fit well together, it
+sometimes becomes necessary, or at least adds to security, to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page054"></a>54</span>
+introduce courses of more solid material. Thus, bricks
+alternate with rolled pebbles in the old walls of Verona, and
+hewn stones with brick in its Lombard churches. A banded
+structure, almost a stratification of the wall, is thus produced;
+and the courses of more solid material are sometimes decorated
+with carving. Even when the wall is not thus banded
+through its whole height, it frequently becomes expedient to
+lay a course of stone, or at least of more carefully chosen
+materials, at regular heights; and such belts or bands we may
+call String courses. These are a kind of epochs in the wall&rsquo;s
+existence; something like periods of rest and reflection in human
+life, before entering on a new career. Or else, in the building,
+they correspond to the divisions of its stories within, express its
+internal structure, and mark off some portion of the ends of
+its existence already attained.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Finally, on the top of the wall some protection from
+the weather is necessary, or some preparation for the reception
+of superincumbent weight, called a coping, or Cornice.
+I shall use the word Cornice for both; for, in fact, a coping
+is a roof to the wall itself, and is carried by a small cornice
+as the roof of the building by a large one. In either case, the
+cornice, small or large, is the termination of the wall&rsquo;s existence,
+the accomplishment of its work. When it is meant to carry
+some superincumbent weight, the cornice may be considered as
+its hand, opened to carry something above its head; as the base
+was considered its foot: and the three parts should grow out
+of each other and form one whole, like the root, stalk, and bell
+of a flower.</p>
+
+<p>These three parts we shall examine in succession; and, first,
+the Base.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. It may be sometimes in our power, and it is always
+expedient, to prepare for the whole building some settled
+foundation, level and firm, out of sight. But this has not
+been done in some of the noblest buildings in existence. It
+cannot always be done perfectly, except at enormous expense;
+and, in reasoning upon the superstructure, we shall never
+suppose it to be done. The mind of the spectator does not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page055"></a>55</span>
+conceive it; and he estimates the merits of the edifice on the
+supposition of its being built upon the ground. Even if there
+be a vast table land of foundation elevated for the whole of
+it, accessible by steps all round, as at Pisa, the surface of this
+table is always conceived as capable of yielding somewhat to
+superincumbent weight, and generally is so; and we shall
+base all our arguments on the widest possible supposition,
+that is to say, that the building stands on a surface either of
+earth, or, at all events, capable of yielding in some degree to
+its weight.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. II.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_2"><img src="images/img055.jpg" width="350" height="323" alt="Fig. II." title="Fig. II." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Now, let the reader simply ask himself how, on
+such a surface, he would
+set about building a substantial
+wall, that should be
+able to bear weight and to
+stand for ages. He would
+assuredly look about for the
+largest stones he had at
+his disposal, and, rudely levelling
+the ground, he would
+lay these well together over
+a considerably larger width
+than he required the wall to
+be (suppose as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_2">Fig. II.</a>),
+in order to equalise the pressure of the wall over a large surface,
+and form its foot. On the top of these he would perhaps
+lay a second tier of large stones, <i>b</i>, or even the third, <i>c</i>, making
+the breadth somewhat less each time, so as to prepare for the
+pressure of the wall on the centre, and, naturally or necessarily,
+using somewhat smaller stones above than below (since
+we supposed him to look about for the largest first), and
+cutting them more neatly. His third tier, if not his second,
+will probably appear a sufficiently secure foundation for finer
+work; for if the earth yield at all, it will probably yield pretty
+equally under the great mass of masonry now knit together
+over it. So he will prepare for the wall itself at once by
+sloping off the next tier of stones to the right diameter, as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page056"></a>56</span>
+at <i>d</i>. If there be any joints in this tier within the wall, he
+may perhaps, for further security, lay a binding stone across
+them, <i>e</i>, and then begin the work of the wall veil itself,
+whether in bricks or stones.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. I have supposed the preparation here to be for a large
+wall, because such a preparation will give us the best general
+type. But it is evident that the essential features of the arrangement
+are only two, that is to say, one tier of massy work
+for foundation, suppose <i>c</i>, missing the first two; and the receding
+tier or real foot of the wall, <i>d</i>. The reader will find these
+members, though only of brick, in most of the considerable
+and independent walls in the suburbs of London.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. It is evident, however, that the general type, <a href="#fig_2">Fig. II.</a>,
+will be subject to many different modifications in different
+circumstances. Sometimes the ledges of the tiers <i>a</i> and <i>b</i>
+may be of greater width; and when the building is in a
+secure place, and of finished masonry, these may be sloped
+off also like the main foot <i>d</i>. In Venetian buildings these
+lower ledges are exposed to the sea, and therefore left rough
+hewn; but in fine work and in important positions the lower
+ledges may be bevelled and decorated like the upper, or
+another added above <i>d</i>; and all these parts may be in
+different proportions, according to the disposition of the
+building above them. But we have nothing to do with any
+of these variations at present, they being all more or less
+dependent upon decorative considerations, except only one of
+very great importance, that is to say, the widening of the
+lower ledge into a stone seat, which may be often done in
+buildings of great size with most beautiful effect: it looks
+kind and hospitable, and preserves the work above from
+violence. In St. Mark&rsquo;s at Venice, which is a small and low
+church, and needing no great foundation for the wall veils
+of it, we find only the three members, <i>b</i>, <i>c</i>, and <i>d</i>. Of these
+the first rises about a foot above the pavement of St. Mark&rsquo;s
+Place, and forms an elevated dais in some of the recesses of
+the porches, chequered red and white; <i>c</i> forms a seat which
+follows the line of the walls, while its basic character is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page057"></a>57</span>
+marked by its also carrying certain shafts with which we
+have here no concern; <i>d</i> is of white marble; and all are
+enriched and decorated in the simplest and most perfect
+manner possible, as we shall see in <a href="#chap_25">Chap. XXV.</a> And thus
+much may serve to fix the type of wall bases, a type oftener
+followed in real practice than any other we shall hereafter be
+enabled to determine: for wall bases of necessity must be
+solidly built, and the architect is therefore driven into the
+adoption of the right form; or if he deviate from it, it is
+generally in meeting some necessity of peculiar circumstances,
+as in obtaining cellars and underground room, or in preparing
+for some grand features or particular parts of the wall, or in
+some mistaken idea of decoration,&mdash;into which errors we had
+better not pursue him until we understand something more
+of the rest of the building: let us therefore proceed to consider
+the wall veil.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_33" href="#FnAnchor_33"><span class="fn">33</span></a> Many walls are slightly sloped or curved towards their tops, and have
+buttresses added to them (that of the Queen&rsquo;s Bench Prison is a curious
+instance of the vertical buttress and inclined wall); but in all such instances
+the slope of the wall is properly to be considered a condition of incorporated
+buttress.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page058"></a>58</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_5"></a>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE WALL VEIL.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">The</span> summer of the year 1849 was spent by the writer
+in researches little bearing upon his present subject, and
+connected chiefly with proposed illustrations of the mountain
+forms in the works of J. M. W. Turner. But there are sometimes
+more valuable lessons to be learned in the school of
+nature than in that of Vitruvius, and a fragment of building
+among the Alps is singularly illustrative of the chief feature
+which I have at present to develope as necessary to the
+perfection of the wall veil.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fragment of some size; a group of broken walls, one
+of them overhanging; crowned with a cornice, nodding some
+hundred and fifty feet over its massy flank, three thousand
+above its glacier base, and fourteen thousand above the sea,&mdash;a
+wall truly of some majesty, at once the most precipitous
+and the strongest mass in the whole chain of the Alps, the
+Mont Cervin.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower.
+It is a vast ridged promontory, connected at its western root
+with the Dent d&rsquo;Erin, and lifting itself like a rearing horse
+with its face to the east. All the way along the flank of it,
+for half a day&rsquo;s journey on the Zmutt glacier, the grim black
+terraces of its foundations range almost without a break; and
+the clouds, when their day&rsquo;s work is done, and they are
+weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and
+rest till dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched
+along the grisly ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall
+gleaming in the moonlight, three thousand feet above.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page059"></a>59</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down,
+as if by the single sweep of a sword, from the crest of it to
+the base; hewn concave and smooth, like the hollow of a
+wave: on each flank of it there is set a buttress, both of
+about equal height, their heads sloped out from the main wall
+about seven hundred feet below its summit. That on the
+north is the most important; it is as sharp as the frontal angle
+of a bastion, and sloped sheer away to the north-east,
+throwing out spur beyond spur, until it terminates in a long
+low curve of russet precipice, at whose foot a great bay of the
+glacier of the Col de Cervin lies as level as a lake. This spur
+is one of the few points from which the mass of the Mont
+Cervin is in anywise approachable. It is a continuation of the
+masonry of the mountain itself, and affords us the means of
+examining the character of its materials.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. Few architects would like to build with them. The
+slope of the rocks to the north-west is covered two feet deep
+with their ruins, a mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull
+brick-red color, which yields beneath the foot like ashes, so
+that, in running down, you step one yard, and slide three.
+The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still disposed in thin
+courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that they look in
+places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a rock;
+and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the
+mountain were upheld by miracle; but surprise becomes more
+intelligent reverence for the great builder, when we find, in
+the middle of the mass of these dead leaves, a course of living
+rock, of quartz as white as the snow that encircles it, and
+harder than a bed of steel.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. It is one only of a thousand iron bands that knit the
+strength of the mighty mountain. Through the buttress and
+the wall alike, the courses of its varied masonry are seen in
+their successive order, smooth and true as if laid by line and
+plummet,<a name="FnAnchor_34" href="#Footnote_34"><span class="sp">34</span></a> but of thickness and strength continually varying,
+and with silver cornices glittering along the edge of each,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page060"></a>60</span>
+laid by the snowy winds and carved by the sunshine,&mdash;stainless
+ornaments of the eternal temple, by which &ldquo;neither the
+hammer nor the axe, nor any tool, was heard while it was in
+building.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. I do not, however, bring this forward as an instance
+of any universal law of natural building; there are solid as
+well as coursed masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious
+that the most noble cliff in Europe, which this eastern front
+of the Cervin is, I believe, without dispute, should be to us
+an example of the utmost possible stability of precipitousness
+attained with materials of imperfect and variable character;
+and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which do not
+display alternations between compact and friable conditions
+of their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes
+when the bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they are
+harder. And, although we are not hence to conclude that it
+is well to introduce courses of bad materials when we can
+get perfect material, I believe we may conclude with great
+certainty that it is better and easier to strengthen a wall
+necessarily of imperfect substance, as of brick, by introducing
+carefully laid courses of stone, than by adding to its thickness;
+and the first impression we receive from the unbroken aspect
+of a wall veil, unless it be of hewn stone throughout, is that
+it must be both thicker and weaker than it would have been,
+had it been properly coursed. The decorative reasons for
+adopting the coursed arrangement, which we shall notice
+hereafter, are so weighty, that they would alone be almost
+sufficient to enforce it; and the constructive ones will apply
+universally, except in the rare cases in which the choice of
+perfect or imperfect material is entirely open to us, or where
+the general system of the decoration of the building requires
+absolute unity in its surface.</p>
+
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. III.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_3"><img src="images/img061.jpg" width="300" height="206" alt="Fig. III." title="Fig. III." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. As regards the arrangement of the intermediate
+parts themselves, it is regulated by certain conditions of
+bonding and fitting the stones or bricks, which the reader
+need hardly be troubled to consider, and which I wish that
+bricklayers themselves were always honest enough to observe.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page061"></a>61</span>
+But I hardly know whether to note under the head of ĉsthetic
+or constructive law, this important principle, that masonry is
+always bad which appears to have arrested the attention of
+the architect more than absolute conditions of strength
+require. Nothing is more contemptible in any work than an
+appearance of the slightest desire on the part of the builder
+to <i>direct attention</i> to the way its stones are put together, or of
+any trouble taken either to show or to conceal it more than
+was rigidly necessary: it may sometimes, on the one hand, be
+necessary to conceal it as far as may be, by delicate and close
+fitting, when the joints would interfere with lines of sculpture
+or of mouldings; and it may often, on the other hand, be
+delightful to show it, as it is delightful in places to show the
+anatomy even of the most delicate human frame: but <i>studiously</i>
+to conceal it is the error of vulgar painters, who are afraid to
+show that their figures have bones; and studiously to display
+it is the error of the base pupils of Michael Angelo, who turned
+heroes&rsquo; limbs into surgeons&rsquo; diagrams,&mdash;but with less excuse
+than theirs, for there is less interest in the anatomy displayed.
+Exhibited masonry is in most cases the expedient of architects
+who do not know how to fill up blank spaces, and many a
+building, which would have been decent enough if let alone,
+has been scrawled over with
+straight lines, as in <a href="#fig_3">Fig. III.</a>,
+on exactly the same principles,
+and with just the same
+amount of intelligence as a
+boy&rsquo;s in scrawling his copy-book
+when he cannot write.
+The device was thought ingenious
+at one period of architectural
+history; St. Paul&rsquo;s
+and Whitehall are covered
+with it, and it is in this I imagine that some of our modern
+architects suppose the great merit of those buildings to consist.
+There is, however, no excuse for errors in disposition of
+masonry, for there is but one law upon the subject, and that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page062"></a>62</span>
+easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and all unnecessary
+expense, either in showing or concealing. Every one
+knows a building is built of separate stones; nobody will ever
+object to seeing that it is so, but nobody wants to count them.
+The divisions of a church are much like the divisions of a
+sermon; they are always right so long as they are necessary
+to edification, and always wrong when they are thrust upon the
+attention as divisions only. There may be neatness in carving
+when there is richness in feasting; but I have heard many a
+discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all
+carving and no meat.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_34" href="#FnAnchor_34"><span class="fn">34</span></a> On the eastern side: violently contorted on the northern and western.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page063" id="page063"></a>63</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_6"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE WALL CORNICE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> have lastly to consider the close of the wall&rsquo;s existence,
+or its cornice. It was above stated, that a cornice has
+one of two offices: if the wall have nothing to carry, the
+cornice is its roof, and defends it from the weather; if there
+is weight to be carried above the wall, the cornice is its hand,
+and is expanded to carry the said weight.</p>
+
+<p>There are several ways of roofing or protecting independent
+walls, according to the means nearest at hand: sometimes
+the wall has a true roof all to itself; sometimes it terminates
+in a small gabled ridge, made of bricks set slanting, as constantly
+in the suburbs of London; or of hewn stone, in stronger work;
+or in a single sloping face, inclined to the outside. We need
+not trouble ourselves at present about these small roofings,
+which are merely the diminutions of large ones; but we must
+examine the important and constant member of the wall structure,
+which prepares it either for these small roofs or for
+weights above, and is its true cornice.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. The reader will, perhaps, as heretofore, be kind
+enough to think for himself, how, having carried up his wall
+veil as high as it may be needed, he will set about protecting
+it from weather, or preparing it for weight. Let him imagine
+the top of the unfinished wall, as it would be seen from above
+with all the joints, perhaps uncemented, or imperfectly filled
+up with cement, open to the sky; and small broken materials
+filling gaps between large ones, and leaving cavities ready for
+the rain to soak into, and loosen and dissolve the cement, and
+split, as it froze, the whole to pieces. I am much mistaken if
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page064"></a>64</span>
+his first impulse would not be to take a great flat stone and lay
+it on the top; or rather a series of such, side by side, projecting
+well over the edge of the wall veil. If, also, he proposed
+to lay a weight (as, for instance, the end of a beam) on the wall,
+he would feel at once that the pressure of this beam on, or
+rather among, the small stones of the wall veil, might very
+possibly dislodge or disarrange some of them; and the first
+impulse would be, in this case, also to lay a large flat stone on
+the top of all to receive the beam, or any
+other weight, and distribute it equally
+among the small stones below, as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_4">Fig.
+IV.</a></p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. IV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_4"><img src="images/img064.jpg" width="175" height="500" alt="Fig. IV." title="Fig. IV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. We must therefore have our flat
+stone in either case; and let <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_4">Fig. IV.</a>,
+be the section or side of it, as it is set across
+the wall. Now, evidently, if by any
+chance this weight happen to be thrown
+more on the edges of this stone than the
+centre, there will be a chance of these
+edges breaking off. Had we not better,
+therefore, put another stone, sloped off to
+the wall, beneath the projecting one, as at
+<i>c</i>. But now our cornice looks somewhat
+too heavy for the wall; and as the upper
+stone is evidently of needless thickness,
+we will thin it somewhat, and we have the
+form <i>d</i>. Now observe: the lower or bevelled stone here at <i>d</i>
+corresponds to <i>d</i> in the base (Fig. II., page 59). That was the
+foot of the wall; this is its hand. And the top stone here,
+which is a constant member of cornices, corresponds to the
+under stone <i>c</i>, in Fig. II., which is a constant member of bases.
+The reader has no idea at present of the enormous importance
+of these members; but as we shall have to refer to them
+perpetually, I must ask him to compare them, and fix their
+relations well in his mind: and, for convenience, I shall call
+the bevelled or sloping stone, X, and the upright edged stone,
+Y. The reader may remember easily which is which; for X
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page065"></a>65</span>
+is an intersection of two slopes, and may therefore properly
+mean either of the two sloping stones; and Y is a figure with
+a perpendicular line and two slopes, and may therefore fitly
+stand for the upright stone in relation to each of the sloping
+ones; and as we shall have to say much more about cornices
+than about bases, let X and Y stand for the stones of the cornice,
+and Xb and Yb for those of the base, when distinction is
+needed.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. Now the form at <i>d</i>, <a href="#fig_4">Fig. IV.</a>, is the great root and
+primal type of all cornices whatsoever. In order to see what
+forms may be developed from it, let us take its profile a little
+larger&mdash;<i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, with X and Y duly marked. Now this
+form, being the root of all cornices, may either have to finish
+the wall and so keep off rain; or, as so often stated, to carry
+weight. If the former, it is evident that, in its present profile,
+the rain will run back down the slope of X; and if the latter,
+that the sharp angle or edge of X, at <i>k</i>, may be a little too
+weak for its work, and run a chance of giving way. To avoid
+the evil in the first case, suppose we hollow the slope of X
+inwards, as at <i>b</i>; and to avoid it in the second case, suppose
+we strengthen X by letting it bulge outwards, as at c.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. V.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_5"><img src="images/img065.jpg" width="500" height="380" alt="Fig. V." title="Fig. V." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. These (<i>b</i> and <i>c</i>) are the profiles of two vast families of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page066"></a>66</span>
+cornices, springing from the same root, which, with a third
+arising from their combination (owing its origin to ĉsthetic
+considerations, and inclining sometimes to the one, sometimes
+to the other), have been employed, each on its third part of
+the architecture of the whole world throughout all ages, and
+must continue to be so employed through such time as is yet
+to come. We do not at present speak of the third or combined
+group; but the relation of the two main branches to
+each other, and to the line of origin, is given at <i>e</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>;
+where the dotted lines are the representatives of the two
+families, and the straight line of the root. The slope of this
+right line, as well as the nature of the curves, here drawn as
+segments of circles, we leave undetermined: the slope, as well
+as the proportion of the depths of X and Y to each other, vary
+according to the weight to be carried, the strength of the
+stone, the size of the cornice, and a thousand other accidents;
+and the nature of the curves according to ĉsthetic laws. It is
+in these infinite fields that the invention of the architect is permitted
+to expatiate, but not in the alteration of primitive
+forms.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. But to proceed. It will doubtless appear to the
+reader, that, even allowing for some of these permissible variations
+in the curve or slope of X, neither the form at <i>b</i>, nor
+any approximation to that form, would be sufficiently undercut
+to keep the rain from running back upon it. This is true;
+but we have to consider that the cornice, as the close of the
+wall&rsquo;s life, is of all its features that which is best fitted for
+honor and ornament. It has been esteemed so by almost all
+builders, and has been lavishly decorated in modes hereafter to
+be considered. But it is evident that, as it is high above the
+eye, the fittest place to receive the decoration is the slope of
+X, which is inclined towards the spectator; and if we cut away
+or hollow out this slope more than we have done at <i>b</i>, all decoration
+will be hid in the shadow. If, therefore, the climate
+be fine, and rain of long continuance not to be dreaded, we
+shall not hollow the stone X further, adopting the curve at <i>b</i>
+merely as the most protective in our power. But if the climate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page067"></a>67</span>
+be one in which rain is frequent and dangerous, as in alternations
+with frost, we may be compelled to consider the cornice
+in a character distinctly protective, and to hollow out X
+farther, so as to enable it thoroughly to accomplish its purpose.
+A cornice thus treated loses its character as the crown or
+honor of the wall, takes the office of its protector, and is called
+a <span class="scs">DRIPSTONE</span>. The dripstone is naturally the attribute of
+Northern buildings, and therefore especially of Gothic architecture;
+the true cornice is the attribute of Southern buildings,
+and therefore of Greek and Italian architecture; and it is one
+of their peculiar beauties, and eminent features of superiority.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Before passing to the dripstone, however, let us
+examine a little farther into the nature of the true cornice.
+We cannot, indeed, render either of the forms <i>b</i> or <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>,
+perfectly protective from rain, but we can help them a little
+in their duty by a slight advance of their upper ledge. This,
+with the form <i>b</i>, we can best manage by cutting off the sharp
+upper point of its curve, which is evidently weak and useless;
+and we shall have the form <i>f</i>. By a slight advance of the
+upper stone <i>c</i>, we shall have the parallel form <i>g</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These two cornices, <i>f</i> and <i>g</i>, are characteristic of early
+Byzantine work, and are found on all the most lovely
+examples of it in Venice. The type <i>a</i> is rarer, but occurs
+pure in the most exquisite piece of composition in Venice&mdash;the
+northern portico of St. Mark&rsquo;s; and will be given in due
+time.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Now the reader has doubtless noticed that these
+forms of cornice result, from considerations of fitness and
+necessity, far more neatly and decisively than the forms of the
+base, which we left only very generally determined. The
+reason is, that there are many ways of building foundations,
+and many <i>good</i> ways, dependent upon the peculiar accidents
+of the ground and nature of accessible materials. There is
+also room to spare in width, and a chance of a part of the
+arrangement being concealed by the ground, so as to modify
+height. But we have no room to spare in width on the top
+of a wall, and all that we do must be thoroughly visible; and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page068"></a>68</span>
+we can but have to deal with bricks, or stones of a certain
+degree of fineness, and not with mere gravel, or sand, or
+clay,&mdash;so that as the conditions are limited, the forms become
+determined; and our steps will be more clear and certain the
+farther we advance. The sources of a river are usually half
+lost among moss and pebbles, and its first movements doubtful
+in direction; but, as the current gathers force, its banks are
+determined, and its branches are numbered.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. So far of the true cornice: we have still to determine
+the form of the dripstone.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. VI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_6"><img src="images/img068.jpg" width="600" height="165" alt="Fig. VI." title="Fig. VI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>We go back to our primal type or root of cornice, <i>a</i> of
+<a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a> We take this at <i>a</i> in <a href="#fig_6">Fig. VI.</a>, and we are to consider
+it entirely as a protection against rain. Now the only
+way in which the rain can be kept from running back on the
+slope of X is by a bold hollowing out of it upwards, <i>b</i>. But
+clearly, by thus doing, we shall so weaken the projecting part
+of it that the least shock would break it at the neck, <i>c</i>; we
+must therefore cut the whole out of one stone, which will give
+us the form <i>d</i>. That the water may not lodge on the upper
+ledge of this, we had better round it off; and it will better
+protect the joint at the bottom of the slope if we let the stone
+project over it in a roll, cutting the recess deeper above.
+These two changes are made in <i>e</i>: <i>e</i> is the type of dripstones;
+the projecting part being, however, more or less rounded into
+an approximation to the shape of a falcon&rsquo;s beak, and often
+reaching it completely. But the essential part of the arrangement
+is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we
+find this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page069"></a>69</span>
+builders have been <i>bred</i> in a wet country, and that the rest of
+the building will be prepared for rough weather. The up cutting
+of the curve is sometimes all the distinction between the
+mouldings of far-distant countries and utterly strange nations.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. VII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_7"><img src="images/img069a.jpg" width="150" height="188" alt="Fig. VII." title="Fig. VII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a href="#fig_7">Fig. VII.</a> representing a moulding with an outer and inner
+curve, the latter undercut. Take the
+outer line, and this moulding is one constant
+in Venice, in architecture traceable
+to Arabian types, and chiefly to the early
+mosques of Cairo. But take the inner
+line; it is a dripstone at Salisbury. In
+that narrow interval between the curves
+there is, when we read it rightly, an expression
+of another and mightier curve,&mdash;the
+orbed sweep of the earth and sea, between
+the desert of the Pyramids, and the green and level
+fields through which the clear streams of Sarum wind so
+slowly.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. VIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_8"><img src="images/img069b.jpg" width="350" height="263" alt="Fig. VIII." title="Fig. VIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>And so delicate is the test, that though pure cornices are
+often found in the north,&mdash;borrowed from classical models,&mdash;so
+surely as we find a true dripstone moulding in the South, the
+influence of Northern
+builders has been at
+work; and this will
+be one of the principal
+evidences which I
+shall use in detecting
+Lombard influence on
+Arab work; for the
+true Byzantine and
+Arab mouldings are
+all open to the sky and
+light, but the Lombards
+brought with
+them from the North the fear of rain, and in all the Lombardic
+Gothic we instantly recognize the shadowy dripstone: <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_8">Fig.
+VIII.</a>, is from a noble fragment at Milan, in the Piazza dei
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page070"></a>70</span>
+Mercanti; <i>b</i>, from the Broletto of Como. Compare them
+with <i>c</i> and <i>d</i>; both from Salisbury; <i>e</i> and <i>f</i> from Lisieux, Normandy;
+<i>g</i> and <i>h</i> from Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. The reader is now master of all that he need know
+about the construction of the general wall cornice, fitted
+either to become a crown of the wall, or to carry weight
+above.  If, however, the weight above become considerable,
+it may be necessary to support the cornice at intervals with
+brackets; especially if it be required to project far, as well
+as to carry weight; as, for instance, if there be a gallery
+on top of the wall. This kind of bracket-cornice, deep or
+shallow, forms a separate family, essentially connected with
+roofs and galleries; for if there be no superincumbent weight,
+it is evidently absurd to put brackets to a plain cornice or dripstone
+(though this is sometimes done in carrying out a style);
+so that, as soon as we see a bracket put to a cornice, it implies,
+or should imply, that there is a roof or gallery above it.
+Hence this family of cornices I shall consider in connection
+with roofing, calling them &ldquo;roof cornices,&rdquo; while what we
+have hitherto examined are proper &ldquo;wall cornices.&rdquo; The roof
+cornice and wall cornice are therefore treated in division D.</p>
+
+<p>We are not, however, as yet nearly ready for our roof.
+We have only obtained that which was to be the object of
+our first division (A); we have got, that is to say, a general
+idea of a wall and of the three essential parts of a wall; and
+we have next, it will be remembered, to get an idea of a pier
+and the essential parts of a pier, which were to be the subjects
+of our second division (B).</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page071"></a>71</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_7"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE PIER BASE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">In</span> § <span class="scs">III.</span> of <a href="#chap_3">Chap. III.</a>, it was stated that when a wall had
+to sustain an addition of vertical pressure, it was first fitted to
+sustain it by some addition to its own thickness; but if the
+pressure became very great, by being gathered up into <span class="sc">Piers</span>.</p>
+
+<p>I must first make the reader understand what I mean by a
+wall&rsquo;s being gathered up. Take a piece of tolerably thick
+drawing-paper, or thin Bristol board, five or six inches square.
+Set it on its edge on the table, and put a small octavo book
+on the edge or top of it, and it will bend instantly. Tear it
+into four strips all across, and roll up each strip tightly. Set
+these rolls on end on the table, and they will carry the small
+octavo perfectly well. Now the thickness or substance of the
+paper employed to carry the weight is exactly the same as it
+was before, only it is differently arranged, that is to say,
+&ldquo;gathered up.&rdquo;<a name="FnAnchor_35" href="#Footnote_35"><span class="sp">35</span></a> If therefore a wall be gathered up like the
+Bristol board, it will bear greater weight than it would if it
+remained a wall veil. The sticks into which you gather it are
+called <i>Piers</i>. A pier is a coagulated wall.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. Now you cannot quite treat the wall as you did the
+Bristol board, and twist it up at once; but let us see how you
+<i>can</i> treat it. Let <span class="scs">A</span>, <a href="#fig_9">Fig. IX.</a>, be the plan of a wall which you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page072"></a>72</span>
+have made inconveniently and expensively thick, and which
+still appears to be slightly too weak for what it must carry:
+divide it, as at <span class="scs">B</span>, into equal spaces, <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, &amp;c. Cut out a
+thin slice of it at every <i>a</i> on each side, and put the slices you
+cut out on at every <i>b</i> on each side, and you will have the plan
+at B, with exactly the same quantity of bricks. But your wall
+is now so much concentrated, that, if it was only slightly too
+weak before, it will be stronger now than it need be; so you
+may spare some of your space as well as your bricks by cutting
+off the corners of the thicker parts, as suppose <i>c</i>, <i>c</i>, <i>c</i>, <i>c</i>,
+at <span class="scs">C</span>: and you have now a series of square piers connected by
+a wall veil, which, on less space and with less materials, will
+do the work of the wall at <span class="scs">A</span> perfectly well.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. IX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_9"><img src="images/img072.jpg" width="450" height="512" alt="Fig. IX." title="Fig. IX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. I do not say <i>how much</i> may be cut away in the corners
+<i>c</i>, <i>c</i>,&mdash;that is a mathematical question with which we need not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page073"></a>73</span>
+trouble ourselves: all that we need know is, that out of every
+slice we take from the &ldquo;<i>b</i>&lsquo;s&rdquo; and put on at the &ldquo;<i>a</i>&rsquo;s,&rdquo; we may
+keep a certain percentage of room and bricks, until, supposing
+that we do not want the wall veil for its own sake, this latter
+is thinned entirely away, like the girdle of the Lady of Avenel,
+and finally breaks, and we have nothing but a row of square
+piers, <span class="scs">D</span>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. But have we yet arrived at the form which will spare
+most room, and use fewest materials. No; and to get farther
+we must apply the general principle to our wall, which is
+equally true in morals and mathematics, that the strength of
+materials, or of men, or of minds, is always most available
+when it is applied as closely as possible to a single point.</p>
+
+<p>Let the point to which we wish the strength of our square
+piers to be applied, be chosen. Then we shall of course put
+them directly under it, and the point will be in their centre.
+But now some of their materials are not so near or close to
+this point as others. Those at the corners are farther off than
+the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if every particle of the pier be brought as near as
+possible to the centre of it, the form it assumes is the circle.</p>
+
+<p>The circle must be, therefore, the best possible form of
+plan for a pier, from the beginning of time to the end of it.
+A circular pier is called a pillar or column, and all good architecture
+adapted to vertical support is made up of pillars, has
+always been so, and must ever be so, as long as the laws of the
+universe hold.</p>
+
+<p>The final condition is represented at <span class="scs">E</span>, in its relation to that
+at <span class="scs">D</span>. It will be observed that though each circle projects a
+little beyond the side of the square out of which it is formed,
+the space cut off at the angles is greater than that added at
+the sides; for, having our materials in a more concentrated
+arrangement, we can afford to part with some of them in this
+last transformation, as in all the rest.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. And now, what have the base and the cornice of the
+wall been doing while we have been cutting the veil to pieces
+and gathering it together?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page074"></a>74</span></p>
+
+<p>The base is also cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes
+the base of the column.</p>
+
+<p>The cornice is cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes
+the capital of the column. Do not be alarmed at the
+new word, it does not mean a new thing; a capital is only the
+cornice of a column, and you may, if you like, call a cornice
+the capital of a wall.</p>
+
+<p>We have now, therefore, to examine these three concentrated
+forms of the base, veil, and cornice: first, the concentrated
+base, still called the <span class="sc">Base</span> of the column; then the
+concentrated veil, called the <span class="sc">Shaft</span> of the column; then the
+concentrated cornice, called the <span class="sc">Capital</span> of the column.</p>
+
+<p>And first the Base:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. X.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_10"><img src="images/img074.jpg" width="450" height="257" alt="Fig. X." title="Fig. X." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Look back to the main type, <a href="#fig_2">Fig. II.</a>, page 55, and
+apply its profiles in due proportion to the feet of the pillars at
+<span class="scs">E</span> in <a href="#fig_9">Fig. IX.</a> <a href="#page072">p. 72</a>: If each step in <a href="#fig_2">Fig. II.</a> were gathered
+accurately, the projection of the entire circular base would be
+less in proportion to its height than it is in <a href="#fig_2">Fig. II.</a>; but the
+approximation to the result in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. X.</a> is quite accurate enough
+for our purposes. (I pray the reader to observe that I have
+not made the smallest change, except this necessary expression
+of a reduction in diameter, in <a href="#fig_2">Fig. II.</a> as it is applied
+in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. X.</a>, only I have not drawn the joints of the stones
+because these would confuse the outlines of the bases; and
+I have not represented the rounding of the shafts, because
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page075"></a>75</span>
+it does not bear at present on the argument.) Now it would
+hardly be convenient, if we had to pass between the pillars, to
+have to squeeze ourselves through one of those angular gaps
+or brêches de Roland in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. X.</a> Our first impulse would be
+to cut them open; but we cannot do this, or our piers are
+unsafe. We have but one other resource, to fill them up until
+we have a floor wide enough to let us pass easily: this we may
+perhaps obtain at the first ledge, we are nearly sure to get it
+at the second, and we may then obtain access to the raised
+interval, either by raising the earth over the lower courses of
+foundation, or by steps round the entire building.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#fig_11">Fig. XI.</a> is the arrangement of <a href="#fig_10">Fig. X.</a> so treated.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_11"><img src="images/img075.jpg" width="450" height="256" alt="Fig. XI." title="Fig. XI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. But suppose the pillars are so vast that the lowest
+chink in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. X.</a> would be quite wide enough to let us pass
+through it. Is there then any reason for filling it up? Yes.
+It will be remembered that in <a href="#chap_4">Chap. IV.</a> § <span class="scs">VIII.</span> the chief reason
+for the wide foundation of the wall was stated to be &ldquo;that it
+might equalise its pressure over a large surface;&rdquo; but when
+the foundation is cut to pieces as in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. X.</a>, the pressure is
+thrown on a succession of narrowed and detached spaces of
+that surface. If the ground is in some places more disposed
+to yield than in others, the piers in those places will sink more
+than the rest, and this distortion of the system will be probably
+of more importance in pillars than in a wall, because the adjustment
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page076"></a>76</span>
+of the weight above is more delicate; we thus actually
+want the <i>weight</i> of the stones between the pillars, in order
+that the whole foundation may be bonded into one, and sink
+together if it sink at all: and the more massy the pillars, the
+more we shall need to fill the intervals of their foundations.
+In the best form of Greek architecture, the intervals are filled
+up to the root of the shaft, and the columns have no independent
+base; they stand on the even floor of their foundation.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Such a structure is not only admissible, but, when
+the column is of great thickness in proportion to its height,
+and the sufficient firmness, either of the ground or prepared floor,
+is evident, it is the best of all, having a strange dignity in its
+excessive simplicity. It is, or ought to be, connected in our
+minds with the deep meaning of primeval memorial. &ldquo;And
+Jacob took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it
+up for a pillar.&rdquo; I do not fancy that he put a base for it first.
+If you try to put a base to the rock-piers of Stonehenge, you
+will hardly find them improved; and two of the most perfect
+buildings in the world, the Parthenon and Ducal palace of
+Venice, have no bases to their pillars: the latter has them,
+indeed, to its upper arcade shafts; and had once, it is said, a
+continuous raised base for its lower ones: but successive elevations
+of St. Mark&rsquo;s Place have covered this base, and parts of
+the shafts themselves, with an inundation of paving stones;
+and yet the building is, I doubt not, as grand as ever. Finally,
+the two most noble pillars in Venice, those brought from Acre,
+stand on the smooth marble surface of the Piazzetta, with no
+independent bases whatever. They are rather broken away
+beneath, so that you may look under parts of them, and stand
+(not quite erect, but leaning somewhat) safe by their own
+massy weight. Nor could any bases possibly be devised that
+would not spoil them.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. But it is otherwise if the pillar be so slender as to look
+doubtfully balanced. It would indeed stand quite as safely
+without an independent base as it would with one (at least,
+unless the base be in the form of a socket). But it will not
+appear so safe to the eye. And here for the first time, I have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page077"></a>77</span>
+to express and apply a principle, which I believe the reader
+will at once grant,&mdash;that features necessary to express security
+to the imagination, are often as essential parts of good architecture
+as those required for security itself. It was said that
+the wall base was the foot or paw of the wall. Exactly in the
+same way, and with clearer analogy, the pier base is the foot
+or paw of the pier. Let us, then, take a hint from nature.
+A foot has two offices, to bear up, and to hold firm. As far
+as it has to bear up, it is uncloven, with slight projection,&mdash;look
+at an elephant&rsquo;s (the Doric base of animality);<a name="FnAnchor_36" href="#Footnote_36"><span class="sp">36</span></a> but as
+far as it has to hold firm, it is divided and clawed, with wide
+projections,&mdash;look at an eagle&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. Now observe. In proportion to the massiness of the
+column, we require its foot to express merely the power of
+bearing up; in fact, it can do without a foot, like the Squire
+in Chevy Chase, if the ground only be hard enough. But if
+the column be slender, and look as if it might lose its balance,
+we require it to look as if it had hold of the ground, or the
+ground hold of it, it does not matter which,&mdash;some expression
+of claw, prop, or socket. Now let us go back to <a href="#fig_11">Fig. XI.</a>, and
+take up one of the bases there, in the state in which we left it.
+We may leave out the two lower steps (with which we have
+nothing more to do, as they have become the united floor or
+foundation of the whole), and, for the sake of greater clearness,
+I shall not draw the bricks in the shaft, nor the flat stone
+which carries them, though the reader is to suppose them remaining
+as drawn in <a href="#fig_11">Fig. XI.</a>; but I shall only draw the shaft
+and its two essential members of base, Xb and Yb, as explained
+at <a href="#page065">p. 65</a>, above: and now, expressing the rounding of these
+numbers on <i>a</i> somewhat larger scale, we have the profile <i>a</i>,
+<a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>; <i>b</i>, the perspective appearance of such a base seen
+from above; and <i>c</i>, the plan of it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Now I am quite sure the reader is not satisfied of the
+stability of this form as it is seen at <i>b</i>; nor would he ever be
+so with the main contour of a circular base. Observe, we have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page078"></a>78</span>
+taken some trouble to reduce the member Yb into this round
+form, and all that we have gained by so doing, is this unsatisfactory
+and unstable look of the base; of which the chief
+reason is, that a circle, unless enclosed by right lines, has never
+an appearance of fixture, or definite place,<a name="FnAnchor_37" href="#Footnote_37"><span class="sp">37</span></a>&mdash;we suspect it of
+motion, like an orb of heaven; and the second is, that the
+whole base, considered as the foot of the shaft, has no grasp
+nor hold: it is a club-foot, and looks too blunt for the limb,&mdash;it
+wants at least expansion, if not division.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_12"><img src="images/img078.jpg" width="500" height="504" alt="Fig. XII." title="Fig. XII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. Suppose, then, instead of taking so much trouble
+with the member Yb, we save time and labor, and leave it a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page079"></a>79</span>
+square block. Xb must, however, evidently follow the pillar,
+as its condition is that it slope to the very base of the wall veil,
+and of whatever the wall veil becomes. So the corners of Yb
+will project beyond the circle of Xb, and we shall have (<a href="#fig_12">Fig.
+XII.</a>) the profile <i>d</i>, the perspective appearance <i>e</i>, and the plan
+<i>f</i>. I am quite sure the reader likes <i>e</i> much better than he did
+<i>b</i>. The circle is now placed, and we are not afraid of its rolling
+away. The foot has greater expansion, and we have saved
+labor besides, with little loss of space, for the interval between
+the bases is just as great as it was before,&mdash;we have only filled
+up the corners of the squares.</p>
+
+<p>But is it not possible to mend the form still further? There
+is surely still an appearance of separation between Xb and Yb,
+as if the one might slip off the other. The foot is expanded
+enough; but it needs some expression of grasp as well. It has
+no toes. Suppose we were to put a spur or prop to Xb at each
+corner, so as to hold it fast in the centre of Yb. We will do
+this in the simplest possible form. We will have the spur, or
+small buttress, sloping straight from the corner of Yb up to
+the top of Xb, and as seen from above, of the shape of a triangle.
+Applying such spurs in <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>, we have the diagonal
+profile at <i>g</i>, the perspective <i>h</i>, and the plan <i>i</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. I am quite sure the reader likes this last base the
+best, and feels as if it were the firmest. But he must carefully
+distinguish between this feeling or imagination of the eye, and
+the real stability of the structure. That this real stability has
+been slightly increased by the changes between <i>b</i> and <i>h</i>, in <a href="#fig_12">Fig.
+XII.</a>, is true. There is in the base <i>h</i> somewhat less chance of
+accidental dislocation, and somewhat greater solidity and weight.
+But this very slight gain of security is of no importance whatever
+when compared with the general requirements of the
+structure. The pillar must be <i>perfectly</i> secure, and more than
+secure, with the base <i>b</i>, or the building will be unsafe, whatever
+other base you put to the pillar. The changes are made,
+not for the sake of the almost inappreciable increase of security
+they involve, but in order to convince the eye of the real security
+which the base <i>b</i> <i>appears</i> to compromise. This is especially
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page080"></a>80</span>
+the case with regard to the props or spurs, which are
+absolutely useless in reality, but are of the highest importance
+as an expression of safety. And this will farther appear when
+we observe that they have been above quite arbitrarily supposed
+to be of a triangular form. Why triangular? Why should
+not the spur be made wider and stronger, so as to occupy the
+whole width of the angle of the square, and to become a complete
+expansion of Xb to the edge of the square? Simply
+because, whatever its width, it has, in reality, no supporting
+power whatever; and the <i>expression</i> of support is greatest
+where it assumes a form approximating to that of the spur or
+claw of an animal. We shall, however, find hereafter, that it
+ought indeed to be much wider than it is in <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>, where
+it is narrowed in order to make its structure clearly intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. If the reader chooses to consider this spur as an
+ĉsthetic feature altogether, he is at liberty to do so, and to
+transfer what we have here said of it to the beginning of <a href="#chap_25">Chap.
+XXV.</a> I think that its true place is here, as an <i>expression</i> of
+safety, and not a means of beauty; but I will assume only, as
+established, the form <i>e</i> of <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>, which is absolutely, as a
+construction, easier, stronger, and more perfect than <i>b</i>. A
+word or two now of its materials. The wall base, it will be
+remembered, was built of stones more neatly cut as they were
+higher in place; and the members, Y and X, of the pier base,
+were the highest members of the wall base gathered. But,
+exactly in proportion to this gathering or concentration in
+form, should, if possible, be the gathering or concentration of
+substance. For as the whole weight of the building is now to
+rest upon few and limited spaces, it is of the greater importance
+that it should be there received by solid masonry. Xb and Yb
+are therefore, if possible, to be each of a single stone; or, when
+the shaft is small, both cut out of one block, and especially if
+spurs are to be added to Xb. The reader must not be angry
+with me for stating things so self-evident, for these are all
+necessary steps in the chain of argument which I must not
+break. Even this change from detached stones to a single
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page081"></a>81</span>
+block is not without significance; for it is part of the real
+service and value of the member Yb to provide for the reception
+of the shaft a surface free from joints; and the eye always
+conceives it as a firm covering over all inequalities or fissures
+in the smaller masonry of the floor.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV.</span> I have said nothing yet of the proportion of the
+height of Yb to its width, nor of that of Yb and Xb to each
+other. Both depend much on the height of shaft, and are besides
+variable within certain limits, at the architect&rsquo;s discretion.
+But the limits of the height of Yb may be thus generally
+stated. If it looks so thin as that the weight of the column
+above might break it, it is too low; and if it is higher than its
+own width, it is too high. The utmost admissible height is
+that of a cubic block; for if it ever become higher than it is
+wide, it becomes itself a part of a pier, and not the base of
+one.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI.</span> I have also supposed Yb, when expanded from
+beneath Xb, as always expanded into a square, and four spurs
+only to be added at the angles. But Yb may be expanded into
+a pentagon, hexagon, or polygon; and Xb then may have five,
+six, or many spurs. In proportion, however, as the sides
+increase in number, the spurs become shorter and less energetic
+in their effect, and the square is in most cases the best form.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII.</span> We have hitherto conducted the argument entirely
+on the supposition of the pillars being numerous, and in a
+range. Suppose, however, that we require only a single pillar:
+as we have free space round it, there is no need to fill up the
+first ranges of its foundations; nor need we do so in order to
+equalise pressure, since the pressure to be met is its own alone.
+Under such circumstances, it is well to exhibit the lower tiers
+of the foundation as well as Yb and Xb. The noble bases of
+the two granite pillars of the Piazzetta at Venice are formed
+by the entire series of members given in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. X.</a>, the lower
+courses expanding into steps, with a superb breadth of proportion
+to the shaft. The member Xb is of course circular, having
+its proper decorative mouldings, not here considered; Yb is
+octagonal, but filled up into a square by certain curious groups
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page082"></a>82</span>
+of figures representing the trades of Venice. The three
+courses below are octagonal, with their sides set across the
+angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet
+in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7
+feet each side).</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII.</span> Detached buildings, like our own Monument, are
+not pillars, but towers built in imitation of Pillars. As towers
+they are barbarous, being dark, inconvenient, and unsafe,
+besides lying, and pretending to be what they are not. As
+shafts they are barbarous, because they were designed at a time
+when the Renaissance architects had introduced and forced into
+acceptance, as <i>de rigueur</i>, a kind of columnar high-heeled shoe,&mdash;a
+thing which they called a pedestal, and which is to a true
+base exactly what a Greek actor&rsquo;s cothurnus was to a Greek
+gentleman&rsquo;s sandal. But the Greek actor knew better, I believe,
+than to exhibit or to decorate his cork sole; and, with
+shafts as with heroes, it is rather better to put the sandal off
+than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed, occasions on which
+a pedestal may be necessary; it may be better to raise a shaft
+from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others, its
+companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher
+shaft; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if
+otherwise too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than to use
+a larger shaft of coarser material; but the pedestal is in each
+case a make-shift, not an additional perfection. It may, in the
+like manner, be sometimes convenient for men to walk on
+stilts, but not to keep their stilts on as ornamental parts of
+dress. The bases of the Nelson Column, the Monument, and
+the column of the Place Vendôme, are to the shafts, exactly
+what highly ornamented wooden legs would be to human
+beings.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX.</span> So far of bases of detached shafts. As we do not
+yet know in what manner shafts are likely to be grouped, we
+can say nothing of those of grouped shafts until we know more
+of what they are to support.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly; we have throughout our reasoning upon the base
+supposed the pier to be circular. But circumstances may occur
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page083"></a>83</span>
+to prevent its being reduced to this form, and it may remain
+square or rectangular; its base will then be simply the wall
+base following its contour, and we have no spurs at the angles.
+Thus much may serve respecting pier bases; we have next to
+examine the concentration of the Wall Veil, or the Shaft.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_35" href="#FnAnchor_35"><span class="fn">35</span></a> The experiment is not quite fair in this rude fashion; for the small
+rolls owe their increase of strength much more to their tubular form than
+their aggregation of material; but if the paper be cut up into small strips,
+and tied together firmly in three or four compact bundles, it will exhibit
+increase of strength enough to show the principle. Vide, however, <a href="#app_16">Appendix
+16</a>, &ldquo;Strength of Shafts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_36" href="#FnAnchor_36"><span class="fn">36</span></a> <a href="#app_17">Appendix 17</a>, &ldquo;Answer to Mr. Garbett.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_37" href="#FnAnchor_37"><span class="fn">37</span></a> Yet more so than any other figure enclosed by a curved line: for the
+circle, in its relations to its own centre, is the curve of greatest stability.
+Compare § <span class="scs">XX.</span> of <a href="#chap_20">Chap. XX.</a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page084"></a>84</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_8"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE SHAFT.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> have seen in the last Chapter how, in converting
+the wall into the square or cylindrical shaft, we parted at every
+change of form with some quantity of material. In proportion
+to the quantity thus surrendered, is the necessity that what we
+retain should be good of its kind, and well set together, since
+everything now depends on it.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear also that the best material, and the closest concentration,
+is that of the natural crystalline rocks; and that, by
+having reduced our wall into the shape of shafts, we may be
+enabled to avail ourselves of this better material, and to
+exchange cemented bricks for crystallised blocks of stone.
+Therefore, the general idea of a perfect shaft is that of a single
+stone hewn into a form more or less elongated and cylindrical.
+Under this form, or at least under the ruder one of a long
+stone set upright, the conception of true shafts appears first
+to have occurred to the human mind; for the reader must note
+this carefully, once for all, it does not in the least follow that
+the order of architectural features which is most reasonable in
+their arrangement, is most probable in their invention. I have
+theoretically deduced shafts from walls, but shafts were never
+so reasoned out in architectural practice. The man who first
+propped a thatched roof with poles was the discoverer of their
+principle; and he who first hewed a long stone into a cylinder,
+the perfecter of their practice.</p>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II.</span> It is clearly necessary that shafts of this kind (we will
+call them, for convenience, <i>block</i> shafts) should be composed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page085"></a>85</span>
+of stone not liable to flaws or fissures; and therefore that we
+must no longer continue our argument as if it were always
+possible to do what is to be done in the best way; for the
+style of a national architecture may evidently depend, in great
+measure, upon the nature of the rocks of the country.</p>
+
+<p>Our own English rocks, which supply excellent building
+stone from their thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most
+part entirely incapable of being worked into shafts of any size,
+except only the granites and whinstones, whose hardness renders
+them intractable for ordinary purposes;&mdash;and English
+architecture therefore supplies no instances of the block shaft
+applied on an extensive scale; while the facility of obtaining
+large masses of marble has in Greece and Italy been partly the
+cause of the adoption of certain noble types of architectural
+form peculiar to those countries, or, when occurring elsewhere,
+derived from them.</p>
+
+<p>We have not, however, in reducing our walls to shafts, calculated
+on the probabilities of our obtaining better materials
+than those of which the walls were built; and we shall therefore
+first consider the form of shaft which will be best when
+we have the best materials; and then consider how far we can
+imitate, or how far it will be wise to imitate, this form with
+any materials we can obtain.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. Now as I gave the reader the ground, and the stones,
+that he might for himself find out how to build his wall, I
+shall give him the block of marble, and the chisel, that he may
+himself find out how to shape his column. Let him suppose
+the elongated mass, so given him, rudely hewn to the thickness
+which he has calculated will be proportioned to the weight it
+has to carry. The conditions of stability will require that
+some allowance be made in finishing it for any chance of slight
+disturbance or subsidence of the ground below, and that, as
+everything must depend on the uprightness of the shaft, as
+little chance should be left as possible of its being thrown off
+its balance. It will therefore be prudent to leave it slightly
+thicker at the base than at the top. This excess of diameter at
+the base being determined, the reader is to ask himself how
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page086"></a>86</span>
+most easily and simply to smooth the column from one extremity
+to the other. To cut it into a true straight-sided cone
+would be a matter of much trouble and nicety, and would
+incur the continual risk of chipping into it too deep. Why
+not leave some room for a chance stroke, work it slightly, <i>very</i>
+slightly convex, and smooth the curve by the eye between the
+two extremities? you will save much trouble and time, and
+the shaft will be all the stronger.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_13"><img src="images/img086.jpg" width="500" height="239" alt="Fig. XIII." title="Fig. XIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This is accordingly the natural form of a detached block
+shaft. It is the best. No other will ever be so agreeable to
+the mind or eye. I do not mean that it is not capable of
+more refined execution, or of the application of some of the
+laws of ĉsthetic beauty, but that it is the best recipient of
+execution and subject of law; better in either case than if you
+had taken more pains, and cut it straight.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. You will observe, however, that the convexity is to be
+very slight, and that the shaft is not to <i>bulge</i> in the centre, but
+to taper from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character
+of the curve you will discern better by exaggerating, in a diagram,
+the conditions of its sculpture.</p>
+
+<p>Let <i>a</i>, <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>b,</i> at <span class="scs">A</span>, <a href="#fig_13">Fig. XIII.</a>, be the rough block of the
+shaft, laid on the ground; and as thick as you can by any
+chance require it to be; you will leave it of this full thickness
+at its base at <span class="scs">A</span>, but at the other end you will mark off upon it
+the diameter <i>c</i>, <i>d,</i> which you intend it to have at the summit;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page087"></a>87</span>
+you will then take your mallet and chisel, and working from <i>c</i>
+and <i>d</i> you will roughly knock off the corners, shaded in the
+figure, so as to reduce the shaft to the figure described by the
+inside lines in <span class="scs">A</span> and the outside lines in <span class="scs">B</span>; you then proceed
+to smooth it, you chisel away the shaded parts in <span class="scs">B</span>, and leave
+your finished shaft of the form of the <i>inside</i> lines <i>e</i>, <i>g</i>, <i>f</i>, <i>h</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The result of this operation will be of course that the shaft
+tapers faster towards the top than it does near the ground.
+Observe this carefully; it is a point of great future importance.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. So far of the shape of detached or block shafts. We
+can carry the type no farther on merely structural considerations:
+let us pass to the shaft of inferior materials.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, in practice, this step must be soon made.
+It is alike difficult to obtain, transport, and raise, block shafts
+more than ten or twelve feet long, except in remarkable positions,
+and as pieces of singular magnificence. Large pillars
+are therefore always composed of more than one block of
+stone. Such pillars are either jointed like basalt columns, and
+composed of solid pieces of stone set one above another; or
+they are filled up <i>towers</i>, built of small stones cemented into
+a mass, with more or less of regularity: Keep this distinction
+carefully in mind, it is of great importance; for the jointed
+column, every stone composing which, however thin, is (so to
+speak) a complete <i>slice</i> of the shaft, is just as strong as the
+block pillar of one stone, so long as no forces are brought into
+action upon it which would have a tendency to cause horizontal
+dislocation. But the pillar which is built as a filled-up
+tower is of course liable to fissure in any direction, if its cement
+give way.</p>
+
+<p>But, in either case, it is evident that all constructive reason
+of the curved contour is at once destroyed. Far from being
+an easy or natural procedure, the fitting of each portion of
+the curve to its fellow, in the separate stones, would require
+painful care and considerable masonic skill; while, in the case
+of the filled-up tower, the curve outwards would be even
+unsafe; for its greatest strength (and that the more in proportion
+to its careless building) lies in its bark, or shell of outside
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page088"></a>88</span>
+stone; and this, if curved outwards, would at once burst outwards,
+if heavily loaded above.</p>
+
+<p>If, therefore, the curved outline be ever retained in such
+shafts, it must be in obedience to ĉsthetic laws only.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. But farther. Not only the curvature, but even the
+tapering by straight lines, would be somewhat difficult of
+execution in the pieced column. Where, indeed, the entire
+shaft is composed of four or five blocks set one upon another,
+the diameters may be easily determined at the successive joints,
+and the stones chiselled to the same slope. But this becomes
+sufficiently troublesome when the joints are numerous, so that
+the pillar is like a pile of cheeses; or when it is to be built of
+small and irregular stones. We should be naturally led, in
+the one case, to cut all the cheeses to the same diameter; in
+the other to build by the plumb-line; and in both to give up
+the tapering altogether.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Farther. Since the chance, in the one case, of horizontal
+dislocation, in the other, of irregular fissure, is much
+increased by the composition of the shaft out of joints or
+small stones, a larger bulk of shaft is required to carry the
+given weight; and, <i>c&aelig;teris paribus</i>, jointed and cemented
+shafts must be thicker in proportion to the weight they carry
+than those which are of one block.</p>
+
+<p>We have here evidently natural causes of a very marked
+division in schools of architecture: one group composed of
+buildings whose shafts are either of a single stone or of few
+joints; the shafts, therefore, being gracefully tapered, and
+reduced by successive experiments to the narrowest possible
+diameter proportioned to the weight they carry: and the other
+group embracing those buildings whose shafts are of many
+joints or of small stones; shafts which are therefore not
+tapered, and rather thick and ponderous in proportion to the
+weight they carry; the latter school being evidently somewhat
+imperfect and inelegant as compared with the former.</p>
+
+<p>It may perhaps appear, also, that this arrangement of the
+materials in cylindrical shafts at all would hardly have suggested
+itself to a people who possessed no large blocks out of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page089"></a>89</span>
+which to hew them; and that the shaft built of many pieces
+is probably derived from, and imitative of the shaft hewn
+from few or from one.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. If, therefore, you take a good geological map of
+Europe, and lay your finger upon the spots where volcanic
+influences supply either travertin or marble in accessible and
+available masses, you will probably mark the points where
+the types of the first school have been originated and developed.
+If, in the next place, you will mark the districts where
+broken and rugged basalt or whinstone, or slaty sandstone,
+supply materials on easier terms indeed, but fragmentary and
+unmanageable, you will probably distinguish some of the
+birthplaces of the derivative and less graceful school. You
+will, in the first case, lay your finger on Pĉstum, Agrigentum,
+and Athens; in the second, on Durham and Lindisfarne.</p>
+
+<p>The shafts of the great primal school are, indeed, in their
+first form, as massy as those of the other, and the tendency
+of both is to continual diminution of their diameters: but in
+the first school it is a true diminution in the thickness of the
+independent pier; in the last, it is an apparent diminution,
+obtained by giving it the appearance of a group of minor
+piers. The distinction, however, with which we are concerned
+is not that of slenderness, but of vertical or curved contour;
+and we may note generally that while throughout the whole
+range of Northern work, the perpendicular shaft appears in
+continually clearer development, throughout every group
+which has inherited the spirit of the Greek, the shaft retains
+its curved or tapered form; and the occurrence of the vertical
+detached shaft may at all times, in European architecture, be
+regarded as one of the most important collateral evidences of
+Northern influence.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. It is necessary to limit this observation to European
+architecture, because the Egyptian shaft is often untapered,
+like the Northern. It appears that the Central Southern, or
+Greek shaft, was tapered or curved on ĉsthetic rather than
+constructive principles; and the Egyptian which precedes, and
+the Northern which follows it, are both vertical, the one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page090"></a>90</span>
+because the best form had not been discovered, the other
+because it could not be attained. Both are in a certain degree
+barbaric; and both possess in combination and in their ornaments
+a power altogether different from that of the Greek
+shaft, and at least as impressive if not as admirable.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. We have hitherto spoken of shafts as if their number
+were fixed, and only their diameter variable according to the
+weight to be borne. But this supposition is evidently gratuitous;
+for the same weight may be carried either by many
+and slender, or by few and massy shafts. If the reader will
+look back to <a href="#fig_9">Fig. IX.</a>, he will find the number of shafts into
+which the wall was reduced to be dependent altogether upon
+the length of the spaces <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, &amp;c., a length which was
+arbitrarily fixed. We are at liberty to make these spaces of
+what length we choose, and, in so doing, to increase the number
+and diminish the diameter of the shafts, or <i>vice versâ</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Supposing the materials are in each case to be of the
+same kind, the choice is in great part at the architect&rsquo;s
+discretion, only there is a limit on the one hand to the
+multiplication of the slender shaft, in the inconvenience of the
+narrowed interval, and on the other, to the enlargement of
+the massy shaft, in the loss of breadth to the building.<a name="FnAnchor_38" href="#Footnote_38"><span class="sp">38</span></a>
+That will be commonly the best proportion which is a natural
+mean between the two limits; leaning to the side of grace or
+of grandeur according to the expressional intention of the
+work. I say, <i>commonly</i> the best, because, in some cases, this
+expressional invention may prevail over all other considerations,
+and a column of unnecessary bulk or fantastic slightness
+be adopted in order to strike the spectator with awe or with
+surprise.<a name="FnAnchor_39" href="#Footnote_39"><span class="sp">39</span></a> The architect is, however, rarely in practice compelled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page091"></a>91</span>
+to use one kind of material only; and his choice lies
+frequently between the employment of a larger number of
+solid and perfect small shafts, or a less number of pieced and
+cemented large ones. It is often possible to obtain from
+quarries near at hand, blocks which might be cut into shafts
+eight or twelve feet long and four or five feet round, when
+larger shafts can only be obtained in distant localities; and
+the question then is between the perfection of smaller features
+and the imperfection of larger. We shall find numberless
+instances in Italy in which the first choice has been boldly,
+and I think most wisely made; and magnificent buildings
+have been composed of systems of small but perfect shafts,
+multiplied and superimposed. So long as the idea of the
+symmetry of a perfect shaft remained in the builder&rsquo;s mind,
+his choice could hardly be directed otherwise, and the adoption
+of the built and tower-like shaft appears to have been the result
+of a loss of this sense of symmetry consequent on the employment
+of intractable materials.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. But farther: we have up to this point spoken of
+shafts as always set in ranges, and at equal intervals from each
+other. But there is no necessity for this; and material differences
+may be made in their diameters if two or more be
+grouped so as to do together the work of one large one, and
+that within, or nearly within, the space which the larger one
+would have occupied.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. Let <span class="scs">A, B, C,</span> <a href="#fig_14">Fig. XIV.</a>, be three surfaces, of which
+<span class="scs">B</span> and <span class="scs">C</span> contain equal areas, and each of them double that of
+<span class="scs">A</span>: then supposing them all loaded to the same height, <span class="scs">B</span>
+or <span class="scs">C</span> would receive twice as much weight as <span class="scs">A</span>; therefore,
+to carry <span class="scs">B</span> or <span class="scs">C</span> loaded, we should need a shaft of twice the
+strength needed to carry <span class="scs">A</span>. Let <span class="scs">S</span> be the shaft required to
+carry <span class="scs">A</span>, and <span class="scs">S<span class="su">2</span></span> the shaft required to carry <span class="scs">B</span> or <span class="scs">C</span>; then <span class="scs">S<span class="su">3</span></span>
+may be divided into two shafts, or <span class="scs">S<span class="su">2</span></span> into four shafts, as at <span class="scs">S<span class="su">3</span></span>,
+all equal in area or solid contents;<a name="FnAnchor_40" href="#Footnote_40"><span class="sp">40</span></a> and the mass <span class="scs">A</span> might be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page092"></a>92</span>
+carried safely by two of
+them, and the masses <span class="scs">B</span>
+and <span class="scs">C</span>, each by four of
+them.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XIV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_14"><img src="images/img092.jpg" width="350" height="863" alt="Fig. XIV." title="Fig. XIV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Now if we put the
+single shafts each under
+the centre of the mass
+they have to bear, as represented
+by the shaded
+circles at <i>a</i>, <i>a</i><span class="su">2</span>, <i>a</i><span class="su">3</span>, the
+masses <span class="scs">A</span> and <span class="scs">C</span> are both
+of them very ill supported,
+and even <span class="scs">B</span> insufficiently;
+but apply the
+four and the two shafts
+as at <i>b</i>, <i>b</i><span class="su">2</span>, <i>b</i><span class="su">3</span>, and they
+are supported satisfactorily.
+Let the weight on
+each of the masses be
+doubled, and the shafts
+doubled in area, then we
+shall have such arrangements
+as those at <i>c</i>, <i>c</i><span class="su">2</span>, <i>c</i><span class="su">3</span>;
+and if again the shafts
+and weight be doubled,
+we shall have <i>d</i>, <i>d</i><span class="su">2</span>, <i>d</i><span class="su">3</span>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. Now it will at
+once be observed that the
+arrangement of the shafts
+in the series of <span class="scs">B</span> and <span class="scs">C</span> is
+always exactly the same
+in their relations to each
+other; only the group of
+<span class="scs">B</span> is set evenly, and the
+group of <span class="scs">C</span> is set obliquely,&mdash;the one carrying a square, the
+other a cross.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_15"><img src="images/img093.jpg" width="250" height="127" alt="Fig. XV." title="Fig. XV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>You have in these two series the primal representations of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page093"></a>93</span>
+shaft arrangement in the Southern and Northern schools;
+while the group <i>b</i>, of which <i>b</i><span class="su">2</span> is the double, set evenly, and
+<i>c</i><span class="su">2</span> the double, set obliquely, is common to both. The reader
+will be surprised to find how all the complex and varied forms
+of shaft arrangement will range themselves into one or other
+of these groups; and still more surprised to find the oblique
+or cross set system on the one hand, and the square set system
+on the other, severally distinctive of Southern and Northern
+work. The dome of St. Mark&rsquo;s, and the crossing of the nave
+and transepts of Beauvais, are both carried by square piers;
+but the piers of St. Mark&rsquo;s are set square to the walls of the
+church, and those of Beauvais obliquely to them: and this
+difference is even a more essential one than that between the
+smooth surface of the one and the reedy complication of the
+other. The two squares here in the margin (<a href="#fig_15">Fig. XV.</a>) are
+exactly of the same size, but their
+expression is altogether different,
+and in that difference lies one of
+the most subtle distinctions between
+the Gothic and Greek spirit,&mdash;from
+the shaft, which bears the
+building, to the smallest decoration.
+The Greek square is by preference set evenly, the Gothic
+square obliquely; and that so constantly, that wherever we
+find the level or even square occurring as a prevailing form,
+either in plan or decoration, in early northern work, there we
+may at least suspect the presence of a southern or Greek
+influence; and, on the other hand, wherever the oblique
+square is prominent in the south, we may confidently look for
+farther evidence of the influence of the Gothic architects.
+The rule must not of course be pressed far when, in either
+school, there has been determined search for every possible
+variety of decorative figures; and accidental circumstances
+may reverse the usual system in special cases; but the evidence
+drawn from this character is collaterally of the highest value,
+and the tracing it out is a pursuit of singular interest. Thus,
+the Pisan Romanesque might in an instant be pronounced to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page094"></a>94</span>
+have been formed under some measure of Lombardic influence,
+from the oblique squares set under its arches; and in
+it we have the spirit of northern Gothic affecting details of
+the southern;&mdash;obliquity of square, in magnificently shafted
+Romanesque. At Monza, on the other hand, the levelled
+square is the characteristic figure of the entire decoration of
+the façade of the Duomo, eminently giving it southern character;
+but the details are derived almost entirely from the
+northern Gothic. Here then we have southern spirit and
+northern detail. Of the cruciform outline of the load of the
+shaft, a still more positive test of northern work, we shall
+have more to say in the 28th Chapter; we must at present
+note certain farther changes in the form of the grouped shaft,
+which open the way to every branch of its endless combinations,
+southern or northern.<span style="clear: both; ">&nbsp;</span> </p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XVI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_16"><img src="images/img094.jpg" width="250" height="461" alt="Fig. XVI." title="Fig. XVI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. 1. If the group at <i>d</i><span class="su">3</span>, <a href="#fig_14">Fig. XIV.</a>, be taken from under
+its loading, and have its centre
+filled up, it will become a quatrefoil;
+and it will represent,
+in their form of most frequent
+occurrence, a family of shafts,
+whose plans are foiled figures,
+trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils,
+&amp;c.; of which a trefoiled example,
+from the Frari at Venice, is
+the third in <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>, and a
+quatrefoil from Salisbury the
+eighth. It is rare, however, to
+find in Gothic architecture
+shafts of this family composed
+of a large number of foils,
+because multifoiled shafts are
+seldom true grouped shafts, but
+are rather canaliculated conditions
+of massy piers. The representatives
+of this family may be
+considered as the quatrefoil on the Gothic side of the Alps;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page095"></a>95</span>
+and the Egyptian multifoiled shaft on the south, approximating
+to the general type, <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_16">Fig. XVI.</a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. Exactly opposed to this great family is that of shafts
+which have concave curves instead of convex on each of their
+sides; but these are not, properly speaking, grouped shafts at
+all, and their proper place is among decorated piers; only
+they must be named here in order to mark their exact opposition
+to the foiled system. In their simplest form, represented
+by <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_16">Fig. XVI.</a>, they have no representatives in good architecture,
+being evidently weak and meagre; but approximations
+to them exist in late Gothic, as in the vile cathedral of Orleans,
+and in modern cast-iron shafts. In their fully developed form
+they are the Greek Doric, <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_16">Fig. XVI.</a>, and occur in caprices
+of the Romanesque and Italian Gothic: <i>d</i>, <a href="#fig_16">Fig. XVI.</a>, is from
+the Duomo of Monza.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. 2. Between <i>c</i><span class="su">3</span> and <i>d</i><span class="su">3</span> of <a href="#fig_14">Fig. XIV.</a> there may be
+evidently another condition, represented at 6, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>, and
+formed by the insertion of a central shaft within the four
+external ones. This central shaft we may suppose to expand
+in proportion to the weight it has to carry. If the external
+shafts expand in the same proportion, the entire form remains
+unchanged; but if they do not expand, they may (1) be pushed
+out by the expanding shaft, or (2) be gradually swallowed up
+in its expansion, as at 4, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a> If they are pushed out, they
+are removed farther from each other by every increase of the
+central shaft; and others may then be introduced in the vacant
+spaces; giving, on the plan, a central orb with an ever increasing
+host of satellites, 10, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>; the satellites themselves
+often varying in size, and perhaps quitting contact with the
+central shaft. Suppose them in any of their conditions fixed,
+while the inner shaft expands, and they will be gradually buried
+in it, forming more complicated conditions of 4, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>
+The combinations are thus altogether infinite, even supposing
+the central shaft to be circular only; but their infinity is multiplied
+by many other infinities when the central shaft itself
+becomes square or crosslet on the section, or itself multifoiled
+(8, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>) with satellite shafts eddying about its recesses and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page096"></a>96</span>
+angles, in every possible relation of attraction. Among these
+endless conditions of change, the choice of the architect is free,
+this only being generally noted: that, as the whole value of
+such piers depends, first, upon their being wisely fitted to the
+weight above them, and, secondly, upon their all working
+together: and one not failing the rest, perhaps to the ruin of
+all, he must never multiply shafts without visible cause in the
+disposition of members superimposed:<a name="FnAnchor_41" href="#Footnote_41"><span class="sp">41</span></a> and in his multiplied
+group he should, if possible, avoid a marked separation between
+the large central shaft and its satellites; for if this exist, the
+satellites will either appear useless altogether, or else, which is
+worse, they will look as if they were meant to keep the central
+shaft together by wiring or caging it in; like iron rods set
+round a supple cylinder,&mdash;a fatal fault in the piers of Westminster
+Abbey, and, in a less degree, in the noble nave of the
+cathedral of Bourges.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. While, however, we have been thus subdividing or
+assembling our shafts, how far has it been possible to retain
+their curved or tapered outline? So long as they remain distinct
+and equal, however close to each other, the independent
+curvature may evidently be retained. But when once they
+come in contact, it is equally evident that a column, formed of
+shafts touching at the base and separate at the top, would
+appear as if in the very act of splitting asunder. Hence, in all
+the closely arranged groups, and especially those with a central
+shaft, the tapering is sacrificed; and with less cause for regret,
+because it was a provision against subsidence or distortion,
+which cannot now take place with the separate members of
+the group. Evidently, the work, if safe at all, must be executed
+with far greater accuracy and stability when its supports
+are so delicately arranged, than would be implied by such precaution.
+In grouping shafts, therefore, a true perpendicular
+line is, in nearly all cases, given to the pier; and the reader
+will anticipate that the two schools, which we have already
+found to be distinguished, the one by its perpendicular and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page097"></a>97</span>
+pieced shafts, and the other by its curved and block shafts, will
+be found divided also in their employment of grouped shafts;&mdash;it
+is likely that the idea of grouping, however suggested,
+will be fully entertained and acted upon by the one, but hesitatingly
+by the other; and that we shall find, on the one hand,
+buildings displaying sometimes massy piers of small stones,
+sometimes clustered piers of rich complexity, and on the other,
+more or less regular succession of block shafts, each treated as
+entirely independent of those around it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. Farther, the grouping of shafts once admitted, it is
+probable that the complexity and richness of such arrangements
+would recommend them to the eye, and induce their frequent,
+even their unnecessary introduction; so that weight which
+might have been borne by a single pillar, would be in preference
+supported by four or five. And if the stone of the
+country, whose fragmentary character first occasioned the
+building and piecing of the large pier, were yet in beds consistent
+enough to supply shafts of very small diameter, the
+strength and simplicity of such a construction might justify it,
+as well as its grace. The fact, however, is that the charm
+which the multiplication of line possesses for the eye has
+always been one of the chief ends of the work in the grouped
+schools; and that, so far from employing the grouped piers in
+order to the introduction of very slender block shafts, the most
+common form in which such piers occur is that of a solid
+jointed shaft, each joint being separately cut into the contour
+of the group required.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. We have hitherto supposed that all grouped or clustered
+shafts have been the result or the expression of an actual
+gathering and binding together of detached shafts. This is
+not, however, always so: for some clustered shafts are little
+more than solid piers channelled on the surface, and their form
+appears to be merely the development of some longitudinal
+furrowing or striation on the original single shaft. That clustering
+or striation, whichever we choose to call it, is in this
+case a decorative feature, and to be considered under the head
+of decoration.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXI</span>. It must be evident to the reader at a glance, that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page098"></a>98</span>
+real serviceableness of any of these grouped arrangements must
+depend upon the relative shortness of the shafts, and that,
+when the whole pier is so lofty that its minor members become
+mere reeds or rods of stone, those minor members can no
+longer be charged with any considerable weight. And the
+fact is, that in the most complicated Gothic arrangements,
+when the pier is tall and its satellites stand clear of it, no real
+work is given them to do, and they might all be removed
+without endangering the building. They are merely the <i>expression</i>
+of a great consistent system, and are in architecture
+what is often found in animal anatomy,&mdash;a bone, or process of
+a bone, useless, under the ordained circumstances of its life, to
+the particular animal in which it is found, and slightly developed,
+but yet distinctly existent, and representing, for the sake
+of absolute consistency, the same bone in its appointed, and
+generally useful, place, either in skeletons of all animals, or in
+the genus to which the animal itself belongs.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXII</span>. Farther: as it is not easy to obtain pieces of stone
+long enough for these supplementary shafts (especially as it is
+always unsafe to lay a stratified stone with its beds upright)
+they have been frequently composed of two or more short
+shafts set upon each other, and to conceal the unsightly junction,
+a flat stone has been interposed, carved into certain
+mouldings, which have the appearance of a ring on the shaft.
+Now observe: the whole pier was the gathering of the whole
+wall, the base gathers into base, the veil into the shaft, and
+the string courses of the veil gather into these rings; and
+when this is clearly expressed, and the rings do indeed correspond
+with the string courses of the wall veil, they are perfectly
+admissible and even beautiful; but otherwise, and
+occurring, as they do in the shafts of Westminster, in the
+middle of continuous lines, they are but sorry make-shifts, and
+of late since gas has been invented, have become especially
+offensive from their unlucky resemblance to the joints of gas-pipes,
+or common water-pipes. There are two leaden ones,
+for instance, on the left hand as one enters the abbey at Poet&rsquo;s
+Corner, with their solderings and funnels looking exactly like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page099"></a>99</span>
+rings and capitals, and most disrespectfully mimicking the
+shafts of the abbey, inside.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far we have traced the probable conditions of shaft
+structure in pure theory; I shall now lay before the reader
+a brief statement of the facts of the thing in time past and
+present.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIII</span>. In the earliest and grandest shaft architecture
+which we know, that of Egypt, we have no grouped arrangements,
+properly so called, but either single and smooth shafts,
+or richly reeded and furrowed shafts, which represent the extreme
+conditions of a complicated group bound together to
+sustain a single mass; and are indeed, without doubt, nothing
+else than imitations of bundles of reeds, or of clusters of lotus:<a name="FnAnchor_42" href="#Footnote_42"><span class="sp">42</span></a>
+but in these shafts there is merely the idea of a group, not the
+actual function or structure of a group; they are just as much
+solid and simple shafts as those which are smooth, and merely
+by the method of their decoration present to the eye the image
+of a richly complex arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIV</span>. After these we have the Greek shaft, less in scale,
+and losing all suggestion or purpose of suggestion of complexity,
+its so-called flutings being, visibly as actually, an external
+decoration.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXV</span>. The idea of the shaft remains absolutely single in
+the Roman and Byzantine mind; but true grouping begins in
+Christian architecture by the placing of two or more separate
+shafts side by side, each having its own work to do; then three
+or four, still with separate work; then, by such steps as those
+above theoretically pursued, the number of the members increases,
+while they coagulate into a single mass; and we have
+finally a shaft apparently composed of thirty, forty, fifty, or
+more distinct members; a shaft which, in the reality of its
+service, is as much a single shaft as the old Egyptian one; but
+which differs from the Egyptian in that all its members, how
+many soever, have each individual work to do, and a separate
+rib of arch or roof to carry: and thus the great Christian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100"></a>100</span>
+truth of distinct services of the individual soul is typified in
+the Christian shaft; and the old Egyptian servitude of the
+multitudes, the servitude inseparable from the children of
+Ham, is typified also in that ancient shaft of the Egyptians,
+which in its gathered strength of the river reeds, seems, as the
+sands of the desert drift over its ruin, to be intended to remind
+us for ever of the end of the association of the wicked. &ldquo;Can
+the rush grow up without mire, or the flag grow without
+water?&mdash;So are the paths of all that forget God; and the
+hypocrite&rsquo;s hope shall perish.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVI</span>. Let the reader then keep this distinction of the
+three systems clearly in his mind: Egyptian system, an apparent
+cluster supporting a simple capital and single weight;
+Greek and Roman system, single shaft, single weight;
+Gothic system, divided shafts, divided weight: at first actually
+and simply divided, at last apparently and infinitely divided;
+so that the fully formed Gothic shaft is a return to the Egyptian,
+but the weight is divided in the one and undivided in the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVII</span>. The transition from the actual to the apparent
+cluster, in the Gothic, is a question of the most curious
+interest; I have thrown together the shaft sections in <a href="#plate_2">Plate
+II.</a> to illustrate it, and exemplify what has been generally
+stated above.<a name="FnAnchor_43" href="#Footnote_43"><span class="sp">43</span></a></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">II.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_2"><img src="images/img100.jpg" width="409" height="650" alt="PLANS OF PIERS." title="PLANS OF PIERS." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">PLANS OF PIERS.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>1. The earliest, the most frequent, perhaps the most beautiful
+of all the groups, is also the simplest; the two shafts arranged
+as at <i>b</i> or <i>c</i>, (<a href="#fig_14">Fig. XIV.</a>) above, bearing an oblong mass,
+and substituted for the still earlier structure <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_14">Fig. XIV.</a> In
+<a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a> (<a href="#chap_27">Chap. XXVII.</a>) are three examples of the transition:
+the one on the left, at the top, is the earliest single-shafted
+arrangement, constant in the rough Romanesque
+windows; a huge hammer-shaped capital being employed to
+sustain the thickness of the wall. It was rapidly superseded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101"></a>101</span>
+by the double shaft, as on the right of it; a very early example
+from the cloisters of the Duomo, Verona. Beneath, is a most
+elaborate and perfect one from St. Zeno of Verona, where the
+group is twice complicated, two shafts being used, both with
+quatrefoil sections. The plain double shaft, however, is by
+far the most frequent, both in the Northern and Southern
+Gothic, but for the most part early; it is very frequent in
+cloisters, and in the singular one of St. Michael&rsquo;s Mount, Normandy,
+a small pseudo-arcade runs along between the pairs of
+shafts, a miniature aisle. The group is employed on a magnificent
+scale, but ill proportioned, for the main piers of the
+apse of the cathedral of Coutances, its purpose being to conceal
+one shaft behind the other, and make it appear to the spectator
+from the nave as if the apse were sustained by single shafts, of
+inordinate slenderness. The attempt is ill-judged, and the result
+unsatisfactory.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XVII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_17"><img src="images/img101.jpg" width="120" height="129" alt="Fig. XVII." title="Fig. XVII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVIII</span>. 2. When these pairs of shafts come near each
+other, as frequently at the turnings of angles (<a href="#fig_17">Fig. XVII.</a>),
+the quadruple group results, <i>b</i> 2, <a href="#fig_14">Fig. XIV.</a>, of
+which the Lombardic sculptors were excessively
+fond, usually tying the shafts together in their
+centre, in a lover&rsquo;s knot.  They thus occur in
+<a href="#plate_5">Plate V.</a>, from the Broletto of Como; at the
+angle of St. Michele of Lucca, <a href="#plate_21">Plate XXI.</a>;
+and in the balustrade of St. Mark&rsquo;s. This is a group, however,
+which I have never seen used on a large scale.<a name="FnAnchor_44" href="#Footnote_44"><span class="sp">44</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIX</span>. 3. Such groups, consolidated by a small square in their
+centre, form the shafts of St. Zeno, just spoken of, and figured
+in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a>, which are among the most interesting pieces
+of work I know in Italy. I give their entire arrangement in
+<a href="#fig_18">Fig. XVIII.</a>: both shafts have the same section, but one receives
+a half turn as it ascends, giving it an exquisite spiral
+contour: the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is given at
+2, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of all
+that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102"></a>102</span>
+It was asserted that the oblique belonged to the north, the
+even to the south: we have here the northern Lombardic
+nation naturalised in Italy, and, behold, the oblique
+and even quatrefoil linked together; not
+confused, but actually linked by a bar of stone, as
+seen in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a>, under the capitals.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">Fig. XVIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_18"><img src="images/img102.jpg" width="120" height="403" alt="Fig. XVIII." title="Fig. XVIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>4. Next to these, observe the two groups of
+five shafts each, 5 and 6, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>, one oblique,
+the other even. Both are from upper stories;
+the oblique one from the triforium of Salisbury;
+the even one from the upper range of shafts in
+the façade of St. Mark&rsquo;s at Venice.<a name="FnAnchor_45" href="#Footnote_45"><span class="sp">45</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXX</span>. Around these central types are grouped,
+in <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>, four simple examples of the satellitic
+cluster, all of the Northern Gothic: 4, from
+the Cathedral of Amiens; 7, from that of Lyons
+(nave pier); 8, the same from Salisbury; 10,
+from the porch of Notre Dame, Dijon, having satellites of
+three magnitudes: 9 is one of the piers between the doors of
+the same church, with shafts of four magnitudes, and is an
+instance of the confusion of mind of the Northern architects
+between piers proper and jamb mouldings (noticed farther in
+the next chapter, § <span class="scs">XXXI</span>.): for this fig. 9, which is an angle
+at the meeting of two jambs, is treated like a rich independent
+shaft, and the figure below, 12, which is half of a true shaft,
+is treated like a meeting of jambs.</p>
+
+<p>All these four examples belonging to the oblique or Northern
+system, the curious trefoil plan, 3, lies <i>between</i> the two, as
+the double quatrefoil next it <i>unites</i> the two. The trefoil is
+from the Frari, Venice, and has a richly worked capital in the
+Byzantine manner,&mdash;an imitation, I think, of the Byzantine
+work by the Gothic builders: 1 is to be compared with it,
+being one of the earliest conditions of the cross shaft, from the
+atrium of St. Ambrogio at Milan. 13 is the nave pier of St.
+Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully developed:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103"></a>103</span>
+and 11 another nave pier from Vienne, on the Rhone,
+of far more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is
+set to the nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the
+grandest development I have ever seen of the cross shaft,
+with satellite shafts in the nooks of it: it is half of one of
+the great western piers of the cathedral of Bourges, measuring
+eight feet each side, thirty-two round.<a name="FnAnchor_46" href="#Footnote_46"><span class="sp">46</span></a> Then the one below
+(15) is half of a nave pier of Rouen Cathedral, showing the
+mode in which such conditions as that of Dijon (9) and that of
+Bourges (12) were fused together into forms of inextricable
+complexity (inextricable I mean in the irregularity of proportion
+and projection, for all of them are easily resolvable into
+simple systems in connexion with the roof ribs). This pier
+of Rouen is a type of the last condition of the good Gothic;
+from this point the small shafts begin to lose shape, and run
+into narrow fillets and ridges, projecting at the same time
+farther and farther in weak tongue-like sections, as described
+in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps.&rdquo; I have only here given one example
+of this family, an unimportant but sufficiently characteristic
+one (16) from St. Gervais of Falaise. One side of the nave of
+that church is Norman, the other Flamboyant, and the two
+piers 14 and 16 stand opposite each other. It would be useless
+to endeavor to trace farther the fantasticism of the later
+Gothic shafts; they become mere aggregations of mouldings
+very sharply and finely cut, their bases at the same time running
+together in strange complexity and their capitals diminishing
+and disappearing. Some of their conditions, which, in their
+rich striation, resemble crystals of beryl, are very massy and
+grand; others, meagre, harsh, or effeminate in themselves, are
+redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration; and I have
+long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of
+this French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104"></a>104</span>
+power. But this inquiry is foreign altogether to our present
+purpose, and we shall therefore turn back from the Flamboyant
+to the Norman side of the Falaise aisle, resolute for the future
+that all shafts of which we may have the ordering, shall be
+permitted, as with wisdom we may also permit men or cities,
+to gather themselves into companies, or constellate themselves
+into clusters, but not to fuse themselves into mere masses of
+nebulous aggregation.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_38" href="#FnAnchor_38"><span class="fn">38</span></a> In saying this, it is assumed that the interval is one which is to be
+traversed by men; and that a certain relation of the shafts and intervals to
+the size of the human figure is therefore necessary. When shafts are used
+in the upper stories of buildings, or on a scale which ignores all relation to
+the human figure, no such relative limits exist either to slenderness or
+solidity.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_39" href="#FnAnchor_39"><span class="fn">39</span></a> Vide the interesting discussion of this point in Mr. Fergusson&rsquo;s account
+of the Temple of Karnak, &ldquo;Principles of Beauty in Art,&rdquo; p. 219.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_40" href="#FnAnchor_40"><span class="fn">40</span></a> I have assumed that the strength of similar shafts of equal height is
+as the squares of their diameters; which, though not actually a correct expression,
+is sufficiently so for all our present purposes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_41" href="#FnAnchor_41"><span class="fn">41</span></a> How far this condition limits the system of shaft grouping we shall see
+presently. The reader must remember, that we at present reason respecting
+shafts in the abstract only.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_42" href="#FnAnchor_42"><span class="fn">42</span></a> The capitals being formed by the flowers, or by a representation of the
+bulging out of the reeds at the top, under the weight of the architrave.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_43" href="#FnAnchor_43"><span class="fn">43</span></a> I have not been at the pains to draw the complicated piers in this plate
+with absolute exactitude to the scale of each: they are accurate enough for
+their purpose: those of them respecting which we shall have farther question
+will be given on a much larger scale.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_44" href="#FnAnchor_44"><span class="fn">44</span></a> The largest I remember support a monument in St. Zeno of Verona;
+they are of red marble, some ten or twelve feet high.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_45" href="#FnAnchor_45"><span class="fn">45</span></a> The effect of this last is given in <a href="#plate_6">Plate VI.</a> of the folio series.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_46" href="#FnAnchor_46"><span class="fn">46</span></a> The entire development of this cross system in connexion with the
+vaulting ribs, has been most clearly explained by Professor Willis (Architecture
+of Mid. Ages, Chap. IV.); and I strongly recommend every reader
+who is inclined to take pains in the matter, to read that chapter. I have
+been contented, in my own text, to pursue the abstract idea of shaft form.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page105"></a>105</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_9"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE CAPITAL.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I.</span> <span class="sc">The</span> reader will remember that in <a href="#chap_7">Chap. VII.</a> § <span class="scs">V.</span> it
+was said that the cornice of the wall, being cut to pieces and
+gathered together, formed the capital of the column. We
+have now to follow it in its transformation.</p>
+
+<p>We must, of course, take our simplest form or root of cornices
+(<i>a</i>, in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, above). We will take X and Y there, and
+we must necessarily gather them together as we did Xb and Yb
+in <a href="#chap_7">Chap. VII.</a> Look back to the tenth paragraph of <a href="#chap_7">Chap.
+VII.</a>, read or glance it over again, substitute X and Y for Xb
+and Yb, read capital for base, and, as we said that the capital
+was the hand of the pillar, while the base was its foot, read
+also fingers for toes; and as you look to the plate, <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>,
+turn it upside down. Then <i>h</i>, in <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>, becomes now your
+best general form of block capital, as before of block base.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II.</span> You will thus have a perfect idea of the analogies
+between base and capital; our farther inquiry is into their
+differences. You cannot but have noticed that when <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>
+is turned upside down, the square stone (Y) looks too heavy
+for the supporting stone (X); and that in the profile of cornice
+(<i>a</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>) the proportions are altogether different. You
+will feel the fitness of this in an instant when you consider
+that the principal function of the sloping part in <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a> is
+as a prop to the pillar to keep it from <i>slipping aside</i>; but the
+function of the sloping stone in the cornice and capital is to
+<i>carry weight above</i>. The thrust of the slope in the one case
+should therefore be lateral, in the other upwards.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III.</span> We will, therefore, take the two figures, <i>e</i> and <i>h</i> of
+<a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>, and make this change in them as we reverse them,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page106"></a>106</span>
+using now the exact profile of the cornice <i>a</i>,&mdash;the father of
+cornices; and we shall thus have <i>a</i> and <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_19">Fig. XIX.</a></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XIX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_19"><img src="images/img106.jpg" width="650" height="351" alt="Fig. XIX." title="Fig. XIX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Both of these are
+sufficiently ugly,
+the reader thinks;
+so do I; but we
+will mend them before
+we have done
+with them: that at
+<i>a</i> is assuredly the
+ugliest,&mdash;like a tile
+on a flower-pot. It
+is, nevertheless, the
+father of capitals;
+being the simplest
+condition of the
+gathered father of
+cornices. But it is
+to be observed that
+the diameter of the
+shaft here is arbitrarily
+assumed to
+be small, in order
+more clearly to
+show the general
+relations of the sloping
+stone to the
+shaft and upper
+stone; and this
+smallness of the
+shaft diameter is inconsistent with the serviceableness and beauty
+of the arrangement at <i>a</i>, if it were to be realised (as we shall
+see presently); but it is not inconsistent with its central character,
+as the representative of every species of possible capital;
+nor is its tile and flower-pot look to be regretted, as it may
+remind the reader of the reported origin of the Corinthian
+capital. The stones of the cornice, hitherto called X and Y,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107"></a>107</span>
+receive, now that they form the capital, each a separate name;
+the sloping stone is called the Bell of the capital, and that laid
+above it, the Abacus. Abacus means a board or tile: I wish
+there were an English word for it, but I fear there is no substitution
+possible, the term having been long fixed, and the reader
+will find it convenient to familiarise himself with the Latin
+one.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV.</span> The form of base, <i>e</i> of <a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a>, which corresponds
+to this first form of capital, <i>a,</i> was said to be objectionable only
+because it <i>looked</i> insecure; and the spurs were added as a kind
+of pledge of stability to the eye. But evidently the projecting
+corners of the abacus at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_19">Fig. XIX.</a>, are <i>actually</i> insecure;
+they may break off, if great weight be laid upon them. This
+is the chief reason of the ugliness of the form; and the spurs
+in <i>b</i> are now no mere pledges of apparent stability, but have
+very serious practical use in supporting the angle of the abacus.
+If, even with the added spur, the support seems insufficient,
+we may fill up the crannies between the spurs and the bell,
+and we have the form <i>c</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Thus <i>a</i>, though the germ and type of capitals, is itself
+(except under some peculiar conditions) both ugly and insecure;
+<i>b</i> is the first type of capitals which carry light weight; <i>c</i>, of
+capitals which carry excessive weight.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V.</span> I fear, however, the reader may think he is going
+slightly too fast, and may not like having the capital forced
+upon him out of the cornice; but would prefer inventing a
+capital for the shaft itself, without reference to the cornice at
+all. We will do so then; though we shall come to the same
+result.</p>
+
+<p>The shaft, it will be remembered, has to sustain the same
+weight as the long piece of wall which was concentrated into
+the shaft; it is enabled to do this both by its better form and
+better knit materials; and it can carry a greater weight than
+the space at the top of it is adapted to receive. The first point,
+therefore, is to expand this space as far as possible, and that in
+a form more convenient than the circle for the adjustment of
+the stones above. In general the square is a more convenient
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108"></a>108</span>
+form than any other; but the hexagon or octagon is sometimes
+better fitted for masses of work which divide in six or eight
+directions. Then our first impulse would be to put a square
+or hexagonal stone on the top of the
+shaft, projecting as far beyond it as
+might be safely ventured; as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_20">Fig.
+XX.</a> This is the abacus. Our next idea
+would be to put a conical shaped stone
+beneath this abacus, to support its outer
+edge, as at <i>b</i>. This is the bell.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_20"><img src="images/img108.jpg" width="250" height="455" alt="Fig. XX." title="Fig. XX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI.</span> Now the entire treatment of the
+capital depends simply on the manner in
+which this bell-stone is prepared for fitting
+the shaft below and the abacus above.
+Placed as at <i>a</i>, in <a href="#fig_19">Fig. XIX.</a>, it gives us
+the simplest of possible forms; with the
+spurs added, as at <i>b</i>, it gives the germ of
+the richest and most elaborate forms: but
+there are two modes of treatment more dexterous than the one,
+and less elaborate than the other, which are of the highest
+possible importance,&mdash;modes in which the bell is brought to its
+proper form by truncation.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII.</span> Let <i>d</i> and <i>f</i>, <a href="#fig_19">Fig. XIX.</a>, be two bell-stones; <i>d</i> is part
+of a cone (a sugar-loaf upside down, with its point cut off); <i>f</i>
+part of a four-sided pyramid. Then, assuming the abacus to
+be square, <i>d</i> will already fit the shaft, but has to be chiselled
+to fit the abacus; <i>f</i> will already fit the abacus, but has to be
+chiselled to fit the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>From the broad end of <i>d</i> chop or chisel off, in four vertical
+planes, as much as will leave its head an exact square. The
+vertical cuttings will form curves on the sides of the cone
+(curves of a curious kind, which the reader need not be troubled
+to examine), and we shall have the form at <i>e</i>, which is the root
+of the greater number of Norman capitals.</p>
+
+<p>From <i>f</i> cut off the angles, beginning at the corners of the
+square and widening the truncation downwards, so as to give
+the form at <i>g</i>, where the base of the bell is an octagon, and its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page109"></a>109</span>
+top remains a square. A very slight rounding away of the
+angles of the octagon at the base of <i>g</i> will enable it to fit the
+circular shaft closely enough for all practical purposes, and this
+form, at <i>g</i>, is the root of nearly all Lombardic capitals.</p>
+
+<p>If, instead of a square, the head of the bell were hexagonal
+or octagonal, the operation of cutting would be the same on
+each angle; but there would be produced, of course, six or
+eight curves on the sides of <i>e</i>, and twelve or sixteen sides to
+the base of <i>g</i>.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_21"><img src="images/img109.jpg" width="200" height="186" alt="Fig. XXI." title="Fig. XXI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII.</span> The truncations in <i>e</i> and <i>g</i> may of course be executed
+on concave or convex forms of <i>d</i> and <i>f</i>; but <i>e</i> is usually
+worked on a straight-sided bell, and the
+truncation of <i>g</i> often becomes concave
+while the bell remains straight; for this
+simple reason,&mdash;that the sharp points at the
+angles of <i>g</i>, being somewhat difficult to cut,
+and easily broken off, are usually avoided
+by beginning the truncation a little way
+down the side of the bell, and then recovering
+the lost ground by a deeper cut inwards, as here, <a href="#fig_21">Fig. XXI.</a>
+This is the actual form of the capitals of the balustrades of St.
+Mark&rsquo;s: it is the root of all the Byzantine Arab capitals, and
+of all the most beautiful capitals in the world, whose function
+is to express lightness.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX.</span> We have hitherto proceeded entirely on the assumption
+that the form of cornice which was gathered together to produce
+the capital was the root of cornices, <i>a</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a> But
+this, it will be remembered, was said in § <span class="scs">VI.</span> of <a href="#chap_6">Chap. VI.</a> to
+be especially characteristic of southern work, and that in northern
+and wet climates it took the form of a dripstone.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, in the northern climates, the dripstone gathered
+together forms a peculiar northern capital, commonly called
+the Early English,<a name="FnAnchor_47" href="#Footnote_47"><span class="sp">47</span></a> owing to its especial use in that style.</p>
+
+<p>There would have been no absurdity in this if shafts were
+always to be exposed to the weather; but in Gothic constructions
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110"></a>110</span>
+the most important shafts are in the inside of the building.
+The dripstone sections of their capitals are therefore unnecessary
+and ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X.</span> They are, however, much worse than unnecessary.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_22"><img src="images/img110.jpg" width="650" height="139" alt="Fig. XXII." title="Fig. XXII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The edge of the dripstone, being undercut, has no bearing
+power, and the capital fails, therefore, in
+its own principal function; and besides
+this, the undercut contour admits of no
+distinctly visible decoration; it is, therefore,
+left utterly barren, and the capital
+looks as if it had been turned in a lathe.
+The Early English capital has, therefore,
+the three greatest faults that any design
+can have: (1) it fails in its own proper
+purpose, that of support; (2) it is adapted
+to a purpose to which it can never be put,
+that of keeping off rain; (3) it cannot be
+decorated.</p>
+
+<p>The Early English capital is, therefore,
+a barbarism of triple grossness, and degrades
+the style in which it is found,
+otherwise very noble, to one of second-rate
+order.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI.</span> Dismissing, therefore, the Early
+English capital, as deserving no place in
+our system, let us reassemble in one view
+the forms which have been legitimately
+developed, and which are to become hereafter
+subjects of decoration. To the forms
+<i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, and <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_19">Fig. XIX.</a>, we must add the
+two simplest truncated forms <i>e</i> and <i>g</i>, <a href="#fig_19">Fig.
+XIX.</a>, putting their abaci on them (as we
+considered their contours in the bells only),
+and we shall have the five forms now given in parallel perspective
+in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>, which are the roots of all good capitals
+existing, or capable of existence, and whose variations,
+infinite and a thousand times infinite, are all produced by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111"></a>111</span>
+introduction of various curvatures into their contours, and the
+endless methods of decoration superinduced on such curvatures.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII.</span> There is, however, a kind of variation, also infinite,
+which takes place in these radical forms, before they receive
+either curvature or decoration. This is the variety of proportion
+borne by the different lines of the capital to each other,
+and to the shafts. This is a structural question, at present to
+be considered as far as is possible.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_23"><img src="images/img111.jpg" width="500" height="299" alt="Fig. XXIII." title="Fig. XXIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII.</span> All the five capitals (which are indeed five orders
+with legitimate distinction; very different, however, from the
+five orders as commonly understood) may be represented by
+the same profile, a section through the sides of <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>d</i>, and <i>e</i>,
+or through the angles of <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a> This profile we will
+put on the top of a shaft, as at A, <a href="#fig_23">Fig. XXIII.</a>, which shaft
+we will suppose of equal diameter above and below for the
+sake of greater simplicity: in this simplest condition, however,
+relations of proportion exist between five quantities, any
+one or any two, or any three, or any four of which may change,
+irrespective of the others. These five quantities are:</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">1. The height of the shaft, <i>a b</i>;</p>
+<p class="nomarg">2. Its diameter, <i>b c</i>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112"></a>112</span></p>
+<p class="nomarg">3. The length of slope of bell, <i>b d</i>;</p>
+<p class="nomarg">4. The inclination of this slope, or angle <i>c b d</i>;</p>
+<p class="nomarg">5. The depth of abacus, <i>d e</i>.</p>
+
+<p>For every change in any one of these quantities we have
+a new proportion of capital: five infinities, supposing change
+only in one quantity at a time: infinity of infinities in the sum
+of possible changes.</p>
+
+<p>It is, therefore, only possible to note the general laws of
+change; every scale of pillar, and every weight laid upon it
+admitting, within certain limits, a variety out of which the
+architect has his choice; but yet fixing limits which the proportion
+becomes ugly when it approaches, and dangerous
+when it exceeds. But the inquiry into this subject is too
+difficult for the general reader, and I shall content myself with
+proving four laws, easily understood and generally applicable;
+for proof of which if the said reader care not, he may miss the
+next four paragraphs without harm.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV.</span> 1. <i>The more slender the shaft, the greater, proportionally,
+may be the projection of the abacus.</i> For, looking
+back to <a href="#fig_23">Fig. XXIII.</a>, let the height <i>a b</i> be fixed, the length
+<i>d b</i>, the angle <i>d b c</i>, and the depth <i>d e</i>. Let the single quantity
+<i>b c</i> be variable, let B be a capital and shaft which are found to
+be perfectly safe in proportion to the weight they bear, and
+let the weight be equally distributed over the whole of the
+abacus. Then this weight may be represented by any number
+of equal divisions, suppose four, as <i>l</i>, <i>m</i>, <i>n</i>, <i>r</i>, of brickwork
+above, of which each division is one fourth of the whole
+weight; and let this weight be placed in the most trying way
+on the abacus, that is to say, let the masses <i>l</i> and <i>r</i> be detached
+from <i>m</i> and <i>n</i>, and bear with their full weight on the outside of
+the capital. We assume, in B, that the width of abacus <i>e f</i> is
+twice as great as that of the shaft, <i>b c,</i> and on these conditions
+we assume the capital to be safe.</p>
+
+<p>But <i>b c</i> is allowed to be variable. Let it become <i>b</i><span class="su">2</span> <i>c</i><span class="su">2</span> at C,
+which is a length representing about the diameter of a shaft
+containing half the substance of the shaft B, and, therefore,
+able to sustain not more than half the weight sustained by B.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113"></a>113</span>
+But the slope <i>b d</i> and depth <i>d e</i> remaining unchanged, we have
+the capital of C, which we are to load with only half the
+weight of <i>l</i>, <i>m</i>, <i>n</i>, <i>r</i>, i. e., with <i>l</i> and <i>r</i> alone. Therefore the
+weight of <i>l</i> and <i>r</i>, now represented by the masses <i>l</i><span class="su">2</span>, <i>r</i><span class="su">2</span>, is distributed
+over the whole of the capital. But the weight <i>r</i> was
+adequately supported by the projecting piece of the first capital
+<i>h f c</i>: much more is it now adequately supported by <i>i h</i>,
+<i>f</i><span class="su">2</span> <i>c</i><span class="su">2</span>. Therefore, if the capital of B was safe, that of C is
+more than safe. Now in B the length <i>e f</i> was only twice <i>b c</i>;
+but in C, <i>e</i><span class="su">2</span> <i>f</i><span class="su">2</span> will be found more than twice that of <i>b</i><span class="su">2</span> <i>c</i><span class="su">2</span>.
+Therefore, the more slender the shaft, the greater may be the
+proportional excess of the abacus over its diameter.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXIV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_24"><img src="images/img113.jpg" width="500" height="147" alt="Fig. XXIV." title="Fig. XXIV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV.</span> 2. <i>The smaller the scale of the building, the greater
+may be the excess of the abacus over the diameter of the shaft.</i>
+This principle requires, I think, no very lengthy proof: the
+reader can understand at once that the cohesion and strength
+of stone which can sustain a small projecting mass, will not
+sustain a vast one overhanging in the same proportion. A
+bank even of loose earth, six feet high, will sometimes overhang
+its base a foot or two, as you may see any day in the
+gravelly banks of the lanes of Hampstead: but make the bank
+of gravel, equally loose, six hundred feet high, and see if you
+can get it to overhang a hundred or two! much more if there
+be weight above it increased in the same proportion. Hence,
+let any capital be given, whose projection is just safe, and no
+more, on its existing scale; increase its proportions every way
+equally, though ever so little, and it is unsafe; diminish them
+equally, and it becomes safe in the exact degree of the
+diminution.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page114"></a>114</span></p>
+
+<p>Let, then, the quantity <i>e d</i>, and angle <i>d b c</i>, at A of <a href="#fig_23">Fig.
+XXIII.</a>, be invariable, and let the length <i>d b</i> vary: then we
+shall have such a series of forms as may be represented by
+<i>a, b, c,</i> <a href="#fig_24">Fig. XXIV.</a>, of which <i>a</i> is a proportion for a colossal
+building, <i>b</i> for a moderately sized building, while <i>c</i> could only
+be admitted on a very small scale indeed.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. 3. <i>The greater the excess of abacus, the steeper must
+be the slope of the bell, the shaft diameter being constant.</i></p>
+
+<p>This will evidently follow from the considerations in the
+last paragraph; supposing only that, instead of the scale of
+shaft and capital varying together, the scale of the capital varies
+alone. For it will then still be true, that, if the projection of
+the capital be just safe on a given scale,
+as its excess over the shaft diameter
+increases, the projection will be unsafe,
+if the slope of the bell remain constant.
+But it may be rendered safe by making
+this slope steeper, and so increasing its
+supporting power.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_25"><img src="images/img114.jpg" width="250" height="518" alt="Fig. XXV." title="Fig. XXV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Thus let the capital <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_25">Fig. XXV.</a>,
+be just safe.  Then the capital <i>b</i>, in
+which the slope is the same but the
+excess greater, is unsafe. But the capital
+<i>c</i>, in which, though the excess equals
+that of <i>b</i>, the steepness of the supporting
+slope is increased, will be as safe as
+<i>b</i>, and probably as strong as <i>a</i>.<a name="FnAnchor_48" href="#Footnote_48"><span class="sp">48</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. 4. <i>The steeper the slope of the bell, the thinner may
+be the abacus.</i></p>
+
+<p>The use of the abacus is eminently to equalise the pressure
+over the surface of the bell, so that the weight may not by
+any accident be directed exclusively upon its edges. In proportion
+to the strength of these edges, this function of the
+abacus is superseded, and these edges are strong in proportion
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115"></a>115</span>
+to the steepness of the slope. Thus in <a href="#fig_26">Fig. XXVI.</a>, the bell
+at <i>a</i> would carry weight safely enough without any abacus,
+but that at <i>c</i> would not: it would probably
+have its edges broken off.  The
+abacus superimposed might be on <i>a</i>
+very thin, little more than formal, as at
+<i>b</i>; but on <i>c</i> must be thick, as at <i>d</i>.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXVI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_26"><img src="images/img115.jpg" width="200" height="222" alt="Fig. XXVI." title="Fig. XXVI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. These four rules are all that
+are necessary for general criticism; and
+observe that these are only semi-imperative,&mdash;rules
+of permission, not of compulsion.
+Thus Law 1 asserts that the
+slender shaft <i>may</i> have greater excess of capital than the
+thick shaft; but it need not, unless the architect chooses; his
+thick shafts <i>must</i> have small excess, but his slender ones
+need not have large. So Law 2 says, that as the building is
+smaller, the excess <i>may</i> be greater; but it need not, for the
+excess which is safe in the large is still safer in the small. So
+Law 3 says that capitals of great excess must have steep
+slopes; but it does not say that capitals of small excess may
+not have steep slopes also, if we choose. And lastly, Law 4
+asserts the necessity of the thick abacus for the shallow bell;
+but the steep bell may have a thick abacus also.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. It will be found, however, that in practice some confession
+of these laws will always be useful, and especially of
+the two first. The eye always requires, on a slender shaft, a
+more spreading capital than it does on a massy one, and a
+bolder mass of capital on a small scale than on a large. And,
+in the application of the first rule, it is to be noted that a shaft
+becomes slender either by diminution of diameter or increase
+of height; that either mode of change presupposes the weight
+above it diminished, and requires an expansion of abacus. I
+know no mode of spoiling a noble building more frequent in
+actual practice than the imposition of flat and slightly expanded
+capitals on tall shafts.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. The reader must observe, also, that, in the demonstration
+of the four laws, I always assumed the weight above to be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116"></a>116</span>
+given. By the alteration of this weight, therefore, the architect
+has it in his power to relieve, and therefore alter, the forms
+of his capitals. By its various distribution on their centres or
+edges, the slope of their bells and thickness of abaci will be
+affected also; so that he has countless expedients at his command
+for the various treatment of his design. He can divide
+his weights among more shafts; he can throw them in different
+places and different directions on the abaci; he can alter slope
+of bells or diameter of shafts; he can use spurred or plain bells,
+thin or thick abaci; and all these changes admitting of infinity
+in their degrees, and infinity a thousand times told in their
+relations: and all this without reference to decoration, merely
+with the five forms of block capital!</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXI</span>. In the harmony of these arrangements, in their fitness,
+unity, and accuracy, lies the true proportion of every
+building,&mdash;proportion utterly endless in its infinities of change,
+with unchanged beauty. And yet this connexion of the frame
+of their building into one harmony has, I believe, never been
+so much as dreamed of by architects. It has been instinctively
+done in some degree by many, empirically in some degree by
+many more; thoughtfully and thoroughly, I believe, by none.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXII</span>. We have hitherto considered the abacus as necessarily
+a separate stone from the bell: evidently, however, the
+strength of the capital will be undiminished if both are cut out
+of one block. This is actually the case in many capitals, especially
+those on a small scale; and in others the detached upper
+stone is a mere representative of the abacus, and is much thinner
+than the form of the capital requires, while the true abacus
+is united with the bell, and concealed by its decoration, or
+made part of it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIII</span>. Farther. We have hitherto considered bell and
+abacus as both derived from the concentration of the cornice.
+But it must at once occur to the reader, that the projection of
+the under stone and the thickness of the upper, which are quite
+enough for the work of the continuous cornice, may not be
+enough always, or rather are seldom likely to be so, for the
+harder work of the capital. Both may have to be deepened
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117"></a>117</span>
+and expanded: but as this would cause a want of harmony in
+the parts, when they occur on the same level, it is better in
+such case to let the <i>entire</i> cornice form the abacus of the capital,
+and put a deep capital bell beneath it.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXVII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_27"><img src="images/img117.jpg" width="300" height="457" alt="Fig. XXVII." title="Fig. XXVII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIV</span>. The reader will understand both arrangements instantly
+by two examples. <a href="#fig_27">Fig. XXVII.</a> represents two windows,
+more than usually beautiful
+examples of a very frequent
+Venetian form. Here the
+deep cornice or string course
+which runs along the wall
+of the house is quite strong
+enough for the work of the
+capitals of the slender shafts:
+its own upper stone is therefore
+also theirs; its own lower
+stone, by its revolution or
+concentration, forms their
+bells: but to mark the increased
+importance of its function
+in so doing, it receives decoration,
+as the bell of the capital,
+which it did not receive
+as the under stone of the
+cornice.</p>
+
+<p>In <a href="#fig_28">Fig. XXVIII.</a>, a little bit of the church of Santa Fosca
+at Torcello, the cornice or string course, which goes round
+every part of the church, is not strong enough to form the
+capitals of the shafts. It therefore forms their abaci only;
+and in order to mark the diminished importance of its function,
+it ceases to receive, as the abacus of the capital, the
+decoration which it received as the string course of the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>This last arrangement is of great frequency in Venice,
+occurring most characteristically in St. Mark&rsquo;s: and in the
+Gothic of St. John and Paul we find the two arrangements
+beautifully united, though in great simplicity; the string
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118"></a>118</span>
+courses of the walls form the capitals of the shafts of the traceries;
+and the abaci of the vaulting shafts of the apse.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXVIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_28"><img src="images/img118.jpg" width="450" height="346" alt="Fig. XXVIII." title="Fig. XXVIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXV</span>. We have hitherto spoken of capitals of circular
+shafts only: those of square piers are more frequently formed
+by the cornice only; otherwise they are like those of circular
+piers, without the difficulty of reconciling the base of the bell
+with its head.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVI</span>. When two or more shafts are grouped together,
+their capitals are usually treated as separate, until they come
+into actual contact. If there be any awkwardness in the
+junction, it is concealed by the decoration, and one abacus
+serves, in most cases, for all. The double group, <a href="#fig_27">Fig. XXVII.</a>,
+is the simplest possible type of the arrangement. In the richer
+Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster
+together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the
+capitals of the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with
+small nominal abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry
+the serviceable abacus of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rouen.
+There is, however, evident sacrifice of sound principle in
+this system, the smaller abaci being of no use. They are the
+exact contrary of the rude early abacus at Milan, given in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119"></a>119</span>
+There one poor abacus stretched itself out to do all the
+work: here there are idle abaci getting up into corners and
+doing none.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVII</span>. Finally, we have considered the capital hitherto
+entirely as an expansion of the bearing power of the shaft,
+supposing the shaft composed of a single stone. But, evidently,
+the capital has a function, if possible, yet more important,
+when the shaft is composed of small masonry. It enables all
+that masonry to act together, and to receive the pressure from
+above collectively and with a single strength. And thus, considered
+merely as a large stone set on the top of the shaft, it is
+a feature of the highest architectural importance, irrespective
+of its expansion, which indeed is, in some very noble capitals,
+exceedingly small. And thus every large stone set at any
+important point to reassemble the force of smaller masonry and
+prepare it for the sustaining of weight, is a capital or &ldquo;head&rdquo;
+stone (the true meaning of the word) whether it project or not.
+Thus at 6, in <a href="#plate_4">Plate IV.</a>, the stones which support the thrust of
+the brickwork are capitals, which have no projection at all;
+and the large stones in the window above are capitals projecting
+in one direction only.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVIII</span>. The reader is now master of all he need know
+respecting construction of capitals; and from what has been
+laid before him, must assuredly feel that there can never be
+any new system of architectural forms invented; but that all
+vertical support must be, to the end of time, best obtained by
+shafts and capitals. It has been so obtained by nearly every
+nation of builders, with more or less refinement in the management
+of the details; and the later Gothic builders of the North
+stand almost alone in their effort to dispense with the natural
+development of the shaft, and banish the capital from their
+compositions.</p>
+
+<p>They were gradually led into this error through a series of
+steps which it is not here our business to trace. But they may
+be generalised in a few words.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIX</span>. All classical architecture, and the Romanesque
+which is legitimately descended from it, is composed of bold
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120"></a>120</span>
+independent shafts, plain or fluted, with bold detached capitals,
+forming arcades or colonnades where they are needed; and of
+walls whose apertures are surrounded by courses of parallel
+lines called mouldings, which are continuous round the apertures,
+and have neither shafts nor capitals. The shaft system
+and moulding system are entirely separate.</p>
+
+<p>The Gothic architects confounded the two. They clustered
+the shafts till they looked like a group of mouldings. They
+shod and capitaled the mouldings till they looked like a group
+of shafts. So that a pier became merely the side of a door or
+window rolled up, and the side of the window a pier unrolled
+(vide last Chapter, § <span class="scs">XXX</span>.), both being composed of a series of
+small shafts, each with base and capital. The architect seemed
+to have whole mats of shafts at his disposal, like the rush mats
+which one puts under cream cheese. If he wanted a great pier
+he rolled up the mat; if he wanted the side of a door he spread
+out the mat: and now the reader has to add to the other distinctions
+between the Egyptian and the Gothic shaft, already
+noted in § <span class="scs">XXVI</span>. of <a href="#chap_8">Chap. VIII.</a>, this one more&mdash;the most important
+of all&mdash;that while the Egyptian rush cluster has only
+one massive capital altogether, the Gothic rush mat has a separate
+tiny capital to every several rush.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXX</span>. The mats were gradually made of finer rushes, until
+it became troublesome to give each rush its capital. In fact,
+when the groups of shafts became excessively complicated,
+the expansion of their small abaci was of no use: it was dispensed
+with altogether, and the mouldings of pier and jamb
+ran up continuously into the arches.</p>
+
+<p>This condition, though in many respects faulty and false,
+is yet the eminently characteristic state of Gothic: it is the
+definite formation of it as a distinct style, owing no farther aid
+to classical models; and its lightness and complexity render it,
+when well treated, and enriched with Flamboyant decoration,
+a very glorious means of picturesque effect. It is, in fact, this
+form of Gothic which commends itself most easily to the general
+mind, and which has suggested the innumerable foolish
+theories about the derivation of Gothic from tree trunks and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121"></a>121</span>
+avenues, which have from time to time been brought forward
+by persons ignorant of the history of architecture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXI</span>. When the sense of picturesqueness, as well as that
+of justness and dignity, had been lost, the spring of the continuous
+mouldings was replaced by what Professor Willis calls
+the Discontinuous impost; which, being a barbarism of the
+basest and most painful kind, and being to architecture what
+the setting of a saw is to music, I shall not trouble the reader
+to examine. For it is not in my plan to note for him all the
+various conditions of error, but only to guide him to the appreciation
+of the right; and I only note even the true Continuous
+or Flamboyant Gothic because this is redeemed by its beautiful
+decoration, afterwards to be considered. For, as far as structure
+is concerned, the moment the capital vanishes from the
+shaft, that moment we are in error: all good Gothic has true
+capitals to the shafts of its jambs and traceries, and all Gothic
+is debased the instant the shaft vanishes. It matters not how
+slender, or how small, or how low, the shaft may be: wherever
+there is indication of concentrated vertical support, then the
+capital is a necessary termination. I know how much Gothic,
+otherwise beautiful, this sweeping principle condemns; but it
+condemns not altogether. We may still take delight in its
+lovely proportions, its rich decoration, or its elastic and reedy
+moulding; but be assured, wherever shafts, or any approximations
+to the forms of shafts, are employed, for whatever office,
+or on whatever scale, be it in jambs or piers, or balustrades, or
+traceries, without capitals, there is a defiance of the natural
+laws of construction; and that, wherever such examples are
+found in ancient buildings, they are either the experiments of
+barbarism, or the commencements of decline.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_47" href="#FnAnchor_47"><span class="fn">47</span></a> <a href="#app_19">Appendix 19</a>, &ldquo;Early English Capitals.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_48" href="#FnAnchor_48"><span class="fn">48</span></a> In this case the weight borne is supposed to increase as the abacus
+widens; the illustration would have been clearer if I had assumed the
+breadth of abacus to be constant, and that of the shaft to vary.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page122"></a>122</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_10" id="chap_10"></a>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ARCH LINE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> have seen in the last section how our means of vertical
+support may, for the sake of economy both of space and
+material, be gathered into piers or shafts, and directed to the
+sustaining of particular points. The next question is how to
+connect these points or tops of shafts with each other, so as to
+be able to lay on them a continuous roof. This the reader, as
+before, is to favor me by finding out for himself, under these
+following conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Let <i>s</i>, <i>s</i>, <a href="#fig_29">Fig. XXIX</a>. opposite, be two shafts, with their
+capitals ready prepared for their work; and <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, and
+<i>c</i>, <i>c</i>, <i>c</i>, be six stones of different sizes, one very long and large,
+and two smaller, and three smaller still, of which the reader is
+to choose which he likes best, in order to connect the tops of
+the shafts.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose he will first try if he can lift the great stone <i>a</i>,
+and if he can, he will put it very simply on the tops of the two
+pillars, as at A.</p>
+
+<p>Very well indeed: he has done already what a number of
+Greek architects have been thought very clever for having
+done. But suppose he <i>cannot</i> lift the great stone <i>a</i>, or suppose
+I will not give it to him, but only the two smaller stones at
+<i>b</i>, <i>b</i>; he will doubtless try to put them up, tilted against each
+other, as at <i>d</i>. Very awkward this; worse than card-house
+building. But if he cuts off the corners of the stones, so as to
+make each of them of the form <i>e</i>, they will stand up very
+securely, as at B.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose he cannot lift even these less stones, but can
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page123"></a>123</span>
+raise those at <i>c</i>, <i>c</i>, <i>c</i>. Then, cutting each of them into the
+form at <i>e</i>, he will doubtless set them up as at <i>f</i>.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXIX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_29" id="fig_29"><img src="images/img123.jpg" width="500" height="615" alt="Fig. XXIX." title="Fig. XXIX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. This last arrangement looks a little dangerous.  Is
+there not a chance of the stone in the middle pushing the
+others out, or tilting them up and aside, and slipping down
+itself between them? There is such a chance: and if by somewhat
+altering the form of the stones, we can diminish this
+chance, all the better. I must say &ldquo;we&rdquo; now, for perhaps I
+may have to help the reader a little.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page124"></a>124</span></p>
+
+<p>The danger is, observe, that the midmost stone at <i>f</i> pushes
+out the side ones: then if we can give the side ones such a
+shape as that, left to themselves, they would fall heavily forward,
+they will resist this push <i>out</i> by their weight, exactly in
+proportion to their own particular inclination or desire to tumble
+<i>in</i>. Take one of them separately, standing up as at <i>g</i>; it
+is just possible it may stand up as it is, like the Tower of Pisa:
+but we want it to fall forward. Suppose we cut away the
+parts that are shaded at <i>h</i> and leave it as at <i>i</i>, it is very certain
+it cannot stand alone now, but will fall forward to our entire
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Farther: the midmost stone at <i>f</i> is likely to be troublesome
+chiefly by its weight, pushing down between the others; the
+more we lighten it the better: so we will cut it into exactly
+the same shape as the side ones, chiselling away the shaded
+parts, as at <i>h</i>. We shall then have all the three stones <i>k</i>, <i>l</i>, <i>m</i>,
+of the same shape; and now putting them together, we have,
+at C, what the reader, I doubt not, will perceive at once to be
+a much more satisfactory arrangement than that at <i>f</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. We have now got three arrangements; in one using
+only one piece of stone, in the second two, and in the third
+three. The first arrangement has no particular name, except
+the &ldquo;horizontal:&rdquo; but the single stone (or beam, it may be,) is
+called a lintel; the second arrangement is called a &ldquo;Gable;&rdquo;
+the third an &ldquo;Arch.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We might have used pieces of wood instead of stone in all
+these arrangements, with no difference in plan, so long as the
+beams were kept loose, like the stones; but as beams can be
+securely nailed together at the ends, we need not trouble ourselves
+so much about their shape or balance, and therefore the
+plan at <i>f</i> is a peculiarly wooden construction (the reader will
+doubtless recognise in it the profile of many a farm-house
+roof): and again, because beams are tough, and light, and long,
+as compared with stones, they are admirably adapted for the
+constructions at A and B, the plain lintel and gable, while that
+at C is, for the most part, left to brick and stone.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. But farther. The constructions, A, B, and C, though
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125"></a>125</span>
+very conveniently to be first considered as composed of one,
+two, and three pieces, are by no means necessarily so. When
+we have once cut the stones of the arch into a shape like that
+of <i>k</i>, <i>l</i>, and <i>m</i>, they will hold together, whatever their number,
+place, or size, as at <i>n</i>; and the great value of the arch is,
+that it permits small stones to be used with safety instead of
+large ones, which are not always to be had. Stones cut into
+the shape of <i>k</i>, <i>l</i>, and <i>m</i>, whether they be short or long (I
+have drawn them all sizes at <i>n</i> on purpose), are called Voussoirs;
+this is a hard, ugly French name; but the reader will
+perhaps be kind enough to recollect it; it will save us both
+some trouble: and to make amends for this infliction, I will
+relieve him of the term <i>keystone</i>. One voussoir is as much a
+keystone as another; only people usually call the stone which
+is last put in the keystone; and that one happens generally to
+be at the top or middle of the arch.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. Not only the arch, but even the lintel, may be built of
+many stones or bricks. The reader may see lintels built in this
+way over most of the windows of our brick London houses, and
+so also the gable: there are, therefore, two distinct questions
+respecting each arrangement;&mdash;First, what is the line or direction
+of it, which gives it its strength? and, secondly, what is the
+manner of masonry of it, which gives it its consistence? The
+first of these I shall consider in this Chapter under the head
+of the Arch Line, using the term arch as including all manner
+of construction (though we shall have no trouble except
+about curves); and in the next Chapter I shall consider the
+second, under the head, Arch Masonry.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Now the arch line is the ghost or skeleton of the arch;
+or rather it is the spinal marrow of the arch, and the voussoirs
+are the vertebrĉ, which keep it safe and sound, and clothe it.
+This arch line the architect has first to conceive and shape in
+his mind, as opposed to, or having to bear, certain forces
+which will try to distort it this way and that; and against
+which he is first to direct and bend the line itself into as strong
+resistance as he may, and then, with his voussoirs and what else
+he can, to guard it, and help it, and keep it to its duty and in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126"></a>126</span>
+its shape. So the arch line is the moral character of the arch,
+and the adverse forces are its temptations; and the voussoirs,
+and what else we may help it with, are its armor and its
+motives to good conduct.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. This moral character of the arch is called by architects
+its &ldquo;Line of Resistance.&rdquo; There is a great deal of nicety
+in calculating it with precision, just as there is sometimes in
+finding out very precisely what is a man&rsquo;s true line of moral
+conduct; but this, in arch morality and in man morality, is a
+very simple and easily to be understood principle,&mdash;that if
+either arch or man expose themselves to their special temptations
+or adverse forces, <i>outside</i> of the voussoirs or proper
+and appointed armor, both will fall. An arch whose line of
+resistance is in the middle of its voussoirs is perfectly safe:
+in proportion as the said line runs near the edge of its voussoirs,
+the arch is in danger, as the man is who nears temptation; and
+the moment the line of resistance emerges out of the voussoirs
+the arch falls.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. There are, therefore, properly speaking, two arch
+lines. One is the visible direction or curve of the arch, which
+may generally be considered as the under edge of its voussoirs,
+and which has often no more to do with the real stability of
+the arch, than a man&rsquo;s apparent conduct has with his heart.
+The other line, which is the line of resistance, or line of good
+behavior, may or may not be consistent with the outward and
+apparent curves of the arch; but if not, then the security of
+the arch depends simply upon this, whether the voussoirs
+which assume or pretend to the one line are wide enough to
+include the other.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. Now when the reader is told that the line of resistance
+varies with every change either in place or quantity of the
+weight above the arch, he will see at once that we have no
+chance of arranging arches by their moral characters: we can
+only take the apparent arch line, or visible direction, as a
+ground of arrangement. We shall consider the possible or
+probable forms or contours of arches in the present Chapter,
+and in the succeeding one the forms of voussoir and other help
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127"></a>127</span>
+which may best fortify these visible lines against every temptation
+to lose their consistency.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_30"><img src="images/img127.jpg" width="350" height="239" alt="Fig. XXX." title="Fig. XXX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. Look back to <a href="#fig_29">Fig. XXIX.</a> Evidently the abstract or
+ghost line of the arrangement at A is a plain horizontal line,
+as here at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_30">Fig. XXX.</a> The abstract line of the arrangement
+at B, <a href="#fig_29">Fig. XXIX.</a>, is composed of two straight lines, set
+against each other, as here at <i>b</i>. The abstract line of C,
+<a href="#fig_29">Fig. XXIX.</a>, is a curve
+of some kind, not at
+present determined, suppose
+<i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_30">Fig. XXX.</a>
+Then, as <i>b</i> is two of the
+straight lines at <i>a</i>, set up
+against each other, we
+may conceive an arrangement,
+<i>d</i>, made up of two
+of the curved lines at <i>c</i>,
+set against each other.
+This is called a pointed arch, which is a contradiction in terms:
+it ought to be called a curved gable; but it must keep the
+name it has got.</p>
+
+<p>Now <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>c</i>, <i>d</i>, <a href="#fig_30">Fig. XXX.</a>, are the ghosts of the lintel, the
+gable, the arch, and the pointed arch. With the poor lintel
+ghost we need trouble ourselves no farther; there are no
+changes in him: but there is much variety in the other three,
+and the method of their variety will be best discerned by
+studying <i>b</i> and <i>d</i>, as subordinate to and connected with the
+simple arch at <i>c</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Many architects, especially the worst, have been very
+curious in designing out of the way arches,&mdash;elliptical arches,
+and four-centred arches, so called, and other singularities. The
+good architects have generally been content, and we for the
+present will be so, with God&rsquo;s arch, the arch of the rainbow
+and of the apparent heaven, and which the sun shapes for
+us as it sets and rises. Let us watch the sun for a moment as
+it climbs: when it is a quarter up, it will give us the arch <i>a</i>,
+<a href="#fig_31">Fig. XXXI.</a>; when it is half up, <i>b</i>, and when three quarters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128"></a>128</span>
+up, <i>c</i>. There will be an infinite number of arches between
+these, but we will take these as sufficient representatives of all.
+Then <i>a</i> is the low arch, <i>b</i> the central or pure arch, <i>c</i> the high
+arch, and the rays of the sun would have drawn for us their
+voussoirs.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. We will take these several arches successively, and
+fixing the top of each accurately, draw two right lines thence
+to its base, <i>d</i>, <i>e</i>, <i>f</i>, <a href="#fig_31">Fig. XXXI.</a> Then these lines give us the
+relative gables of each of the arches; <i>d</i> is the Italian or
+southern gable, <i>e</i> the central gable, <i>f</i> the Gothic gable.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_31"><img src="images/img128.jpg" width="500" height="427" alt="Fig. XXXI." title="Fig. XXXI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. We will again take the three arches with their
+gables in succession, and on each of the sides of the gable,
+between it and the arch, we will describe another arch, as at
+<i>g</i>, <i>h</i>, <i>i</i>. Then the curves so described give the pointed arches
+belonging to each of the round arches; <i>g</i>, the flat pointed
+arch, <i>h</i>, the central pointed arch, and <i>i</i>, the lancet pointed
+arch.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. If the radius with which these intermediate curves
+are drawn be the base of <i>f</i>, the last is the equilateral pointed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129"></a>129</span>
+arch, one of great importance in Gothic work. But between
+the gable and circle, in all the three figures, there are an infinite
+number of pointed arches, describable with different radii;
+and the three round arches, be it remembered, are themselves
+representatives of an infinite number, passing from the flattest
+conceivable curve, through the semicircle and horseshoe, up to
+the full circle.</p>
+
+<p>The central and the last group are the most important.
+The central round, or semicircle, is the Roman, the Byzantine,
+and Norman arch; and its relative pointed includes one wide
+branch of Gothic. The horseshoe round is the Arabic and
+Moorish arch, and its relative pointed includes the whole range
+of Arabic and lancet, or Early English and French Gothics.
+I mean of course by the relative pointed, the entire group of
+which the equilateral arch is the representative.
+Between it and the outer horseshoe, as this latter
+rises higher, the reader will find, on experiment,
+the great families of what may be called the
+horseshoe pointed,&mdash;curves of the highest importance,
+but which are all included, with English
+lancet, under the term, relative pointed of the horseshoe arch.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_32"><img src="images/img129.jpg" width="120" height="101" alt="Fig. XXXII." title="Fig. XXXII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. The groups above described are all formed of circular
+arcs, and include all truly useful and beautiful arches for ordinary
+work. I believe that singular and complicated curves are
+made use of in modern engineering, but with these the general
+reader can have no concern: the Ponte della Trinita at Florence
+is the most graceful instance I know of such structure; the
+arch made use of being very subtle, and approximating to the
+low ellipse; for which, in common work, a barbarous pointed
+arch, called four-centred, and composed of bits of circles, is
+substituted by the English builders. The high ellipse, I believe,
+exists in eastern architecture. I have never myself met with
+it on a large scale; but it occurs in the niches of the later portions
+of the Ducal palace at Venice, together with a singular
+hyperbolic arch, <i>a</i> in <a href="#fig_33">Fig. XXXIII.</a>, to be described hereafter:
+with such caprices we are not here concerned.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. We are, however, concerned to notice the absurdity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130"></a>130</span>
+of another form of arch, which, with the four-centred, belongs
+to the English perpendicular Gothic.</p>
+
+<p>Taking the gable of any of the groups in <a href="#fig_31">Fig. XXXI.</a>
+(suppose the equilateral), here at <i>b</i>, in <a href="#fig_33">Fig. XXXIII.</a>, the
+dotted line representing the relative pointed arch, we may
+evidently conceive an arch formed by reversed curves on the
+inside of the gable, as here shown by the inner curved lines.
+I imagine the reader by this time knows enough of the nature
+of arches to understand that, whatever strength or stability
+was gained by the curve on the <i>outside</i> of the gable, exactly
+so much is lost by curves on the <i>inside</i>. The natural tendency
+of such an arch to dissolution by its own mere weight renders
+it a feature of detestable ugliness, wherever it occurs on a large
+scale. It is eminently characteristic of Tudor work, and it is
+the profile of the Chinese roof (I say on a large scale, because
+this as well as all other capricious arches, may be made secure
+by their masonry when small, but not otherwise). Some allowable
+modifications of it will be noticed in the chapter on Roofs.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_33"><img src="images/img130.jpg" width="500" height="127" alt="Fig. XXXIII." title="Fig. XXXIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. There is only one more form of arch which we have
+to notice. When the last described arch is used, not as the
+principal arrangement, but as a mere heading to a common
+pointed arch, we have the form <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_33">Fig. XXXIII.</a> Now this is
+better than the entirely reversed arch for two reasons; first,
+less of the line is weakened by reversing; secondly, the double
+curve has a very high ĉsthetic value, not existing in the mere
+segments of circles. For these reasons arches of this kind are
+not only admissible, but even of great desirableness, when
+their scale and masonry render them secure, but above a certain
+scale they are altogether barbarous; and, with the reversed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131"></a>131</span>
+Tudor arch, wantonly employed, are the characteristics of the
+worst and meanest schools of architecture, past or present.</p>
+
+<p>This double curve is called the Ogee; it is the profile of
+many German leaden roofs, of many Turkish domes (there
+more excusable, because associated and in sympathy with exquisitely
+managed arches of the same line in the walls below),
+of Tudor turrets, as in Henry the Seventh&rsquo;s Chapel, and it is
+at the bottom or top of sundry other blunders all over the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. The varieties of the ogee curve are infinite, as the
+reversed portion of it may be engrafted on every other form
+of arch, horseshoe, round, or pointed. Whatever is generally
+worthy of note in these varieties, and in other arches of
+caprice, we shall best discover by examining their masonry; for
+it is by their good masonry only that they are rendered either
+stable or beautiful. To this question, then, let us address ourselves.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page132"></a>132</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_11" id="chap_11"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ARCH MASONRY.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">On</span> the subject of the stability of arches, volumes have
+been written and volumes more are required. The reader
+will not, therefore, expect from me any very complete explanation
+of its conditions within the limits of a single chapter.
+But that which is necessary for him to know is very simple
+and very easy; and yet, I believe, some part of it is very little
+known, or noticed.</p>
+
+<p>We must first have a clear idea of what is meant by an
+arch. It is a curved <i>shell</i> of firm materials, on whose back a
+burden is to be laid of <i>loose</i> materials. So far as the materials
+above it are <i>not loose</i>, but themselves hold together, the opening
+below is not an arch, but an <i>excavation</i>. Note this difference
+very carefully. If the King of Sardinia tunnels through
+the Mont Cenis, as he proposes, he will not require to build
+a brick arch under his tunnel to carry the weight of the
+Mont Cenis: that would need scientific masonry indeed.
+The Mont Cenis will carry itself, by its own cohesion, and a
+succession of invisible granite arches, rather larger than the
+tunnel. But when Mr. Brunel tunnelled the Thames bottom,
+he needed to build a brick arch to carry the six or seven feet
+of mud and the weight of water above. That is a type of all
+arches proper.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. Now arches, in practice, partake of the nature of the
+two. So far as their masonry above is Mont-Cenisian, that is
+to say, colossal in comparison of them, and granitic, so that
+the arch is a mere hole in the rock substance of it, the form
+of the arch is of no consequence whatever: it may be rounded,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133"></a>133</span>
+or lozenged, or ogee&rsquo;d, or anything else; and in the noblest
+architecture there is always <i>some</i> character of this kind given
+to the masonry. It is independent enough not to care about
+the holes cut in it, and does not subside into them like sand.
+But the theory of arches does not presume on any such condition
+of things; it allows itself only the shell of the arch
+proper; the vertebrĉ, carrying their marrow of resistance;
+and, above this shell, it assumes the wall to be in a state of
+flux, bearing down on the arch, like water or sand, with its
+whole weight. And farther, the problem which is to be
+solved by the arch builder is not merely to carry this weight,
+but to carry it with the least thickness of shell. It is easy to
+carry it by continually thickening your voussoirs: if you have
+six feet depth of sand or gravel to carry, and you choose to
+employ granite voussoirs six feet thick, no question but your
+arch is safe enough. But it is perhaps somewhat too costly:
+the thing to be done is to carry the sand or gravel with brick
+voussoirs, six inches thick, or, at any rate, with the least
+thickness of voussoir which will be safe; and to do this requires
+peculiar arrangement of the lines of the arch. There
+are many arrangements, useful all in their way, but we have
+only to do, in the best architecture, with the simplest and
+most easily understood. We have first to note those which
+regard the actual shell of the arch, and then we shall give a
+few examples of the superseding of such expedients by Mont-Cenisian
+masonry.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. What we have to say will apply to all arches, but the
+central pointed arch is the best for general illustration. Let
+<i>a</i>, <a href="#plate_3">Plate III.</a>, be the shell of a pointed arch with loose loading
+above; and suppose you find that shell not quite thick enough;
+and that the weight bears too heavily on the top of the arch,
+and is likely to break it in: you proceed to thicken your shell,
+but need you thicken it all equally? Not so; you would only
+waste your good voussoirs. If you have any common sense
+you will thicken it at the top, where a Mylodon&rsquo;s skull is
+thickened for the same purpose (and some human skulls, I
+fancy), as at <i>b</i>. The pebbles and gravel above will now shoot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134"></a>134</span>
+off it right and left, as the bullets do off a cuirassier&rsquo;s breastplate,
+and will have no chance of beating it in.</p>
+
+<p>If still it be not strong enough, a farther addition may be
+made, as at <i>c</i>, now thickening the voussoirs a little at the base
+also. But as this may perhaps throw the arch inconveniently
+high, or occasion a waste of voussoirs at the top, we may
+employ another expedient.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. I imagine the reader&rsquo;s common sense, if not his previous
+knowledge, will enable him to understand that if the
+arch at <i>a</i>, <a href="#plate_3">Plate III.</a>, burst <i>in</i> at the top, it must burst <i>out</i> at
+the sides. Set up two pieces of pasteboard, edge to edge, and
+press them down with your hand, and you will see them bend
+out at the sides. Therefore, if you can keep the arch from
+starting out at the points <i>p</i>, <i>p</i>, it <i>cannot</i> curve in at the top,
+put what weight on it you will, unless by sheer crushing of the
+stones to fragments.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. Now you may keep the arch from starting out at <i>p</i> by
+loading it at <i>p</i>, putting more weight upon it and against it at
+that point; and this, in practice, is the way it is usually done.
+But we assume at present that the weight above is sand or
+water, quite unmanageable, not to be directed to the points
+we choose; and in practice, it may sometimes happen that
+we cannot put weight upon the arch at <i>p</i>. We may perhaps
+want an opening above it, or it may be at the side of the
+building, and many other circumstances may occur to hinder
+us.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. But if we are not sure that we can put weight above
+it, we are perfectly sure that we can hang weight under it.
+You may always thicken your shell inside, and put the weight
+upon it as at <i>x x</i>, in <i>d</i>, <a href="#plate_3">Plate III.</a> Not much chance of its
+bursting out at <i>p</i>, now, is there?</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Whenever, therefore, an arch has to bear vertical
+pressure, it will bear it better when its shell is shaped as at <i>b</i>
+or <i>d</i>, than as at <i>a: b</i> and <i>d</i> are, therefore, the types of arches
+built to resist vertical pressure, all over the world, and from
+the beginning of architecture to its end. None others can
+be compared with them: all are imperfect except these.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page135"></a>135</span></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">III.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_3"><img src="images/img134.jpg" width="395" height="650" alt="ARCH MASONRY." title="ARCH MASONRY." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">ARCH MASONRY.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The added projections at <i>x x</i>, in <i>d</i>, are called <span class="sc">Cusps</span>, and
+they are the very soul and life of the best northern Gothic;
+yet never thoroughly understood nor found in perfection,
+except in Italy, the northern builders working often, even in
+the best times, with the vulgar form at <i>a</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The form at <i>b</i> is rarely found in the north: its perfection
+is in the Lombardic Gothic; and branches of it, good and bad
+according to their use, occur in Saracenic work.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. The true and perfect cusp is single only. But it
+was probably invented (by the Arabs?) not as a constructive,
+but a decorative feature, in pure fantasy; and in early northern
+work it is only the application to the arch of the foliation, so
+called, of penetrated spaces in stone surfaces, already enough
+explained in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; Chap. III., p. 85 <i>et seq.</i> It
+is degraded in dignity, and loses its usefulness, exactly in
+proportion to its multiplication on the arch. In later architecture,
+especially English Tudor, it is sunk into dotage, and
+becomes a simple excrescence, a bit of stone pinched up out of
+the arch, as a cook pinches the paste at the edge of a pie.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. The depth and place of the cusp, that is to say, its
+exact application to the shoulder of the curve of the arch,
+varies with the direction of the weight to be sustained. I have
+spent more than a month, and that in hard work too, in merely
+trying to get the forms of cusps into perfect order: whereby
+the reader may guess that I have not space to go into the
+subject now; but I shall hereafter give a few of the leading
+and most perfect examples, with their measures and masonry.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. The reader now understands all that he need about the
+shell of the arch, considered as an united piece of stone.</p>
+
+<p>He has next to consider the shape of the voussoirs. This,
+as much as is required, he will be able best to comprehend by
+a few examples; by which I shall be able also to illustrate, or
+rather which will force me to illustrate, some of the methods
+of Mont-Cenisian masonry, which were to be the second part
+of our subject.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. 1 and 2, <a href="#plate_4">Plate IV.</a>, are two cornices; 1 from St.
+Antonio, Padua; 2, from the Cathedral of Sens. I want them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136"></a>136</span>
+for cornices; but I have put them in this plate because, though
+their arches are filled up behind, and are in fact mere blocks
+of stone with arches cut into their faces, they illustrate the constant
+masonry of small arches, both in Italian and Northern
+Romanesque, but especially Italian, each arch being cut out
+of its own proper block of stone: this is Mont-Cenisian enough,
+on a small scale.</p>
+
+<p>3 is a window from Carnarvon Castle, and very primitive
+and interesting in manner,&mdash;one of its arches being of one
+stone, the other of two.  And here we have an instance of a
+form of arch which would be barbarous enough on a large
+scale, and of many pieces; but quaint and agreeable thus massively
+built.</p>
+
+<p>4 is from a little belfry in a Swiss village above Vevay; one
+fancies the window of an absurd form, seen in the distance,
+but one is pleased with it on seeing its masonry.  It could
+hardly be stronger.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. These then are arches cut of one block. The next
+step is to form them of two pieces, set together at the head
+of the arch. 6, from the Eremitani, Padua, is very quaint
+and primitive in manner: it is a curious church altogether,
+and has some strange traceries cut out of single blocks. One
+is given in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a>, in the left-hand
+corner at the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>7, from the Frari, Venice, very firm and fine, and admirably
+decorated, as we shall see hereafter. 5, the simple two-pieced
+construction, wrought with the most exquisite proportion and
+precision of workmanship, as is everything else in the glorious
+church to which it belongs, San Fermo of Verona. The
+addition of the top piece, which completes the circle, does not
+affect the plan of the beautiful arches, with their simple and
+perfect cusps; but it is highly curious, and serves to show how
+the idea of the cusp rose out of mere foliation. The whole of
+the architecture of this church may be characterised as exhibiting
+the maxima of simplicity in construction, and perfection in
+workmanship,&mdash;a rare unison: for, in general, simple designs
+are rudely worked, and as the builder perfects his execution,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137"></a>137</span>
+he complicates his plan. Nearly all the arches of San Fermo
+are two-pieced.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">IV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_4"><img src="images/img137.jpg" width="380" height="650" alt="ARCH MASONRY." title="ARCH MASONRY." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">ARCH MASONRY.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. We have seen the construction with one and two
+pieces: <i>a</i> and <i>b</i>, Fig. 8, <a href="#plate_4">Plate IV.</a>, are the general types of
+the construction with three pieces, uncusped and cusped; <i>c</i>
+and <i>d</i> with five pieces, uncusped and cusped. Of these the
+three-pieced construction is of enormous importance, and must
+detain us some time. The five-pieced is the three-pieced with
+a joint added on each side, and is also of great importance.
+The four-pieced, which is the two-pieced with added joints,
+rarely occurs, and need not detain us.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. It will be remembered that in first working out the
+principle of the arch, we composed the arch of three pieces.
+Three is the smallest number which can exhibit the real <i>principle</i>
+of arch masonry, and it may be considered as representative
+of all arches built on that principle; the one and two-pieced
+arches being microscopic Mont-Cenisian, mere caves
+in blocks of stone, or gaps between two rocks leaning together.</p>
+
+<p>But the three-pieced arch is properly representative of all;
+and the larger and more complicated constructions are merely
+produced by keeping the central piece for what is called a
+keystone, and putting additional joints at the sides. Now so
+long as an arch is pure circular or pointed, it does not matter
+how many joints or voussoirs you have, nor where the
+joints are; nay, you may joint your keystone itself, and make
+it two-pieced. But if the arch be of any bizarre form, especially
+ogee, the joints must be in particular places, and the
+masonry simple, or it will not be thoroughly good and secure;
+and the fine schools of the ogee arch have only arisen in
+countries where it was the custom to build arches of few pieces.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. The typical pure pointed arch of Venice is a five-pieced
+arch, with its stones in three orders of magnitude, the
+longest being the lowest, as at <i>b</i><span class="su">2</span>, <a href="#plate_3">Plate III.</a> If the arch be very
+large, a fourth order of magnitude is added, as at <i>a</i><span class="su">2</span>. The
+portals of the palaces of Venice have one or other of these
+masonries, almost without exception. Now, as one piece is
+added to make a larger door, one piece is taken away to make
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138"></a>138</span>
+a smaller one, or a window, and the masonry type of the
+Venetian Gothic window is consequently three-pieced, <i>c</i><span class="su">2</span>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. The reader knows already where a cusp is useful.
+It is wanted, he will remember, to give weight to those side
+stones, and draw them inwards against the thrust of the top
+stone. Take one of the side stones of <i>c</i><span class="su">2</span> out for a moment, as
+at <i>d</i>. Now the <i>proper</i> place of the cusp upon it varies with
+the weight which it bears or requires; but in practice this
+nicety is rarely observed; the place of the cusp is almost always
+determined by ĉsthetic considerations, and it is evident that
+the variations in its place may be infinite. Consider the cusp
+as a wave passing up the side stone from its bottom to its top;
+then you will have the succession of forms from <i>e</i> to <i>g</i> (<a href="#plate_3">Plate
+III.</a>), with infinite degrees of transition from each to each;
+but of which you may take <i>e</i>, <i>f</i>, and <i>g</i>, as representing three
+great families of cusped arches. Use <i>e</i> for your side stones,
+and you have an arch as that at <i>h</i> below, which may be called
+a down-cusped arch. Use <i>f</i> for the side stone, and you have
+<i>i</i>, which may be called a mid-cusped arch. Use <i>g</i>, and you
+have <i>k</i>, an up-cusped arch.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. The reader will observe that I call the arch mid-cusped,
+not when the cusped point is in the middle of the
+curve of the arch, but when it is in the middle of the <i>side
+piece</i>, and also that where the side pieces join the keystone
+there will be a change, perhaps somewhat abrupt, in the curvature.</p>
+
+<p>I have preferred to call the arch mid-cusped with respect
+to its side piece than with respect to its own curve, because
+the most beautiful Gothic arches in the world, those of the
+Lombard Gothic, have, in all the instances I have examined,
+a form more or less approximating to this mid-cusped one at
+<i>i</i> (<a href="#plate_3">Plate III.</a>), but having the curvature of the cusp carried
+up into the keystone, as we shall see presently: where, however,
+the arch is built of many voussoirs, a mid-cusped arch
+will mean one which has the point of the cusp midway between
+its own base and apex.</p>
+
+<p>The Gothic arch of Venice is almost invariably up-cusped,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139"></a>139</span>
+as at <i>k</i>. The reader may note that, in both down-cusped and
+up-cusped arches, the piece of stone, added to form the cusp,
+is of the shape of a scymitar, held down in the one case and
+up in the other.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. Now, in the arches <i>h</i>, <i>i</i>, <i>k</i>, a slight modification has
+been made in the form of the central piece, in order that it
+may continue the curve of the cusp. This modification is not
+to be given to it in practice without considerable nicety of
+workmanship; and some curious results took place in Venice
+from this difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>At <i>l</i> (<a href="#plate_3">Plate III.</a>) is the shape of the Venetian side stone,
+with its cusp detached from the arch. Nothing can possibly
+be better or more graceful, or have the weight better disposed
+in order to cause it to nod forwards against the keystone, as
+above explained, Ch. X. § <span class="scs">II</span>., where I developed the whole
+system of the arch from three pieces, in order that the reader
+might now clearly see the use of the weight of the cusp.</p>
+
+<p>Now a Venetian Gothic palace has usually at least three
+stories; with perhaps ten or twelve windows in each story,
+and this on two or three of its sides, requiring altogether some
+hundred to a hundred and fifty side pieces.</p>
+
+<p>I have no doubt, from observation of the way the windows
+are set together, that the side pieces were carved in pairs, like
+hooks, of which the keystones were to be the eyes; that these
+side pieces were ordered by the architect in the gross, and
+were used by him sometimes for wider, sometimes for narrower
+windows; bevelling the two ends as required, fitting in keystones
+as he best could, and now and then varying the arrangement
+by turning the side pieces <i>upside down</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There were various conveniences in this way of working,
+one of the principal being that the side pieces with their cusps
+were always cut to their complete form, and that no part of the
+cusp was carried out into the keystone, which followed the
+curve of the outer arch itself. The ornaments of the cusp
+might thus be worked without any troublesome reference to
+the rest of the arch.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. Now let us take a pair of side pieces, made to order,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140"></a>140</span>
+like that at <i>l</i>, and see what we can make of them. We will
+try to fit them first with a keystone which continues the curve
+of the outer arch, as at <i>m</i>. This the reader assuredly thinks
+an ugly arch. There are a great many of them in Venice, the
+ugliest things there, and the Venetian builders quickly began
+to feel them so. What could they do to better them? The
+arch at <i>m</i> has a central piece of the form <i>r</i>. Substitute for it
+a piece of the form <i>s</i>, and we have the arch at <i>n</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. This arch at <i>n</i> is not so strong as that at <i>m</i>; but,
+built of good marble, and with its pieces of proper thickness, it
+is quite strong enough for all practical purposes on a small scale.
+I have examined at least two thousand windows of this kind
+and of the other Venetian ogees, of which that at <i>y</i> (in which
+the plain side-piece <i>d</i> is used instead of the cusped one) is the
+simplest; and I never found <i>one</i>, even in the most ruinous
+palaces (in which they had had to sustain the distorted weight
+of falling walls) in which the central piece was fissured; and
+this is the only danger to which the window is exposed; in
+other respects it is as strong an arch as can be built.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed that the change from the <i>r</i> keystone
+to the <i>s</i> keystone was instantaneous. It was a change wrought
+out by many curious experiments, which we shall have to trace
+hereafter, and to throw the resultant varieties of form into
+their proper groups.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXI</span>. One step more: I take a mid-cusped side piece in
+its block form at <i>t</i>, with the bricks which load the back of it.
+Now, as these bricks support it behind, and since, as far as the
+use of the cusp is concerned, it matters not whether its weight
+be in marble or bricks, there is nothing to hinder us from cutting
+out some of the marble, as at <i>u</i>, and filling up the space
+with bricks. (<i>Why</i> we should take a fancy to do this, I do
+not pretend to guess at present; all I have to assert is, that, if
+the fancy should strike us, there would be no harm in it).
+Substituting this side piece for the other in the window <i>n</i>, we
+have that at <i>w</i>, which may, perhaps, be of some service to us
+afterwards; here we have nothing more to do with it than to
+note that, thus built, and properly backed by brickwork, it is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141"></a>141</span>
+just as strong and safe a form as that at <i>n</i>; but that this, as
+well as every variety of ogee arch, depends entirely for its
+safety, fitness, and beauty, on the masonry which we have just
+analysed; and that, built on a large scale, and with many
+voussoirs, all such arches would be unsafe and absurd in
+general architecture. Yet they may be used occasionally for
+the sake of the exquisite beauty of which their rich and fantastic
+varieties admit, and sometimes for the sake of another merit,
+exactly the opposite of the constructional ones we are at present
+examining, that they seem to stand by enchantment.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">V.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_5"><img src="images/img141.jpg" width="404" height="650" alt="Arch Masonry." title="Arch Masonry." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">Arch Masonry. <br />
+                      BRULETTO OF COMO.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXII</span>. In the above reasonings, the inclination of the joints
+of the voussoirs to the curves of the arch has not been considered.
+It is a question of much nicety, and which I have
+not been able as yet fully to investigate: but the natural idea
+of the arrangement of these lines (which in round arches are
+of course perpendicular to the curve) would be that every
+voussoir should have the lengths of its outer and inner arched
+surface in the same proportion to each other. Either this
+actual law, or a close approximation to it, is assuredly enforced
+in the best Gothic buildings.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIII</span>. I may sum up all that it is necessary for the reader
+to keep in mind of the general laws connected with this subject,
+by giving him an example of each of the two forms of
+the perfect Gothic arch, uncusped and cusped, treated with
+the most simple and magnificent masonry, and partly, in both
+cases, Mont-Cenisian.</p>
+
+<p>The first, <a href="#plate_5">Plate V.</a>, is a window from the Broletto of Como.
+It shows, in its filling, first, the single-pieced arch, carried on
+groups of four shafts, and a single slab of marble filling the
+space above, and pierced with a quatrefoil (Mont-Cenisian,
+this), while the mouldings above are each constructed with a
+separate system of voussoirs, all of them shaped, I think, on
+the principle above stated, § <span class="scs">XXII</span>., in alternate serpentine and
+marble; the outer arch being a noble example of the pure
+uncusped Gothic construction, <i>b</i> of <a href="#plate_3">Plate III.</a></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXIV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_34"><img src="images/img142.jpg" width="600" height="658" alt="Fig. XXXIV." title="Fig. XXXIV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIV</span>. <a href="#fig_34">Fig. XXXIV.</a> is the masonry of the side arch of,
+as far as I know or am able to judge, the most perfect Gothic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142"></a>142</span>
+sepulchral monument in the world, the foursquare canopy of
+the (nameless?)<a name="FnAnchor_49" href="#Footnote_49"><span class="sp">49</span></a> tomb standing over the small cemetery gate
+of the Church of St. Anastasia at Verona. I shall have frequent
+occasion to recur to this monument, and, I believe,
+shall be able sufficiently to justify the terms in which I speak
+of it: meanwhile, I desire only that the reader should observe
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143"></a>143</span>
+the severity and simplicity of the arch lines, the exquisitely
+delicate suggestion of the ogee curve in the apex, and chiefly
+the use of the cusp in giving <i>inward</i> weight to the great pieces
+of stone on the flanks of the arch, and preventing their thrust
+outwards from being severely thrown on the lowermost stones.
+The effect of this arrangement is, that the whole massy canopy
+is sustained safely by four slender pillars (as will be seen hereafter
+in the careful plate I hope to give of it), these pillars
+being rather steadied than materially assisted against the thrust,
+by iron bars, about an inch thick, connecting them at the
+heads of the abaci; a feature of peculiar importance in this
+monument, inasmuch as we know it to be part of the original
+construction, by a beautiful little Gothic wreathed pattern,
+like one of the hems of garments of Fra Angelico, running
+along the iron bar itself. So carefully, and so far, is the
+system of decoration carried out in this pure and lovely monument,
+my most beloved throughout all the length and breadth
+of Italy;&mdash;chief, as I think, among all the sepulchral marbles
+of a land of mourning.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_49" href="#FnAnchor_49"><span class="fn">49</span></a> At least I cannot find any account of it in Maffei&rsquo;s &ldquo;Verona,&rdquo; nor anywhere
+else, to be depended upon. It is, I doubt not, a work of the beginning
+of the thirteenth century. Vide <a href="#app_19">Appendix 19</a>, &ldquo;Tombs at St. Anastasia.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page144"></a>144</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_12" id="chap_12"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ARCH LOAD.</h5>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_35"><img src="images/img144.jpg" width="300" height="501" alt="Fig. XXXV." title="Fig. XXXV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">In</span> the preceding enquiry we have always supposed
+either that the load upon the arch was perfectly loose, as of
+gravel or sand, or that it was
+Mont-Cenisian, and formed
+one mass with the arch
+voussoirs, of more or less
+compactness.</p>
+
+<p>In practice, the state is
+usually something between
+the two. Over bridges and
+tunnels it sometimes approaches
+to the condition of
+mere dust or yielding earth;
+but in architecture it is mostly
+firm masonry, not altogether
+acting with the voussoirs,
+yet by no means bearing
+on them with perfectly dead
+weight, but locking itself together
+above them, and capable
+of being thrown into forms
+which relieve them, in some
+degree, from its pressure.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. It is evident that if we are to place a continuous roof
+above the line of arches, we must fill up the intervals between
+them on the tops of the columns. We have at present nothing
+granted us but the bare masonry, as here at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_35">Fig. XXXV.</a>,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145"></a>145</span>
+and we must fill up the intervals between the semicircle so as
+to obtain a level line of support. We may first do this simply
+as at <i>b</i>, with plain mass of
+wall; so laying the roof on
+the top, which is the
+method of the pure Byzantine
+and Italian Romanesque.
+But if we find too
+much stress is thus laid on
+the arches, we may introduce
+small second shafts
+on the top of the great
+shaft, <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_36">Fig. XXXVI.</a>,
+which may assist in carrying
+the roof, conveying
+great part of its weight at
+once to the heads of the
+main shafts, and relieving
+from its pressure the centres
+of the arches.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXVI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_36"><img src="images/img145.jpg" width="250" height="610" alt="Fig. XXXVI." title="Fig. XXXVI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. The new shaft
+thus introduced may either
+remain lifted on the head
+of the great shaft, or may
+be carried to the ground in
+front of it, or through it, <i>b</i>,
+<a href="#fig_36">Fig. XXXVI.</a>; in which
+latter case the main shaft
+divides into two or more
+minor shafts, and forms a
+group with the shaft
+brought down from above.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. When this shaft,
+brought from roof to
+ground, is subordinate to the main pier, and either is carried
+down the face of it, or forms no large part of the group, the
+principle is Romanesque or Gothic, <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_36">Fig. XXXVI.</a> When
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146"></a>146</span>
+it becomes a bold central shaft, and the main pier splits into
+two minor shafts on its sides, the principle is Classical or Palladian,
+<i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_36">Fig. XXXVI.</a> Which latter arrangement becomes absurd
+or unsatisfactory in proportion to the sufficiency of the
+main shaft to carry the roof without the help of the minor
+shafts or arch, which in many instances of Palladian work look
+as if they might be removed without danger to the building.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. The form <i>a</i> is a more pure Northern Gothic type than
+even <i>b</i>, which is the connecting link between it and the classical
+type. It is found chiefly in English and other northern
+Gothic, and in early Lombardic, and is, I doubt not, derived
+as above explained, <a href="#chap_1">Chap. I.</a> § <span class="scs">XXVII</span>. <i>b</i> is a general French
+Gothic and French Romanesque form, as in great purity at
+Valence.</p>
+
+<p>The small shafts of the form <i>a</i> and <i>b</i>, as being northern,
+are generally connected with steep vaulted roofs, and receive
+for that reason the name of vaulting shafts.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Of these forms <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_35">Fig. XXXV.</a>, is the purest and
+most sublime, expressing the power of the arch most distinctly.
+All the others have some appearance of dovetailing and morticing
+of timber rather than stonework; nor have I ever yet
+seen a single instance, quite satisfactory, of the management
+of the capital of the main shaft, when it had either to sustain
+the base of the vaulting shaft, as in <i>a</i>, or to suffer it to pass
+through it, as in <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_36">Fig. XXXVI.</a> Nor is the bracket which
+frequently carries the vaulting shaft in English work a fitting
+support for a portion of the fabric which is at all events presumed
+to carry a considerable part of the weight of the roof.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. The triangular spaces on the flanks of the arch are
+called Spandrils, and if the masonry of these should be found,
+in any of its forms, too heavy for the arch, their weight may
+be diminished, while their strength remains the same, by piercing
+them with circular holes or lights. This is rarely necessary
+in ordinary architecture, though sometimes of great use in
+bridges and iron roofs (a succession of such circles may be
+seen, for instance, in the spandrils at the Euston Square
+station); but, from its constructional value, it becomes the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147"></a>147</span>
+best form in which to arrange spandril decorations, as we shall
+see hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. The height of the load above the arch is determined
+by the needs of the building and possible length of the shaft;
+but with this we have at present nothing to do, for we have
+performed the task which was set us. We have ascertained,
+as it was required that we should in § <span class="scs">VI</span>. of <a href="#chap_3">Chap. III.</a> (A),
+the construction of walls; (B), that of piers; (C), that of piers
+with lintels or arches prepared for roofing. We have next,
+therefore, to examine (D) the structure of the roof.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page148"></a>148</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_13" id="chap_13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ROOF.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">Hitherto</span> our enquiry has been unembarrassed by any
+considerations relating exclusively either to the exterior or
+interior of buildings. But it can remain so no longer. As
+far as the architect is concerned, one side of a wall is generally
+the same as another; but in the roof there are usually two
+distinct divisions of the structure; one, a shell, vault, or flat
+ceiling, internally visible, the other, an upper structure, built
+of timber, to protect the lower; or of some different form, to
+support it. Sometimes, indeed, the internally visible structure
+is the real roof, and sometimes there are more than two divisions,
+as in St. Paul&rsquo;s, where we have a central shell with a mask
+below and above. Still it will be convenient to remember the
+distinction between the part of the roof which is usually visible
+from within, and whose only business is to stand strongly,
+and not fall in, which I shall call the Roof Proper; and,
+secondly, the upper roof, which, being often partly supported
+by the lower, is not so much concerned with its own stability
+as with the weather, and is appointed to throw off snow, and
+get rid of rain, as fast as possible, which I shall call the Roof
+Mask.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. It is, however, needless for me to engage the reader
+in the discussion of the various methods of construction of
+Roofs Proper, for this simple reason, that no person without
+long experience can tell whether a roof be wisely constructed
+or not; nor tell at all, even with help of any amount of experience,
+without examination of the several parts and bearings of
+it, very different from any observation possible to the general
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page149"></a>149</span>
+critic: and more than this, the enquiry would be useless to us
+in our Venetian studies, where the roofs are either not contemporary
+with the buildings, or flat, or else vaults of the simplest
+possible constructions, which have been admirably explained
+by Willis in his &ldquo;Architecture of the Middle Ages,&rdquo; Chap.
+VII., to which I may refer the reader for all that it would be
+well for him to know respecting the connexion of the different
+parts of the vault with the shafts. He would also do well to
+read the passages on Tudor vaulting, pp. 185-193, in Mr.
+Garbett&rsquo;s rudimentary Treatise on Design, before alluded to.<a name="FnAnchor_50" href="#Footnote_50"><span class="sp">50</span></a>
+I shall content myself therefore with noting one or two points
+on which neither writer has had occasion to touch, respecting
+the Roof Mask.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. It was said in § <span class="scs">V</span>. of Chapter III. that we should
+not have occasion, in speaking of roof construction, to add
+materially to the forms then suggested. The forms which we
+have to add are only those resulting from the other curves of
+the arch developed in the last chapter; that is to say, the
+various eastern domes and cupolas arising out of the revolution
+of the horseshoe and ogee curves, together with the well-known
+Chinese concave roof. All these forms are of course
+purely decorative, the bulging outline, or concave surface,
+being of no more use, or rather of less, in throwing off snow
+or rain, than the ordinary spire and gable; and it is rather
+curious, therefore, that all of them, on a small scale, should
+have obtained so extensive use in Germany and Switzerland,
+their native climate being that of the east, where their purpose
+seems rather to concentrate light upon their orbed surfaces.
+I much doubt their applicability, on a large scale, to
+architecture of any admirable dignity; their chief charm is, to
+the European eye, that of strangeness; and it seems to me possible
+that in the east the bulging form may be also delightful,
+from the idea of its enclosing a volume of cool air. I enjoy
+them in St. Mark&rsquo;s, chiefly because they increase the fantastic
+and unreal character of St. Mark&rsquo;s Place; and because they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150"></a>150</span>
+appear to sympathise with an expression, common, I think, to
+all the buildings of that group, of a natural buoyancy, as if
+they floated in the air or on the surface of the sea. But, assuredly,
+they are not features to be recommended for
+imitation.<a name="FnAnchor_51" href="#Footnote_51"><span class="sp">51</span></a></p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXVII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_37"><img src="images/img150.jpg" width="250" height="386" alt="Fig. XXXVII." title="Fig. XXXVII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. One form, closely connected with the Chinese concave,
+is, however, often constructively right,&mdash;the gable with
+an inward angle, occurring with exquisitely
+picturesque effect throughout
+the domestic architecture of
+the north, especially Germany and
+Switzerland; the lower slope being
+either an attached external penthouse
+roof, for protection of the
+wall, as in <a href="#fig_37">Fig. XXXVII.</a>, or else a
+kind of buttress set on the angle of
+the tower; and in either case the
+roof itself being a simple gable,
+continuous beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. The true gable, as it is the
+simplest and most natural, so I esteem
+it the grandest of roofs;
+whether rising in ridgy darkness, like a grey slope of slaty
+mountains, over the precipitous walls of the northern cathedrals,
+or stretched in burning breadth above the white and
+square-set groups of the southern architecture. But this difference
+between its slope in the northern and southern structure
+is a matter of far greater importance than is commonly
+supposed, and it is this to which I would especially direct the
+reader&rsquo;s attention.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page151"></a>151</span>
+snow in the north, has been a thousand times alluded to:
+another I do not remember having seen noticed, namely, that
+rooms in a roof are comfortably habitable in the north, which
+are painful <i>sotto piombi</i> in Italy; and that there is in wet
+climates a natural tendency in all men to live as high as possible,
+out of the damp and mist. These two causes, together
+with accessible quantities of good timber, have induced in the
+north a general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or
+squared above a tower, becomes a spire or turret; and this
+feature, worked out with elaborate decoration, is the key-note
+of the whole system of aspiration, so called, which the German
+critics have so ingeniously and falsely ascribed to a devotional
+sentiment pervading the Northern Gothic: I entirely and
+boldly deny the whole theory; our cathedrals were for the
+most part built by worldly people, who loved the world, and
+would have gladly staid in it for ever; whose best hope was
+the escaping hell, which they thought to do by building cathedrals,
+but who had very vague conceptions of Heaven in general,
+and very feeble desires respecting their entrance therein;
+and the form of the spired cathedral has no more intentional
+reference to Heaven, as distinguished from the flattened slope
+of the Greek pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman
+house has, as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one.
+We may now, with ingenious pleasure, trace such symbolic
+characters in the form; we may now use it with such definite
+meaning; but we only prevent ourselves from all right understanding
+of history, by attributing much influence to these
+poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The
+human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such
+silken cords; and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose
+tiles in the roof, have, unhappily, much more to do with the
+fashions of a man&rsquo;s house building than his ideas of celestial
+happiness or angelic virtue. Associations of affection have far
+higher power, and forms which can be no otherwise accounted
+for may often be explained by reference to the natural features
+of the country, or to anything which habit must have
+rendered familiar, and therefore delightful; but the direct
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152"></a>152</span>
+symbolisation of a sentiment is a weak motive with all men,
+and far more so in the practical minds of the north than among
+the early Christians, who were assuredly quite as heavenly-minded,
+when they built basilicas, or cut conchas out of the
+catacombs, as were ever the Norman barons or monks.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. There is, however, in the north an animal activity
+which materially aided the system of building begun in mere
+utility,&mdash;an animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as
+the languor of the south in reclining or level work. Imagine
+the difference between the action of a man urging himself to
+his work in a snow storm, and the inaction of one laid at his
+length on a sunny bank among cicadas and fallen olives, and
+you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies which
+were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remembering
+always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the
+other death.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. And to the force of this vital instinct we have farther
+to add the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of
+the groups and wildernesses of the tree which is to the German
+mind what the olive or palm is to the southern, the spruce fir.
+The eye which has once been habituated to the continual serration
+of the pine forest, and to the multiplication of its infinite
+pinnacles, is not easily offended by the repetition of similar
+forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of flat or
+massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of
+the poplar, more especially in the valleys of France; but think
+of the spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling
+with which the Northman would be inspired by the frostwork
+wreathed upon its glittering point, and the Italian by the dark
+green depth of sunshine on the broad table of the stone-pine<a name="FnAnchor_52" href="#Footnote_52"><span class="sp">52</span></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153"></a>153</span>
+(and consider by the way whether the spruce fir be a more
+heavenly-minded tree than those dark canopies of the Mediterranean
+isles).</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. Circumstance and sentiment, therefore, aiding each
+other, the steep roof becomes generally adopted, and delighted
+in, throughout the north; and then, with the gradual exaggeration
+with which every pleasant idea is pursued by the
+human mind, it is raised into all manner of peaks, and points,
+and ridges; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on its flanks,
+and the walls increased in height, in proportion, until we get
+indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more principle
+of religious aspiration in it than a child&rsquo;s tower of cards.
+What is more, the desire to build high is complicated with the
+peculiar love of the grotesque<a name="FnAnchor_53" href="#Footnote_53"><span class="sp">53</span></a> which is characteristic of the
+north, together with especial delight in multiplication of small
+forms, as well as in exaggerated points of shade and energy,
+and a certain degree of consequent insensibility to perfect
+grace and quiet truthfulness; so that a northern architect could
+not feel the beauty of the Elgin marbles, and there will always
+be (in those who have devoted themselves to this particular
+school) a certain incapacity to taste the finer characters of
+Greek art, or to understand Titian, Tintoret, or Raphael:
+whereas among the Italian Gothic workmen, this capacity was
+never lost, and Nino Pisano and Orcagna could have understood
+the Theseus in an instant, and would have received from
+it new life. There can be no question that theirs was the
+greatest school, and carried out by the greatest men; and that
+while those who began with this school could perfectly well
+feel Rouen Cathedral, those who study the Northern Gothic
+remain in a narrowed field&mdash;one of small pinnacles, and dots,
+and crockets, and twitched faces&mdash;and cannot comprehend the
+meaning of a broad surface or a grand line. Nevertheless the
+northern school is an admirable and delightful thing, but a
+lower thing than the southern. The Gothic of the Ducal
+Palace of Venice is in harmony with all that is grand in all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154"></a>154</span>
+the world: that of the north is in harmony with the grotesque
+northern spirit only.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. We are, however, beginning to lose sight of our roof
+structure in its spirit, and must return to our text. As the
+height of the walls increased, in sympathy with the rise of the
+roof, while their thickness remained the same, it became more
+and more necessary to support them by buttresses; but&mdash;and
+this is another point that the reader must specially note&mdash;it is
+not the steep roof mask which requires the buttress, but the
+vaulting beneath it; the roof mask being a mere wooden frame
+tied together by cross timbers, and in small buildings often
+put together on the ground, raised afterwards, and set on the
+walls like a hat, bearing vertically upon them; and farther, I
+believe in most cases the northern vaulting requires its great
+array of external buttress, not so much from any peculiar boldness
+in its own forms, as from the greater comparative thinness
+and height of the walls, and more determined throwing
+of the whole weight of the roof on particular points. Now
+the connexion of the interior frame-work (or true roof) with
+the buttress, at such points, is not visible to the spectators
+from without; but the relation of the roof mask to the top of
+the wall which it protects, or from which it springs, is perfectly
+visible; and it is a point of so great importance in the
+effect of the building, that it will be well to make it a subject
+of distinct consideration in the following Chapter.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_50" href="#FnAnchor_50"><span class="fn">50</span></a> <a href="#app_17">Appendix 17</a></p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_51" href="#FnAnchor_51"><span class="fn">51</span></a> I do not speak of the true dome, because I have not studied its construction
+enough to know at what largeness of scale it begins to be rather
+a <i>tour de force</i> than a convenient or natural form of roof, and because the
+ordinary spectator&rsquo;s choice among its various outlines must always be dependent
+on ĉsthetic considerations only, and can in no wise be grounded on
+any conception of its infinitely complicated structural principles.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_52" href="#FnAnchor_52"><span class="fn">52</span></a> I shall not be thought to have overrated the effect of forest scenery on
+the <i>northern</i> mind; but I was glad to hear a Spanish gentleman, the other
+day, describing, together with his own, the regret which the peasants in
+his neighborhood had testified for the loss of a noble stone-pine, one of the
+grandest in Spain, which its proprietor had suffered to be cut down for
+small gain. He said that the mere spot where it had grown was still popularly
+known as &ldquo;El Pino.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_53" href="#FnAnchor_53"><span class="fn">53</span></a> <a href="#app_8">Appendix 8</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page155"></a>155</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_14" id="chap_14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ROOF CORNICE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">It</span> will be remembered that in the Sixth Chapter we
+paused (§ <span class="scs">X</span>.) at the point where the addition of brackets to
+the ordinary wall cornice would have converted it into a structure
+proper for sustaining a roof. Now the wall cornice was
+treated throughout our enquiry (compare Chapter VII. § <span class="scs">V</span>.) as
+the capital of the wall, and as forming, by its concentration,
+the capital of the shaft. But we must not reason <i>back</i> from
+the capital to the cornice, and suppose that an extension of the
+principles of the capital to the whole length of the wall, will
+serve for the roof cornice; for all our conclusions respecting
+the capital were based on the supposition of its being
+adapted to carry considerable weight condensed on its abacus:
+but the roof cornice is, in most cases, required rather to
+project boldly than to carry weight; and arrangements are
+therefore to be adopted for it which will secure the projection
+of large surfaces without being calculated to resist extraordinary
+pressure. This object is obtained by the use of
+brackets at intervals, which are the peculiar distinction of the
+roof cornice.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II.</span> Roof cornices are generally to be divided into two
+great families: the first and simplest, those which are composed
+merely by the projection of the edge of the roof mask
+over the wall, sustained by such brackets or spurs as may be
+necessary; the second, those which provide a walk round the
+edge of the roof, and which require, therefore, some stronger
+support, as well as a considerable mass of building above or
+beside the roof mask, and a parapet. These two families we
+shall consider in succession.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page156"></a>156</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III.</span> 1. The Eaved Cornice. We may give it this name,
+as represented in the simplest form by cottage eaves. It is
+used, however, in bold projection, both in north, and south, and
+east; its use being, in the north, to throw the rain well away
+from the wall of the building; in the south to give it shade;
+and it is ordinarily constructed of the ends of the timbers of
+the roof mask (with their tiles or shingles continued to the
+edge of the cornice), and sustained by spurs of timber. This
+is its most picturesque and natural form; not inconsistent with
+great splendor of architecture in the mediĉval Italian domestic
+buildings, superb in its mass of cast shadow, and giving
+rich effect to the streets of Swiss towns, even when they have
+no other claim to interest. A farther value is given to it by
+its waterspouts, for in order to avoid loading it with weight of
+water in the gutter at the edge, where it would be a strain on
+the fastenings of the pipe, it has spouts of discharge at intervals
+of three or four feet,&mdash;rows of magnificent leaden or iron
+dragons&rsquo; heads, full of delightful character, except to any person
+passing along the middle of the street in a heavy shower.
+I have had my share of their kindness in my time, but owe
+them no grudge; on the contrary, much gratitude for the delight
+of their fantastic outline on the calm blue sky, when they
+had no work to do but to open their iron mouths and pant in
+the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV.</span> When, however, light is more valuable than shadow,
+or when the architecture of the wall is too fair to be concealed,
+it becomes necessary to draw the cornice into narrower limits;
+a change of considerable importance, in that it permits the
+gutter, instead of being of lead and hung to the edge of the
+cornice, to be of stone, and supported by brackets in the wall,
+these brackets becoming proper recipients of after decoration
+(and sometimes associated with the stone channels of discharge,
+called gargoyles, which belong, however, more properly to the
+other family of cornices). The most perfect and beautiful
+example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the
+rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by
+small brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>157</span>
+edge decorated with the English dogtooth moulding, whose
+sharp zigzag mingles richly with the curved edges of the tiling.
+I know no cornice more beautiful in its extreme simplicity and
+serviceableness.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V.</span> The cornice of the Greek Doric is a condition of the
+same kind, in which, however, there are no brackets, but useless
+appendages hung to the bottom of the gutter (giving,
+however, some impression of support as seen from a distance),
+and decorated with stone symbolisms of raindrops. The brackets
+are not allowed, because they would interfere with the
+sculpture, which in this architecture is put beneath the cornice;
+and the overhanging form of the gutter is nothing
+more than a vast dripstone moulding, to keep the rain from
+such sculpture: its decoration of guttĉ, seen in silver points
+against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a kind of continual
+refreshment and remembrance of rain in it; but the
+whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only endurable
+when the eye is quickly drawn away from it to sculpture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI.</span> In later cornices, invented for the Greek orders, and
+farther developed by the Romans, the bracket appears in true
+importance, though of barbarous and effeminate outline: and
+gorgeous decorations are applied to it, and to the various horizontal
+mouldings which it carries, some of them of great
+beauty, and of the highest value to the mediĉval architects
+who imitated them. But a singularly gross mistake was made
+in the distribution of decoration on these rich cornices (I do
+not know when first, nor does it matter to me or to the reader),
+namely, the charging with ornament the under surface of the
+cornice between the brackets, that is to say, the exact piece of
+the whole edifice, from top to bottom, where ornament is least
+visible. I need hardly say much respecting the wisdom of
+this procedure, excusable only if the whole building were
+covered with ornament; but it is curious to see the way in
+which modern architects have copied it, even when they had
+little enough ornament to spare. For instance, I suppose few
+persons look at the Athenĉum Club-house without feeling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158"></a>158</span>
+vexed at the meagreness and meanness of the windows of the
+ground floor: if, however, they look up under the cornice, and
+have good eyes, they will perceive that the architect has reserved
+his decorations to put between the brackets; and by
+going up to the first floor, and out on the gallery, they may
+succeed in obtaining some glimpses of the designs of the said
+decorations.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII.</span> Such as they are, or were, these cornices were soon
+considered essential parts of the &ldquo;order&rdquo; to which they belonged;
+and the same wisdom which endeavored to fix the
+proportions of the orders, appointed also that no order should
+go without its cornice. The reader has probably heard of the
+architectural division of superstructure into architrave, frieze,
+and cornice; parts which have been appointed by great architects
+to all their work, in the same spirit in which great rhetoricians
+have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium,
+and narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to consider
+that it may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof,
+and get rid of rain, without such an arrangement, as it is to
+tell a plain fact without an exordium or peroration; but he
+must very absolutely consider that the architectural peroration
+or cornice is strictly and sternly limited to the end of the wall&rsquo;s
+speech,&mdash;that is, to the edge of the roof; and that it has nothing
+whatever to do with shafts nor the orders of them. And
+he will then be able fully to enjoy the farther ordinance of the
+late Roman and Renaissance architects, who, attaching it to
+the shaft as if it were part of its shadow, and having to employ
+their shafts often in places where they came not near the roof,
+forthwith cut the roof-cornice to pieces and attached a bit of it
+to every column; thenceforward to be carried by the unhappy
+shaft wherever it went, in addition to any other work on which
+it might happen to be employed. I do not recollect among
+any living beings, except Renaissance architects, any instance
+of a parallel or comparable stupidity: but one can imagine a
+savage getting hold of a piece of one of our iron wire ropes,
+with its rings upon it at intervals to bind it together, and pulling
+the wires asunder to apply them to separate purposes; but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159"></a>159</span>
+imagining there was magic in the ring that bound them, and so
+cutting that to pieces also, and fastening a little bit of it to
+every wire.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII.</span> Thus much may serve us to know respecting the
+first family of wall cornices. The second is immeasurably more
+important, and includes the cornices of all the best buildings
+in the world. It has derived its best form from mediĉval
+military architecture, which imperatively required two things;
+first, a parapet which should permit sight and offence, and
+afford defence at the same time; and secondly, a projection
+bold enough to enable the defenders to rake the bottom of
+the wall with falling bodies; projection which, if the wall
+happened to slope inwards, required not to be small. The
+thoroughly magnificent forms of cornice thus developed by
+necessity in military buildings, were adopted, with more or less
+of boldness or distinctness, in domestic architecture, according
+to the temper of the times and the circumstances of the individual&mdash;decisively
+in the baron&rsquo;s house, imperfectly in the
+burgher&rsquo;s: gradually they found their way into ecclesiastical
+architecture, under wise modifications in the early cathedrals,
+with infinite absurdity in the imitations of them; diminishing
+in size as their original purpose sank into a decorative one, until
+we find battlements, two-and-a-quarter inches square, decorating
+the gates of the Philanthropic Society.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX.</span> There are, therefore, two distinct features in all cornices
+of this kind; first, the bracket, now become of enormous
+importance and of most serious practical service; the second,
+the parapet: and these two features we shall consider in succession,
+and in so doing, shall learn all that is needful for us to
+know, not only respecting cornices, but respecting brackets in
+general, and balconies.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXVIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_38"><img src="images/img160.jpg" width="130" height="197" alt="Fig. XXXVIII." title="Fig. XXXVIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X.</span> 1. The Bracket. In the simplest form of military cornice,
+the brackets are composed of two or more long stones,
+supporting each other in gradually increasing projection, with
+roughly rounded ends, <a href="#fig_38">Fig. XXXVIII.</a>, and the parapet is
+simply a low wall carried on the ends of these, leaving, of
+course, behind, or within it, a hole between each bracket for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160"></a>160</span>
+the convenient dejection of hot sand and lead. This form
+is best seen, I think, in the old Scotch castles; it is very
+grand, but has a giddy look, and one is
+afraid of the whole thing toppling off the
+wall. The next step was to deepen the
+brackets, so as to get them propped against
+a great depth of the main rampart, and to
+have the inner ends of the stones held by a
+greater weight of that main wall above;
+while small arches were thrown from bracket
+to bracket to carry the parapet wall more
+securely. This is the most perfect form of
+cornice, completely satisfying the eye of its
+security, giving full protection to the wall, and applicable to all
+architecture, the interstices between the brackets being filled
+up, when one does not want to throw boiling lead on any body
+below, and the projection being always delightful, as giving
+greater command and view of the building, from its angles, to
+those walking on the rampart. And as, in military buildings,
+there were usually towers at the angles (round which the battlements
+swept) in order to flank the walls, so often in the
+translation into civil or ecclesiastical architecture, a small turret
+remained at the angle, or a more bold projection of balcony, to
+give larger prospect to those upon the rampart. This cornice,
+perfect in all its parts, as arranged for ecclesiastical architecture,
+and exquisitely decorated, is the one employed in the duomo
+of Florence and campanile of Giotto, of which I have already
+spoken as, I suppose, the most perfect architecture in the world.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI.</span> In less important positions and on smaller edifices, this
+cornice diminishes in size, while it retains its arrangement, and
+at last we find nothing but the spirit and form of it left; the
+real practical purpose having ceased, and arch, brackets and
+all, being cut out of a single stone. Thus we find it used in
+early buildings throughout the whole of the north and south
+of Europe, in forms sufficiently represented by the two examples
+in <a href="#plate_4">Plate IV.</a>: 1, from St. Antonio, Padua; 2, from Sens
+in France.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page161"></a>161</span></p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XXXIX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_39"><img src="images/img161a.jpg" width="130" height="559" alt="Fig. XXXIX." title="Fig. XXXIX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII.</span> I wish, however, at present to fix the reader&rsquo;s attention
+on the form of the bracket itself; a most important feature
+in modern as well as ancient architecture. The first idea of
+a bracket is that of a long stone or piece of <span class="correction" title="corrected from timbe">timber</span>
+projecting from the wall, as <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_39">Fig. XXXIX.</a>,
+of which the strength depends on the toughness
+of the stone or wood, and the stability on the
+weight of wall above it (unless it be the end
+of a main beam). But let it be supposed that
+the structure at <i>a</i>, being of the required projection,
+is found too weak: then we may strengthen
+it in one of three ways; (1) by putting a second
+or third stone beneath it, as at <i>b</i>; (2) by giving
+it a spur, as at <i>c</i>; (3) by giving it a shaft and
+another bracket below, <i>d</i>; the great use of this
+arrangement being that the lowermost bracket
+has the help of the weight of the shaft-length
+of wall above its insertion, which is, of course,
+greater than the weight of the small shaft: and
+then the lower bracket may be farther helped by
+the structure at <i>b</i> or <i>c</i>.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XL.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_40"><img src="images/img161b.jpg" width="100" height="360" alt="Fig. XL." title="Fig. XL." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII.</span> Of these structures, <i>a</i> and <i>c</i> are evidently
+adapted especially for wooden buildings; <i>b</i> and <i>d</i> for stone
+ones; the last, of course, susceptible of the richest decoration,
+and superbly employed in the cornice of the cathedral
+of Monza: but all are beautiful in their way,
+and are the means of, I think, nearly half the picturesqueness
+and power of mediĉval building; the
+forms <i>b</i> and <i>c</i> being, of course, the most frequent;
+<i>a</i>, when it occurs, being usually rounded off, as at <i>a</i>,
+<a href="#fig_40">Fig. XL.</a>; <i>b</i>, also, as in <a href="#fig_38">Fig. XXXVIII.</a>, or else itself
+composed of a single stone cut into the form
+of the group <i>b</i> here, <a href="#fig_40">Fig. XL.</a>, or plain, as at <i>c</i>,
+which is also the proper form of the brick bracket,
+when stone is not to be had. The reader will at
+once perceive that the form <i>d</i> is a barbarism (unless
+when the scale is small and the weight to be carried exceedingly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162"></a>162</span>
+light): it is of course, therefore, a favorite form with the
+Renaissance architects; and its introduction is one of the first
+corruptions of the Venetian architecture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV.</span> There is one point necessary to be noticed, though
+bearing on decoration more than construction, before we leave
+the subject of the bracket. The whole power of the construction
+depends upon the stones being well <i>let into</i> the wall; and
+the first function of the decoration should be to give the
+idea of this insertion, if possible; at all events, not to contradict
+this idea. If the reader will glance at any of the brackets
+used in the ordinary architecture of London, he will find them
+of some such character as <a href="#fig_41">Fig. XLI.</a>; not a bad form in itself,
+but exquisitely absurd in its curling lines, which give the idea
+of some writhing suspended tendril, instead of a stiff support,
+and by their careful avoidance of the wall make the
+bracket look pinned on, and in constant danger of
+sliding down. This is, also, a Classical and Renaissance
+decoration.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_41"><img src="images/img162.jpg" width="100" height="222" alt="Fig. XLI." title="Fig. XLI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV.</span> 2. The Parapet. Its forms are fixed in
+military architecture by the necessities of the art of
+war at the time of building, and are always beautiful
+wherever they have been really thus fixed; delightful in
+the variety of their setting, and in the quaint darkness of their
+shot-holes, and fantastic changes of elevation and outline.
+Nothing is more remarkable than the swiftly discerned difference
+between the masculine irregularity of such true battlements,
+and the formal pitifulness of those which are set on
+modern buildings to give them a military air,&mdash;as on the jail
+at Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI.</span> Respecting the Parapet for mere safeguard upon
+buildings not military, there are just two fixed laws. It should
+be pierced, otherwise it is not recognised from below for a
+parapet at all, and it should not be in the form of a battlement,
+especially in church architecture.</p>
+
+<p>The most comfortable heading of a true parapet is a plain
+level on which the arm can be rested, and along which it can
+glide. Any jags or elevations are disagreeable; the latter, as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page163"></a>163</span>
+interrupting the view and disturbing the eye, if they are
+higher than the arm, the former, as opening some aspect of
+danger if they are much lower; and the inconvenience, therefore,
+of the battlemented form, as well as the worse than
+absurdity, the bad feeling, of the appliance of a military feature
+to a church, ought long ago to have determined its rejection.
+Still (for the question of its picturesque value is here so closely
+connected with that of its practical use, that it is vain to endeavor
+to discuss it separately) there is a certain agreeableness
+in the way in which the jagged outline dovetails the shadow of
+the slated or leaded roof into the top of the wall, which may
+make the use of the battlement excusable where there is a difficulty
+in managing some unvaried line, and where the expense
+of a pierced parapet cannot be encountered: but remember
+always, that the value of the battlement consists in its letting
+shadow into the light of the wall, or <i>vice versâ</i>, when it comes
+against light sky, letting the light of the sky into the shade of
+the wall; but that the actual outline of the parapet itself, if
+the eye be arrested upon this, instead of upon the alternation
+of shadow, is as <i>ugly</i> a succession of line as can by any possibility
+be invented. Therefore, the battlemented parapet may
+only be used where this alternation of shade is certain to be
+shown, under nearly all conditions of effect; and where the
+lines to be dealt with are on a scale which may admit battlements
+of bold and manly size. The idea that a battlement is
+an ornament anywhere, and that a miserable and diminutive
+imitation of castellated outline will always serve to fill up blanks
+and Gothicise unmanageable spaces, is one of the great idiocies
+of the present day. A battlement is in its origin a piece of
+wall large enough to cover a man&rsquo;s body, and however it may
+be decorated, or pierced, or finessed away into traceries, as long
+as so much of its outline is retained as to suggest its origin, so
+long its size must remain undiminished. To crown a turret
+six feet high with chopped battlements three inches wide, is
+children&rsquo;s Gothic: it is one of the paltry falsehoods for which
+there is no excuse, and part of the system of using models of
+architecture to decorate architecture, which we shall hereafter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164"></a>164</span>
+note as one of the chief and most destructive follies of the
+Renaissance;<a name="FnAnchor_54" href="#Footnote_54"><span class="sp">54</span></a> and in the present day the practice may be
+classed as one which distinguishes the architects of whom there
+is no hope, who have neither eye nor head for their work, and
+who must pass their lives in vain struggles against the refractory
+lines of their own buildings.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII.</span> As the only excuse for the battlemented parapet is
+its alternation of shadow, so the only fault of the natural or
+level parapet is its monotony of line. This is, however, in
+practice, almost always broken by the pinnacles of the buttresses,
+and if not, may be varied by the tracery of its penetrations.
+The forms of these evidently admit every kind of
+change; for a stone parapet, however pierced, is sure to be
+strong enough for its purpose of protection, and, as regards the
+strength of the building in general, the lighter it is the better.
+More fantastic forms may, therefore, be admitted in a parapet
+than in any other architectural feature, and for most services,
+the Flamboyant parapets seem to me preferable to all others;
+especially when the leaden roofs set off by points of darkness
+the lace-like intricacy of penetration. These, however, as well
+as the forms usually given to Renaissance balustrades (of which,
+by the bye, the best piece of criticism I know is the sketch in
+&ldquo;David Copperfield&rdquo; of the personal appearance of the man
+who stole Jip), and the other and finer forms invented by Paul
+Veronese in his architectural backgrounds, together with the
+pure columnar balustrade of Venice, must be considered as
+altogether decorative features.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII.</span> So also are, of course, the jagged or crown-like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165"></a>165</span>
+finishings of walls employed where no real parapet of protection
+is desired; originating in the defences of outworks and
+single walls: these are used much in the east on walls surrounding
+unroofed courts. The richest examples of such
+decoration are Arabian; and from Cairo they seem to have
+been brought to Venice. It is probable that few of my readers,
+however familiar the general form of the Ducal Palace may
+have been rendered to them by innumerable drawings, have any
+distinct idea of its roof, owing to the staying of the eye on its
+superb parapet, of which we shall give account hereafter. In
+most of the Venetian cases the parapets which surround roofing
+are very sufficient for protection, except that the stones of
+which they are composed appear loose and infirm: but their
+purpose is entirely decorative; every wall, whether detached
+or roofed, being indiscriminately fringed with Arabic forms of
+parapet, more or less Gothicised, according to the lateness of
+their date.</p>
+
+<p>I think there is no other point of importance requiring
+illustration respecting the roof itself, or its cornice: but this
+Venetian form of ornamental parapet connects itself curiously,
+at the angles of nearly all the buildings on which it occurs,
+with the pinnacled system of the north, founded on the structure
+of the buttress. This, it will be remembered, is to be the
+subject of the fifth division of our inquiry.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_54" href="#FnAnchor_54"><span class="fn">54</span></a> Not of Renaissance alone: the practice of modelling buildings on a
+minute scale for niches and tabernacle-work has always been more or less
+admitted, and I suppose <i>authority</i> for diminutive battlements might be
+gathered from the Gothic of almost every period, as well as for many other
+faults and mistakes: no Gothic school having ever been thoroughly systematised
+or perfected, even in its best times. But that a mistaken decoration
+sometimes occurs among a crowd of noble ones, is no more an excuse for
+the habitual&mdash;far less, the exclusive&mdash;use of such a decoration, than the
+accidental or seeming misconstructions of a Greek chorus are an excuse for
+a school boy&rsquo;s ungrammatical exercise.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page166"></a>166</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_15"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE BUTTRESS.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I.</span> <span class="sc">We</span> have hitherto supposed ourselves concerned with
+the support of vertical pressure only; and the arch and roof
+have been considered as forms of abstract strength, without
+reference to the means by which their lateral pressure was to
+be resisted. Few readers will need now to be reminded, that
+every arch or gable not tied at its base by beams or bars,
+exercises a lateral pressure upon the walls which sustain it,&mdash;pressure
+which may, indeed, be met and sustained by increasing
+the thickness of the wall or vertical piers, and which is in
+reality thus met in most Italian buildings, but may, with less
+expenditure of material, and with (perhaps) more graceful
+effect, be met by some particular application of the provisions
+against lateral pressure called Buttresses. These, therefore,
+we are next to examine.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II.</span> Buttresses are of many kinds, according to the character
+and direction of the lateral forces they are intended to
+resist. But their first broad division is into buttresses which
+meet and break the force before it arrives at the wall, and
+buttresses which stand on the lee side of the wall, and prop it
+against the force.</p>
+
+<p>The lateral forces which walls have to sustain are of three
+distinct kinds: dead weight, as of masonry or still water;
+moving weight, as of wind or running water; and sudden concussion,
+as of earthquakes, explosions, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, dead weight can only be resisted by the buttress
+acting as a prop; for a buttress on the side of, or towards the
+weight, would only add to its effect. This, then, forms the
+first great class of buttressed architecture; lateral thrusts, of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167"></a>167</span>
+roofing or arches, being met by props of masonry outside&mdash;the
+thrust from within, the prop without; or the crushing
+force of water on a ship&rsquo;s side met by its cross timbers&mdash;the
+thrust here from without the wall, the prop within.</p>
+
+<p>Moving weight may, of course, be resisted by the prop on
+the lee side of the wall, but is often more effectually met, on
+the side which is attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms,
+cunning buttresses, which do not attempt to sustain the weight,
+but <i>parry</i> it, and throw it off in directions clear of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly: concussions and vibratory motion, though in
+reality only supported by the prop buttress, must be provided
+for by buttresses on both sides of the wall, as their direction
+cannot be foreseen, and is continually changing.</p>
+
+<p>We shall briefly glance at these three systems of buttressing;
+but the two latter being of small importance to our present
+purpose, may as well be dismissed first.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III.</span> 1. Buttresses for guard against moving weight and
+set towards the weight they resist.</p>
+
+<p>The most familiar instance of this kind of buttress we have
+in the sharp piers of a bridge, in the centre of a powerful
+stream, which divide the current on their edges, and throw it
+to each side under the arches. A ship&rsquo;s bow is a buttress of
+the same kind, and so also the ridge of a breastplate, both
+adding to the strength of it in resisting a cross blow, and giving
+a better chance of a bullet glancing aside. In Switzerland, projecting
+buttresses of this kind are often built round churches,
+heading up hill, to divide and throw off the avalanches. The
+various forms given to piers and harbor quays, and to the bases
+of light-houses, in order to meet the force of the waves, are all
+conditions of this kind of buttress. But in works of ornamental
+architecture such buttresses are of rare occurrence;
+and I merely name them in order to mark their place in our
+architectural system, since in the investigation of our present
+subject we shall not meet with a single example of them,
+unless sometimes the angle of the foundation of a palace set
+against the sweep of the tide, or the wooden piers of some
+canal bridge quivering in its current.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page168"></a>168</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV.</span> 2. Buttresses for guard against vibratory motion.</p>
+
+<p>The whole formation of this kind of buttress resolves itself
+into mere expansion of the base of the wall, so as to make it
+stand steadier, as a man stands with his feet apart when he is
+likely to lose his balance. This approach to a pyramidal form
+is also of great use as a guard against the action of artillery;
+that if a stone or tier of stones be battered out of the lower
+portions of the wall, the whole upper part may not topple over
+or crumble down at once. Various forms of this buttress,
+sometimes applied to particular points of the wall, sometimes
+forming a great sloping rampart along its base, are frequent in
+buildings of countries exposed to earthquake. They give a
+peculiarly heavy outline to much of the architecture of the
+kingdom of Naples, and they are of the form in which strength
+and solidity are first naturally sought, in the slope of the
+Egyptian wall. The base of Guy&rsquo;s Tower at Warwick is a
+singularly bold example of their military use; and so, in general,
+bastion and rampart profiles, where, however, the object
+of stability against a shock is complicated with that of sustaining
+weight of earth in the rampart behind.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V.</span> 3. Prop buttresses against dead weight.</p>
+
+<p>This is the group with which we have principally to do;
+and a buttress of this kind acts in two ways, partly by its
+weight and partly by its strength. It acts by its weight when
+its mass is so great that the weight it sustains cannot stir it,
+but is lost upon it, buried in it, and annihilated: neither the
+shape of such a buttress nor the cohesion of its materials are
+of much consequence; a heap of stones or sandbags, laid up
+against the wall, will answer as well as a built and cemented
+mass.</p>
+
+<p>But a buttress acting by its strength is not of mass sufficient
+to resist the weight by mere inertia; but it conveys the weight
+through its body to something else which is so capable; as, for
+instance, a man leaning against a door with his hands, and
+propping himself against the ground, conveys the force which
+would open or close the door against him through his body to
+the ground. A buttress acting in this way must be of perfectly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169"></a>169</span>
+coherent materials, and so strong that though the weight
+to be borne could easily move it, it cannot break it: this kind
+of buttress may be called a conducting buttress. Practically,
+however, the two modes of action are always in some sort
+united. Again, the weight to be borne may either act generally
+on the whole wall surface, or with excessive energy on
+particular points: when it acts on the whole wall surface, the
+whole wall is generally supported; and the arrangement becomes
+a continuous rampart, as a dyke, or bank of reservoir.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI.</span> It is, however, very seldom that lateral force in architecture
+is equally distributed. In most cases the weight of
+the roof, or the force of any lateral thrust, are more or less
+confined to certain points and directions. In an early state of
+architectural science this definiteness of direction is not yet
+clear, and it is met by uncertain application of mass or
+strength in the buttress, sometimes by mere thickening of the
+wall into square piers, which are partly piers, partly buttresses,
+as in Norman keeps and towers. But as science advances, the
+weight to be borne is designedly and decisively thrown upon
+certain points; the direction and degree of the forces which
+are then received are exactly calculated, and met by conducting
+buttresses of the smallest possible dimensions; themselves,
+in their turn, supported by vertical buttresses acting by weight,
+and these perhaps, in their turn, by another set of conducting
+buttresses: so that, in the best examples of such arrangements,
+the weight to be borne may be considered as the shock of an
+electric fluid, which, by a hundred different rods and channels,
+is divided and carried away into the ground.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII.</span> In order to give greater weight to the vertical buttress
+piers which sustain the conducting buttresses, they are
+loaded with pinnacles, which, however, are, I believe, in all
+the buildings in which they become very prominent, merely
+decorative: they are of some use, indeed, by their weight;
+but if this were all for which they were put there, a few cubic
+feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose,
+without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader
+likes to ask any Gothic architect with whom he may happen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170"></a>170</span>
+to be acquainted, to substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles,
+he will see by the expression of his face how far he considers
+the pinnacles decorative members. In the work which seems
+to me the great type of simple and masculine buttress structure,
+the apse of Beauvais, the pinnacles are altogether insignificant,
+and are evidently added just as exclusively to entertain
+the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the
+slight shafts which are set on its angles; while in other very
+noble Gothic buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches
+for statues, without any reference to construction at all: and
+sometimes even, as in the tomb of Can Signoria at Verona, on
+small piers detached from the main building.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII.</span> I believe, therefore, that the development of the pinnacle
+is merely a part of the general erectness and picturesqueness
+of northern work above alluded to: and that, if there had
+been no other place for the pinnacles, the Gothic builders
+would have put them on the tops of their arches (they often
+<i>did</i> on the tops of gables and pediments), rather than not have
+had them; but the natural position of the pinnacle is, of
+course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability
+of the building; that is to say, on its main wall piers and the
+vertical piers at the buttresses. And thus the edifice is surrounded
+at last by a complete company of detached piers and
+pinnacles, each sustaining an inclined prop against the central
+wall, and looking something like a band of giants holding it
+up with the butts of their lances. This arrangement would
+imply the loss of an enormous space of ground, but the intervals
+of the buttresses are usually walled in below, and form
+minor chapels.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="fig_42"><img src="images/img171.jpg" width="600" height="178" alt="Fig. XLII." title="Fig. XLII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX.</span> The science of this arrangement has made it the
+subject of much enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic
+architects, almost as unreasonable, in some respects, as the
+declamation of the Renaissance architects respecting Greek
+structure. The fact is, that the whole northern buttress system
+is based on the grand requirement of tall windows and
+vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to gain
+this quantity of light, the piers between the windows are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page171"></a>171</span>
+diminished in thickness until they are far too weak to bear the
+roof, and then sustained by external buttresses. In the Italian
+method the light is rather dreaded than desired, and the wall
+is made wide enough between the windows to bear the roof,
+and so left. In fact, the simplest expression of the difference
+in the systems is, that a northern apse is a southern one with
+its inter-fenestrial piers set edgeways. Thus, <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_42">Fig. XLII.</a>, is
+the general idea of the southern apse; take it to pieces, and
+set all its piers edgeways, as at <i>b</i>, and you have the northern
+one. You gain much light for the interior, but you cut the
+exterior to pieces, and instead of a bold rounded or polygonal
+surface, ready for any kind of decoration, you have a series
+of dark and damp cells, which no device that I have yet
+seen has succeeded in decorating in a perfectly satisfactory
+manner. If the system be farther carried, and a second or
+third order of buttresses be added, the real fact is that we
+have a building standing on two or three rows of concentric
+piers, with the <i>roof off</i> the whole of it except the central
+circle, and only ribs left, to carry the weight of the bit of
+remaining roof in the middle; and after the eye has been
+accustomed to the bold and simple rounding of the Italian
+apse, the skeleton character of the disposition is painfully felt.
+After spending some months in Venice, I thought Bourges
+Cathedral looked exactly like a half-built ship on its shores.
+It is useless, however, to dispute respecting the merits of the
+two systems: both are noble in their place; the Northern
+decidedly the most scientific, or at least involving the greatest
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page172"></a>172</span>
+display of science, the Italian the calmest and purest, this
+having in it the sublimity of a calm heaven or a windless noon,
+the other that of a mountain flank tormented by the north
+wind, and withering into grisly furrows of alternate chasm
+and crag.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X.</span> If I have succeeded in making the reader understand
+the veritable action of the buttress, he will have no difficulty
+in determining its fittest form. He has to deal with two distinct
+kinds; one, a narrow vertical pier, acting principally by
+its weight, and crowned by a pinnacle; the other, commonly
+called a Flying buttress, a cross bar set from such a pier (when
+detached from the building) against the main wall. This
+latter, then, is to be considered as a mere prop or shore, and its
+use by the Gothic architects might be illustrated by the supposition
+that we were to build all our houses with walls too thin
+to stand without wooden props outside, and then to substitute
+stone props for wooden ones. I have some doubts of the real
+dignity of such a proceeding, but at all events the merit of the
+form of the flying buttress depends on its faithfully and visibly
+performing this somewhat humble office; it is, therefore, in its
+purity, a mere sloping bar of stone, with an arch beneath it to
+carry its weight, that is to say, to prevent the action of gravity
+from in any wise deflecting it, or causing it to break downwards
+under the lateral thrust; it is thus formed quite simple
+in Notre Dame of Paris, and in the Cathedral of Beauvais,
+while at Cologne the sloping bars are pierced with quatrefoils,
+and at Amiens with traceried arches. Both seem to me effeminate
+and false in principle; not, of course, that there is any
+occasion to make the flying buttress heavy, if a light one will
+answer the purpose; but it seems as if some security were
+sacrificed to ornament. At Amiens the arrangement is now
+seen to great disadvantage, for the early traceries have been
+replaced by base flamboyant ones, utterly weak and despicable.
+Of the degradations of the original form which took place in
+after times, I have spoken at p. 35 of the &ldquo;Seven Lamps.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI.</span> The form of the common buttress must be familiar to
+the eye of every reader, sloping if low, and thrown into
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173"></a>173</span>
+successive steps if they are to be carried to any considerable
+height. There is much dignity in them when they are of
+essential service; but even in their best examples, their awkward
+angles are among the least manageable features of the
+Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was
+destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a
+diminished scale; until the buttress became actually confused
+with the shaft, and we find strangely crystallised masses of
+diminutive buttress applied, for merely vertical support, in the
+northern tabernacle work; while in some recent copies of it
+the principle has been so far distorted that the tiny buttressings
+look as if they carried the superstructure on the points
+of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford.
+Indeed, in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently consider
+buttresses as convenient breaks of blank surface, and
+general apologies for deadness of wall. They stand in the
+place of ideas, and I think are supposed also to have something
+of the odor of sanctity about them; otherwise, one hardly sees
+why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the
+kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one&rsquo;s hat
+off, should have a bunch of them at every corner; and worse
+than this, they are even thought ornamental when they can be
+of no possible use; and these stupid penthouse outlines are
+forced upon the eye in every species of decoration: in St.
+Margaret&rsquo;s Chapel, West Street, there are actually a couple of
+buttresses at the end of every pew.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII.</span> It is almost impossible, in consequence of these unwise
+repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some
+degree of prejudice; and I look upon it as one of the most
+justifiable causes of the unfortunate aversion with which many
+of our best architects regard the whole Gothic school. It
+may, however, always be regarded with respect when its form
+is simple and its service clear; but no treason to Gothic can be
+greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to enhance
+the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page174"></a>174</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+
+<h5>FORM OF APERTURE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I.</span> <span class="sc">We</span> have now, in order, examined the means of raising
+walls and sustaining roofs, and we have finally to consider the
+structure of the necessary apertures in the wall veil, the door
+and window; respecting which there are three main points to
+be considered.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">1. The form of the aperture, <i>i.e.</i>, its outline, its size, and
+the forms of its sides.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">2. The filling of the aperture, <i>i.e.</i>, valves and glass, and
+their holdings.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">3. The protection of the aperture, and its appliances, <i>i.e.</i>,
+canopies, porches, and balconies. We shall examine
+these in succession.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II.</span> 1. The form of the aperture: and first of doors. We
+will, for the present, leave out of the question doors and gates
+in unroofed walls, the forms of these being very arbitrary, and
+confine ourselves to the consideration of doors of entrance into
+roofed buildings. Such doors will, for the most part, be at, or
+near, the base of the building; except when raised for purposes
+of defence, as in the old Scotch border towers, and our
+own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit access in
+deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for
+convenience or magnificence. But in most cases, whether high
+or low, a door may be assumed to be considerably lower than
+the apartments or buildings into which it gives admission, and
+therefore to have some height of wall above it, whose weight
+must be carried by the heading of the door. It is clear, therefore,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175"></a>175</span>
+that the best heading must be an arch, because the
+strongest, and that a square-headed door must be wrong, unless
+under Mont-Cenisian masonry; or else, unless the top of the
+door be the roof of the building, as in low cottages. And a
+square-headed door is just so much more wrong and ugly than a
+connexion of main shafts by lintels, as the weight of wall above
+the door is likely to be greater than that above the main shafts.
+Thus, while I admit the Greek general forms of temple to be
+admirable in their kind, I think the Greek door always offensive
+and unmanageable.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III.</span> We have it also determined by necessity, that the
+apertures shall be at least above a man&rsquo;s height, with perpendicular
+sides (for sloping sides are evidently unnecessary, and
+even inconvenient, therefore absurd) and level threshold; and
+this aperture we at present suppose simply cut through the
+wall without any bevelling of the jambs. Such a door, wide
+enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and with such
+fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be
+fit enough for any building into which entrance is required
+neither often, nor by many persons at a time. But when
+entrance and egress are constant, or
+required by crowds, certain further
+modifications must take place.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLIII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_43"><img src="images/img175.jpg" width="250" height="154" alt="Fig. XLIII" title="Fig. XLIII" /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV.</span> When entrance and egress
+are constant, it may be supposed
+that the valves will be absent or unfastened,&mdash;that
+people will be passing
+more quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfrequent,
+and that the square angles of the wall will be inconvenient
+to such quick passers through. It is evident, therefore,
+that what would be done in time, for themselves, by the
+passing multitude, should be done for them at once by the
+architect; and that these angles, which would be worn away
+by friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called,
+splayed, and the most contracted part of the aperture made as
+short as possible, so that the plan of the entrance should become
+as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_43">Fig. XLIII.</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page176"></a>176</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V.</span> Farther. As persons on the outside may often
+approach the door or depart from it, <i>beside</i> the building, so as
+to turn aside as they enter or leave the door, and therefore
+touch its jamb, but, on the inside, will in almost every case
+approach the door, or depart from it in the direct line of the
+entrance (people generally walking <i>forward</i> when they enter a
+hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do so
+when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may
+be very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside,
+so that the plan of the aperture should become as at <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_43">Fig.
+XLIII.</a> Farther, as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently
+carry an unbevelled arch, the door arch must be bevelled also,
+and the aperture, seen from the outside, will have somewhat
+the aspect of a small cavern diminishing towards the interior.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI.</span> If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is
+required for multitudes at the same time, the size of the aperture
+either must be increased, or other apertures must be introduced.
+It may, in some buildings, be optional with the architect
+whether he shall give many small doors, or few large
+ones; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres, and other places
+where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are by
+far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the
+purposes of the building, as when it is to be entered by processions,
+or where the crowd most usually enter in one direction,
+require the large single entrance; and (for here again the
+ĉsthetic and structural laws cannot be separated) the expression
+and harmony of the building require, in nearly every case,
+an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which
+is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a
+great multitude should find its way out and in, as ants and
+wasps do, through holes; and nothing more undignified than
+the paltry doors of many of our English cathedrals, which look
+as if they were made, not for the open egress, but for the
+surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides,
+the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as
+possible, to desire at least the western entrance to be single,
+partly because no man of right feeling would willingly lose the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page177"></a>177</span>
+idea of unity and fellowship in going up to worship, which is
+suggested by the vast single entrance; partly because it is at
+the entrance that the most serious words of the building are
+always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the
+worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken
+to all at once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak
+repetitions over minor doors.</p>
+
+<p>In practice the matter has been, I suppose, regulated almost
+altogether by convenience, the western doors being single in
+small churches, while in the larger the entrances become three
+or five, the central door remaining always principal, in consequence
+of the fine sense of composition which the mediĉval
+builders never lost. These arrangements have formed the
+noblest buildings in the world. Yet it is worth observing<a name="FnAnchor_55" href="#Footnote_55"><span class="sp">55</span></a>
+how perfect in its simplicity the single entrance may become,
+when it is treated as in the Duomo and St. Zeno of Verona,
+and other such early Lombard churches, having noble porches,
+and rich sculptures grouped around the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII.</span> However, whether the entrances be single, triple, or
+manifold, it is a constant law that one shall be principal, and
+all shall be of size in some degree proportioned to that of
+the building. And this size is, of course, chiefly to be expressed
+in width, that being the only useful dimension in a
+door (except for pageantry, chairing of bishops and waving of
+banners, and other such vanities, not, I hope, after this century,
+much to be regarded in the building of Christian temples);
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178"></a>178</span>
+but though the width is the only necessary dimension, it is well
+to increase the height also in some proportion to it, in order
+that there may be less weight of wall above, resting on the
+increased span of the arch. This is, however, so much the
+necessary result of the broad curve of the arch itself, that there
+is no structural necessity of elevating the jamb; and I believe
+that beautiful entrances might be made of every span of arch,
+retaining the jamb at a little more than a man&rsquo;s height, until
+the sweep of the curves became so vast that the small vertical
+line became a part of them, and one entered into the temple as
+under a great rainbow.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII.</span> On the other hand, the jamb <i>may</i> be elevated indefinitely,
+so that the increasing entrance retains <i>at least</i> the
+proportion of width it had originally; say 4 ft. by 7 ft. 5 in.
+But a less proportion of width than this has always a meagre,
+inhospitable, and ungainly look except in military architecture,
+where the narrowness of the entrance is necessary, and its
+height adds to its grandeur, as between the entrance towers
+of our British castles. This law however, observe, applies
+only to true doors, not to the arches of porches, which may be
+of any proportion, as of any number, being in fact intercolumniations,
+not doors; as in the noble example of the west
+front of Peterborough, which, in spite of the destructive
+absurdity of its central arch being the narrowest, would still,
+if the paltry porter&rsquo;s lodge, or gatehouse, or turnpike, or whatever
+it is, were knocked out of the middle of it, be the noblest
+west front in England.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX.</span> Further, and finally. In proportion to the height and
+size of the building, and therefore to the size of its doors, will
+be the thickness of its walls, especially at the foundation, that
+is to say, beside the doors; and also in proportion to the
+numbers of a crowd will be the unruliness and pressure of it.
+Hence, partly in necessity and partly in prudence, the splaying
+or chamfering of the jamb of the larger door will be
+deepened, and, if possible, made at a larger angle for the large
+door than for the small one; so that the large door will always
+be encompassed by a visible breadth of jamb proportioned to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179"></a>179</span>
+its own magnitude. The decorative value of this feature we
+shall see hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X.</span> The second kind of apertures we have to examine
+are those of windows.</p>
+
+<p>Window apertures are mainly of two kinds; those for outlook,
+and those for inlet of light, many being for both purposes,
+and either purpose, or both, combined in military architecture
+with those of offence and defence. But all window
+apertures, as compared with door apertures, have almost infinite
+licence of form and size: they may be of any shape, from the
+slit or cross slit to the circle;<a name="FnAnchor_56" href="#Footnote_56"><span class="sp">56</span></a> of any size, from the loophole
+of the castle to the pillars of light of the cathedral apse. Yet,
+according to their place and purpose, one or two laws of fitness
+hold respecting them, which let us examine in the two
+classes of windows successively, but without reference to military
+architecture, which here, as before, we may dismiss as a
+subject of separate science, only noticing that windows, like
+all other features, are always delightful, if not beautiful, when
+their position and shape have indeed been thus necessarily
+determined, and that many of their most picturesque forms
+have resulted from the requirements of war. We should also
+find in military architecture the typical forms of the two
+classes of outlet and inlet windows in their utmost development;
+the greatest sweep of sight and range of shot on the
+one hand, and the fullest entry of light and air on the other,
+being constantly required at the smallest possible apertures.
+Our business, however, is to reason out the laws for ourselves,
+not to take the examples as we find them.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI.</span> 1. Outlook apertures. For these no general outline
+is determinable by the necessities or inconveniences of outlooking,
+except only that the bottom or sill of the windows, at
+whatever height, should be horizontal, for the convenience of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page180"></a>180</span>
+leaning on it, or standing on it if the window be to the ground.
+The form of the upper part of the window is quite immaterial,
+for all windows allow a greater range of sight when they are
+<i>approached</i> than that of the eye itself: it is the approachability
+of the window, that is to say, the annihilation of the thickness
+of the wall, which is the real point to be attended to. If,
+therefore, the aperture be inaccessible, or so small that the
+thickness of the wall cannot be entered, the wall is to be
+bevelled<a name="FnAnchor_57" href="#Footnote_57"><span class="sp">57</span></a> on the outside, so as to increase the range of sight as
+far as possible; if the aperture can be entered, then bevelled
+from the point to which entrance is possible. The bevelling
+will, if possible, be in every direction, that is to say, upwards
+at the top, outwards at the sides, and downwards at the bottom,
+but essentially <i>downwards</i>; the earth and the doings upon it
+being the chief object in outlook windows, except of observatories;
+and where the object is a distinct and special view
+downwards, it will be of advantage to shelter the eye as far as
+possible from the rays of light coming from above, and the
+head of the window may be left horizontal, or even the whole
+aperture sloped outwards, as the slit in a letter-box is inwards.</p>
+
+<p>The best windows for outlook are, of course, oriels and bow
+windows, but these are not to be considered under the head
+of apertures merely; they are either balconies roofed and
+glazed, and to be considered under the head of external appliances,
+or they are each a story of an external semi-tower,
+having true aperture windows on each side of it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs correction" title="added a §">XII.</span> 2. Inlet windows. These windows may, of course, be
+of any shape and size whatever, according to the other necessities
+of the building, and the quantity and direction of light
+desired, their purpose being now to throw it in streams on
+particular lines or spots; now to diffuse it everywhere; sometimes
+to introduce it in broad masses, tempered in strength, as
+in the cathedral colored window; sometimes in starry showers
+of scattered brilliancy, like the apertures in the roof of an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181"></a>181</span>
+Arabian bath; perhaps the most beautiful of all forms being
+the rose, which has in it the unity of both characters, and
+sympathy with that of the source of light itself. It is noticeable,
+however, that while both the circle and pointed oval are
+beautiful window forms, it would be very painful
+to cut either of them in half and connect
+them by vertical lines, as in <a href="#fig_44">Fig. XLIV.</a> The
+reason is, I believe, that so treated, the upper
+arch is not considered as connected with the
+lower, and forming an entire figure, but as the ordinary arch
+roof of the aperture, and the lower arch as an arch <i>floor</i>,
+equally unnecessary and unnatural. Also, the elliptical oval is
+generally an unsatisfactory form, because it gives the idea of
+useless trouble in building it, though it occurs quaintly and
+pleasantly in the former windows of France: I believe it is also
+objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look,
+like that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated
+forms, are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because
+this is the weakest position they can structurally have; that is
+to say, less light is admitted, with greater loss of strength to
+the building, than by any other form. If admissible anywhere,
+it is for the sake of variety at the top of the building,
+as the flat parallelogram sometimes not ungracefully in Italian
+Renaissance.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLIV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_44"><img src="images/img181.jpg" width="120" height="84" alt="Fig. XLIV." title="Fig. XLIV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII.</span> The question of bevelling becomes a little more
+complicated in the inlet than the outlook window, because
+the mass or quantity of light admitted is often of more consequence
+than its direction, and often <i>vice versâ</i>; and the outlook
+window is supposed to be approachable, which is far
+from being always the case with windows for light, so that
+the bevelling which in the outlook window is chiefly to open
+range of sight, is in the inlet a means not only of admitting
+the light in greater quantity, but of directing it to the spot
+on which it is to fall. But, in general, the bevelling of the
+one window will reverse that of the other; for, first, no
+natural light will strike on the inlet window from beneath,
+unless reflected light, which is (I believe) injurious to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page182"></a>182</span>
+health and the sight; and thus, while in the outlook window
+the outside bevel downwards is essential, in the inlet it would
+be useless: and the sill is to be flat, if the window be on a
+level with the spot it is to light; and sloped downwards
+within, if above it. Again, as the brightest rays of light are
+the steepest, the outside bevel upwards is as essential in the
+roof of the inlet as it was of small importance in that of the
+outlook window.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV.</span> On the horizontal section the aperture will expand
+internally, a somewhat larger number of rays being thus
+reflected from the jambs; and the aperture being thus the
+smallest possible outside, this is the favorite military form of
+inlet window, always found in magnificent development in
+the thick walls of mediĉval castles and convents. Its effect
+is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon-like in its fullest development,
+owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the
+outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it
+to a mere point of light. A modified condition of it, with
+some combination of the outlook form, is probably the best
+for domestic buildings in general (which, however, in modern
+architecture, are unhappily so thin walled, that the outline of
+the jambs becomes a matter almost of indifference), it being
+generally noticeable that the depth of recess which I have
+observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also
+a certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended
+rather to admit light to persons quietly occupied in their
+homes, than to stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_55" href="#FnAnchor_55"><span class="fn">55</span></a> And worth questioning, also, whether the triple porch has not been
+associated with Romanist views of mediatorship; the Redeemer being
+represented as presiding over the central door only, and the lateral entrances
+being under the protection of saints, while the Madonna almost always has
+one or both of the transepts. But it would be wrong to press this, for, in
+nine cases out of ten, the architect has been merely influenced in his placing
+of the statues by an artist&rsquo;s desire of variety in their forms and dress; and
+very naturally prefers putting a canonisation over one door, a martyrdom
+over another, and an assumption over a third, to repeating a crucifixion or
+a judgment above all. The architect&rsquo;s doctrine is only, therefore, to be
+noted with indisputable reprobation when the Madonna gets possession of
+the main door.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_56" href="#FnAnchor_56"><span class="fn">56</span></a> The arch heading is indeed the best where there is much incumbent
+weight, but a window frequently has very little weight above it, especially
+when placed high, and the arched form loses light in a low room: therefore
+the square-headed window is admissible where the square-headed door
+is not.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_57" href="#FnAnchor_57"><span class="fn">57</span></a> I do not like the sound of the word &ldquo;splayed;&rdquo; I always shall use
+&ldquo;bevelled&rdquo; instead.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page183"></a>183</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+
+<h5>FILLING OF APERTURE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I.</span> <span class="sc">Thus</span> far we have been concerned with the outline only
+of the aperture: we were next, it will be remembered, to
+consider the necessary modes of filling it with valves in the
+case of the door, or with glass or tracery in that of the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>1. Fillings of doors. We concluded, in the previous Chapter,
+that doors in buildings of any importance or size should
+have headings in the form of an arch. This is, however, the
+most inconvenient form we could choose, as respects the fitting
+of the valves of the doorway; for the arch-shaped head of the
+valves not only requires considerable nicety in fitting to the
+arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,&mdash;a double disadvantage,
+straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in
+opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the
+eye, that a door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable
+object. It becomes, therefore, a matter of true
+necessity so to arrange the doorway as to admit of its being
+fitted with rectangular valves.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II.</span> Now, in determining the form of the aperture, we
+supposed the jamb of the door to be of the utmost height required
+for entrance. The extra height of the arch is unnecessary
+as an opening, the arch being required for its strength
+only, not for its elevation. There is, therefore, no reason why
+it should not be barred across by a horizontal lintel, into which
+the valves may be fitted, and the triangular or semicircular
+arched space above the lintel may then be permanently closed,
+as we choose, either with bars, or glass, or stone.</p>
+
+<p>This is the form of all good doors, without exception,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184"></a>184</span>
+over the whole world and in all ages, and no other can ever
+be invented.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III.</span> In the simplest doors the cross lintel is of wood only,
+and glass or bars occupy the space above, a very frequent form
+in Venice. In more elaborate doors the cross lintel is of
+stone, and the filling sometimes of brick, sometimes of stone,
+very often a grand single stone being used to close the entire
+space: the space thus filled is called the Tympanum. In
+large doors the cross lintel is too long to bear the great incumbent
+weight of this stone filling without support; it is, therefore,
+carried by a pier in the centre; and two valves are used,
+fitted to the rectangular spaces on each side of the pier. In
+the most elaborate examples of this condition, each of these
+secondary doorways has an arch heading, a cross lintel, and a
+triangular filling or tympanum of its own, all subordinated to
+the main arch above.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV.</span> 2. Fillings of windows.</p>
+
+<p>When windows are large, and to be filled with glass, the
+sheet of glass, however constructed, whether of large panes or
+small fragments, requires the support of bars of some kind,
+either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood is inapplicable on a
+large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit for door-valves,
+which can be easily refitted, and in which weight
+would be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars,
+which, if they decayed, might let the whole window be blown
+in before their decay was observed, and in which weight
+would be an advantage, as offering more resistance to the
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>Iron is, however, fit for window-bars, and there seems no
+constructive reason why we should not have iron traceries, as
+well as iron pillars, iron churches, and iron steeples. But I
+have, in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; given reasons for not considering
+such structures as architecture at all.</p>
+
+<p>The window-bars must, therefore, be of stone, and of stone
+only.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V.</span> The purpose of the window being always to let in as
+much light, and command as much view, as possible, these
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page185"></a>185</span>
+bars of stone are to be made as slender and as few as they can
+be, consistently with their due strength.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_45"><img src="images/img185.jpg" width="350" height="381" alt="Fig. XLV." title="Fig. XLV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Let it be required to support the breadth of glass, <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_45">Fig.
+XLV.</a> The tendency of the
+glass sustaining any force, as
+of wind from without, is to
+bend into an arch inwards, in
+the dotted line, and break in
+the centre. It is to be supported,
+therefore, by the bar
+put in its centre, <i>c</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But this central bar, <i>c</i>, may
+not be enough, and the spaces
+<i>a c</i>, <i>c b</i>, may still need support.
+The next step will be
+to put two bars instead of
+one, and divide the window into three spaces as at <i>d</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But this may still not be enough, and the window may need
+three bars. Now the greatest stress is always on the centre
+of the window. If the three bars are equal in strength, as at
+<i>e</i>, the central bar is either too slight for its work, or the lateral
+bars too thick for theirs. Therefore, we must slightly increase
+the thickness of the central bar, and diminish that of the
+lateral ones, so as to obtain the arrangement at <i>f h</i>. If the
+window enlarge farther, each of the spaces <i>f g</i>, <i>g h</i>, is treated
+as the original space <i>a b</i>, and we have the groups of bars <i>k</i>
+and <i>l</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So that, whatever the shape of the window, whatever the
+direction and number of the bars, there are to be central or
+main bars; second bars subordinated to them; third bars subordinated
+to the second, and so on to the number required.
+This is called the subordination of tracery, a system delightful
+to the eye and mind, owing to its anatomical framing and
+unity, and to its expression of the laws of good government in
+all fragile and unstable things. All tracery, therefore, which
+is not subordinated, is barbarous, in so far as this part of its
+structure is concerned.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page186"></a>186</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI.</span> The next question will be the direction of the bars.
+The reader will understand at once, without any laborious
+proof, that a given area of glass, supported by its edges, is
+stronger in its resistance to violence when it is arranged in a
+long strip or band than in a square; and that, therefore, glass
+is generally to be arranged, especially in windows on a large
+scale, in oblong areas: and if the bars so dividing it be placed
+horizontally, they will have less power of supporting themselves,
+and will need to be thicker in consequence, than if
+placed vertically. As far, therefore, as the form of the window
+permits, they are to be vertical.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII.</span> But even when so placed, they cannot be trusted to
+support themselves beyond a certain height, but will need cross
+bars to steady them. Cross bars of stone are, therefore, to be
+introduced at necessary intervals, not to divide the glass, but
+to support the upright stone bars. The glass is always to be
+divided longitudinally as far as possible, and the upright bars
+which divide it supported at proper intervals. However high
+the window, it is almost impossible that it should require more
+than two cross bars.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII.</span> It may sometimes happen that when tall windows
+are placed very close to each other for the sake of more light,
+the masonry between them may stand in need, or at least be the
+better of, some additional support. The cross bars of the windows
+may then be thickened, in order to bond the intermediate
+piers more strongly together, and if this thickness appear ungainly,
+it may be modified by decoration.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX.</span> We have thus arrived at the idea of a vertical frame
+work of subordinated bars, supported by cross bars at the
+necessary intervals, and the only remaining question is the
+method of insertion into the aperture. Whatever its form, if
+we merely let the ends of the bars into the voussoirs of its
+heading, the least settlement of the masonry would distort the
+arch, or push up some of its voussoirs, or break the window
+bars, or push them aside. Evidently our object should be to
+connect the window bars among themselves, so framing them
+together that they may give the utmost possible degree of support
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187"></a>187</span>
+to the whole window head in case of any settlement. But
+we know how to do this already: our window bars are nothing
+but small shafts. Capital them; throw small arches across between
+the smaller bars, large arches over them between the
+larger bars, one comprehensive arch over the whole, or else a
+horizontal lintel, if the window have a flat head; and we have
+a complete system of mutual support, independent of the
+aperture head, and yet assisting to sustain it, if need be. But
+we want the spandrils of this arch system to be themselves as
+light, and to let as much light through them, as possible: and
+we know already how to pierce them (<a href="#chap_12">Chap. XII.</a> § <span class="scs">VII</span>.). We
+pierce them with circles; and we have, if the circles are small
+and the stonework strong, the traceries of Giotto and the
+Pisan school; if the circles are as large as possible and the bars
+slender, those which I have already figured and described as
+the only perfect traceries of the Northern Gothic.<a name="FnAnchor_58" href="#Footnote_58"><span class="sp">58</span></a> The
+varieties of their design arise partly from the different size of
+window and consequent number of bars; partly from the
+different heights of their pointed arches, as well as the various
+positions of the window head in relation to the roof, rendering
+one or another arrangement better for dividing the light, and
+partly from ĉsthetic and expressional requirements, which,
+within certain limits, may be allowed a very important influence:
+for the strength of the bars is ordinarily so much
+greater than is absolutely necessary, that some portion of it
+may be gracefully sacrificed to the attainment of variety in the
+plans of tracery&mdash;a variety which, even within its severest
+limits, is perfectly endless; more especially in the pointed
+arch, the proportion of the tracery being in the round arch
+necessarily more fixed.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X.</span> The circular window furnishes an exception to the
+common law, that the bars shall be vertical through the
+greater part of their length: for if they were so, they could
+neither have secure perpendicular footing, nor secure heading,
+their thrust being perpendicular to the curve of the voussoirs
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page188"></a>188</span>
+only in the centre of the window; therefore, a small circle,
+like the axle of a wheel, is put into the centre of the window,
+large enough to give footing to the necessary number of
+radiating bars; and the bars are arranged as spokes, being all
+of course properly capitaled and arch-headed. This is the best
+form of tracery for circular windows, naturally enough called
+wheel windows when so filled.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Now, I wish the reader especially to observe that we
+have arrived at these forms of perfect Gothic tracery without
+the smallest reference to any practice of any school, or to any
+law of authority whatever. They are forms having essentially
+nothing whatever to do either with Goths or Greeks. They
+are eternal forms, based on laws of gravity and cohesion; and
+no better, nor any others so good, will ever be invented, so
+long as the present laws of gravity and cohesion subsist.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. It does not at all follow that this group of forms
+owes its origin to any such course of reasoning as that which
+has now led us to it. On the contrary, there is not the
+smallest doubt that tracery began, partly, in the grouping of
+windows together (subsequently enclosed within a large arch<a name="FnAnchor_59" href="#Footnote_59"><span class="sp">59</span></a>),
+and partly in the fantastic penetrations of a single slab of
+stones under the arch, as the circle in <a href="#plate_5">Plate V.</a> above. The
+perfect form seems to have been accidentally struck in passing
+from experiment on the one side, to affectation on the other;
+and it was so far from ever becoming systematised, that I am
+aware of no type of tracery for which a <i>less</i> decided preference
+is shown in the buildings in which it exists. The early pierced
+traceries are multitudinous and perfect in their kind,&mdash;the late
+Flamboyant, luxuriant in detail, and lavish in quantity,&mdash;but
+the perfect forms exist in comparatively few churches, generally
+in portions of the church only, and are always connected,
+and that closely, either with the massy forms out of which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189"></a>189</span>
+they have emerged, or with the enervated types into which
+they are instantly to degenerate.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. Nor indeed are we to look upon them as in all
+points superior to the more ancient examples. We have above
+conducted our reasoning entirely on the supposition that a
+single aperture is given, which it is the object to fill with
+glass, diminishing the power of the light as little as possible.
+But there are many cases, as in triforium and cloister lights, in
+which glazing is not required; in which, therefore, the bars,
+if there be any, must have some more important function than
+that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is
+to give steadiness and <i>tone</i>, as it were, to the arches and walls
+above and beside them; or to give the idea of protection to
+those who pass along the triforium, and of seclusion to those
+who walk in the cloister. Much thicker shafts, and more
+massy arches, may be properly employed in work of this kind;
+and many groups of such tracery will be found resolvable into
+true colonnades, with the arches in pairs, or in triple or quadruple
+groups, and with small rosettes pierced above them for
+light. All this is just as <i>right</i> in its place, as the glass tracery
+is in its own function, and often much more grand. But the
+same indulgence is not to be shown to the affectations which
+succeeded the developed forms. Of these there are three
+principal conditions: the Flamboyant of France, the Stump
+tracery of Germany, and the Perpendicular of England.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. Of these the first arose, by the most delicate and
+natural transitions, out of the perfect school. It was an endeavor
+to introduce more grace into its lines, and more change
+into its combinations; and the ĉsthetic results are so beautiful,
+that for some time after the right road had been left, the aberration
+was more to be admired than regretted. The final conditions
+became fantastic and effeminate, but, in the country
+where they had been invented, never lost their peculiar grace
+until they were replaced by the Renaissance. The copies of
+the school in England and Italy have all its faults and none
+of its beauties; in France, whatever it lost in method or
+in majesty, it gained in fantasy: literally Flamboyant, it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190"></a>190</span>
+breathed away its strength into the air; but there is not more
+difference between the commonest doggrel that ever broke
+prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of Coleridge,
+or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between
+the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the
+flaming undulations of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that
+confuse themselves with the clouds of every morning sky that
+brightens above the valley of the Seine.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. The second group of traceries, the intersectional or
+German group, may be considered as including the entire
+range of the absurd forms which were invented in order to display
+dexterity in stone-cutting and ingenuity in construction.
+They express the peculiar character of the German mind,
+which cuts the frame of every truth joint from joint, in order
+to prove the edge of its instruments; and, in all cases, prefers
+a new or a strange thought to a good one, and a subtle
+thought to a useful one. The point and value of the
+German tracery consists principally in turning the features
+of good traceries upside down, and cutting them in two
+where they are properly continuous. To destroy at once foundation
+and membership, and suspend everything in the air,
+keeping out of sight, as far as possible, the evidences of a beginning
+and the probabilities of an end, are the main objects of
+German architecture, as of modern German divinity.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. This school has, however, at least the merit of ingenuity.
+Not so the English Perpendicular, though a very
+curious school also in <i>its</i> way. In the course of the reasoning
+which led us to the determination of the perfect Gothic tracery,
+we were induced successively to reject certain methods of arrangement
+as weak, dangerous, or disagreeable. Collect all
+these together, and practise them at once, and you have the
+English Perpendicular.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLVI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_46"><img src="images/img191.jpg" width="600" height="383" alt="Fig. XLVI." title="Fig. XLVI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>As thus. You find, in the first place (§ <span class="scs">V</span>.), that your tracery
+bars are to be subordinated, less to greater; so you take
+a group of, suppose, eight, which you make all exactly equal,
+giving you nine equal spaces in the window, as at A, <a href="#fig_46">Fig.
+XLVI.</a> You found, in the second place (§ <span class="scs">VII</span>.), that there was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page191"></a>191</span>
+no occasion for more than two cross bars; so you take at least
+four or five (also represented at A, <a href="#fig_46">Fig. XLVI.</a>), also carefully
+equalised, and set at equal spaces. You found, in the third
+place (§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>.), that these bars were to be strengthened, in order
+to support the main piers; you will therefore cut the ends off
+the uppermost, and the fourth into three pieces (as also at A).
+In the fourth place, you found (§ <span class="scs">IX</span>.) that you were never to
+run a vertical bar into the arch head; so you run them all into
+it (as at B, <a href="#fig_46">Fig. XLVI.</a>); and this last arrangement will be useful
+in two ways, for it will not only expose both the bars and the
+archivolt to an apparent probability of every species of dislocation
+at any moment, but it will provide you with two pleasing
+interstices at the flanks, in the shape of carving-knives, <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>,
+which, by throwing across the curves <i>c</i>, <i>d</i>, you may easily
+multiply into four; and these, as you can put nothing into
+their sharp tops, will afford you a more than usually rational
+excuse for a little bit of Germanism, in filling them with
+arches upside down, <i>e</i>, <i>f</i>. You will now have left at your disposal
+two and forty similar interstices, which, for the sake of
+variety, you will proceed to fill with two and forty similar
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192"></a>192</span>
+arches: and, as you were told that the moment a bar received
+an arch heading, it was to be treated as a shaft and capitalled,
+you will take care to give your bars no capitals nor bases, but
+to run bars, foliations and all, well into each other after the
+fashion of cast-iron, as at C. You have still two triangular
+spaces occurring in an important part of your window, <i>g g</i>,
+which, as they are very conspicuous, and you cannot make
+them uglier than they are, you will do wisely to let alone;&mdash;and
+you will now have the west window of the cathedral of
+Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular.
+Nor do I think that you can, on the whole, better the arrangement,
+unless, perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars,
+as is done in the cathedral at Gloucester; these buttresses having
+the double advantage of darkening the window when seen
+from within, and suggesting, when it is seen from without, the
+idea of its being divided by two stout party walls, with a
+heavy thrust against the glass.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. Thus far we have considered the plan of the tracery
+only: we have lastly to note the conditions under which the
+glass is to be attached to the bars; and the sections of the bars
+themselves.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLVII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_47"><img src="images/img192.jpg" width="120" height="83" alt="Fig. XLVII." title="Fig. XLVII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>These bars we have seen, in the perfect form, are to become
+shafts; but, supposing the object to be the admission of as
+much light as possible, it is clear that the thickness of the bar
+ought to be chiefly in the depth of the window, and that by
+increasing the depth of the bar we may diminish its breadth:
+clearly, therefore, we should employ the double group of
+shafts, <i>b</i>, of <a href="#fig_14">Fig. XIV.</a>, setting it edgeways in the window:
+but as the glass would then come between the two shafts, we
+must add a member into which it is to be fitted, as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_47">Fig.
+XLVII.</a>, and uniting these three members
+together in the simplest way, with a curved
+instead of a sharp recess behind the shafts,
+we have the section <i>b</i>, the perfect, but simplest
+type of the main tracery bars in good
+Gothic. In triforium and cloister tracery, which has no glass
+to hold, the central member is omitted, and we have either the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193"></a>193</span>
+pure double shaft, always the most graceful, or a single and
+more massy shaft, which is the simpler and more usual form.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. Finally: there is an intermediate arrangement between
+the glazed and the open tracery, that of the domestic
+traceries of Venice. Peculiar conditions, hereafter to be described,
+require the shafts of these traceries to become the
+main vertical supports of the floors and walls. Their thickness
+is therefore enormous; and yet free egress is required between
+them (into balconies) which is obtained by doors in their
+lattice glazing. To prevent the inconvenience and ugliness
+of driving the hinges and fastenings of them into the shafts,
+and having the play of the doors in the intervals, the entire
+glazing is thrown behind the pillars, and attached to their abaci
+and bases with iron. It is thus securely sustained by their
+massy bulk, and leaves their symmetry and shade undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. The depth at which the glass should be placed, in
+windows without traceries, will generally be fixed by the forms
+of their bevelling, the glass occupying the narrowest interval;
+but when its position is not thus fixed, as in many London
+houses, it is to be remembered that the deeper the glass is set
+(the wall being of given thickness), the more light will enter,
+and the clearer the prospect will be to a person sitting quietly
+in the centre of the room; on the contrary, the farther out
+the glass is set, the more convenient the window will be for a
+person rising and looking out of it. The one, therefore, is an
+arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only about
+what is going on upon the earth: the other for those who are
+willing to remain at rest, so that they have free admission of
+the light of Heaven. This might be noted as a curious expressional
+reason for the necessity (of which no man of ordinary
+feeling would doubt for a moment) of a deep recess in
+the window, on the outside, to all good or architectural effect:
+still, as there is no reason why people should be made idle by
+having it in their power to look out of window, and as the
+slight increase of light or clearness of view in the centre of a
+room is more than balanced by the loss of space, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194"></a>194</span>
+greater chill of the nearer glass and outside air, we can, I fear,
+allege no other structural reason for the picturesque external
+recess, than the expediency of a certain degree of protection,
+for the glass, from the brightest glare of sunshine, and heaviest
+rush of rain.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_58" href="#FnAnchor_58"><span class="fn">58</span></a> &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; p. 53.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_59" href="#FnAnchor_59"><span class="fn">59</span></a> On the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Lyons, there is an
+early French window, presenting one of the usual groups of foliated arches
+and circles, left, as it were, loose, without any enclosing curve. The effect
+is very painful. This remarkable window is associated with others of the
+common form.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page195"></a>195</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+
+<h5>PROTECTION OF APERTURE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> have hitherto considered the aperture as merely
+pierced in the thickness of the walls; and when its masonry
+is simple and the fillings of the aperture are unimportant, it
+may well remain so. But when the fillings are delicate and
+of value, as in the case of colored glass, finely wrought
+tracery, or sculpture, such as we shall often find occupying
+the tympanum of doorways, some protection becomes necessary
+against the run of the rain down the walls, and back by
+the bevel of the aperture to the joints or surface of the
+fillings.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. The first and simplest mode of obtaining this is by
+channelling the jambs and arch head; and this is the chief
+practical service of aperture mouldings, which are otherwise
+entirely decorative. But as this very decorative character
+renders them unfit to be made channels for rain water, it is
+well to add some external roofing to the aperture, which may
+protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which
+necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its
+most usual form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or
+round the head of the aperture. But this is, in reality, only a
+contracted form of a true <i>roof</i>, projecting from the wall over
+the aperture; and all protections of apertures whatsoever are
+to be conceived as portions of small roofs, attached to the wall
+behind; and supported by it, so long as their scale admits of
+their being so with safety, and afterwards in such manner
+as may be most expedient. The proper forms of these,
+and modes of their support, are to be the subject of our final
+enquiry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page196"></a>196</span></p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLVIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_48"><img src="images/img196.jpg" width="150" height="508" alt="Fig. XLVIII." title="Fig. XLVIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. Respecting their proper form we need not stay long
+in doubt. A deep gable is evidently the best for throwing off
+rain; even a low gable being better than a high arch. Flat
+roofs, therefore, may only be used when the
+nature of the building renders the gable
+unsightly; as when there is not room for it
+between the stories; or when the object is
+rather shade than protection from rain, as
+often in verandahs and balconies. But for
+general service the gable is the proper and
+natural form, and may be taken as representative
+of the rest. Then this gable may
+either project unsupported from the wall, <i>a</i>,
+<a href="#fig_48">Fig. XLVIII.</a>, or be carried by brackets or
+spurs, <i>b</i>, or by walls or shafts, <i>c</i>, which shafts
+or walls may themselves be, in windows,
+carried on a sill; and this, in its turn, supported
+by brackets or spurs. We shall glance
+at the applications of each of these forms in
+order.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. There is not much variety in the
+case of the first, <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_48">Fig. XLVIII</a>. In the
+Cumberland and border cottages the door is
+generally protected by two pieces of slate
+arranged in a gable, giving the purest possible type of the first
+form. In elaborate architecture such a projection hardly ever
+occurs, and in large architecture cannot with safety occur,
+without brackets; but by cutting away the greater part of the
+projection, we shall arrive at the idea of a plain gabled cornice,
+of which a perfect example will be found in <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a>
+of the folio series. With this first complete form we may
+associate the rude, single, projecting, penthouse roof; imperfect,
+because either it must be level and the water
+lodge lazily upon it, or throw off the drip upon the persons
+entering.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. 2. <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_48">Fig. XLVIII.</a> This is a most beautiful and
+natural type, and is found in all good architecture, from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197"></a>197</span>
+highest to the most humble: it is a frequent form of cottage
+door, more especially when carried
+on spurs, being of peculiarly easy
+construction in wood: as applied
+to large architecture, it can evidently
+be built, in its boldest and
+simplest form, either of wood only,
+or on a scale which will admit of
+its sides being each a single slab of
+stone. If so large as to require
+jointed masonry, the gabled sides
+will evidently require support, and
+an arch must be thrown across under
+them, as in <a href="#fig_49">Fig. XLIX.</a>, from
+Fiesole.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. XLIX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_49"><img src="images/img197.jpg" width="300" height="359" alt="Fig. XLIX." title="Fig. XLIX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>If we cut the projection gradually down, we arrive at the
+common Gothic gable dripstone carried on small brackets,
+carved into bosses, heads, or some other ornamental form; the
+sub-arch in such case being useless, is removed or coincides with
+the arch head of the aperture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI.</span> 3. <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_48">Fig. XLVIII.</a> Substituting walls or pillars for
+the brackets, we may carry the projection as far out as we
+choose, and form the perfect porch, either of the cottage or
+village church, or of the cathedral. As we enlarge the structure,
+however, certain modifications of form become necessary,
+owing to the increased boldness of the required supporting
+arch. For, as the lower end of the gabled roof and of the
+arch cannot coincide, we have necessarily above the shafts one
+of the two forms <i>a</i> or <i>b</i>, in <a href="#fig_50">Fig. L.</a>, of which the latter is
+clearly the best, requiring less masonry and shorter roofing;
+and when the arch becomes so large as to cause a heavy lateral
+thrust, it may become necessary to provide for its farther safety
+by pinnacles, <i>c</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This last is the perfect type of aperture protection. None
+other can ever be invented so good. It is that once employed
+by Giotto in the cathedral of Florence, and torn down by the
+proveditore, Benedetto Uguccione, to erect a Renaissance front
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198"></a>198</span>
+instead; and another such has been destroyed, not long since,
+in Venice, the porch of the church of St. Apollinare, also to
+put up some Renaissance upholstery: for Renaissance, as if it
+were not nuisance enough in the mere fact of its own existence,
+appears invariably as a beast of prey, and founds itself on
+the ruin of all that is best and noblest. Many such porches,
+however, happily still exist in Italy, and are among its principal
+glories.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. L.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_50"><img src="images/img198.jpg" width="600" height="181" alt="Fig. L." title="Fig. L." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. When porches of this kind, carried by walls, are
+placed close together, as in cases where there are many and
+large entrances to a cathedral front, they would, in their general
+form, leave deep and uncomfortable intervals, in which
+damp would lodge and grass grow; and there would be a painful
+feeling in approaching the door in the midst of a crowd,
+as if some of them might miss the real doors, and be driven
+into the intervals, and embayed there. Clearly it will be a
+natural and right expedient, in such cases, to open the walls of
+the porch wider, so that they may correspond in slope, or nearly
+so, with the bevel of the doorway, and either meet each
+other in the intervals, or have the said intervals closed up with
+an intermediate wall, so that nobody may get embayed in
+them. The porches will thus be united, and form one range
+of great open gulphs or caverns, ready to receive all comers,
+and direct the current of the crowd into the narrower entrances.
+As the lateral thrust of the arches is now met by
+each other, the pinnacles, if there were any, must be removed,
+and waterspouts placed between each arch to discharge the
+double drainage of the gables. This is the form of all the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199"></a>199</span>
+noble northern porches, without exception, best represented by
+that of Rheims.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Contracted conditions of the pinnacle porch are
+beautifully used in the doors of the cathedral of Florence;
+and the entire arrangement, in its most perfect form, as adapted
+to window protection and decoration, is applied by Giotto with
+inconceivable exquisiteness in the windows of the campanile;
+those of the cathedral itself being all of the same type.
+Various singular and delightful conditions of it are applied in
+Italian domestic architecture (in the Broletto of Monza very
+quaintly), being associated with balconies for speaking to the
+people, and passing into pulpits. In the north we glaze the
+sides of such projections, and they become bow-windows, the
+shape of roofing being then nearly immaterial and very fantastic,
+often a conical cap. All these conditions of window
+protection, being for real service, are endlessly delightful (and
+I believe the beauty of the balcony, protected by an open
+canopy supported by light shafts, never yet to have been
+properly worked out). But the Renaissance architects destroyed
+all of them, and introduced the magnificent and witty
+Roman invention of a model of a Greek pediment, with its
+cornices of monstrous thickness, bracketed up above the window.
+The horizontal cornice of the pediment is thus useless,
+and of course, therefore, retained; the protection to the head
+of the window being constructed on the principle of a hat with
+its crown sewn up. But the deep and dark triangular cavity
+thus obtained affords farther opportunity for putting ornament
+out of sight, of which the Renaissance architects are not slow
+to avail themselves.</p>
+
+<p>A more rational condition is the complete pediment with a
+couple of shafts, or pilasters, carried on a bracketed sill; and
+the windows of this kind, which have been well designed, are
+perhaps the best things which the Renaissance schools have
+produced: those of Whitehall are, in their way, exceedingly
+beautiful; and those of the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, in
+their simplicity and sublimity, are scarcely unworthy of their
+reputed designer, Michael Angelo.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page200"></a>200</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+
+<h5>SUPERIMPOSITION.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">The</span> reader has now some knowledge of every feature
+of all possible architecture. Whatever the nature of the
+building which may be submitted to his criticism, if it be an
+edifice at all, if it be anything else than a mere heap of stones
+like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large stone hewn into
+shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily resolvable
+into some of the parts which we have been hitherto considering:
+its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small shafts
+and roofs; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or
+walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported
+by various kinds of buttresses. Respecting each of these
+several features I am certain that the reader feels himself prepared,
+by understanding their plain function, to form something
+like a reasonable and definite judgment, whether they
+be good or bad; and this right judgment of parts will, in most
+cases, lead him to just reverence or condemnation of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. The various modes in which these parts are capable
+of combination, and the merits of buildings of different form
+and expression, are evidently not reducible into lists, nor to
+be estimated by general laws. The nobility of each building
+depends on its special fitness for its own purposes; and these
+purposes vary with every climate, every soil, and every national
+custom: nay, there were never, probably, two edifices erected
+in which some accidental difference of condition did not
+require some difference of plan or of structure; so that,
+respecting plan and distribution of parts, I do not hope to
+collect any universal law of right; but there are a few points
+necessary to be noticed respecting the means by which height
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page201"></a>201</span>
+is attained in buildings of various plans, and the expediency
+and methods of superimposition of one story or tier of architecture
+above another.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. For, in the preceding inquiry, I have always supposed
+either that a single shaft would reach to the top of the building,
+or that the farther height required might be added in plain
+wall above the heads of the arches; whereas it may often be
+rather expedient to complete the entire lower series of arches,
+or finish the lower wall, with a bold string course or cornice,
+and build another series of shafts, or another wall, on the top
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. This superimposition is seen in its simplest form in the
+interior shafts of a Greek temple; and it has been largely used
+in nearly all countries where buildings have been meant for
+real service. Outcry has often been raised against it, but the
+thing is so sternly necessary that it has always forced itself into
+acceptance; and it would, therefore, be merely losing time to
+refute the arguments of those who have attempted its disparagement.
+Thus far, however, they have reason on their side,
+that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without
+sacrificing either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it
+is not well to divide it into stories until it has reached proportions
+too large to be justly measured by the eye. It ought
+then to be divided in order to mark its bulk; and decorative
+divisions are often possible, which rather increase than destroy
+the expression of general unity.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. Superimposition, wisely practised, is of two kinds,
+directly contrary to each other, of weight on lightness, and
+of lightness on weight; while the superimposition of weight
+on weight, or lightness on lightness, is nearly always wrong.</p>
+
+<p>1. Weight on lightness: I do not say weight on <i>weakness</i>.
+The superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call
+weight on lightness: the superimposition of the branches on
+a tree trunk I call lightness on weight: in both cases the support
+is fully adequate to the work, the form of support being
+regulated by the differences of requirement. Nothing in
+architecture is half so painful as the apparent want of sufficient
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page202"></a>202</span>
+support when the weight above is visibly passive: for all
+buildings are not passive; some seem to rise by their own
+strength, or float by their own buoyancy; a dome requires no
+visibility of support, one fancies it supported by the air. But
+passive architecture without help for its passiveness is unendurable.
+In a lately built house, No. 86, in Oxford Street,
+three huge stone pillars in the second story are carried apparently
+by the edges of three sheets of plate glass in the first. I
+hardly know anything to match the painfulness of this and
+some other of our shop structures, in which the iron-work is
+concealed; nor, even when it is apparent, can the eye ever feel
+satisfied of their security, when built, as at present, with fifty or
+sixty feet of wall above a rod of iron not the width of this page.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. The proper forms of this superimposition of weight
+on lightness have arisen, for the most part, from the necessity
+or desirableness, in many situations, of elevating the inhabited
+portions of buildings considerably above the ground level,
+especially those exposed to damp or inundation, and the consequent
+abandonment of the ground story as unserviceable, or
+else the surrender of it to public purposes. Thus, in many
+market and town houses, the ground story is left open as a
+general place of sheltered resort, and the enclosed apartments
+raised on pillars. In almost all warm countries the luxury,
+almost the necessity, of arcades to protect the passengers from
+the sun, and the desirableness of large space in the rooms
+above, lead to the same construction. Throughout the Venetian
+islet group, the houses seem to have been thus, in the first
+instance, universally built, all the older palaces appearing to
+have had the rez de chaussée perfectly open, the upper parts
+of the palace being sustained on magnificent arches, and the
+smaller houses sustained in the same manner on wooden piers,
+still retained in many of the cortiles, and exhibited characteristically
+throughout the main street of Murano. As ground
+became more valuable and house-room more scarce, these
+ground-floors were enclosed with wall veils between the original
+shafts, and so remain; but the type of the structure of the
+entire city is given in the Ducal Palace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page203"></a>203</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. To this kind of superimposition we owe the most
+picturesque street effects throughout the world, and the most
+graceful, as well as the most grotesque, buildings, from the
+many-shafted fantasy of the Alhambra (a building as beautiful
+in disposition as it is base in ornamentation) to the four-legged
+stolidity of the Swiss Chalet:<a name="FnAnchor_60" href="#Footnote_60"><span class="sp">60</span></a> nor these only, but great part
+of the effect of our cathedrals, in which, necessarily, the close
+triforium and clerestory walls are superimposed on the nave
+piers; perhaps with most majesty where with greatest simplicity,
+as in the old basilican types, and the noble cathedral
+of Pisa.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. In order to the delightfulness and security of all
+such arrangements, this law must be observed:&mdash;that in proportion
+to the height of wall above them, the shafts are to
+be short. You may take your given height of wall, and turn
+any quantity of that wall into shaft that you like; but you
+must not turn it all into tall shafts, and then put more wall
+above. Thus, having a house five stories high, you may turn
+the lower story into shafts, and leave the four stories in wall;
+or the two lower stories into shafts, and leave three in wall;
+but, whatever you add to the shaft, you must take from the
+wall. Then also, of course, the shorter the shaft the thicker
+will be its <i>proportionate</i>, if not its actual, diameter. In the
+Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts are always the
+thickest.<a name="FnAnchor_61" href="#Footnote_61"><span class="sp">61</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on
+weight, is, in its most necessary use, of stories of houses one
+upon another, where, of course, wall veil is required in the
+lower ones, and has to support wall veil above, aided by as
+much of shaft structure as is attainable within the given
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page204"></a>204</span>
+limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman
+and Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful management
+of this kind of superimposition; sometimes of complete
+courses of external arches and shafts one above the other;
+sometimes of apertures with intermediate cornices at the levels
+of the floors, and large shafts from top to bottom of the building;
+always observing that the upper stories shall be at once
+lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire value of
+such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression
+of the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained
+by the varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of
+superimposition and separation by floors is frankly told.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. In churches and other buildings in which there is no
+separation by floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition
+is often used, in order to enable the builder to avail himself of
+short and slender shafts. It has been noted that these are
+often easily attainable, and of precious materials, when shafts
+large enough and strong enough to do the work at once, could
+not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and of coarse
+stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his
+work in successive stories; either frankly completing the arch
+work and cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it,
+which is the honester and nobler way, or else tying the stories
+together by supplementary shafts from floor to roof,&mdash;the
+general practice of the Northern Gothic, and one which, unless
+most gracefully managed, gives the look of a scaffolding, with
+cross-poles tied to its uprights, to the whole clerestory wall.
+The best method is that which avoids all chance of the upright
+shafts being supposed continuous, by increasing their number
+and changing their places in the upper stories, so that the
+whole work branches from the ground like a tree. This is the
+superimposition of the Byzantine and the Pisan Romanesque;
+the most beautiful examples of it being, I think, the Southern
+portico of St. Mark&rsquo;s, the church of S. Giovanni at Pistoja,
+and the apse of the cathedral of Pisa. In Renaissance work
+the two principles are equally distinct, though the shafts are
+(I think) always one above the other. The reader may see one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205"></a>205</span>
+of the best examples of the separately superimposed story in
+Whitehall (and another far inferior in St. Paul&rsquo;s), and by turning
+himself round at Whitehall may compare with it the system
+of connecting shafts in the Treasury; though this is a singularly
+bad example, the window cornices of the first floor being
+like shelves in a cupboard, and cutting the mass of the building
+in two, in spite of the pillars.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. But this superimposition of lightness on weight is
+still more distinctly the system of many buildings of the kind
+which I have above called Architecture of Position, that is to
+say, architecture of which the greater part is intended merely
+to keep something in a peculiar position; as in light-houses,
+and many towers and belfries. The subject of spire and tower
+architecture, however, is so interesting and extensive, that I
+have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it, and, at all
+events, cannot enter upon it here: but this much is enough for
+the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many
+towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central
+towers of cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the
+real structure of the best and strongest, are the elevation of
+gradually diminishing weight on massy or even solid foundation.
+Nevertheless, since the tower is in its origin a building
+for strength of defence, and faithfulness of watch, rather than
+splendor of aspect, its true expression is of just so much diminution
+of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully balanced
+strength, not a jot more. There must be no light-headedness
+in your noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful
+crest, with the vizor down, and the dark vigilance seen through
+the clefts of it; not the filigree crown or embroidered cap.
+No towers are so grand as the square-browed ones, with massy
+cornices and rent battlements: next to these come the fantastic
+towers, with their various forms of steep roof; the best, not
+the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of all in
+my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns,
+though these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes,
+and capable of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight
+pinnacled things we call towers in England (as in York
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page206"></a>206</span>
+Minster), are mere confectioner&rsquo;s Gothic, and not worth
+classing.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of
+chief necessity,&mdash;that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily
+stand, in their own strength; not by help of buttresses nor
+artful balancings on this side and on that. Your noble tower
+must need no help, must be sustained by no crutches, must
+give place to no suspicion of decrepitude. Its office may be
+to withstand war, look forth for tidings, or to point to heaven:
+but it must have in its own walls the strength to do this; it is
+to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other bulwarks;
+to rise and look forth, &ldquo;the tower of Lebanon that looketh
+toward Damascus,&rdquo; like a stern sentinel, not like a child held
+up in its nurse&rsquo;s arms. A tower may, indeed, have a
+kind of buttress, a projection, or subordinate tower at each of
+its angles; but these are to its main body like the satellites to
+a shaft, joined with its strength, and associated in its uprightness,
+part of the tower itself: exactly in the proportion in
+which they lose their massive unity with its body and assume
+the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower
+loses its dignity.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. These two characters, then, are common to all noble
+towers, however otherwise different in purpose or feature,&mdash;the
+first, that they rise from massy foundation to lighter summits,
+frowning with battlements perhaps, but yet evidently
+more pierced and thinner in wall than beneath, and, in most
+ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open work: the
+second, that whatever the form of the tower, it shall not appear
+to stand by help of buttresses. It follows from the first
+condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary
+ĉsthetic requirements, that we shall have continual variation
+in the arrangements of the stories, and the larger number of
+apertures towards the top,&mdash;a condition exquisitely carried out
+in the old Lombardic towers, in which, however small they
+may be, the number of apertures is always regularly increased
+towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest
+stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six; often, also,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page207"></a>207</span>
+one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing,
+not at present to our purpose. We may sufficiently exemplify
+the general laws of tower building by placing side by side,
+drawn to the same scale, a mediĉval tower, in which most of
+them are simply and unaffectedly observed, and one of our
+own modern towers, in which every one of them is violated,
+in small space, convenient for comparison. (<a href="#plate_6">Plate VI.</a>)</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">VI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_6"><img src="images/img207.jpg" width="374" height="650" alt="TYPES OF TOWERS." title="TYPES OF TOWERS." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">TYPES OF TOWERS.<br />
+                      <span class="f80">BRITISH</span>
+                      <span class="f80" style="padding-left: 10em; ">VENETIAN</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. The old tower is that of St. Mark&rsquo;s at Venice, not a
+very perfect example, for its top is Renaissance, but as good
+Renaissance as there is in Venice; and it is fit for our present
+purpose, because it owes none of its effect to ornament. It is
+built as simply as it well can be to answer its purpose: no
+buttresses; no external features whatever, except some huts at
+the base, and the loggia, afterwards built, which, on purpose,
+I have not drawn; one bold square mass of brickwork; double
+walls, with an ascending inclined plane between them, with
+apertures as small as possible, and these only in necessary
+places, giving just the light required for ascending the stair or
+slope, not a ray more; and the weight of the whole relieved
+only by the double pilasters on the sides, sustaining small
+arches at the top of the mass, each decorated with the scallop
+or cockle shell, presently to be noticed as frequent in Renaissance
+ornament, and here, for once, thoroughly well applied.
+Then, when the necessary height is reached, the belfry is left
+open, as in the ordinary Romanesque campanile, only the shafts
+more slender, but severe and simple, and the whole crowned
+by as much spire as the tower would carry, to render it more
+serviceable as a landmark. The arrangement is repeated in
+numberless campaniles throughout Italy.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built
+college at Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many
+others (just as I have not taken the St. Mark&rsquo;s tower as better
+than many others); but it happens to compress our British
+system of tower building into small space. The Venetian
+tower rises 350 feet,<a name="FnAnchor_62" href="#Footnote_62"><span class="sp">62</span></a> and has no buttresses, though built of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page208"></a>208</span>
+brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built of stone,
+but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge
+buttresses on each angle. The St. Mark&rsquo;s tower has a high
+sloping roof, but carries it simply, requiring no pinnacles at
+its angles; the British tower has no visible roof, but has four
+pinnacles for mere ornament. The Venetian tower has its
+lightest part at the top, and is massy at the base; the British
+tower has its lightest part at the base, and shuts up its windows
+into a mere arrowslit at the top. What the tower was built
+for at all must therefore, it seems to me, remain a mystery to
+every beholder; for surely no studious inhabitant of its upper
+chambers will be conceived to be pursuing his employments
+by the light of the single chink on each side; and, had it been
+intended for a belfry, the sound of its bells would have been
+as effectually prevented from getting out as the light from
+getting in.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. In connexion with the subject of towers and of
+superimposition, one other feature, not conveniently to be
+omitted from our house-building, requires a moment&rsquo;s notice,&mdash;the
+staircase.</p>
+
+<p>In modern houses it can hardly be considered an architectural
+feature, and is nearly always an ugly one, from its being
+apparently without support. And here I may not unfitly note
+the important distinction, which perhaps ought to have been
+dwelt upon in some places before now, between the <i>marvellous</i>
+and the <i>perilous</i> in apparent construction. There are many
+edifices which are awful or admirable in their height, and
+lightness, and boldness of form, respecting which, nevertheless,
+we have no fear that they should fall. Many a mighty
+dome and aërial aisle and arch may seem to stand, as I said,
+by miracle, but by steadfast miracle notwithstanding; there is
+no fear that the miracle should cease. We have a sense of
+inherent power in them, or, at all events, of concealed and
+mysterious provision for their safety. But in leaning towers,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page209"></a>209</span>
+as of Pisa or Bologna, and in much minor architecture, passive
+architecture, of modern times, we feel that there is but a
+chance between the building and destruction; that there is no
+miraculous life in it, which animates it into security, but an
+obstinate, perhaps vain, resistance to immediate danger. The
+appearance of this is often as strong in small things as in
+large; in the sounding-boards of pulpits, for instance, when
+sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one is in
+dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed
+if a single nail should give way; and again, the modern geometrical
+unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage,
+also, in the arrangement of this latter, when room is of value;
+and excessive ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the
+passage walls, or windows. In mediĉval architecture, where
+there was need of room, the staircase was spiral, and enclosed
+generally in an exterior tower, which added infinitely to the
+picturesque effect of the building; nor was the stair itself
+steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed
+straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the
+richest towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this
+arrangement. In Italy the staircase is often in the open air,
+surrounding the interior court of the house, and giving access
+to its various galleries or loggias: in this case it is almost always
+supported by bold shafts and arches, and forms a most
+interesting additional feature of the cortile, but presents no
+peculiarity of construction requiring our present examination.</p>
+
+<p>We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the subject
+of construction; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with
+the simplicity or apparent barrenness of their present results.
+He will find, when he begins to apply them, that they are of
+more value than they now seem; but I have studiously avoided
+letting myself be drawn into any intricate question, because I
+wished to ask from the reader only so much attention as it
+seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling
+to pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater practical
+interest. Evidently it would have been altogether beside
+the purpose of this essay to have entered deeply into the abstract
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page210"></a>210</span>
+science, or closely into the mechanical detail, of construction:
+both have been illustrated by writers far more
+capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the reader&rsquo;s
+discretion; all that has been here endeavored was the leading
+him to appeal to something like definite principle, and refer
+to the easily intelligible laws of convenience and necessity,
+whenever he found his judgment likely to be overborne by
+authority on the one hand, or dazzled by novelty on the other.
+If he has time to do more, and to follow out in all their brilliancy
+the mechanical inventions of the great engineers and
+architects of the day, I, in some sort, envy him, but must part
+company with him: for my way lies not along the viaduct,
+but down the quiet valley which its arches cross, nor through
+the tunnel, but up the hill-side which its cavern darkens, to
+see what gifts Nature will give us, and with what imagery she
+will fill our thoughts, that the stones we have ranged in rude
+order may now be touched with life; nor lose for ever, in
+their hewn nakedness, the voices they had of old, when the
+valley streamlet eddied round them in palpitating light, and
+the winds of the hill-side shook over them the shadows of the
+fern.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_60" href="#FnAnchor_60"><span class="fn">60</span></a> I have spent much of my life among the Alps; but I never pass, without
+some feeling of new surprise, the Chalet, standing on its four pegs (each
+topped with a flat stone), balanced in the fury of Alpine winds. It is not,
+perhaps, generally known that the chief use of the arrangement is not so
+much to raise the building above the snow, as to get a draught of wind
+beneath it, which may prevent the drift from rising against its sides.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_61" href="#FnAnchor_61"><span class="fn">61</span></a> <a href="#app_20">Appendix 20</a>, &ldquo;Shafts of the Ducal Palace.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_62" href="#FnAnchor_62"><span class="fn">62</span></a> I have taken Professor Willis&rsquo;s estimate; there being discrepancy
+among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the
+height myself, the building being one which does not come within the
+range of our future inquiries; and its exact dimensions, even here, are of
+no importance as respects the question at issue.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page211"></a>211</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_20"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> enter now on the second division of our subject.
+We have no more to do with heavy stones and hard lines; we
+are going to be happy: to look round in the world and discover
+(in a serious manner always, however, and under a sense
+of responsibility) what we like best in it, and to enjoy the same
+at our leisure: to gather it, examine it, fasten all we can of it
+into imperishable forms, and put it where we may see it for
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>This is to decorate architecture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. There are, therefore, three steps in the process: first,
+to find out in a grave manner what we like best; secondly,
+to put as much of this as we can (which is little enough) into
+form; thirdly, to put this formed abstraction into a proper
+place.</p>
+
+<p>And we have now, therefore, to make these three inquiries
+in succession: first, what we like, or what is the right material
+of ornament; then how we are to present it, or its right treatment;
+then, where we are to put it, or its right place. I think
+I can answer that first inquiry in this Chapter, the second inquiry
+in the next Chapter, and the third I shall answer in a
+more diffusive manner, by taking up in succession the several
+parts of architecture above distinguished, and rapidly noting
+the kind of ornament fittest for each.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. I said in chapter II. § <span class="scs">XIV</span>., that all noble ornamentation
+was the expression of man&rsquo;s delight in God&rsquo;s work. This
+implied that there was an <i>ig</i>noble ornamentation, which was
+the expression of man&rsquo;s delight in his <i>own</i>. There is such a
+school, chiefly degraded classic and Renaissance, in which the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212"></a>212</span>
+ornament is composed of imitations of tilings made by man. I
+think, before inquiring what we like best of God&rsquo;s work, we
+had better get rid of all this imitation of man&rsquo;s, and be quite
+sure we do not like <i>that</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. We shall rapidly glance, then, at the material of decoration
+hence derived. And now I cannot, as I before have
+done respecting construction, <i>convince</i> the reader of one thing
+being wrong, and another right. I have confessed as much
+again and again; I am now only to make appeal to him, and
+cross-question him, whether he really does like things or not.
+If he likes the ornament on the base of the column of the Place
+Vendôme, composed of Wellington boots and laced frock coats,
+I cannot help it; I can only say I differ from him, and don&rsquo;t
+like it. And if, therefore, I speak dictatorially, and say this
+is base, or degraded, or ugly, I mean, only that I believe men
+of the longest experience in the matter would either think it
+so, or would be prevented from thinking it so only by some
+morbid condition of their minds; and I believe that the reader,
+if he examine himself candidly, will usually agree in my
+statements.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. The subjects of ornament found in man&rsquo;s work may
+properly fall into four heads: 1. Instruments of art, agriculture,
+and war; armor, and dress; 2. Drapery; 3. Shipping; 4.
+Architecture itself.</p>
+
+<p>1. Instruments, armor, and dress.</p>
+
+<p>The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating
+arms in temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of
+employing them as the subjects of sculptural ornament:
+thenceforward, this abuse has been chiefly characteristic of
+classical architecture, whether true or Renaissance. Armor is
+a noble thing in its proper service and subordination to the
+body; so is an animal&rsquo;s hide on its back; but a heap of cast
+skins, or of shed armor, is alike unworthy of all regard or imitation.
+We owe much true sublimity, and more of delightful
+picturesqueness, to the introduction of armor both in painting
+and sculpture: in poetry it is better still,&mdash;Homer&rsquo;s undressed
+Achilles is less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page213"></a>213</span>
+though Phidias would rather have had him naked; in all mediĉval
+painting, arms, like all other parts of costume, are treated
+with exquisite care and delight; in the designs of Leonardo,
+Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes becomes almost
+too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention bestowed
+upon it; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash what the
+Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordinating
+heroism to the light of the steel, while the great
+designers wearied themselves in its elaborate fancy.</p>
+
+<p>But all this labor was given to the living, not the dead
+armor; to the shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of
+the beach; and even so, it was introduced more sparingly by
+the good sculptors than the good painters; for the former felt,
+and with justice, that the painter had the power of conquering
+the over prominence of costume by the expression and color
+of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and
+glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the
+flash of the mail; but they could hardly, by any boldness or
+energy of the marble features, conquer the forwardness and
+conspicuousness of the sharp armorial forms. Their armed
+figures were therefore almost always subordinate, their principal
+figures draped or naked, and their choice of subject was much
+influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the Renaissance
+sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla for the mere crest and
+plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their narrowed
+minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume
+without the person, but to the pettiest details of the costume
+itself. They could not describe Achilles, but they could describe
+his shield; a shield like those of dedicated spoil, without
+a handle, never to be waved in the face of war. And then we
+have helmets and lances, banners and swords, sometimes with
+men to hold them, sometimes without; but always chiselled
+with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery,&mdash;show
+helmets of the stage, no Vulcan work on them, no heavy hammer
+strokes, no Etna fire in the metal of them, nothing but
+pasteboard crests and high feathers. And these, cast together
+in disorderly heaps, or grinning vacantly over keystones, form
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page214"></a>214</span>
+one of the leading decorations of Renaissance architecture, and
+that one of the best; for helmets and lances, however loosely
+laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and books of music,
+which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian sources
+of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon
+became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap
+of cast clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of
+human figures, the indolence of architects came to the aid of
+their affectation, until by the moderns we find the practice carried
+out to its most interesting results, and, as above noted, a
+large pair of boots occupying the principal place in the bas-reliefs
+on the base of the Colonne Vendôme.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example
+of the abuse at its height, occurs in the Hôtel des Invalides,
+where the dormer windows are suits of armor down to the
+bottom of the corselet, crowned by the helmet, and with the
+window in the middle of the breast.</p>
+
+<p>Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent
+occurrence, except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where
+they are not employed as ornaments, but represented for the
+sake of accurate knowledge, or as symbols. Wherever they
+have purpose of this kind, they are of course perfectly right;
+but they are then part of the building&rsquo;s conversation, not conducive
+to its beauty. The French have managed, with great
+dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation
+of their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of
+introducing drapery, as such, for ornament, in the &ldquo;Seven
+Lamps.&rdquo; I may here note a curious instance of the abuse in
+the church of the Jesuiti at Venice (Renaissance). On first
+entering you suppose that the church, being in a poor quarter
+of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy
+green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer&rsquo;s pattern:
+on looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble, with the
+green pattern inlaid. Another remarkable instance is in a piece
+of not altogether unworthy architecture at Paris (Rue Rivoli),
+where the columns are supposed to be decorated with images
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215"></a>215</span>
+of handkerchiefs tied in a stout knot round the middle of them.
+This shrewd invention bids fair to become a new order. Multitudes
+of massy curtains and various upholstery, more or less
+in imitation of that of the drawing-room, are carved and gilt,
+in wood or stone, about the altars and other theatrical portions
+of Romanist churches; but from these coarse and senseless vulgarities
+we may well turn, in all haste, to note, with respect as
+well as regret, one of the errors of the great school of Niccolo
+Pisano,&mdash;an error so full of feeling as to be sometimes all but
+redeemed, and altogether forgiven,&mdash;the sculpture, namely, of
+curtains around the recumbent statues upon tombs, curtains
+which angels are represented as withdrawing, to gaze upon the
+faces of those who are at rest. For some time the idea was
+simply and slightly expressed, and though there was always a
+painfulness in finding the shafts of stone, which were felt to be
+the real supporters of the canopy, represented as of yielding
+drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the tenderness
+of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the
+scholars of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were
+unable to invent; and the quiet curtained canopy became a
+huge marble tent, with a pole in the centre of it. Thus vulgarised,
+the idea itself soon disappeared, to make room for urns,
+torches, and weepers, and the other modern paraphernalia of
+the churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. 3. Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to
+form a separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in
+Roman decoration, and to the continual occurrence of naval
+subjects in modern monumental bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson
+says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a &ldquo;<i>kind</i> of
+beauty&rdquo; in a ship: I say, without any manner of doubt, that
+a ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of
+the noblest; nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so
+lovely as those of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of
+the timbers of a small boat, not a race boat, a mere floating
+chisel, but a broad, strong, sea boat, able to breast a wave and
+break it: and yet, with all this beauty, ships cannot be made
+subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular delight
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216"></a>216</span>
+beneath the pediments of the Admiralty; nor does scenery of
+shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying
+it: witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and
+must be sometimes, introduced in severe subordination to the
+figure subject, but just enough to indicate the scene; sketched
+in the lightest lines on the background; never with any
+attempt at realisation, never with any equality to the force of
+the figures, unless the whole purpose of the subject be picturesque.
+I shall explain this exception presently, in speaking
+of imitative architecture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. There is one piece of a ship&rsquo;s fittings, however, which
+may be thought to have obtained acceptance as a constant
+element of architectural ornament,&mdash;the cable: it is not, however,
+the cable itself, but its abstract form, a group of twisted
+lines (which a cable only exhibits in common with many natural
+objects), which is indeed beautiful as an ornament. Make
+the resemblance complete, give to the stone the threads and
+character of the cable, and you may, perhaps, regard the sculpture
+with curiosity, but never more with admiration. Consider
+the effect of the base of the statue of King William IV. at
+the end of London Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. 4. Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or
+dress, or instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is
+almost exclusively confined to bad architecture&mdash;Roman or
+Renaissance. But the false use of architecture itself, as an
+ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even in the mediĉval
+work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some of its
+noblest examples.</p>
+
+<p>It is, therefore, of great importance to note exactly at what
+point this abuse begins, and in what it consists.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. In all bas-relief, architecture may be introduced as an
+explanation of the scene in which the figures act; but with
+more or less prominence in the <i>inverse ratio of the importance
+of the figures</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The metaphysical reason of this is, that where the figures
+are of great value and beauty, the mind is supposed to be engaged
+wholly with them; and it is an impertinence to disturb
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217"></a>217</span>
+its contemplation of them by any minor features whatever.
+As the figures become of less value, and are regarded with less
+intensity, accessory subjects may be introduced, such as the
+thoughts may have leisure for.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, if the figures be as large as life, and complete statues,
+it is gross vulgarity to carve a temple above them, or distribute
+them over sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyramids:
+I need hardly instance Canova&rsquo;s works,<a name="FnAnchor_63" href="#Footnote_63"><span class="sp">63</span></a> and the Dutch
+pulpit groups, with fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of
+church naves.</p>
+
+<p>If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the
+scene may be explained by lightly traced outlines: this is
+admirably done in the Ninevite marbles.</p>
+
+<p>If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less
+than life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and
+produce picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts
+entirely to themselves, the scenery in which they act may become
+prominent. The most exquisite examples of this treatment
+are the gates of Ghiberti. What would that Madonna
+of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which
+she shrinks back? But all mediĉval work is full of delightful
+examples of the same kind of treatment: the gates of
+hell and of paradise are important pieces, both of explanation
+and effect, in all early representations of the last judgment, or
+of the descent into Hades. The keys of St. Peter, and the
+crushing flat of the devil under his own door, when it is beaten
+in, would hardly be understood without the respective gate-ways
+above. The best of all the later capitals of the Ducal
+Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the
+richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by
+a small emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs
+us, is &ldquo;Numa Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e
+chiese.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. Shipping may be introduced, or rich fancy of vestments,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page218"></a>218</span>
+crowns, and ornaments, exactly on the same conditions
+as architecture; and if the reader will look back to my definition
+of the picturesque in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; he will see
+why I said, above, that they might only be prominent when
+the purpose of the subject was partly picturesque; that is to
+say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment
+from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not
+from the heart of the thing itself.</p>
+
+<p>And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the
+death of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily
+enjoy the sculpture of a storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the
+tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the church of St. Eustorgio at
+Milan, where the grouping of the figures is most fancifully
+complicated by the undercut cordage of the vessel.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. In all these instances, however, observe that the permission
+to represent the human work as an ornament, is conditional
+on its being necessary to the representation of a scene,
+or explanation of an action. On no terms whatever could any
+such subject be independently admissible.</p>
+
+<p class="mb">Observe, therefore, the use of manufacture as ornament is&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">1. With heroic figure sculpture, not admissible at all.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">2. With picturesque figure sculpture, admissible in the degree of its picturesqueness.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">3. Without figure sculpture, not admissible at all.</p>
+
+<p class="mt">So also in painting: Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel,
+would not have willingly painted a dress of figured damask
+or of watered satin; his was heroic painting, not admitting
+accessories.</p>
+
+<p>Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyck, would
+be very sorry to part with their figured stuffs and lustrous
+silks; and sorry, observe, exactly in the degree of their picturesque
+feeling. Should not <i>we</i> also be sorry to have Bishop
+Ambrose without his vest, in that picture of the National
+Gallery?</p>
+
+<p>But I think Vandyck would not have liked, on the other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page219"></a>219</span>
+hand, the vest without the bishop. I much doubt if Titian or
+Veronese would have enjoyed going into Waterloo House,
+and making studies of dresses upon the counter.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. So, therefore, finally, neither architecture nor any
+other human work is admissible as an ornament, except in
+subordination to figure subject. And this law is grossly and
+painfully violated by those curious examples of Gothic, both
+early and late, in the north, (but late, I think, exclusively, in
+Italy,) in which the minor features of the architecture were
+composed of <i>small models</i> of the larger: examples which led
+the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life,
+strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic,&mdash;abuses
+which no Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine,
+nor Italian of the earlier ages would have endured for an
+instant, and which strike me with renewed surprise whenever
+I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century Northern Gothic,
+associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite feeling
+and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges,
+Amiens, Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon,
+may be noted as conspicuous in error: small models of feudal
+towers with diminutive windows and battlements, of cathedral
+spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed with temple pediments
+and nondescript edifices of every kind, are crowded together
+over the recess of the niche into a confused fool&rsquo;s cap for the
+saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the
+taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it
+becomes rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of
+Pavia; and at Venice we find the Renaissance churches decorated
+with models of fortifications like those in the Repository
+at Woolwich, or inlaid with mock arcades in pseudo-perspective,
+copied from gardeners&rsquo; paintings at the ends of
+conservatories.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. I conclude, then, with the reader&rsquo;s leave, that all
+ornament is base which takes for its subject human work, that
+it is utterly base,&mdash;painful to every rightly-toned mind, without
+perhaps immediate sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable
+enough when we <i>do</i> think of it. For to carve our own
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page220"></a>220</span>
+work, and set it up for admiration, is a miserable self-complacency,
+a contentment in our own wretched doings, when we
+might have been looking at God&rsquo;s doings. And all noble
+ornament is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of
+man&rsquo;s delight in God&rsquo;s work.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. For observe, the function of ornament is to make
+you happy. Now in what are you rightly happy? Not in
+thinking of what you have done yourself; not in your own
+pride, not your own birth; not in your own being, or your
+own will, but in looking at God; watching what He does,
+what He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to
+His will.</p>
+
+<p>You are to be made happy by ornaments; therefore they
+must be the expression of all this. Not copies of your own
+handiwork; not boastings of your own grandeur; not heraldries;
+not king&rsquo;s arms, nor any creature&rsquo;s arms, but God&rsquo;s arm,
+seen in His work. Not manifestation of your delight in your
+own laws, or your own liberties, or your own inventions; but
+in divine laws, constant, daily, common laws;&mdash;not Composite
+laws, nor Doric laws, nor laws of the five orders, but of the
+Ten Commandments.</p>
+
+<p class="mb">§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. Then the proper material of ornament will be whatever
+God has created; and its proper treatment, that which
+seems in accordance with or symbolical of His laws. And,
+for material, we shall therefore have, first, the abstract lines
+which are most frequent in nature; and then, from lower to
+higher, the whole range of systematised inorganic and organic
+forms. We shall rapidly glance in order at their kinds; and,
+however absurd the elemental division of inorganic matter by
+the ancients may seem to the modern chemist, it is one so grand
+and simple for arrangements of external appearances, that I
+shall here follow it; noticing first, after abstract lines, the
+imitable forms of the four elements, of Earth, Water, Fire,
+and Air, and then those of animal organisms. It may be convenient
+to the reader to have the order stated in a clear succession
+at first, thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page221"></a>221</span></p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;1. Abstract lines.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;2. Forms of Earth (Crystals).</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;3. Forms of Water (Waves).</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays).</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;5. Forms of Air (Clouds).</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;6. (Organic forms.) Shells.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;7. Fish.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;8. Reptiles and insects.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;9. Vegetation (A.) Stems and Trunks.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">10. Vegetation (B.) Foliage.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">11. Birds.</p>
+<p class="nomarg">12. Mammalian animals and Man.</p>
+
+<p class="mt">It may be objected that clouds are a form of moisture, not
+of air. They are, however, a perfect expression of aërial states
+and currents, and may sufficiently well stand for the element
+they move in. And I have put vegetation apparently somewhat
+out of its place, owing to its vast importance as a means
+of decoration, and its constant association with birds and men.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. 1. Abstract lines. I have not with lines named
+also shades and colors, for this evident reason, that there are
+no such things as abstract shadows, irrespective of the forms
+which exhibit them, and distinguished in their own nature
+from each other; and that the arrangement of shadows, in
+greater or less quantity, or in certain harmonical successions,
+is an affair of treatment, not of selection. And when we use
+abstract colors, we are in fact using a part of nature herself,&mdash;using
+a quality of her light, correspondent with that of the
+air, to carry sound; and the arrangement of color in harmonious
+masses is again a matter of treatment, not selection.
+Yet even in this separate art of coloring, as referred to architecture,
+it is very notable that the best tints are always those
+of natural stones. These can hardly be wrong; I think I
+never yet saw an offensive introduction of the natural colors of
+marble and precious stones, unless in small mosaics, and in one
+or two glaring instances of the resolute determination to produce
+something ugly at any cost. On the other hand, I have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page222"></a>222</span>
+most assuredly never yet seen a painted building, ancient or
+modern, which seemed to me quite right.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. Our first constituents of ornament will therefore be
+abstract lines, that is to say, the most frequent contours of
+natural objects, transferred to architectural forms when it is
+not right or possible to render such forms distinctly imitative.
+For instance, the line or curve of the edge of a leaf may be
+accurately given to the edge of a stone, without rendering the
+stone in the least <i>like</i> a leaf, or suggestive of a leaf; and this
+the more fully, because the lines of nature are alike in all her
+works; simpler or richer in combination, but the same in
+character; and when they are taken out of their combinations
+it is impossible to say from which of her works they have been
+borrowed, their universal property being that of ever-varying
+curvature in the most subtle and subdued transitions, with
+peculiar expressions of motion, elasticity, or dependence, which
+I have already insisted upon at some length in the chapters on
+typical beauty in &ldquo;Modern Painters.&rdquo; But, that the reader
+may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from
+different sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the
+opposite plate, some ten or eleven lines from natural forms of
+very different substances and scale: the first, <i>a b</i>, is in the original,
+I think, the most beautiful simple curve I have ever seen in my
+life; it is a curve about three quarters of a mile long, formed
+by the surface of a small glacier of the second order, on a spur
+of the Aiguille de Blaitière (Chamouni). I have merely outlined
+the crags on the right of it, to show their sympathy and
+united action with the curve of the glacier, which is of course
+entirely dependent on their opposition to its descent; softened,
+however, into unity by the snow, which rarely melts on this
+high glacier surface.</p>
+
+<p>The line <i>d c</i> is some mile and a half or two miles long; it is
+part of the flank of the chain of the Dent d&rsquo;Oche above the
+lake of Geneva, one or two of the lines of the higher and more
+distant ranges being given in combination with it.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">VII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_7"><img src="images/img222.jpg" width="650" height="384" alt="ABSTRACT LINES." title="ABSTRACT LINES." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">ABSTRACT LINES.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>h</i> is a line about four feet long, a branch of spruce fir. I
+have taken this tree because it is commonly supposed to be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223"></a>223</span>
+stiff and ungraceful; its outer sprays are, however, more noble
+in their sweep than almost any that I know: but this fragment
+is seen at great disadvantage, because placed upside down, in
+order that the reader may compare its curvatures with <i>c d</i>, <i>e g</i>,
+and <i>i k</i>, which are all mountain lines; <i>e g</i>, about five hundred
+feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; <i>i k</i>, the entire
+slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley
+of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; <i>l m</i> is the line of
+the side of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper;
+<i>n o</i>, one of the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a
+paper Nautilus; <i>p</i>, a spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula;
+<i>q r</i>, the leaf of the Alisma Plantago with its interior
+ribs, real size; <i>s t</i>, the side of a bay-leaf; <i>u w</i>, of a salvia leaf;
+and it is to be carefully noted that these last curves, being
+never intended by nature to be seen singly, are more heavy and
+less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen as
+independent lines. But all agree in their character of changeful
+curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the
+rest in delicacy and richness of transition.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavored to
+show in the &ldquo;Modern Painters;&rdquo; but one point, there omitted,
+may be mentioned here,&mdash;that almost all these lines are expressive
+of action of <i>force</i> of some kind, while the circle is a line
+of limitation or support. In leafage they mark the forces of
+its growth and expansion, but some among the most beautiful
+of them are described by bodies variously in motion, or subjected
+to force; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of
+water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by
+their satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be
+considered instead of its relation to the planet; by boats, or
+birds, turning in the water or air, by clouds in various action
+upon the wind, by sails in the curvatures they assume under its
+force, and by thousands of other objects moving or bearing
+force. In the Alisma leaf, <i>q r</i>, the lines through its body,
+which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different expansions of
+its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those which
+would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224"></a>224</span>
+the shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing
+out at its point. Circular curves, on the contrary, are always,
+I think, curves of limitation or support; that is to say, curves
+of perfect rest. The cylindrical curve round the stem of a
+plant binds its fibres together; while the <i>ascent</i> of the stem is
+in lines of various curvature: so the curve of the horizon and
+of the apparent heaven, of the rainbow, etc.: and though the
+reader might imagine that the circular orbit of any moving
+body, or the curve described by a sling, was a curve of motion,
+he should observe that the circular character is given to the
+curve not by the motion, but by the confinement: the circle is
+the consequence not of the energy of the body, but of its being
+forbidden to leave the centre; and whenever the whirling or
+circular motion can be fully impressed on it we obtain instant
+balance and rest with respect to the centre of the circle.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the peculiar fitness of the circular curve as a sign of
+rest, and security of support, in arches; while the other curves,
+belonging especially to action, are to be used in the more active
+architectural features&mdash;the hand and foot (the capital and base),
+and in all minor ornaments; more freely in proportion to their
+independence of structural conditions.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXI</span>. We need not, however, hope to be able to imitate,
+in general work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of
+nature&rsquo;s highest designing: on the contrary, their extreme
+refinement renders them unfit for coarse service or material.
+Lines which are lovely in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell,
+are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and those which are
+sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the substance
+of incumbent marble. Of all the graceful lines assembled on
+<a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a>, we shall do well to be content with two of the simplest.
+We shall take one mountain line (<i>e g</i>) and one leaf line
+(<i>u w</i>), or rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not
+want them all. I will mark off from <i>u w</i> the little bit <i>x y</i>, and
+from <i>e g</i> the piece <i>e f</i>; both which appear to me likely to be
+serviceable: and if hereafter we need the help of any abstract
+lines, we will see what we can do with these only.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXII</span>. 2. Forms of Earth (Crystals). It may be asked why
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225"></a>225</span>
+I do not say rocks or mountains? Simply, because the nobility
+of these depends, first, on their scale, and, secondly, on accident.
+Their scale cannot be represented, nor their accident
+systematised. No sculptor can in the least imitate the peculiar
+character of accidental fracture: he can obey or exhibit the
+laws of nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her fancies,
+nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain
+is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the
+forces which are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold
+and careful imitation of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of
+convulsion; no delicate recommendation of ruin. We are to
+follow the labor of Nature, but not her disturbance; to imitate
+what she has deliberately ordained,<a name="FnAnchor_64" href="#Footnote_64"><span class="sp">64</span></a> not what she has violently
+suffered, or strangely permitted. The only uses, therefore, of
+rock form which are wise in the architect, are its actual introduction
+(by leaving untouched such blocks as are meant for
+rough service), and that noble use of the general examples of
+mountain structure of which I have often heretofore spoken.
+Imitations of rock form have, for the most part, been confined
+to periods of degraded feeling and to architectural toys or
+pieces of dramatic effect,&mdash;the Calvaries and holy sepulchres of
+Romanism, or the grottoes and fountains of English gardens.
+They were, however, not unfrequent in mediĉval bas-reliefs;
+very curiously and elaborately treated by Ghiberti on the doors
+of Florence, and in religious sculpture necessarily introduced
+wherever the life of the anchorite was to be expressed. They
+were rarely introduced as of ornamental character, but for
+particular service and expression; we shall see an interesting
+example in the Ducal Palace at Venice.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIII</span>. But against crystalline form, which is the completely
+systematised natural structure of the earth, none of
+these objections hold good, and, accordingly, it is an endless
+element of decoration, where higher conditions of structure
+cannot be represented. The four-sided pyramid, perhaps the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page226"></a>226</span>
+most frequent of all natural crystals, is called in architecture
+a dogtooth; its use is quite limitless, and always beautiful: the
+cube and rhomb are almost equally frequent in chequers and
+dentils: and all mouldings of the middle Gothic are little more
+than representations of the canaliculated crystals of the beryl,
+and such other minerals:</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIV</span>. Not knowingly. I do not suppose a single hint
+was ever actually taken from mineral form; not even by the
+Arabs in their stalactite pendants and vaults: all that I mean
+to allege is, that beautiful ornament, wherever found, or however
+invented, is always either an intentional or unintentional
+copy of some constant natural form; and that in this particular
+instance, the pleasure we have in these geometrical figures
+of our own invention, is dependent for all its acuteness on the
+natural tendency impressed on us by our Creator to love the
+forms into which the earth He gave us to tread, and out of
+which He formed our bodies, knit itself as it was separated
+from the deep.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXV</span>. 3. Forms of Water (Waves).</p>
+
+<p>The reasons which prevent rocks from being used for ornament
+repress still more forcibly the portraiture of the sea.
+Yet the constant necessity of introducing some representation
+of water in order to explain the scene of events, or as a sacred
+symbol, has forced the sculptors of all ages to the invention of
+some type or letter for it, if not an actual imitation. We
+find every degree of conventionalism or of naturalism in these
+types, the earlier being, for the most part, thoughtful symbols;
+the latter, awkward attempts at portraiture.<a name="FnAnchor_65" href="#Footnote_65"><span class="sp">65</span></a> The most conventional
+of all types is the Egyptian zigzag, preserved in the
+astronomical sign of Aquarius; but every nation, with any
+capacities of thought, has given, in some of its work, the same
+great definition of open water, as &ldquo;an undulatory thing with
+fish in it.&rdquo; I say <i>open</i> water, because inland nations have a
+totally different conception of the element. Imagine for an instant
+the different feelings of an husbandman whose hut is built
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227"></a>227</span>
+by the Rhine or the Po, and who sees, day by day, the same
+giddy succession of silent power, the same opaque, thick, whirling,
+irresistible labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies,
+coiling themselves into serpentine race by the reedy banks, in
+omne volubilis ĉvum,&mdash;and the image of the sea in the mind
+of the fisher upon the rocks of Ithaca, or by the Straits of
+Sicily, who sees how, day by day, the morning winds come
+coursing to the shore, every breath of them with a green wave
+rearing before it; clear, crisp, ringing, merry-minded waves,
+that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as
+they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust
+of crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand. Fancy the difference
+of the image of water in those two minds, and then compare
+the sculpture of the coiling eddies of the Tigris and its
+reedy branches in those slabs of Nineveh, with the crested
+curls of the Greek sea on the coins of Camerina or Tarentum.
+But both agree in the undulatory lines, either of the currents
+or the surface, and in the introduction of fish as explanatory of
+the meaning of those lines (so also the Egyptians in their
+frescoes, with most elaborate realisation of the fish). There is
+a very curious instance on a Greek mirror in the British
+Museum, representing Orion on the Sea; and multitudes of
+examples with dolphins on the Greek vases: the type is preserved
+without alteration in mediĉval painting and sculpture.
+The sea in that Greek mirror (at least 400 <span class="scs">B.C.</span>), in the mosaics
+of Torcello and St. Mark&rsquo;s, on the font of St. Frediano at
+Lucca, on the gate of the fortress of St. Michael&rsquo;s Mount in
+Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the
+Ducal Palace at Venice (under Arion on his Dolphin), is represented
+in a manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the
+frescoes of Avignon, has, with his usual strong feeling for
+naturalism, given the best example I remember, in painting, of
+the unity of the conventional system with direct imitation, and
+that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue color the
+coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the
+breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation
+and decorative effect are subordinate to easily understood symbolical
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228"></a>228</span>
+language; the undulatory lines are often valuable as an
+enrichment of surface, but are rarely of any studied gracefulness.
+One of the best examples I know of their expressive
+arrangement is around some figures in a spandril at Bourges,
+representing figures sinking in deep sea (the deluge): the waved
+lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the edge of the
+moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order of
+nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times
+of debasement, water began to be represented with its waves,
+foam, etc., as on the Vendramin tomb at Venice, above cited;
+but even there, without any definite ornamental purpose, the
+sculptor meant partly to explain a story, partly to display dexterity
+of chiselling, but not to produce beautiful forms pleasant
+to the eye. The imitation is vapid and joyless, and it has often
+been matter of surprise to me that sculptors, so fond of exhibiting
+their skill, should have suffered this imitation to fall so
+short, and remain so cold,&mdash;should not have taken more pains
+to curl the waves clearly, to edge them sharply, and to express,
+by drill-holes or other artifices, the character of foam.
+I think in one of the Antwerp churches something of this kind
+is done in wood, but in general it is rare.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVI</span>. 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays). If neither
+the sea nor the rock can be imagined, still less the devouring
+fire. It has been symbolised by radiation both in painting and
+sculpture, for the most part in the latter very unsuccessfully.
+It was suggested to me, not long ago,<a name="FnAnchor_66" href="#Footnote_66"><span class="sp">66</span></a> that zigzag decorations
+of Norman architects were typical of light springing from the
+half-set orb of the sun; the resemblance to the ordinary sun
+type is indeed remarkable, but I believe accidental. I shall
+give you, in my large plates, two curious instances of radiation
+in brick ornament above arches, but I think these also without
+any very luminous intention. The imitations of fire in the
+torches of Cupids and genii, and burning in tops of urns, which
+attest and represent the mephitic inspirations of the seventeenth
+century in most London churches, and in monuments all over
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page229"></a>229</span>
+civilised Europe, together with the gilded rays of Romanist
+altars, may be left to such mercy as the reader is inclined to
+show them.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVII</span>. 5. Forms of Air (Clouds). Hardly more manageable
+than flames, and of no ornamental use, their majesty being
+in scale and color, and inimitable in marble. They are lightly
+traced in much of the cinque cento sculpture; very boldly and
+grandly in the strange Last Judgment in the porch of St.
+Maclou at Rouen, described in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps.&rdquo; But the
+most elaborate imitations are altogether of recent date, arranged
+in concretions like flattened sacks, forty or fifty feet above the
+altars of continental churches, mixed with the gilded truncheons
+intended for sunbeams above alluded to.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVIII</span>. 6. Shells. I place these lowest in the scale (after
+inorganic forms) as being moulds or coats of organism; not
+themselves organic. The sense of this, and of their being mere
+emptiness and deserted houses, must always prevent them, however
+beautiful in their lines, from being largely used in ornamentation.
+It is better to take the line and leave the shell.
+One form, indeed, that of the cockle, has been in all ages used
+as the decoration of half domes, which were named conchas
+from their shell form: and I believe the wrinkled lip of the
+cockle, so used, to have been the origin, in some parts of
+Europe at least, of the exuberant foliation of the round arch.
+The scallop also is a pretty radiant form, and mingles well with
+other symbols when it is needed. The crab is always as delightful
+as a grotesque, for here we suppose the beast inside the
+shell; and he sustains his part in a lively manner among the
+other signs of the zodiac, with the scorpion; or scattered upon
+sculptured shores, as beside the Bronze Boar of Florence. We
+shall find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one of the
+Piazzetta shafts.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIX</span>. 7. Fish. These, as beautiful in their forms as they
+are familiar to our sight, while their interest is increased by
+their symbolic meaning, are of great value as material of ornament.
+Love of the picturesque has generally induced a choice
+of some supple form with scaly body and lashing tail, but the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230"></a>230</span>
+simplest fish form is largely employed in mediĉval work. We
+shall find the plain oval body and sharp head of the Thunny
+constantly at Venice; and the fish used in the expression of
+sea-water, or water generally, are always plain bodied creatures
+in the best mediĉval sculpture. The Greek type of the
+dolphin, however, sometimes but slightly exaggerated from the
+real outline of the Delphinus Delphis,<a name="FnAnchor_67" href="#Footnote_67"><span class="sp">67</span></a> is one of the most picturesque
+of animal forms; and the action of its slow revolving
+plunge is admirably caught upon the surface sea represented
+in Greek vases.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXX</span>. 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent
+and lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror
+in strange combination; the horror, which in an imitation is
+felt only as a pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite
+subjects in all periods of art; and the unity of both lizard
+and serpent in the ideal dragon, the most picturesque and
+powerful of all animal forms, and of peculiar symbolical interest
+to the Christian mind, is perhaps the principal of all the
+materials of mediĉval picturesque sculpture. By the best
+sculptors it is always used with this symbolic meaning, by the
+cinque cento sculptors as an ornament merely. The best and
+most natural representations of mere viper or snake are to be
+found interlaced among their confused groups of meaningless
+objects. The real power and horror of the snake-head has,
+however, been rarely reached. I shall give one example from
+Verona of the twelfth century.</p>
+
+<p>Other less powerful reptile forms are not unfrequent.
+Small frogs, lizards, and snails almost always enliven the foregrounds
+and leafage of good sculpture. The tortoise is less
+usually employed in groups. Beetles are chiefly mystic and
+colossal. Various insects, like everything else in the world,
+occur in cinque cento work; grasshoppers most frequently.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page231"></a>231</span>
+We shall see on the Ducal Palace at Venice an interesting use
+of the bee.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXI</span>. 9. Branches and stems of Trees. I arrange these
+under a separate head; because, while the forms of leafage
+belong to all architecture, and ought to be employed in it
+always, those of the branch and stem belong to a peculiar
+imitative and luxuriant architecture, and are only applicable
+at times. Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived little beauty
+in the stems of trees; they were little else than timber to
+them; and they preferred the rigid and monstrous triglyph, or
+the fluted column, to a broken bough or gnarled trunk. But
+with Christian knowledge came a peculiar regard for the forms
+of vegetation, from the root upwards. The actual representation
+of the entire trees required in many scripture subjects,&mdash;as
+in the most frequent of Old Testament subjects, the Fall;
+and again in the Drunkenness of Noah, the Garden Agony,
+and many others, familiarised the sculptors of bas-relief to the
+beauty of forms before unknown; while the symbolical name
+given to Christ by the Prophets, &ldquo;the Branch,&rdquo; and the frequent
+expressions referring to this image throughout every
+scriptural description of conversion, gave an especial interest
+to the Christian mind to this portion of vegetative structure.
+For some time, nevertheless, the sculpture of trees was confined
+to bas-relief; but it at last affected even the treatment of
+the main shafts in Lombard Gothic buildings,&mdash;as in the
+western façade of Genoa, where two of the shafts are represented
+as gnarled trunks: and as bas-relief itself became more
+boldly introduced, so did tree sculpture, until we find the
+writhed and knotted stems of the vine and fig used for angle
+shafts on the Doge&rsquo;s Palace, and entire oaks and appletrees
+forming, roots and all, the principal decorative sculptures of
+the Scala tombs at Verona. It was then discovered to be more
+easy to carve branches than leaves and, much helped by the
+frequent employment in later Gothic of the &ldquo;Tree of Jesse,&rdquo;
+for traceries and other purposes, the system reached full developement
+in a perfect thicket of twigs, which form the richest
+portion of the decoration of the porches of Beauvais. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232"></a>232</span>
+had now been carried to its richest extreme: men wearied of
+it and abandoned it, and like all other natural and beautiful
+things, it was ostracised by the mob of Renaissance architects.
+But it is interesting to observe how the human mind, in its
+acceptance of this feature of ornament, proceeded from the
+ground, and followed, as it were, the natural growth of the
+tree. It began with the rude and solid trunk, as at Genoa;
+then the branches shot out, and became loaded leaves; autumn
+came, the leaves were shed, and the eye was directed to the
+extremities of the delicate branches;&mdash;the Renaissance frosts
+came, and all perished.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXII</span>. 10. Foliage, Flowers, and Fruit. It is necessary
+to consider these as separated from the stems; not only, as
+above noted, because their separate use marks another school
+of architecture, but because they are the only organic structures
+which are capable of being so treated, and intended to be
+so, without strong effort of imagination. To pull animals to
+pieces, and use their paws for feet of furniture, or their heads
+for terminations of rods and shafts, is <i>usually</i> the characteristic
+of feelingless schools; the greatest men like their animals
+whole. The head may, indeed, be so managed as to look
+emergent from the stone, rather than fastened to it; and
+wherever there is throughout the architecture any expression
+of sternness or severity (severity in its literal sense, as in
+Romans, <span class="scs">XI</span>. 22), such divisions of the living form may be
+permitted; still, you cannot cut an animal to pieces as you can
+gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our gathering,
+and for our constant delight: wherever men exist in a
+perfectly civilised and healthy state, they have vegetation
+around them; wherever their state approaches that of innocence
+or perfectness, it approaches that of Paradise,&mdash;it is a
+dressing of garden. And, therefore, where nothing else can
+be used for ornament, vegetation may; vegetation in any
+form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A single
+leaf laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or frame-work
+of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost
+of the leaf,&mdash;the hollow &ldquo;foil&rdquo; cut out of it,&mdash;possesses a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page233"></a>233</span>
+charm which nothing else can replace; a charm not exciting,
+nor demanding laborious thought or sympathy, but perfectly
+simple, peaceful, and satisfying.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIII</span>. The full recognition of leaf forms, as the general
+source of subordinate decoration, is one of the chief characteristics
+of Christian architecture; but the two <i>roots</i> of leaf
+ornament are the Greek acanthus, and the Egyptian lotus.<a name="FnAnchor_68" href="#Footnote_68"><span class="sp">68</span></a>
+The dry land and the river thus each contributed their part;
+and all the florid capitals of the richest Northern Gothic on
+the one hand, and the arrowy lines of the severe Lombardic
+capitals on the other, are founded on these two gifts of the
+dust of Greece and the waves of the Nile. The leaf which is,
+I believe, called the Persepolitan water-leaf, is to be associated
+with the lotus flower and stem, as the origin of our noblest
+types of simple capital; and it is to be noted that the florid
+leaves of the dry land are used most by the Northern architects,
+while the water leaves are gathered for their ornaments
+by the parched builders of the Desert.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIV</span>. Fruit is, for the most part, more valuable in color
+than form; nothing is more beautiful as a subject of sculpture
+on a tree; but, gathered and put in baskets, it is quite possible
+to have too much of it. We shall find it so used very dextrously
+on the Ducal Palace of Venice, there with a meaning
+which rendered it right necessary; but the Renaissance architects
+address themselves to spectators who care for nothing
+but feasting, and suppose that clusters of pears and pineapples
+are visions of which their imagination can never weary, and
+above which it will never care to rise. I am no advocate for
+image worship, as I believe the reader will elsewhere sufficiently
+find; but I am very sure that the Protestantism of
+London would have found itself quite as secure in a cathedral
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234"></a>234</span>
+decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung round
+with bunches of ribston pippins.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXV</span>. 11. Birds. The perfect and simple grace of bird
+form, in general, has rendered it a favorite subject with early
+sculptors, and with those schools which loved form more than
+action; but the difficulty of expressing action, where the muscular
+markings are concealed, has limited the use of it in later
+art. Half the ornament, at least, in Byzantine architecture,
+and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed of birds, either
+pecking at fruit or flowers, or standing on either side of a
+flower or vase, or alone, as generally the symbolical peacock.
+But how much of our general sense of grace or power of
+motion, of serenity, peacefulness, and spirituality, we owe to
+these creatures, it is impossible to conceive; their wings supplying
+us with almost the only means of representation of spiritual
+motion which we possess, and with an ornamental form of
+which the eye is never weary, however meaninglessly or endlessly
+repeated; whether in utter isolation, or associated with
+the bodies of the lizard, the horse, the lion, or the man. The
+heads of the birds of prey are always beautiful, and used as the
+richest ornaments in all ages.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVI</span>. 12. Quadrupeds and Men. Of quadrupeds the
+horse has received an elevation into the primal rank of sculptural
+subject, owing to his association with men. The full
+value of other quadruped forms has hardly been perceived, or
+worked for, in late sculpture; and the want of science is more
+felt in these subjects than in any other branches of early work.
+The greatest richness of quadruped ornament is found in the
+hunting sculpture of the Lombards; but rudely treated (the
+most noble examples of treatment being the lions of Egypt,
+the Ninevite bulls, and the mediĉval griffins). Quadrupeds
+of course form the noblest subjects of ornament next to the
+human form; this latter, the chief subject of sculpture, being
+sometimes the end of architecture rather than its decoration.</p>
+
+<p>We have thus completed the list of the materials of architectural
+decoration, and the reader may be assured that no
+effort has ever been successful to draw elements of beauty from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235"></a>235</span>
+any other sources than these. Such an effort was once resolutely
+made. It was contrary to the religion of the Arab to
+introduce any animal form into his ornament; but although
+all the radiance of color, all the refinements of proportion, and
+all the intricacies of geometrical design were open to him, he
+could not produce any noble work without an <i>abstraction</i> of
+the forms of leafage, to be used in his capitals, and made the
+ground plan of his chased ornament. But I have above noted
+that coloring is an entirely distinct and independent art; and
+in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps&rdquo; we saw that this art had most power
+when practised in arrangements of simple geometrical form:
+the Arab, therefore, lay under no disadvantage in coloring,
+and he had all the noble elements of constructive and proportional
+beauty at his command: he might not imitate the sea-shell,
+but he could build the dome. The imitation of radiance
+by the variegated voussoir, the expression of the sweep of the
+desert by the barred red lines upon the wall, the starred inshedding
+of light through his vaulted roof, and all the endless
+fantasy of abstract line,<a name="FnAnchor_69" href="#Footnote_69"><span class="sp">69</span></a> were still in the power of his ardent
+and fantastic spirit. Much he achieved; and yet in the effort
+of his overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he
+made his architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined
+enchantment, and left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a
+startling dream, whose beauty we may indeed feel, and whose
+instruction we may receive, but must smile at its inconsistency,
+and mourn over its evanescence.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_63" href="#FnAnchor_63"><span class="fn">63</span></a> The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly symptoms
+in the civilisation of the upper classes in the present century.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_64" href="#FnAnchor_64"><span class="fn">64</span></a> Thus above, I adduced for the architect&rsquo;s imitation the appointed stories
+and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular forms of crag or fissure.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_65" href="#FnAnchor_65"><span class="fn">65</span></a> <a href="#app_21">Appendix 21</a>, &ldquo;Ancient Representations of Water.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_66" href="#FnAnchor_66"><span class="fn">66</span></a> By the friend to whom I owe <a href="#app_21">Appendix 21</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_67" href="#FnAnchor_67"><span class="fn">67</span></a> One is glad to hear from Cuvier, that though dolphins in general are
+&ldquo;les plus carnassiers, et proportion gardée avec leur taille, les plus cruels
+de l&rsquo;ordre;&rdquo; yet that in the Delphinus Delphis, &ldquo;tout l&rsquo;organisation de son
+cerveau annonce <i>qu&rsquo;il ne doit pas être dépourvu de la docilité</i> qu&rsquo;ils (les
+anciens) lui attribuaient.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_68" href="#FnAnchor_68"><span class="fn">68</span></a> Vide Wilkinson, vol. v., woodcut No. 478, fig. 8. The tamarisk appears
+afterwards to have given the idea of a subdivision of leaf more pure
+and quaint than that of the acanthus. Of late our botanists have discovered,
+in the &ldquo;Victoria regia&rdquo; (supposing its blossom reversed), another
+strangely beautiful type of what we may perhaps hereafter find it convenient
+to call <i>Lily</i> capitals.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_69" href="#FnAnchor_69"><span class="fn">69</span></a> <a href="#app_22">Appendix 22</a>, &ldquo;Arabian Ornamentation.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page236"></a>236</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_21" id="chap_21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+
+<h5>TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> now know where we are to look for subjects of
+decoration. The next question is, as the reader must remember,
+how to treat or express these subjects.</p>
+
+<p>There are evidently two branches of treatment: the first
+being the expression, or rendering to the eye and mind, of the
+thing itself; and the second, the arrangement of the thing so
+expressed: both of these being quite distinct from the placing
+of the ornament in proper parts of the building. For instance,
+suppose we take a vine-leaf for our subject. The first question
+is, how to cut the vine-leaf? Shall we cut its ribs and
+notches on the edge, or only its general outline? and so on.
+Then, how to arrange the vine-leaves when we have them;
+whether symmetrically, or at random; or unsymmetrically,
+yet within certain limits? All these I call questions of treatment.
+Then, whether the vine-leaves so arranged are to be
+set on the capital of a pillar or on its shaft, I call a question of
+place.</p>
+
+<p class="mb">§ <span class="scs">II</span>. So, then, the questions of mere treatment are twofold,
+how to express, and how to arrange. And expression is to
+the mind or the sight. Therefore, the inquiry becomes really
+threefold:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="mn">1. How ornament is to be expressed with reference to the
+mind.</p>
+
+<p class="mn">2. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to the
+sight.</p>
+
+<p class="mn">3. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to both.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page237"></a>237</span></p>
+
+<p class="mt">§ <span class="scs">III</span>. (1.) How is ornament to be treated with <span class="correction" title="corrected from rererence">reference</span> to
+the mind?</p>
+
+<p>If, to produce a good or beautiful ornament, it were only
+necessary to produce a perfect piece of sculpture, and if a well
+cut group of flowers or animals were indeed an ornament
+wherever it might be placed, the work of the architect would
+be comparatively easy. Sculpture and architecture would
+become separate arts; and the architect would order so many
+pieces of such subject and size as he needed, without troubling
+himself with any questions but those of disposition and proportion.
+But this is not so. <i>No perfect piece either of painting
+or sculpture is an architectural ornament at all</i>, except in that
+vague sense in which any beautiful thing is said to ornament
+the place it is in. Thus we say that pictures ornament a room;
+but we should not thank an architect who told us that his
+design, to be complete, required a Titian to be put in one corner
+of it, and a Velasquez in the other; and it is just as
+unreasonable to call perfect sculpture, niched in, or encrusted
+on a building, a portion of the ornament of that building, as it
+would be to hang pictures by the way of ornament on the
+outside of it. It is very possible that the sculptured work
+may be harmoniously associated with the building, or the building
+executed with reference to it; but in this latter case the
+architecture is subordinate to the sculpture, as in the Medicean
+chapel, and I believe also in the Parthenon. And so far from
+the perfection of the work conducing to its ornamental purpose,
+we may say, with entire security, that its perfection, in some
+degree, unfits it for its purpose, and that no absolutely complete
+sculpture can be decoratively right. We have a familiar
+instance in the flower-work of St. Paul&rsquo;s, which is probably, in
+the abstract, as perfect flower sculpture as could be produced
+at the time; and which is just as rational an ornament of the
+building as so many valuable Van Huysums, framed and glazed
+and hung up over each window.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. The especial condition of true ornament is, that it be
+beautiful in its place, and nowhere else, and that it aid the effect
+of every portion of the building over which it has influence;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page238"></a>238</span>
+that it does not, by its richness, make other parts bald, or, by
+its delicacy, make other parts coarse. Every one of its qualities
+has reference to its place and use: <i>and it is fitted for its
+service by what would be faults and deficiencies if it had no
+especial duty</i>. Ornament, the servant, is often formal, where
+sculpture, the master, would have been free; the servant is
+often silent where the master would have been eloquent; or
+hurried, where the master would have been serene.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. How far this subordination is in different situations to
+be expressed, or how far it may be surrendered, and ornament,
+the servant, be permitted to have independent will; and by
+what means the subordination is best to be expressed when it
+is required, are by far the most difficult questions I have ever
+tried to work out respecting any branch of art; for, in many
+of the examples to which I look as authoritative in their majesty
+of effect, it is almost impossible to say whether the abstraction
+or imperfection of the sculpture was owing to the choice, or the
+incapacity of the workman; and, if to the latter, how far the
+result of fortunate incapacity can be imitated by prudent self-restraint.
+The reader, I think, will understand this at once by
+considering the effect of the illuminations of an old missal. In
+their bold rejection of all principles of perspective, light and
+shade, and drawing, they are infinitely more ornamental to the
+page, owing to the vivid opposition of their bright colors and
+quaint lines, than if they had been drawn by Da Vinci himself:
+and so the Arena chapel is far more brightly <i>decorated</i> by the
+archaic frescoes of Giotti, than the Stanze of the Vatican are
+by those of Raffaelle. But how far it is possible to recur to
+such archaicism, or to make up for it by any voluntary abandonment
+of power, I cannot as yet venture in any wise to
+determine.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. So, on the other hand, in many instances of finished
+work in which I find most to regret or to reprobate, I can hardly
+distinguish what is erroneous in principle from what is vulgar
+in execution. For instance, in most Romanesque churches of
+Italy, the porches are guarded by gigantic animals, lions or
+griffins, of admirable severity of design; yet, in many cases,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page239"></a>239</span>
+of so rude workmanship, that it can hardly be determined how
+much of this severity was intentional,&mdash;how much involuntary:
+in the cathedral of Genoa two modern lions have, in imitation
+of this ancient custom, been placed on the steps of its west
+front; and the Italian sculptor, thinking himself a marvellous
+great man because he knew what lions were really like, has
+copied them, in the menagerie, with great success, and produced
+two hairy and well-whiskered beasts, as like to real lions
+as he could possibly cut them. One wishes them back in the
+menagerie for his pains; but it is impossible to say how far
+the offence of their presence is owing to the mere stupidity
+and vulgarity of the sculpture, and how far we might have
+been delighted with a realisation, carried to nearly the same
+length by Ghiberti or Michael Angelo. (I say <i>nearly</i>, because
+neither Ghiberti nor Michael Angelo would ever have
+attempted, or permitted, entire realisation, even in independent
+sculpture.)</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. In spite of these embarrassments, however, some few
+certainties may be marked in the treatment of past architecture,
+and secure conclusions deduced for future practice.
+There is first, for instance, the assuredly intended and resolute
+abstraction of the Ninevite and Egyptian sculptors. The men
+who cut those granite lions in the Egyptian room of the British
+Museum, and who carved the calm faces of those Ninevite
+kings, knew much more, both of lions and kings, than they
+chose to express. Then there is the Greek system, in which
+the human sculpture is perfect, the architecture and animal
+sculpture is subordinate to it, and the architectural ornament
+severely subordinated to this again, so as to be composed of
+little more than abstract lines: and, finally, there is the peculiarly
+mediĉval system, in which the inferior details are carried
+to as great or greater imitative perfection as the higher sculpture;
+and the subordination is chiefly effected by symmetries of
+arrangement, and quaintnesses of treatment, respecting which
+it is difficult to say how far they resulted from intention, and
+how far from incapacity.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Now of these systems, the Ninevite and Egyptian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page240"></a>240</span>
+are altogether opposed to modern habits of thought and action;
+they are sculptures evidently executed under absolute authorities,
+physical and mental, such as cannot at present exist. The
+Greek system presupposes the possession of a Phidias; it is
+ridiculous to talk of building in the Greek manner; you may
+build a Greek shell or box, such as the Greek intended to contain
+sculpture, but you have not the sculpture to put in it.
+Find your Phidias first, and your new Phidias will very
+soon settle all your architectural difficulties in very unexpected
+ways indeed; but until you find him, do not think yourselves
+architects while you go on copying those poor subordinations,
+and secondary and tertiary orders of ornament, which the Greek
+put on the shell of his sculpture. Some of them, beads, and
+dentils, and such like, are as good as they can be for their
+work, and you may use them for subordinate work still; but
+they are nothing to be proud of, especially when you did not
+invent them: and others of them are mistakes and impertinences
+in the Greek himself, such as his so-called honeysuckle
+ornaments and others, in which there is a starched and dull
+suggestion of vegetable form, and yet no real resemblance nor
+life, for the conditions of them result from his own conceit of
+himself, and ignorance of the physical sciences, and want of
+relish for common nature, and vain fancy that he could improve
+everything he touched, and that he honored it by taking
+it into his service: by freedom from which conceits the true
+Christian architecture is distinguished&mdash;not by points to its
+arches.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. There remains, therefore, only the mediĉval system,
+in which I think, generally, more completion is permitted
+(though this often because more was possible) in the inferior
+than in the higher portions of ornamental subject. Leaves,
+and birds, and lizards are realised, or nearly so; men and
+quadrupeds formalised. For observe, the smaller and inferior
+subject remains subordinate, however richly finished; but the
+human sculpture can only be subordinate by being imperfect.
+The realisation is, however, in all cases, dangerous except
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page241"></a>241</span>
+under most skilful management, and the abstraction, if true
+and noble, is almost always more delightful.<a name="FnAnchor_70" href="#Footnote_70"><span class="sp">70</span></a></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">VIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_8"><img src="images/img241.jpg" width="413" height="650" alt="DECORATION BY DISKS." title="DECORATION BY DISKS." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">DECORATION BY DISKS.<br />
+                      <span class="f80"> PALAZZO DEI BADOARI PARTECIPAZZI.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first
+the essential elements of the thing to be represented, then the
+rest in the order of importance (so that wherever we pause we
+shall always have obtained more than we leave behind), and
+using any expedient to impress what we want upon the mind,
+without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such expedient.
+Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock:
+now a peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan; it has a
+high crest, so has a cockatoo; it has a long tail, so has a bird
+of Paradise. But the whole spirit and power of peacock is in
+those eyes of the tail. It is true, the argus pheasant, and one
+or two more birds, have something like them, but nothing for
+a moment comparable to them in brilliancy: express the
+gleaming of the blue eyes through the plumage, and you have
+nearly all you want of peacock, but without this, nothing; and
+yet those eyes are not in relief; a rigidly <i>true</i> sculpture of a
+peacock&rsquo;s form could have no eyes,&mdash;nothing but feathers.
+Here, then, enters the stratagem of sculpture; you <i>must</i> cut
+the eyes in relief, somehow or another; see how it is done in
+the peacock on the opposite page; it is so done by nearly all
+the Byzantine sculptors: this particular peacock is meant to be
+seen at some distance (how far off I know not, for it is an
+interpolation in the building where it occurs, of which more
+hereafter), but at all events at a distance of thirty or forty
+feet; I have put it close to you that you may see plainly the
+rude rings and rods which stand for the eyes and quills, but at
+the just distance their effect is perfect.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. And the simplicity of the means here employed may
+help us, both to some clear understanding of the spirit of
+Ninevite and Egyptian work, and to some perception of the
+kind of enfantillage or archaicism to which it may be possible,
+even in days of advanced science, legitimately to return. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page242"></a>242</span>
+architect has no right, as we said before, to require of us a picture
+of Titian&rsquo;s in order to complete his design; neither has
+he the right to calculate on the co-operation of perfect sculptors,
+in subordinate capacities. Far from this; his business is
+to dispense with such aid altogether, and to devise such a
+system of ornament as shall be capable of execution by uninventive
+and even unintelligent workmen; for supposing that
+he required noble sculpture for his ornament, how far would
+this at once limit the number and the scale of possible buildings?
+Architecture is the work of nations; but we cannot
+have nations of great sculptors. Every house in every street
+of every city ought to be good architecture, but we cannot
+have Flaxman or Thorwaldsen at work upon it: nor, even if
+we chose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings,
+could the mass and majesty of them be great, if we required
+all to be executed by great men; greatness is not to be had in
+the required quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he
+cannot carve it; he can only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs
+at the base of it. And with every increase of your fastidiousness
+in the execution of your ornament, you diminish the possible
+number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not think
+you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection
+will increase the supply: educated imbecility and finessed
+foolishness are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses;
+and there is no free-trade measure, which will ever lower the
+price of brains,&mdash;there is no California of common sense.
+Exactly in the degree in which you require your decoration to
+be wrought by thoughtful men, you diminish the extent and
+number of architectural works. Your business as an architect,
+is to calculate only on the co-operation of inferior men, to think
+for them, and to indicate for them such expressions of your
+thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and the
+feeblest hand can execute. This is the definition of the purest
+architectural abstractions. They are the deep and laborious
+thoughts of the greatest men, put into such easy letters that
+they can be written by the simplest. <i>They are expressions of
+the mind of manhood by the hands of childhood.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page243"></a>243</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. And now suppose one of those old Ninevite or
+Egyptian builders, with a couple of thousand men&mdash;mud-bred,
+onion-eating creatures&mdash;under him, to be set to work, like so
+many ants, on his temple sculptures. What is he to do with
+them? He can put them through a granitic exercise of current
+hand; he can teach them all how to curl hair thoroughly
+into croche-c&oelig;urs, as you teach a bench of school-boys how
+to shape pothooks; he can teach them all how to draw long
+eyes and straight noses, and how to copy accurately certain
+well-defined lines. Then he fits his own great design to their
+capacities; he takes out of king, or lion, or god, as much as
+was expressible by croche-c&oelig;urs and granitic pothooks; he
+throws this into noble forms of his own imagining, and having
+mapped out their lines so that there can be no possibility of
+error, sets his two thousand men to work upon them, with a
+will, and so many onions a day.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. I said those times cannot now return. We have,
+with Christianity, recognised the individual value of every
+soul; and there is no intelligence so feeble but that its single
+ray may in some sort contribute to the general light. This is
+the glory of Gothic architecture, that every jot and tittle,
+every point and niche of it, affords room, fuel, and focus for
+individual fire. But you cease to acknowledge this, and you
+refuse to accept the help of the lesser mind, if you require the
+work to be all executed in a great manner. Your business is
+to think out all of it nobly, to dictate the expression of it as
+far as your dictation can assist the less elevated intelligence:
+then to leave this, aided and taught as far as may be, to its
+own simple act and effort; and to rejoice in its simplicity if
+not in its power, and in its vitality if not in its science.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. We have, then, three orders of ornament, classed
+according to the degrees of correspondence of the executive
+and conceptive minds. We have the servile ornament, in
+which the executive is absolutely subjected to the inventive,&mdash;the
+ornament of the great Eastern nations, more especially
+Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its submissiveness.
+Then we have the mediĉval system, in which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page244"></a>244</span>
+the mind of the inferior workman is recognised, and has full
+room for action, but is guided and ennobled by the ruling
+mind. This is the truly Christian and only perfect system.
+Finally, we have ornaments expressing the endeavor to equalise
+the executive and inventive,&mdash;endeavor which is Renaissance
+and revolutionary, and destructive of all noble architecture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. Thus far, then, of the incompleteness or simplicity
+of execution necessary in architectural ornament, as referred
+to the mind. Next we have to consider that which is required
+when it is referred to the sight, and the various modifications
+of treatment which are rendered necessary by the variation of
+its distance from the eye. I say necessary: not merely expedient
+or economical. It is foolish to carve what is to be seen
+forty feet off with the delicacy which the eye demands within
+two yards; not merely because such delicacy is lost in the
+distance, but because it is a great deal worse than lost:&mdash;the
+delicate work has actually worse effect in the distance than
+rough work. This is a fact well known to painters, and, for
+the most part, acknowledged by the critics of painters, namely,
+that there is a certain distance for which a picture is painted;
+and that the finish, which is delightful if that distance be
+small, is actually injurious if the distance be great: and, moreover,
+that there is a particular method of handling which none
+but consummate artists reach, which has its effects at the intended
+distance, and is altogether hieroglyphical and unintelligible
+at any other. This, I say, is acknowledged in painting,
+but it is not practically acknowledged in architecture; nor until
+my attention was especially directed to it, had I myself any
+idea of the care with which this great question was studied by
+the mediĉval architects. On my first careful examination of
+the capitals of the upper arcade of the Ducal Palace at Venice,
+I was induced, by their singular inferiority of workmanship,
+to suppose them posterior to those of the lower arcade. It
+was not till I discovered that some of those which I thought
+the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I
+obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation; a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page245"></a>245</span>
+system which I afterwards found carried out in every building
+of the great times which I had opportunity of examining.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. There are two distinct modes in which this adaptation
+is effected. In the first, the same designs which are delicately
+worked when near the eye, are rudely cut, and have far
+fewer details when they are removed from it. In this method
+it is not always easy to distinguish economy from skill, or
+slovenliness from science. But, in the second method, a different
+design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of simpler
+lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of
+course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of
+purpose; but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both
+kinds when they are seen close; in the first, a bald execution
+of a perfect design; the second, a baldness of design with
+perfect execution. And in these very imperfections lies the
+admirableness of the ornament.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adaptation
+to the distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of
+observance of natural law. Are not all natural things, it may
+be asked, as lovely near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at
+the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster
+sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling.
+They are meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for
+their place, high above your head; approach them, and they
+fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of
+thunderous vapor. Look at the crest of the Alp, from the
+far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human
+souls have communion with it by their myriads. The child
+looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden
+and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the
+sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world&rsquo;s
+horizon; dyed with the depth of heaven, and clothed with the
+calm of eternity. There was it set, for holy dominion, by
+Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon
+know her going down. It was built for its place in the far-off
+sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies
+away about its foundations, and the tide of human life, shallowed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page246"></a>246</span>
+upon the vast aërial shore, is at last met by the Eternal
+&ldquo;Here shall thy waves be stayed,&rdquo; the glory of its aspect fades
+into blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly
+rocks, its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow, the
+storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own
+ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.</p>
+
+<p>Nor in such instances as these alone, though strangely
+enough, the discrepancy between apparent and actual beauty is
+greater in proportion to the unapproachableness of the object,
+is the law observed. For every distance from the eye there is
+a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different system of lines of
+form; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that distance,
+and for that alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of
+beauty is lost, and another succeeds, to be disorganised and
+reduced to strange and incomprehensible means and appliances
+in its turn. If you desire to perceive the great harmonies of
+the form of a rocky mountain, you must not ascend upon its
+sides. All is there disorder and accident, or seems so; sudden
+starts of its shattered beds hither and thither; ugly struggles
+of unexpected strength from under the ground; fallen fragments,
+toppling one over another into more helpless fall. Retire
+from it, and, as your eye commands it more and more, as
+you see the ruined mountain world with a wider glance, behold!
+dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in the disjointed
+mass; line binds itself into stealthy fellowship with
+line; group by group, the helpless fragments gather themselves
+into ordered companies; new captains of hosts and masses of
+battalions become visible, one by one, and far away answers
+of foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos
+is seen risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the
+unregarded heap could now be spared from the mystic whole.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. Now it is indeed true that where nature loses one
+kind of beauty, as you approach it, she substitutes another;
+this is worthy of her infinite power: and, as we shall see, art
+can sometimes follow her even in doing this; but all I insist
+upon at present is, that the several effects of nature are each
+worked with means referred to a particular distance, and producing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page247"></a>247</span>
+their effect at that distance only. Take a singular and
+marked instance: When the sun rises behind a ridge of pines,
+and those pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two,
+against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches,
+and all, becomes one frostwork of intensely brilliant silver,
+which is relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe,
+for some distance on either side of the sun.<a name="FnAnchor_71" href="#Footnote_71"><span class="sp">71</span></a> Now suppose
+that a person who had never seen pines were, for the first time
+in his life, to see them under this strange aspect, and, reasoning
+as to the means by which such effect could be produced,
+laboriously to approach the eastern ridge, how would he be
+amazed to find that the fiery spectres had been produced by
+trees with swarthy and grey trunks, and dark green leaves!
+We, in our simplicity, if we had been required to produce such
+an appearance, should have built up trees of chased silver, with
+trunks of glass, and then been grievously amazed to find that,
+at two miles off, neither silver nor glass were any more visible;
+but nature knew better, and prepared for her fairy work with
+the strong branches and dark leaves, in her own mysterious
+way.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs correction" title="corrected from XIV">XIX</span>. Now this is exactly what you have to do with your
+good ornament. It may be that it is capable of being approached,
+as well as likely to be seen far away, and then it
+ought to have microscopic qualities, as the pine leaves have,
+which will bear approach. But your calculation of its purpose
+is for a glory to be produced at a given distance; it may
+be here, or may be there, but it is a <i>given</i> distance; and the
+excellence of the ornament depends upon its fitting that distance,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248"></a>248</span>
+and being seen better there than anywhere else, and
+having a particular function and form which it can only discharge
+and assume there. You are never to say that ornament
+has great merit because &ldquo;you cannot see the beauty of it
+here;&rdquo; but, it has great merit because &ldquo;you <i>can</i> see its beauty
+<i>here only</i>.&rdquo; And to give it this merit is just about as difficult
+a task as I could well set you. I have above noted the two
+ways in which it is done: the one, being merely rough cutting,
+may be passed over; the other, which is scientific alteration of
+design, falls, itself, into two great branches, Simplification and
+Emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>A word or two is necessary on each of these heads.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. When an ornamental work is intended to be seen
+near, if its composition be indeed fine, the subdued and delicate
+portions of the design lead to, and unite, the energetic
+parts, and those energetic parts form with the rest a whole, in
+which their own immediate relations to each other are not perceived.
+Remove this design to a distance, and the connecting
+delicacies vanish, the energies alone remain, now either disconnected
+altogether, or assuming with each other new relations,
+which, not having been intended by the designer, will probably
+be painful. There is a like, and a more palpable, effect, in the
+retirement of a band of music in which the instruments are of
+very unequal powers; the fluting and fifeing expire, the drumming
+remains, and that in a painful arrangement, as demanding
+something which is unheard. In like manner, as the
+designer at arm&rsquo;s length removes or elevates his work, fine
+gradations, and roundings, and incidents, vanish, and a totally
+unexpected arrangement is established between the remainder
+of the markings, certainly confused, and in all probability
+painful.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXI</span>. The art of architectural design is therefore, first, the
+preparation for this beforehand, the rejection of all the delicate
+passages as worse than useless, and the fixing the thought upon
+the arrangement of the features which will remain visible far
+away. Nor does this always imply a diminution of resource;
+for, while it may be assumed as a law that fine modulation of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249"></a>249</span>
+surface in light becomes quickly invisible as the object retires,
+there are a softness and mystery given to the harder markings,
+which enable them to be safely used as media of expression.
+There is an exquisite example of this use, in the head of the
+Adam of the Ducal Palace. It is only at the height of 17 or
+18 feet above the eye; nevertheless, the sculptor felt it was no
+use to trouble himself about drawing the corners of the mouth,
+or the lines of the lips, delicately, at that distance; his object
+has been to mark them clearly, and to prevent accidental
+shadows from concealing them, or altering their expression.
+The lips are cut thin and sharp, so that their line cannot be
+mistaken, and a good deep drill-hole struck into the angle of
+the mouth; the eye is anxious and questioning, and one is surprised,
+from below, to perceive a kind of darkness in the iris
+of it, neither like color, nor like a circular furrow. The expedient
+can only be discovered by ascending to the level of the
+head; it is one which would have been quite inadmissible
+except in distant work, six drill-holes cut into the iris, round a
+central one for the pupil.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXII</span>. By just calculation, like this, of the means at our
+disposal, by beautiful arrangement of the prominent features,
+and by choice of different subjects for different places, choosing
+the broadest forms for the farthest distance, it is possible
+to give the impression, not only of perfection, but of an
+exquisite delicacy, to the most distant ornament. And this is
+the true sign of the right having been done, and the utmost
+possible power attained:&mdash;The spectator should be satisfied to
+stay in his place, feeling the decoration, wherever it may be,
+equally rich, full, and lovely: not desiring to climb the steeples
+in order to examine it, but sure that he has it all, where he is.
+Perhaps the capitals of the cathedral of Genoa are the best
+instances of absolute perfection in this kind: seen from below,
+they appear as rich as the frosted silver of the Strada degli
+Orefici; and the nearer you approach them, the less delicate
+they seem.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIII</span>. This is, however, not the only mode, though the
+best, in which ornament is adapted for distance. The other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page250"></a>250</span>
+is emphasis,&mdash;the unnatural insisting upon explanatory lines,
+where the subject would otherwise become unintelligible. It
+is to be remembered that, by a deep and narrow incision, an
+architect has the power, at least in sunshine, of drawing a
+black line on stone, just as vigorously as it can be drawn with
+chalk on grey paper; and that he may thus, wherever and in
+the degree that he chooses, substitute <i>chalk sketching</i> for
+sculpture. They are curiously mingled by the Romans. The
+bas-reliefs of the Arc d&rsquo;Orange are small, and would be confused,
+though in bold relief, if they depended for intelligibility
+on the relief only; but each figure is outlined by a strong
+<i>incision</i> at its edge into the background, and all the ornaments
+on the armor are simply drawn with incised lines, and not cut
+out at all. A similar use of lines is made by the Gothic nations
+in all their early sculpture, and with delicious effect. Now, to
+draw a mere pattern&mdash;as, for instance, the bearings of a shield&mdash;with
+these simple incisions, would, I suppose, occupy an able
+sculptor twenty minutes or half an hour; and the pattern is
+then clearly seen, under all circumstances of light and shade;
+there can be no mistake about it, and no missing it. To carve
+out the bearings in due and finished relief would occupy a long
+summer&rsquo;s day, and the results would be feeble and indecipherable
+in the best lights, and in some lights totally and hopelessly
+invisible, ignored, non-existant. Now the Renaissance architects,
+and our modern ones, despise the simple expedient of
+the rough Roman or barbarian. They do not care to be understood.
+They care only to speak finely, and be thought great
+orators, if one could only hear them. So I leave you to choose
+between the old men, who took minutes to tell things plainly,
+and the modern men, who take days to tell them unintelligibly.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIV</span>. All expedients of this kind, both of simplification
+and energy, for the expression of details at a distance where
+their actual forms would have been invisible, but more especially
+this linear method, I shall call Proutism; for the greatest
+master of the art in modern times has been Samuel Prout.
+He actually takes up buildings of the later times in which the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page251"></a>251</span>
+ornament has been too refined for its place, and translates it
+into the energised linear ornament of earlier art: and to this
+power of taking the life and essence of decoration, and putting
+it into a perfectly intelligible form, when its own fulness would
+have been confused, is owing the especial power of his drawings.
+Nothing can be more closely analogous than the method
+with which an old Lombard uses his chisel, and that with
+which Prout uses the reed-pen; and we shall see presently
+farther correspondence in their feeling about the enrichment
+of luminous surfaces.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXV</span>. Now, all that has been hitherto said refers to ornament
+whose distance is fixed, or nearly so; as when it is at
+any considerable height from the ground, supposing the spectator
+to desire to see it, and to get as near it as he can. But
+the distance of ornament is never fixed to the <i>general</i> spectator.
+The tower of a cathedral is bound to look well, ten miles
+off, or five miles, or half a mile, or within fifty yards. The
+ornaments of its top have fixed distances, compared with those
+of its base; but quite unfixed distances in their relation to the
+great world: and the ornaments of the base have no fixed distance
+at all. They are bound to look well from the other side
+of the cathedral close, and to look equally well, or better, as we
+enter the cathedral door. How are we to manage this?</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVI</span>. As nature manages it. I said above, § <span class="scs">XVII</span>., that
+for every distance from the eye there was a different system
+of form in all natural objects: this is to be so then in architecture.
+The lesser ornament is to be grafted on the greater,
+and third or fourth orders of ornaments upon this again, as
+need may be, until we reach the limits of possible sight; each
+order of ornament being adapted for a different distance: first,
+for example, the great masses,&mdash;the buttresses and stories and
+black windows and broad cornices of the tower, which give it
+make, and organism, as it rises over the horizon, half a score of
+miles away: then the traceries and shafts and pinnacles, which
+give it richness as we approach: then the niches and statues
+and knobs and flowers, which we can only see when we stand
+beneath it. At this third order of ornament, we may pause,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252"></a>252</span>
+in the upper portions; but on the roofs of the niches, and the
+robes of the statues, and the rolls of the mouldings, comes a
+fourth order of ornament, as delicate as the eye can follow,
+when any of these features may be approached.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVII</span>. All good ornamentation is thus arborescent, as it
+were, one class of it branching out of another and sustained by
+it; and its nobility consists in this, that whatever order or class
+of it we may be contemplating, we shall find it subordinated to
+a greater, simpler, and more powerful; and if we then contemplate
+the greater order, we shall find it again subordinated to a
+greater still; until the greatest can only be quite grasped by
+retiring to the limits of distance commanding it.</p>
+
+<p>And if this subordination be not complete, the ornament is
+bad: if the figurings and chasings and borderings of a dress
+be not subordinated to the folds of it,&mdash;if the folds are not subordinate
+to the action and mass of the figure,&mdash;if this action
+and mass not to the divisions of the recesses and shafts among
+which it stands,&mdash;if these not to the shadows of the great arches
+and buttresses of the whole building, in each case there is error;
+much more if all be contending with each other and striving
+for attention at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVIII</span>. It is nevertheless evident, that, however perfect
+this distribution, there cannot be orders adapted to <i>every</i> distance
+of the spectator. Between the ranks of ornament there
+must always be a bold separation; and there must be many
+intermediate distances, where we are too far off to see the
+lesser rank clearly, and yet too near to grasp the next higher
+rank wholly: and at all these distances the spectator will feel
+himself ill-placed, and will desire to go nearer or farther away.
+This must be the case in all noble work, natural or artificial. It
+is exactly the same with respect to Rouen cathedral or the Mont
+Blanc. We like to see them from the other side of the Seine,
+or of the lake of Geneva; from the Marché aux Fleurs, or the
+Valley of Chamouni; from the parapets of the apse, or the
+crags of the Montagne de la Côte: but there are intermediate
+distances which dissatisfy us in either case, and from which one
+is in haste either to advance or to retire.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page253"></a>253</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIX</span>. Directly opposed to this ordered, disciplined, well
+officered and variously ranked ornament, this type of divine,
+and therefore of all good human government, is the democratic
+ornament, in which all is equally influential, and has equal
+office and authority; that is to say, none of it any office nor
+authority, but a life of continual struggle for independence and
+notoriety, or of gambling for chance regards. The English
+perpendicular work is by far the worst of this kind that I know;
+its main idea, or decimal fraction of an idea, being to cover
+its walls with dull, successive, eternity of reticulation, to fill
+with equal foils the equal interstices between the equal bars,
+and charge the interminable blanks with statues and rosettes,
+invisible at a distance, and uninteresting near.</p>
+
+<p>The early Lombardic, Veronese, and Norman work is the
+exact reverse of this; being divided first into large masses, and
+these masses covered with minute chasing and surface work,
+which fill them with interest, and yet do not disturb nor divide
+their greatness. The lights are kept broad and bright, and yet
+are found on near approach to be charged with intricate design.
+This, again, is a part of the great system of treatment which I
+shall hereafter call &ldquo;Proutism;&rdquo; much of what is thought mannerism
+and imperfection in Prout&rsquo;s work, being the result of
+his determined resolution that minor details shall never break
+up his large masses of light.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXX</span>. Such are the main principles to be observed in the
+adaptation of ornament to the sight. We have lastly to inquire
+by what method, and in what quantities, the ornament, thus
+adapted to mental contemplation, and prepared for its physical
+position, may most wisely be arranged. I think the method
+ought first to be considered, and the quantity last; for the advisable
+quantity depends upon the method.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXI</span>. It was said above, that the proper treatment or
+arrangement of ornament was that which expressed the laws
+and ways of Deity. Now, the subordination of visible orders
+to each other, just noted, is one expression of these. But there
+may also&mdash;must also&mdash;be a subordination and obedience of the
+parts of each order to some visible law, out of itself, but having
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254"></a>254</span>
+reference to itself only (not to any upper order): some law
+which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain.</p>
+
+<p>In the tenth chapter of the second volume of &ldquo;Modern
+Painters,&rdquo; the reader will find that I traced one part of the
+beauty of God&rsquo;s creation to the expression of a <i>self</i>-restrained
+liberty: that is to say, the image of that perfection of <i>divine</i>
+action, which, though free to work in arbitrary methods, works
+always in consistent methods, called by us Laws.</p>
+
+<p>Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural
+objects are to become subjects of the art of man, their perfect
+treatment is an image of the perfection of <i>human</i> action: a
+voluntary submission to divine law.</p>
+
+<p>It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose
+originality of thought I have before expressed my obligations,
+Mr. Newton, that the Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures,
+represented to the Greek mind the law of Fate, confining
+human action within limits not to be overpassed. I do not
+believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this; but the
+instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in
+some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessities
+of good ornament.<a name="FnAnchor_72" href="#Footnote_72"><span class="sp">72</span></a> And this expression is heightened,
+rather than diminished, when some portion of the design
+slightly breaks the law to which the rest is subjected; it is
+like expressing the use of miracles in the divine government;
+or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing of a law, generally
+imperative, in compliance with some more imperative need&mdash;the
+hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringement
+of a general law was sometimes sought by the mediĉval
+workmen, I shall be frequently able to point out to the reader;
+but I remember just now a most curious instance, in an archivolt
+of a house in the Corte del Remer close to the Rialto at
+Venice. It is composed of a wreath of flower-work&mdash;a constant
+Byzantine design&mdash;with an animal in each coil; the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page255"></a>255</span>
+whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or
+eating, scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within
+its coil, and between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not
+the tip of a tail, overpasses this appointed line, through a series
+of some five-and-twenty or thirty animals; until, on a sudden,
+and by mutual consent, two little beasts (not looking, for the
+rest, more rampant than the others), one on each side, lay their
+small paws across the enclosing fillet at exactly the same point
+of its course, and thus break the continuity of its line. Two
+ears of corn, or leaves, do the same thing in the mouldings
+round the northern door of the Baptistery at Florence.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXII</span>. Observe, however, and this is of the utmost possible
+importance, that the value of this type does not consist in the
+mere shutting of the ornament into a certain space, but in the
+acknowledgment <i>by</i> the ornament of the fitness of the limitation&mdash;of
+its own perfect willingness to submit to it; nay, of a
+predisposition in itself to fall into the ordained form, without
+any direct expression of the command to do so; an anticipation
+of the authority, and an instant and willing submission to
+it, in every fibre and spray: not merely <i>willing</i>, but <i>happy</i>
+submission, as being pleased rather than vexed to have so
+beautiful a law suggested to it, and one which to follow is so
+justly in accordance with its own nature. You must not cut
+out a branch of hawthorn as it grows, and rule a triangle round
+it, and suppose that it is then submitted to law. Not a bit of
+it. It is only put in a cage, and will look as if it must get out,
+for its life, or wither in the confinement. But the spirit of
+triangle must be put into the hawthorn. It must suck in
+isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and spray,
+must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon
+them, for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and
+to grow all the stronger and more gloriously. And though
+there may be a transgression here and there, and an adaptation
+to some other need, or a reaching forth to some other end
+greater even than the triangle, yet this liberty is to be always
+accepted under a solemn sense of special permission; and
+when the full form is reached and the entire submission
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256"></a>256</span>
+expressed, and every blossom has a thrilling sense of its responsibility
+down into its tiniest stamen, you may take your
+terminal line away if you will. No need for it any more.
+The commandment is written on the heart of the thing.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIII</span>. Then, besides this obedience to external law, there
+is the obedience to internal headship, which constitutes the
+unity of ornament, of which I think enough has been said for
+my present purpose in the chapter on Unity in the second
+vol. of &ldquo;Modern Painters.&rdquo; But I hardly know whether to
+arrange as an expression of a divine law, or a representation
+of a physical fact, the alternation of shade with light which,
+in equal succession, forms one of the chief elements of <i>continuous</i>
+ornament, and in some peculiar ones, such as dentils and
+billet mouldings, is the source of their only charm. The opposition
+of good and evil, the antagonism of the entire human
+system (so ably worked out by Lord Lindsay), the alternation
+of labor with rest, the mingling of life with death, or the
+actual physical fact of the division of light from darkness, and
+of the falling and rising of night and day, are all typified or
+represented by these chains of shade and light of which the
+eye never wearies, though their true meaning may never occur
+to the thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIV</span>. The next question respecting the arrangement of
+ornament is one closely connected also with its quantity. The
+system of creation is one in which &ldquo;God&rsquo;s creatures leap not,
+but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, and nothing
+wants.&rdquo; It is also a feast, where there is nothing redundant.
+So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must never be
+any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a
+single member, or fragment of a member, which could be
+spared. Whatever has nothing to do, whatever could go without
+being missed, is not ornament; it is deformity and encumbrance.
+Away with it. And, on the other hand, care
+must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we permit,
+in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate it,
+as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and
+curdled upon some points, and left the rest of the building
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page257"></a>257</span>
+whey. It is very difficult to give the rules, or analyse the
+feelings, which should direct us in this matter: for some
+shafts may be carved and others left unfinished, and that with
+advantage; some windows may be jewelled like Aladdin&rsquo;s,
+and one left plain, and still with advantage; the door or doors,
+or a single turret, or the whole western façade of a church,
+or the apse or transept, may be made special subjects of decoration,
+and the rest left plain, and still sometimes with advantage.
+But in all such cases there is either sign of that feeling
+which I advocated in the First Chapter of the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo;
+the desire of rather doing some portion of the building as we
+would have it, and leaving the rest plain, than doing the
+whole imperfectly; or else there is choice made of some important
+feature, to which, as more honorable than the rest,
+the decoration is confined. The evil is when, without system,
+and without preference of the nobler members, the ornament
+alternates between sickly luxuriance and sudden blankness.
+In many of our Scotch and English abbeys, especially Melrose,
+this is painfully felt; but the worst instance I have ever seen
+is the window in the side of the arch under the Wellington
+statue, next St. George&rsquo;s Hospital. In the first place, a window
+has no business there at all; in the second, the bars of the
+window are not the proper place for decoration, especially
+<i>wavy</i> decoration, which one instantly fancies of cast iron; in
+the third, the richness of the ornament is a mere patch and
+eruption upon the wall, and one hardly knows whether to be
+most irritated at the affectation of severity in the rest, or at the
+vain luxuriance of the dissolute parallelogram.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXV</span>. Finally, as regards quantity of ornament I have
+already said, again and again, you cannot have too much if it
+be good; that is, if it be thoroughly united and harmonised by
+the laws hitherto insisted upon. But you may easily have too
+much if you have more than you have sense to manage. For
+with every added order of ornament increases the difficulty of
+discipline. It is exactly the same as in war: you cannot, as an
+abstract law, have too many soldiers, but you may easily have
+more than the country is able to sustain, or than your generalship
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258"></a>258</span>
+is competent to command. And every regiment which
+you cannot manage will, on the day of battle, be in your way,
+and encumber the movements it is not in disposition to sustain.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVI</span>. As an architect, therefore, you are modestly to
+measure your capacity of governing ornament. Remember,
+its essence,&mdash;its being ornament at all, consists in its being
+governed. Lose your authority over it, let it command you,
+or lead you, or dictate to you in any wise, and it is an offence,
+an incumbrance, and a dishonor. And it is always ready to do
+this; wild to get the bit in its teeth, and rush forth on its own
+devices. Measure, therefore, your strength; and as long as
+there is no chance of mutiny, add soldier to soldier, battalion
+to battalion; but be assured that all are heartily in the cause,
+and that there is not one of whose position you are ignorant,
+or whose service you could spare.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_70" href="#FnAnchor_70"><span class="fn">70</span></a> Vide &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; Chap. IV. § 34.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_71" href="#FnAnchor_71"><span class="fn">71</span></a> Shakspeare and Wordsworth (I think they only) have noticed this,
+Shakspeare, in Richard II.:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="ind05">&ldquo;But when, from under this terrestrial ball,</p>
+<p>He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>And Wordsworth, in one of his minor poems, on leaving Italy:</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="ind05">&ldquo;My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pines</p>
+<p>On the steep&rsquo;s lofty verge&mdash;how it blackened the air!</p>
+<p>But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines</p>
+<p>With threads that seem part of his own silver hair.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_72" href="#FnAnchor_72"><span class="fn">72</span></a> Some valuable remarks on this subject will be found in a notice of the
+&ldquo;Seven Lamps&rdquo; in the British Quarterly for August, 1849. I think, however,
+the writer attaches too great importance to one out of many ornamental
+necessities.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page259"></a>259</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ANGLE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> have now examined the treatment and specific
+kinds of ornament at our command. We have lastly to note
+the fittest places for their disposal. Not but that all kinds of
+ornament are used in all places; but there are some parts of
+the building, which, without ornament, are more painful than
+others, and some which wear ornament more gracefully than
+others; so that, although an able architect will always be finding
+out some new and unexpected modes of decoration, and
+fitting his ornament into wonderful places where it is least expected,
+there are, nevertheless, one or two general laws which
+may be noted respecting every one of the parts of a building,
+laws not (except a few) imperative like those of construction,
+but yet generally expedient, and good to be understood, if it
+were only that we might enjoy the brilliant methods in which
+they are sometimes broken. I shall note, however, only a few
+of the simplest; to trace them into their ramifications, and
+class in due order the known or possible methods of decoration
+for each part of a building, would alone require a large volume,
+and be, I think, a somewhat useless work; for there is often a
+high pleasure in the very unexpectedness of the ornament,
+which would be destroyed by too elaborate an arrangement of
+its kinds.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. I think that the reader must, by this time, so thoroughly
+understand the connection of the parts of a building,
+that I may class together, in treating of decoration, several
+parts which I kept separate in speaking of construction. Thus
+I shall put under one head (<span class="scs">A</span>) the base of the wall and of the
+shaft; then (<span class="scs">B</span>) the wall veil and shaft itself; then (<span class="scs">C</span>) the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page260"></a>260</span>
+cornice and capital; then (<span class="scs">D</span>) the jamb and archivolt, including
+the arches both over shafts and apertures, and the jambs of
+apertures, which are closely connected with their archivolts;
+finally (<span class="scs">E</span>) the roof, including the real roof, and the minor roofs
+or gables of pinnacles and arches. I think, under these divisions,
+all may be arranged which is necessary to be generally
+stated; for tracery decorations or aperture fillings are but
+smaller forms of application of the arch, and the cusps are
+merely smaller spandrils, while buttresses have, as far as I
+know, no specific ornament. The best are those which have
+least; and the little they have resolves itself into pinnacles,
+which are common to other portions of the building, or into
+small shafts, arches, and niches, of still more general applicability.
+We shall therefore have only five divisions to examine
+in succession, from foundation to roof.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_51"><img src="images/img260.jpg" width="500" height="100" alt="Fig. LI." title="Fig. LI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. But in the decoration of these several parts, certain
+minor conditions of ornament occur which are of perfectly
+general application. For instance, whether, in archivolts,
+jambs, or buttresses, or in square piers, or at the extremity of
+the entire building, we necessarily have the awkward (moral
+or architectural) feature, the <i>corner</i>. How to turn a corner
+gracefully becomes, therefore, a perfectly general question; to
+be examined without reference to any particular part of the
+edifice.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. Again, the furrows and ridges by which bars of parallel
+light and shade are obtained, whether these are employed
+in arches, or jambs, or bases, or cornices, must of necessity
+present one or more of six forms: square projection, <i>a</i> (<a href="#fig_51">Fig.
+LI.</a>), or square recess, <i>b</i>, sharp projection, <i>c</i>, or sharp recess, <i>d</i>,
+curved projection, <i>e</i>, or curved recess, <i>f</i>. What odd curves
+the projection or recess may assume, or how these different
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261"></a>261</span>
+conditions may be mixed and run into one another, is not our
+present business. We note only the six distinct kinds or types.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when these ridges or furrows are on a small scale
+they often themselves constitute all the ornament required for
+larger features, and are left smooth cut; but on a very large
+scale they are apt to become insipid, and they require a sub-ornament
+of their own, the consideration of which is, of course,
+in great part, general, and irrespective of the place held by the
+mouldings in the building itself: which consideration I think
+we had better undertake first of all.</p>
+
+<p class="mb">§ <span class="scs">V</span>. But before we come to particular examination of these
+minor forms, let us see how far we can simplify it. Look back
+to <a href="#fig_51">Fig. LI.</a>, above. There are distinguished in it six forms of
+moulding. Of these, <i>c</i> is nothing but a small corner; but, for
+convenience sake, it is better to call it an edge, and to consider
+its decoration together with that of the member <i>a</i>, which is
+called a fillet; while <i>e</i>, which I shall call a roll (because I do
+not choose to assume that it shall be only of the semicircular
+section here given), is also best considered together with its
+relative recess, <i>f</i>; and because the shape of a recess is of no
+great consequence, I shall class all the three recesses together,
+and we shall thus have only three subjects for separate consideration:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="mn">1. The Angle.</p>
+<p class="mn">2. The Edge and Fillet.</p>
+<p class="mn">3. The Roll and Recess.</p>
+
+<p class="mt">§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. There are two other general forms which may probably
+occur to the reader&rsquo;s mind, namely, the ridge (as of a roof),
+which is a corner laid on its back, or sloping,&mdash;a supine corner,
+decorated in a very different manner from a stiff upright
+corner: and the point, which is a concentrated corner, and has
+wonderfully elaborate decorations all to its insignificant self,
+finials, and spikes, and I know not what more. But both these
+conditions are so closely connected with roofs (even the cusp
+finial being a kind of pendant to a small roof), that I think it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262"></a>262</span>
+better to class them and their ornament under the head of roof
+decoration, together with the whole tribe of crockets and
+bosses; so that we shall be here concerned only with the three
+subjects above distinguished: and, first, the corner or Angle.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. The mathematician knows there are many kinds of
+angles; but the one we have principally to deal with now, is
+that which the reader may very easily conceive as the corner
+of a square house, or square anything. It is of course the one
+of most frequent occurrence; and its treatment, once understood,
+may, with slight modification, be referred to other corners,
+sharper or blunter, or with curved sides.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Evidently the first and roughest idea which would
+occur to any one who found a corner troublesome, would be
+to cut it off. This is a very summary and tyrannical proceeding,
+somewhat barbarous, yet advisable if nothing else can be done:
+an amputated corner is said to be chamfered. It can, however,
+evidently be cut off in three ways:
+1. with a concave cut, <i>a</i>; 2. with
+a straight cut, <i>b</i>; 3. with a convex
+cut, <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_52">Fig. LII.</a></p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_52"><img src="images/img262.jpg" width="300" height="130" alt="Fig. LII." title="Fig. LII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The first two methods, the
+most violent and summary, have
+the apparent disadvantage that we get by them,&mdash;two corners
+instead of one; much milder corners, however, and with a different
+light and shade between them; so that both methods
+are often very expedient. You may see the straight chamfer
+(<i>b</i>) on most lamp posts, and pillars at railway stations, it being
+the easiest to cut: the concave chamfer requires more care, and
+occurs generally in well-finished but simple architecture&mdash;very
+beautifully in the small arches of the Broletto of Como, <a href="#plate_5">Plate
+V.</a>; and the straight chamfer in architecture of every kind,
+very constantly in Norman cornices and arches, as in Fig. 2,
+<a href="#plate_4">Plate IV.</a>, at Sens.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. The third, or convex chamfer, as it is the gentlest
+mode of treatment, so (as in medicine and morals) it is very
+generally the best. For while the two other methods produce
+two corners instead of one, this gentle chamfer does verily get
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page263"></a>263</span>
+rid of the corner altogether, and substitutes a soft curve in its
+place.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_53"><img src="images/img263.jpg" width="500" height="342" alt="Fig. LIII." title="Fig. LIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>But it has, in the form above given, this grave disadvantage,
+that it looks as if the corner had been rubbed or worn off,
+blunted by time and weather, and in want of sharpening again.
+A great deal often depends, and in such a case as this, everything
+depends, on the <i>Voluntariness</i> of the ornament. The
+work of time is beautiful on surfaces, but not on edges intended
+to be sharp. Even if we needed them blunt, we should not
+like them blunt on compulsion; so, to show that the bluntness
+is our own ordaining, we will put a slight incised line to mark
+off the rounding, and show that it goes no farther than we
+choose. We shall thus have the section <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_53">Fig. LIII.</a>; and
+this mode of turning an angle is one of the very best ever invented.
+By enlarging and deepening the incision, we get in
+succession the forms <i>b</i>, <i>c</i>, <i>d</i>; and by describing a small equal
+arc on each of the sloping lines of these figures, we get <i>e</i>, <i>f</i>,
+<i>g</i>, <i>h</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. I do not know whether these mouldings are called by
+architects chamfers or beads; but I think <i>bead</i> a bad word for
+a continuous moulding, and the proper sense of the word
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264"></a>264</span>
+chamfer is fixed by Spenser as descriptive not merely of truncation,
+but of trench or furrow:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+<p class="ind03">&ldquo;Tho gin you, fond flies, the cold to scorn,</p>
+<p>And, crowing in pipes made of green corn,</p>
+<p>You thinken to be lords of the year;</p>
+<p>But eft when ye count you freed from fear,</p>
+<p>Comes the breme winter with chamfred brows,</p>
+<p>Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>So I shall call the above mouldings beaded chamfers, when
+there is any chance of confusion with the plain chamfer, <i>a</i>, or
+<i>b</i>, of <a href="#fig_52">Fig. LII.</a>: and when there is no such chance, I shall use
+the word chamfer only.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Of those above given, <i>b</i> is the constant chamfer of
+Venice, and <i>a</i> of Verona: <i>a</i> being the grandest and best, and
+having a peculiar precision and quaintness of effect about it.
+I found it twice in Venice, used on the sharp angle, as at <i>a</i> and
+<i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_54">Fig. LIV.</a>, <i>a</i> being from the angle of a house on the Rio San
+Zulian, and <i>b</i> from the windows of the church of San Stefano.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LIV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_54"><img src="images/img264.jpg" width="350" height="460" alt="Fig. LIV." title="Fig. LIV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. There is, however, evidently another variety of the
+chamfers, <i>f</i> and <i>g</i>, <a href="#fig_53">Fig.
+LIII.</a>, formed by an unbroken
+curve instead of
+two curves, as <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_54">Fig. LIV.</a>;
+and when this, or the chamfer
+<i>d</i>, <a href="#fig_53">Fig. LIII.</a>, is large,
+it is impossible to say
+whether they have been
+devised from the incised
+angle, or from small shafts
+set in a nook, as at <i>e</i>, <a href="#fig_54">Fig.
+LIV.</a>, or in the hollow of
+the curved chamfer, as <i>d</i>,
+<a href="#fig_54">Fig. LIV.</a> In general,
+however, the shallow chamfers,
+<i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>e</i>, and <i>f</i>, <a href="#fig_53">Fig.
+LIII.</a>, are peculiar to southern
+work; and may be assumed to have been derived from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265"></a>265</span>
+incised angle, while the deep chamfers, <i>c</i>, <i>d</i>, <i>g</i>, <i>h</i>,  are characteristic
+of northern work, and may be partly derived or imitated
+from the angle shaft; while, with the usual extravagance of
+the northern architects, they are cut deeper and deeper until
+we arrive at the condition <i>f</i>, <a href="#fig_54">Fig. LIV.</a>, which is the favorite
+chamfer at Bourges and Bayeux, and in other good French
+work.</p>
+
+<p>I have placed in the Appendix<a name="FnAnchor_73" href="#Footnote_73"><span class="sp">73</span></a> a figure belonging to this
+subject, but which cannot interest the general reader, showing
+the number of possible chamfers with a roll moulding of given
+size.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. If we take the plain chamfer, <i>b</i>, of <a href="#fig_52">Fig. LII.</a>, on a
+large scale, as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_55">Fig. LV.</a>, and bead both its edges, cutting
+away the parts there shaded, we shall have a form much used
+in richly decorated Gothic, both in England and Italy. It
+might be more simply described as the chamfer <i>a</i> of <a href="#fig_52">Fig. LII.</a>,
+with an incision on each
+edge; but the part here
+shaded is often worked
+into ornamental forms, not
+being entirely cut away.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_55"><img src="images/img265.jpg" width="350" height="182" alt="Fig. LV." title="Fig. LV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. Many other
+mouldings, which at first
+sight appear very elaborate,
+are nothing more than a chamfer, with a series of small
+echoes of it on each side, dying away with a ripple on the
+surface of the wall, as in <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_55">Fig. LV.</a>, from Coutances (observe,
+here the white part is the solid stone, the shade is cut
+away).</p>
+
+<p>Chamfers of this kind are used on a small scale and in delicate
+work: the coarse chamfers are found on all scales: <i>f</i> and
+<i>g</i>, <a href="#fig_53">Fig. LIII.</a>, in Venice, form the great angles of almost every
+Gothic palace; the roll being a foot or a foot and a half round,
+and treated as a shaft, with a capital and fresh base at every
+story, while the stones of which it is composed form alternate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page266"></a>266</span>
+quoins in the brickwork beyond the chamfer curve. I need
+hardly say how much nobler this arrangement is than a common
+quoined angle; it gives a finish to the aspect of the whole
+pile attainable in no other way. And thus much may serve
+concerning angle decoration by chamfer.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_73" href="#FnAnchor_73"><span class="fn">73</span></a> <a href="#app_23">Appendix 23</a>: &ldquo;Varieties of Chamfer.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page267"></a>267</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE EDGE AND FILLET.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">The</span> decoration of the angle by various forms of chamfer
+and bead, as above described, is the quietest method we can
+employ; too quiet, when great energy is to be given to the
+moulding, and impossible, when, instead of a bold angle, we
+have to deal with a small projecting edge, like <i>c</i> in <a href="#fig_51">Fig. LI.</a>
+In such cases we may employ a decoration, far ruder and easier
+in its simplest conditions than the bead, far more effective
+when not used in too great profusion; and of which the complete
+developments are the source of mouldings at once the
+most picturesque and most serviceable which the Gothic
+builders invented.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. The gunwales of the Venetian heavy barges being
+liable to somewhat rough collision with each other, and with
+the walls of the streets, are generally protected by a piece of
+timber, which projects in the form of the fillet, <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_51">Fig. LI.</a>;
+but which, like all other fillets, may, if we so choose, be considered
+as composed of two angles or edges, which the natural
+and most wholesome love of the Venetian boatmen for ornament,
+otherwise strikingly evidenced by their painted sails
+and glittering flag-vanes, will not suffer to remain wholly
+undecorated. The rough service of these timbers, however,
+will not admit of rich ornament, and the boatbuilder usually
+contents himself with cutting a series of notches in each edge,
+one series alternating with the other, as represented at 1,
+<a href="#plate_9">Plate IX.</a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. In that simple ornament, not as confined to Venetian
+boats, but as representative of a general human instinct to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page268"></a>268</span>
+hack at an edge, demonstrated by all school-boys and all idle
+possessors of penknives or other cutting instruments on both
+sides of the Atlantic;&mdash;in that rude Venetian gunwale, I say, is
+the germ of all the ornament which has touched, with its rich
+successions of angular shadow, the portals and archivolts of nearly
+every early building of importance, from the North Cape to
+the Straits of Messina. Nor are the modifications of the first
+suggestion intricate. All that is generic in their character may
+be seen on <a href="#plate_9">Plate IX.</a> at a glance.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">IX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_9"><img src="images/img268.jpg" width="406" height="650" alt="EDGE DECORATION." title="EDGE DECORATION." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">EDGE DECORATION.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. Taking a piece of stone instead of timber, and enlarging
+the notches, until they meet each other, we have the
+condition 2, which is a moulding from the tomb of the Doge
+Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark&rsquo;s. Now, considering this moulding
+as composed of two decorated edges, each edge will be
+reduced, by the meeting of the notches, to a series of four-sided
+pyramids (as marked off by the dotted lines), which, the notches
+here being shallow, will be shallow pyramids; but by deepening
+the notches, we get them as at 3, with a profile <i>a</i>, more or
+less steep. This moulding I shall always call &ldquo;the plain dogtooth;&rdquo;
+it is used in profusion in the Venetian and Veronese
+Gothic, generally set with its front to the spectator, as here at
+3; but its effect may be much varied by placing it obliquely
+(4, and profile as at <i>b</i>); or with one side horizontal (5, and profile
+<i>c</i>). Of these three conditions, 3 and 5 are exactly the same
+in reality, only differently placed; but in 4 the pyramid is
+obtuse, and the inclination of its base variable, the upper side
+of it being always kept vertical. It is comparatively rare. Of
+the three, the last, 5, is far the most brilliant in effect, giving
+in the distance a zigzag form to the high light on it, and a full
+sharp shadow below. The use of this shadow is sufficiently
+seen by fig. 7 in this plate (the arch on the left, the number
+beneath it), in which these levelled dogteeth, with a small interval
+between each, are employed to set off by their vigor the
+delicacy of floral ornament above. This arch is the side of a
+niche from the tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, at Verona;
+and the value, as well as the distant expression of its dogtooth,
+may be seen by referring to Prout&rsquo;s beautiful drawing of this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page269"></a>269</span>
+tomb in his &ldquo;Sketches in France and Italy.&rdquo; I have before
+observed that this artist never fails of seizing the true and leading
+expression of whatever he touches: he has made this ornament
+the leading feature of the niche, expressing it, as in
+distance it is only expressible, by a zigzag.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. The reader may perhaps be surprised at my speaking
+so highly of this drawing, if he take the pains to compare
+Prout&rsquo;s symbolism of the work on the niche with the facts as
+they stand here in <a href="#plate_9">Plate IX.</a> But the truth is that Prout has
+rendered the effect of the monument on the mind of the passer-by;&mdash;the
+effect it was intended to have on every man who
+turned the corner of the street beneath it: and in this sense
+there is actually more truth and likeness<a name="FnAnchor_74" href="#Footnote_74"><span class="sp">74</span></a> in Prout&rsquo;s translation
+than in my fac-simile, made diligently by peering into the
+details from a ladder. I do not say that all the symbolism in
+Prout&rsquo;s Sketch is the best possible; but it is the best which any
+architectural draughtsman has yet invented; and in its application
+to special subjects it always shows curious internal evidence
+that the sketch has been made on the spot, and that the artist
+tried to draw what he saw, not to invent an attractive subject.
+I shall notice other instances of this hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. The dogtooth, employed in this simple form, is, however,
+rather a foil for other ornament, than itself a satisfactory
+or generally available decoration. It is, however, easy to enrich
+it as we choose: taking up its simple form at 3, and describing
+the arcs marked by the dotted lines upon its sides, and cutting
+a small triangular cavity between them, we shall leave its ridges
+somewhat rudely representative of four leaves, as at 8, which is
+the section and front view of one of the Venetian stone cornices
+described above, <a href="#chap_14">Chap. XIV.</a>, § <span class="scs">IV</span>., the figure 8 being here put
+in the hollow of the gutter. The dogtooth is put on the outer
+lower truncation, and is actually in position as fig. 5; but
+being always looked up to, is to the spectator as 3, and always
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page270"></a>270</span>
+rich and effective. The dogteeth are perhaps most frequently
+expanded to the width of fig. 9.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. As in nearly all other ornaments previously described,
+so in this,&mdash;we have only to deepen the Italian cutting, and we
+shall get the Northern type. If we make the original pyramid
+somewhat steeper, and instead of lightly incising, cut it through,
+so as to have the leaves held only by their points to the base,
+we shall have the English dogtooth; somewhat vulgar in its
+piquancy, when compared with French mouldings of a similar
+kind.<a name="FnAnchor_75" href="#Footnote_75"><span class="sp">75</span></a> It occurs, I think, on one house in Venice, in the
+Campo St. Polo; but the ordinary moulding, with light incisions,
+is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well as in the
+roof cornices.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. This being the simplest treatment of the pyramid,
+fig. 10, from the refectory of Wenlock Abbey, is an example
+of the simplest decoration of the recesses or inward angles
+between the pyramids; that is to say, of a simple hacked edge
+like one of those in fig. 2, the <i>cuts</i> being taken up and decorated
+instead of the <i>points</i>. Each is worked into a small trefoiled
+arch, with an incision round it to mark its outline, and another
+slight incision above, expressing the angle of the first cutting.
+I said that the teeth in fig. 7 had in distance the effect of a zigzag:
+in fig. 10 this zigzag effect is seized upon and developed,
+but with the easiest and roughest work; the angular incision
+being a mere limiting line, like that described in § <span class="scs">IX</span>. of the
+last chapter. But hence the farther steps to every condition of
+Norman ornament are self evident. I do not say that all of
+them arose from development of the dogtooth in this manner,
+many being quite independent inventions and uses of zigzag
+lines; still, they may all be referred to this simple type as their
+root and representative, that is to say, the mere hack of the
+Venetian gunwale, with a limiting line following the resultant
+zigzag.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. Fig. 11 is a singular and much more artificial condition,
+cast in brick, from the church of the Frari, and given
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page271"></a>271</span>
+here only for future reference. Fig. 12, resulting from a fillet
+with the cuts on each of its edges interrupted by a bar, is a
+frequent Venetian moulding, and of great value; but the plain
+or leaved dogteeth have been the favorites, and that to such a
+degree, that even the Renaissance architects took them up;
+and the best bit of Renaissance design in Venice, the side of
+the Ducal Palace next the Bridge of Sighs, owes great part of
+its splendor to its foundation, faced with large flat dogteeth,
+each about a foot wide in the base, with their points truncated,
+and alternating with cavities which are their own negatives or
+casts.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. One other form of the dogtooth is of great importance
+in northern architecture, that produced by oblique cuts
+slightly curved, as in the margin, <a href="#fig_56">Fig. LVI.</a> It is susceptible
+of the most fantastic and endless decoration; each of the resulting
+leaves being, in the early porches of Rouen and Lisieux,
+hollowed out and worked into branching tracery: and at
+Bourges, for distant effect, worked into plain leaves, or bold
+bony processes with knobs at the points, and near the spectator,
+into crouching demons and broad winged owls, and other
+fancies and intricacies, innumerable and inexpressible.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LVI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_56"><img src="images/img271.jpg" width="110" height="316" alt="Fig. LVI." title="Fig. LVI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Thus much is enough to be noted respecting edge
+decoration. We were next to consider the fillet.
+Professor Willis has noticed an ornament, which
+he has called the Venetian dentil, &ldquo;as the most
+universal ornament in its own district that ever I
+met with;&rdquo; but has not noticed the reason for its
+frequency. It is nevertheless highly interesting.</p>
+
+<p>The whole early architecture of Venice is
+architecture of incrustation: this has not been
+enough noticed in its peculiar relation to that of
+the rest of Italy. There is, indeed, much incrusted
+architecture throughout Italy, in elaborate
+ecclesiastical work, but there is more which is
+frankly of brick, or thoroughly of stone. But the Venetian
+habitually incrusted his work with <span class="correction" title="changed from 'macre'">nacre</span>; he built his houses,
+even the meanest, as if he had been a shell-fish,&mdash;roughly inside,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page272"></a>272</span>
+mother-of-pearl on the surface: he was content, perforce,
+to gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick
+for his substance of wall; but he overlaid it with the wealth
+of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You might
+fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying
+sea had beaten upon till it coated it with marble: at first a
+dark city&mdash;washed white by the sea foam. And I told you
+before that it was also a city of shafts and arches, and that its
+dwellings were raised upon continuous arcades, among which
+the sea waves wandered. Hence the thoughts of its builders
+were early and constantly directed to the incrustation of
+arches.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LVII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_57"><img src="images/img272.jpg" width="300" height="191" alt="Fig. LVII." title="Fig. LVII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. In <a href="#fig_57">Fig. LVII.</a> I have given two of these Byzantine
+stilted arches: the one on the right, <i>a</i>, as they now too often
+appear, in its bare brickwork; that on the left, with its alabaster
+covering, literally marble defensive armor, riveted
+together in pieces, which follow the contours of the building.
+Now, on the wall, these pieces are mere flat slabs cut to the
+arch outline; but under the
+soffit of the arch the marble
+mail is curved, often cut
+singularly thin, like bent
+tiles, and fitted together so
+that the pieces would sustain
+each other even without
+rivets. It is of course desirable
+that this thin sub-arch
+of marble should project enough to sustain the facing of
+the wall; and the reader will see, in <a href="#fig_57">Fig. LVII.</a>, that its edge
+forms a kind of narrow band round the arch (<i>b</i>), a band which
+the least enrichment would render a valuable decorative feature.
+Now this band is, of course, if the soffit-pieces project
+a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a mere fillet, like the
+wooden gunwale in <a href="#plate_9">Plate IX.</a>; and the question is, how to
+enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dogtoothed,
+but the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth,
+and would not have used it here, if they had; for the dogtooth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page273"></a>273</span>
+cannot be employed alone, especially on so principal an angle
+as this of the main arches, without giving to the whole building
+a peculiar look, which I can <span class="correction" title="changed from 'no'">not</span> otherwise describe than as
+being to the eye, exactly what untempered acid is to the
+tongue. The mere dogtooth is an <i>acid</i> moulding, and can
+only be used in certain mingling with others, to give them
+piquancy; never alone. What, then, will be the next easiest
+method of giving interest to the fillet?</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LVIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_58"><img src="images/img273.jpg" width="160" height="429" alt="Fig. LVIII." title="Fig. LVIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. Simply to make the incisions square instead of sharp,
+and to leave equal intervals of the square edge between them.
+<a href="#fig_58">Fig. LVIII.</a> is one of the curved pieces of arch armor, with its
+edge thus treated; one side only being done at the bottom, to
+show the simplicity and ease of the work. This ornament
+gives force and interest to the edge of the arch, without in the
+least diminishing its quietness. Nothing
+was ever, nor could be ever invented, fitter
+for its purpose, or more easily cut. From
+the arch it therefore found its way into
+every position where the edge of a piece of
+stone projected, and became, from its constancy
+of occurrence in the latest Gothic
+as well as the earliest Byzantine, most truly
+deserving of the name of the &ldquo;Venetian
+Dentil.&rdquo; Its complete intention is now,
+however, only to be seen in the pictures of
+Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio; for,
+like most of the rest of the mouldings of
+Venetian buildings, it was always either
+gilded or painted&mdash;often both, gold being
+laid on the faces of the dentils, and their
+recesses colored alternately red and blue.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. Observe, however, that the reason
+above given for the <i>universality</i> of
+this ornament was by no means the reason of its <i>invention</i>.
+The Venetian dentil is a particular application (consequent on
+the incrusted character of Venetian architecture) of the general
+idea of dentil, which had been originally given by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page274"></a>274</span>
+Greeks, and realised both by them and by the Byzantines in
+many laborious forms, long before there was need of them for
+arch armor; and the lower half of <a href="#plate_9">Plate IX.</a> will give some
+idea of the conditions which occur in the Romanesque of
+Venice, distinctly derived from the classical dentil; and of the
+gradual transition to the more convenient and simple type, the
+running-hand dentil, which afterwards became the characteristic
+of Venetian Gothic. No. 13<a name="FnAnchor_76" href="#Footnote_76"><span class="sp">76</span></a> is the common dentiled
+cornice, which occurs repeatedly in St. Mark&rsquo;s; and, as late as
+the thirteenth century, a reduplication of it, forming the abaci
+of the capitals of the Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15 is perhaps an
+earlier type; perhaps only one of more careless workmanship,
+from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca&rsquo; Foscari: and it is
+interesting to compare it with fig. 14 from the Cathedral of
+Vienne, in South France. Fig. 17, from St. Mark&rsquo;s, and 18,
+from the apse of Murano, are two very early examples in which
+the future true Venetian dentil is already developed in method
+of execution, though the object is still only to imitate the
+classical one; and a rude imitation of the bead is joined with
+it in fig. 17. No. 16 indicates two examples of experimental
+forms: the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala,
+at Verona; the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the
+thirteenth century: 19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly
+found in cast brick, and connecting the dentils with the dogteeth:
+20 is a form introduced richly in the later Gothic, but
+of rare occurrence until the latter half of the thirteenth century.
+I shall call it the <i>gabled</i> dentil. It is found in the
+greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several
+slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21,
+from the tomb of Pietro Cornaro, may serve as an example.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. All the forms given in <a href="#plate_9">Plate IX.</a> are of not unfrequent
+occurrence: varying much in size and depth, according
+to the expression of the work in which they occur; generally
+increasing in size in late work (the earliest dentils are seldom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page275"></a>275</span>
+more than an inch or an inch and a half long: the fully
+developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as four
+or five in length, by one and a half in breadth); but they are
+all somewhat rare, compared to the true or armor dentil,
+above described. On the other hand, there are one or two
+unique conditions, which will be noted in the buildings where
+they occur.<a name="FnAnchor_77" href="#Footnote_77"><span class="sp">77</span></a> The Ducal Palace furnishes three anomalies in
+the arch, dogtooth, and dentil: it has a hyperbolic arch, as
+noted above, <a href="#chap_10">Chap. X.</a>, § <span class="scs">XV</span>.; it has a double-fanged dogtooth
+in the rings of the spiral shafts on its angles; and,
+finally, it has a dentil with concave sides, of which the section
+and two of the blocks, real size, are given in <a href="#plate_14">Plate XIV.</a> The
+labor of obtaining this difficult profile has, however, been
+thrown away; for the effect of the dentil at ten feet distance
+is exactly the same as that of the usual form: and the reader
+may consider the dogtooth and dentil in that plate as fairly
+representing the common use of them in the Venetian Gothic.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. I am aware of no other form of fillet decoration
+requiring notice: in the Northern Gothic, the fillet is employed
+chiefly to give severity or flatness to mouldings supposed
+to be too much rounded, and is therefore generally
+plain. It is itself an ugly moulding, and, when thus employed,
+is merely a foil for others, of which, however, it at last
+usurped the place, and became one of the most painful features
+in the debased Gothic both of Italy and the North.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_74" href="#FnAnchor_74"><span class="fn">74</span></a> I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the light among
+the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this sketch of Prout&rsquo;s, and
+the character of the wild and broken leaves, half dead, on the stone of the
+foreground.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_75" href="#FnAnchor_75"><span class="fn">75</span></a> Vide the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; p. 122.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_76" href="#FnAnchor_76"><span class="fn">76</span></a> The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of each; the
+part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that which is cut into
+dentils left.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_77" href="#FnAnchor_77"><span class="fn">77</span></a> As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or
+Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil, entirely
+covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the outside of the duomo
+of Bergamo; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as the handle of a mace often
+is with nails, with massy dogteeth or nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli
+palace of Bologna.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page276"></a>276</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ROLL AND RECESS.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">I have</span> classed these two means of architectural effect
+together, because the one is in most cases the negative of the
+other, and is used to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light;
+recess alternating with roll, not only in lateral, but in successive
+order; not merely side by side with each other, but interrupted
+the one by the other in their own lines. A recess itself
+has properly no decoration; but its depth gives value to the
+decoration which flanks, encloses, or interrupts it, and the
+form which interrupts it best is the roll.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. I use the word roll generally for any mouldings
+which present to the eye somewhat the appearance of being
+cylindrical, and look like round rods. When upright, they are
+in appearance, if not in fact, small shafts; and are a kind of
+bent shaft, even when used in archivolts and traceries;&mdash;when
+horizontal, they confuse themselves with cornices, and are, in
+fact, generally to be considered as the best means of drawing
+an architectural line in any direction, the soft curve of their
+side obtaining some shadow at nearly all times of the day, and
+that more tender and grateful to the eye than can be obtained
+either by an incision or by any other form of projection.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. Their decorative power is, however, too slight for
+rich work, and they frequently require, like the angle and the
+fillet, to be rendered interesting by subdivision or minor ornament
+of their own. When the roll is small, this is effected,
+exactly as in the case of the fillet, by cutting pieces out of it;
+giving in the simplest results what is called the Norman billet
+moulding: and when the cuts are given in couples, and the
+pieces rounded into spheres and almonds, we have the ordinary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page277"></a>277</span>
+Greek bead, both of them too well known to require illustration.
+The Norman billet we shall not meet with in Venice;
+the bead constantly occurs in Byzantine, and of course in
+Renaissance work. In <a href="#plate_9">Plate IX.</a>, Fig. 17, there is a remarkable
+example of its early treatment, where the cuts in it are left
+sharp.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. But the roll, if it be of any size, deserves better treatment.
+Its rounded surface is too beautiful to be cut away in
+notches; and it is rather to be covered with flat chasing or inlaid
+patterns. Thus ornamented, it gradually blends itself with
+the true shaft, both in the Romanesque work of the North, and
+in the Italian connected schools; and the patterns used for it
+are those used for shaft decoration in general.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. But, as alternating with the recess, it has a decoration
+peculiar to itself. We have often, in the preceding chapters,
+noted the fondness of the Northern builders for deep shade
+and hollowness in their mouldings; and in the second chapter
+of the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; the changes are described which reduced
+the massive roll mouldings of the early Gothic to a
+series of recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of
+these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us: it
+was, indeed, endlessly varied; but needlessly, for the value of
+a recess is in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form.
+But it was not in mere wanton indulgence of their love of
+shade that the Flamboyant builders deepened the furrows of
+their mouldings: they had found a means of decorating those
+furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire frame-work
+of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect of
+this decoration; where the ornament ceases, the frame-work is
+meagre and mean: but the ornament is, in the best examples of
+the style, unceasing.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. It is, in fact, an ornament formed by the ghosts or
+anatomies of the old shafts, left in the furrows which had
+taken their place. Every here and there, a fragment of a roll
+or shaft is left in the recess or furrow: a billet-moulding on a
+huge scale, but a billet-moulding reduced to a skeleton; for
+the fragments of roll are cut hollow, and worked into mere
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page278"></a>278</span>
+entanglement of stony fibres, with the gloom of the recess
+shown through them. These ghost rolls, forming sometimes
+pedestals, sometimes canopies, sometimes covering the whole
+recess with an arch of tracery, beneath which it runs like a
+tunnel, are the peculiar decorations of the Flamboyant Gothic.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Now observe, in all kinds of decoration, we must
+keep carefully under separate heads, the consideration of the
+changes wrought in the mere physical form, and in the intellectual
+purpose of ornament. The relations of the canopy to
+the statue it shelters, are to be considered altogether distinctly
+from those of the canopy to the building which it decorates.
+In its earliest conditions the canopy is partly confused with
+representations of miniature architecture: it is sometimes a
+small temple or gateway, sometimes a honorary addition to
+the pomp of a saint, a covering to his throne, or to his shrine;
+and this canopy is often expressed in bas-relief (as in painting),
+without much reference to the great requirements of the building.
+At other times it is a real protection to the statue, and is
+enlarged into a complete pinnacle, carried on proper shafts, and
+boldly roofed. But in the late northern system the canopies
+are neither expressive nor protective. They are a kind of
+stone lace-work, required for the ornamentation of the building,
+for which the statues are often little more than an excuse,
+and of which the physical character is, as above described, that
+of ghosts of departed shafts.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. There is, of course, much rich tabernacle work
+which will not come literally under this head, much which is
+straggling or flat in its plan, connecting itself gradually with
+the ordinary forms of independent shrines and tombs; but the
+general idea of all tabernacle work is marked in the common
+phrase of a &ldquo;niche,&rdquo; that is to say a hollow intended for a
+statue, and crowned by a canopy; and this niche decoration
+only reaches its full development when the Flamboyant hollows
+are cut deepest, and when the manner and spirit of sculpture
+had so much lost their purity and intensity that it became
+desirable to draw the eye away from the statue to its covering,
+so that at last the canopy became the more important of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page279"></a>279</span>
+the two, and is itself so beautiful that we are often contented
+with architecture from which profanity has struck the statues,
+if only the canopies are left; and consequently, in our modern
+ingenuity, even set up canopies where we have no intention of
+setting statues.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. It is a pity that thus we have no really noble example
+of the effect of the statue in the recesses of architecture: for
+the Flamboyant recess was not so much a preparation for it
+as a gulf which swallowed it up. When statues were most
+earnestly designed, they were thrust forward in all kinds of
+places, often in front of the pillars, as at Amiens, awkwardly
+enough, but with manly respect to the purpose of the figures.
+The Flamboyant hollows yawned at their sides, the statues
+fell back into them, and nearly disappeared, and a flash of
+flame in the shape of a canopy rose as they expired.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. I do not feel myself capable at present of speaking
+with perfect justice of this niche ornament of the north, my
+late studies in Italy having somewhat destroyed my sympathies
+with it. But I once loved it intensely, and will not say anything
+to depreciate it now, save only this, that while I have
+studied long at Abbeville, without in the least finding that it
+made me care less for Verona, I never remained long in
+Verona without feeling some doubt of the nobility of Abbeville.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Recess decoration by leaf mouldings is constantly and
+beautifully associated in the north with niche decoration, but
+requires no special notice, the recess in such cases being used
+merely to give value to the leafage by its gloom, and the difference
+between such conditions and those of the south being
+merely that in the one the leaves are laid across a hollow, and
+in the other over a solid surface; but in neither of the schools
+exclusively so, each in some degree intermingling the method
+of the other.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. Finally the recess decoration by the ball flower is
+very definite and characteristic, found, I believe, chiefly in
+English work. It consists merely in leaving a small boss or
+sphere, fixed, as it were, at intervals in the hollows; such
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page280"></a>280</span>
+bosses being afterwards carved into roses, or other ornamental
+forms, and sometimes lifted quite up out of the hollow, on
+projecting processes, like vertebrĉ, so as to make them more
+conspicuous, as throughout the decoration of the cathedral of
+Bourges.</p>
+
+<p>The value of this ornament is chiefly in the <i>spotted</i> character
+which it gives to the lines of mouldings seen from a distance.
+It is very rich and delightful when not used in excess;
+but it would satiate and weary the eye if it were ever used in
+general architecture. The spire of Salisbury, and of St.
+Mary&rsquo;s at Oxford, are agreeable as isolated masses; but if an
+entire street were built with this spotty decoration at every
+casement, we could not traverse it to the end without disgust.
+It is only another example of the constant aim at piquancy of
+effect which characterised the northern builders; an ingenious
+but somewhat vulgar effort to give interest to their grey masses
+of coarse stone, without overtaking their powers either of invention
+or execution. We will thank them for it without
+blame or praise, and pass on.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page281"></a>281</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE BASE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">We</span> know now as much as is needful respecting the
+methods of minor and universal decorations, which were distinguished
+in Chapter XXII., § <span class="scs">III</span>., from the ornament which
+has special relation to particular parts. This local ornament,
+which, it will be remembered, we arranged in § <span class="scs">II</span>. of the same
+chapter under five heads, we have next, under those heads, to
+consider. And, first, the ornament of the bases, both of walls
+and shafts.</p>
+
+<p>It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that
+there are something in those divisions like the beginning, the
+several courses, and the close of a human life. And as, in all
+well-conducted lives, the hard work, and roughing, and gaining
+of strength come first, the honor or decoration in certain
+intervals during their course, but most of all in their close, so,
+in general, the base of the wall, which is its beginning of labor,
+will bear least decoration, its body more, especially those
+epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown or cornice
+most of all. Still, in some buildings, all these are decorated
+richly, though the last most; and in others, when the base is
+well protected and yet conspicuous, it may probably receive
+even more decoration than other parts.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. Now, the main things to be expressed in a base are its
+levelness and evenness. We cannot do better than construct
+the several members of the base, as developed in Fig. II., <a href="#page055">p.
+55</a>, each of a different colored marble, so as to produce
+marked level bars of color all along the foundation. This is
+exquisitely done in all the Italian elaborate wall bases; that of
+St. Anastasia at Verona is one of the most perfect existing, for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page282"></a>282</span>
+play of color; that of Giotto&rsquo;s campanile is on the whole the
+most beautifully finished. Then, on the vertical portions, <i>a</i>, <i>b</i>,
+<i>c</i>, we may put what patterns in mosaic we please, so that they
+be not too rich; but if we choose rather to have sculpture (or
+<i>must</i> have it for want of stones to inlay), then observe that all
+sculpture on bases must be in panels, or it will soon be worn
+away, and that a plain panelling is often good without any
+other ornament. The member <i>b</i>, which in St. Mark&rsquo;s is subordinate,
+and <i>c</i>, which is expanded into a seat, are both of them
+decorated with simple but exquisitely-finished panelling, in red
+and white or green and white marble; and the member <i>e</i> is in
+bases of this kind very valuable, as an expression of a firm
+beginning of the substance of the wall itself. This member
+has been of no service to us hitherto, and was unnoticed in the
+chapters on construction; but it was expressed in the figure
+of the wall base, on account of its great value when the foundation
+is of stone and the wall of brick (coated or not). In
+such cases it is always better to add the course <i>e</i>, above the
+slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the common masonry
+of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. It is, however, with the member <i>d</i>, or Xb, that we
+are most seriously concerned; for this being the essential feature
+of all bases, and the true preparation for the wall or shaft,
+it is most necessary that here, if anywhere, we should have
+full expression of levelness and precision; and farther, that, if
+possible, the eye should not be suffered to rest on the points
+of junction of the stones, which would give an effect of
+instability. Both these objects are accomplished by attracting
+the eye to two rolls, separated by a deep hollow, in the member
+<i>d</i> itself. The bold projections of their mouldings entirely
+prevent the attention from being drawn to the joints of the
+masonry, and besides form a simple but beautifully connected
+group of bars of shadow, which express, in their perfect
+parallelism, the absolute levelness of the foundation.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. I need hardly give any perspective drawing of an
+arrangement which must be perfectly familiar to the reader,
+as occurring under nearly every column of the too numerous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283"></a>283</span>
+classical buildings all over Europe. But I may name the base
+of the Bank of England as furnishing a very simple instance
+of the group, with a square instead of a rounded hollow, both
+forming the base of the wall, and gathering into that of the
+shafts as they occur; while the bases of the pillars of the
+façade of the British Museum are as good examples as the
+reader can study on a larger scale.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">X.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_10"><img src="images/img283.jpg" width="380" height="650" alt="PROFILES OF BASES." title="PROFILES OF BASES." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">PROFILES OF BASES.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="mb">§ <span class="scs">V</span>. I believe this group of mouldings was first invented
+by the Greeks, and it has never been materially improved, as
+far as its peculiar purpose is concerned;<a name="FnAnchor_78" href="#Footnote_78"><span class="sp">78</span></a> the classical attempts
+at its variation being the ugliest: one, the using a single roll
+of larger size, as may be seen in the Duke of York&rsquo;s column,
+which therefore looks as if it stood on a large sausage (the
+Monument has the same base, but more concealed by pedestal
+decoration): another, the using two rolls without the intermediate
+cavetto,&mdash;a condition hardly less awkward, and which
+may be studied to advantage in the wall and shaftbases of the
+Athenĉum Club-house: and another, the introduction of what
+are called fillets between the rolls, as may be seen in the pillars
+of Hanover Chapel, Regent Street, which look, in consequence,
+as if they were standing upon a pile of pewter collection
+plates. But the only successful changes have been
+mediĉval; and their nature will be at once understood by a
+glance at the varieties given on the opposite page. It will be
+well first to give the buildings in which they occur, in order.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr f90" style="margin-left: 1em; " summary="data">
+
+<tr><td>
+<p>&nbsp;1. Santa Fosca, Torcello.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;2. North transept, St. Mark&rsquo;s, Venice.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;3. Nave, Torcello.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;4. Nave, Torcello.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;5. South transept, St. Mark&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;6. Northern portico, upper shafts, St. Mark&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;7. Another of the same group.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.</p>
+<p>10. Outside wall base, St. Mark&rsquo;s, Venice.</p>
+<p>11. Fondaco de&rsquo; Turchi, Venice.</p>
+<p>12. Nave, Vienne, France.</p>
+<p>13. Fondaco de&rsquo; Turchi, Venice.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284"></a>284</span></p>
+<p>14. Ca&rsquo; Giustiniani, Venice.</p></td>
+
+<td style="border-left: 1px solid black; ">&nbsp;</td>
+
+<td>
+<p>15. Byzantine fragment, Venice.</p>
+<p>16. St. Mark&rsquo;s, upper Colonnade.</p>
+<p>17. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)</p>
+<p>18. Ca&rsquo; Falier, Venice.</p>
+<p>19. St. Zeno, Verona.</p>
+<p>20. San Stefano, Venice.</p>
+<p>21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)</p>
+<p>22. Nave, Salisbury.</p>
+<p>23. Santa Fosca, Torcello.</p>
+<p>24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral.</p>
+<p>25. Notre Dame, Dijon.</p>
+<p>26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral.</p>
+<p>27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy).</p>
+<p>28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral.</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="mt">§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Eighteen out of the twenty eight varieties are Venetian,
+being bases to which I shall have need of future reference;
+but the interspersed examples, 8, 9, 12, and 19, from
+Milan, Pavia, Vienne (France), and Verona, show the exactly
+correspondent conditions of the Romanesque base at the period,
+throughout the centre of Europe. The last five examples
+show the changes effected by the French Gothic architects: the
+Salisbury base (22) I have only introduced to show its dulness
+and vulgarity beside them; and 23, from Torcello, for a special
+reason, in that place.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. The reader will observe that the two bases, 8 and 9,
+from the two most important Lombardic churches of Italy,
+St. Ambrogio of Milan and St. Michele of Pavia, mark the
+character of the barbaric base founded on pure Roman models,
+sometimes approximating to such models very closely; and
+the varieties 10, 11, 13, 16 are Byzantine types, also founded
+on Roman models. But in the bases 1 to 7 inclusive, and,
+still more characteristically, in 23 below, there is evidently
+an original element, a tendency to use the fillet and hollow
+instead of the roll, which is eminently Gothic; which in the
+base 3 reminds one even of Flamboyant conditions, and is
+excessively remarkable as occurring in Italian work certainly
+not later than the tenth century, taking even the date of the
+last rebuilding of the Duomo of Torcello, though I am strongly
+inclined to consider these bases portions of the original church.
+And I have therefore put the base 23 among the Gothic group
+to which it has so strong relationship, though, on the last supposition,
+five centuries older than the earliest of the five
+terminal examples; and it is still more remarkable because it
+reverses the usual treatment of the lower roll, which is in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page285"></a>285</span>
+general a tolerably accurate test of the age of a base, in the
+degree of its projection. Thus, in the examples 2, 3, 4, 5, 9,
+10, 12, the lower roll is hardly rounded at all, and diametrically
+opposed to the late Gothic conditions, 24 to 28, in which
+it advances gradually, like a wave preparing to break, and at
+last is actually seen curling over with the long-backed rush of
+surf upon the shore. Yet the Torcello base resembles these
+Gothic ones both in expansion beneath and in depth of cavetto
+above.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. There can be no question of the ineffable superiority
+of these Gothic bases, in grace of profile, to any ever invented
+by the ancients. But they have all two great faults: They
+seem, in the first place, to have been designed without sufficient
+reference to the necessity of their being usually seen
+from above; their grace of profile cannot be estimated when
+so seen, and their excessive expansion gives them an appearance
+of flatness and separation from the shaft, as if they had
+splashed out under its pressure: in the second place their
+cavetto is so deeply cut that it has the appearance of a black
+fissure between the members of the base; and in the Lyons
+and Bourges shafts, 24 and 26, it is impossible to conquer the
+idea suggested by it, that the two stones above and below have
+been intended to join close, but that some pebbles have got in
+and kept them from fitting; one is always expecting the
+pebbles to be crushed, and the shaft to settle into its place with
+a thunder-clap.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. For these reasons, I said that the profile of the pure
+classic base had hardly been materially improved; but the
+various conditions of it are beautiful or commonplace, in proportion
+to the variety of proportion among their lines and the
+delicacy of their curvatures; that is to say, the expression of
+characters like those of the abstract lines in <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a></p>
+
+<p>The five best profiles in <a href="#plate_10">Plate X.</a> are 10, 17, 19, 20, 21; 10
+is peculiarly beautiful in the opposition between the bold projection
+of its upper roll, and the delicate leafy curvature of its
+lower; and this and 21 may be taken as nearly perfect types,
+the one of the steep, the other of the expansive basic profiles.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page286"></a>286</span>
+The characters of all, however, are so dependent upon their
+place and expression, that it is unfair to judge them thus separately;
+and the precision of curvature is a matter of so small
+consequence in general effect, that we need not here pursue the
+subject farther.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LIX</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_59"><img src="images/img286.jpg" width="350" height="363" alt="Fig. LIX" title="Fig. LIX" /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. We have thus far, however, considered only the lines
+of moulding in the member X b, whether of wall or shaft base.
+But the reader will remember that in our best shaft base, in
+<a href="#fig_12">Fig. XII.</a> (<a href="#page078">p. 78</a>), certain props or spurs were applied to the
+slope of X b; but now that
+X b is divided into these
+delicate mouldings, we cannot
+conveniently apply the
+spur to its irregular profile;
+we must be content to set it
+against the lower roll. Let
+the upper edge of this lower
+roll be the curved line
+here, <i>a</i>, <i>d</i>, <i>e</i>, <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_59">Fig. LIX.</a>,
+and <i>c</i> the angle of the square
+plinth projecting beneath
+it. Then the spur, applied
+as we saw in <a href="#chap_7">Chap. VII.</a>,
+will be of some such form as the triangle <i>c e d</i>, <a href="#fig_59">Fig. LIX.</a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. Now it has just been stated that it is of small importance
+whether the abstract lines of the profile of a base moulding
+be fine or not, because we rarely stoop down to look at
+them. But this triangular spur is nearly always seen from
+above, and the eye is drawn to it as one of the most important
+features of the whole base; therefore it is a point of immediate
+necessity to substitute for its harsh right lines (<i>c d</i>, <i>c e</i>) some
+curve of noble abstract character.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. I mentioned, in speaking of the line of the salvia leaf
+at <a href="#page224">p. 224</a>, that I had marked off the portion of it, <i>x y</i>, because
+I thought it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards; and
+I promised the reader that as he had built, so he should decorate
+his edifice at his own free will. If, therefore, he likes the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page287"></a>287</span>
+above triangular spur, <i>c d e</i>, by all means let him keep it; but
+if he be on the whole dissatisfied with it, I may be permitted,
+perhaps, to advise him to set to work like a tapestry bee, to cut
+off the little bit of line of salvia leaf <i>x y</i>, and try how he can
+best substitute it for the awkward lines <i>c d c e</i>. He may try it
+any way that he likes; but if he puts the salvia curvature
+inside the present lines, he will find the spur looks weak, and I
+think he will determine at last on placing it as I have done at
+<i>c d</i>, <i>c e</i>, <a href="#fig_60">Fig. LX.</a> (If the reader will be at the pains to transfer
+the salvia leaf line with tracing paper, he will find it accurately
+used in this figure.) Then I merely add an outer circular
+line to represent the outer swell of the roll against which the
+spur is set, and I put another such spur to the opposite corner
+of the square, and we have the half base, <a href="#fig_60">Fig. LX.</a>, which is a
+general type of the best Gothic bases in existence, being very
+nearly that of the upper shafts of the Ducal Palace of Venice.
+In those shafts the quadrant <i>a b</i>, or the upper edge of the lower
+roll, is 2 feet 1-3/8 inches round, and the base of the spur <i>d e</i>, is
+10 inches; the line <i>d e</i> being therefore to <i>a b</i> as 10 to 25-3/8. In
+<a href="#fig_60">Fig. LX.</a> it is as 10 to 24, the measurement being easier and the
+type somewhat more generally representative of the best, <i>i. e.</i>
+broadest, spurs of Italian Gothic.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_60"><img src="images/img287.jpg" width="600" height="319" alt="Fig. LX." title="Fig. LX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288"></a>288</span>
+magical in salvia leaves: the line I take from them happened
+merely to fall conveniently on the page, and might as well
+have been taken from anything else; it is simply its character
+of gradated curvature which fits it for our use. On <a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a>,
+opposite, I have given plans of the spurs and quadrants of
+twelve Italian and three Northern bases; these latter (13), from
+Bourges, (14) from Lyons, (15) from Rouen, are given merely
+to show the Northern disposition to break up bounding lines,
+and lose breadth in picturesqueness. These Northern bases
+look the prettiest in this plate, because this variation of the
+outline is nearly all the ornament they have, being cut very
+rudely; but the Italian bases above them are merely prepared
+by their simple outlines for far richer decoration at the next
+step, as we shall see presently. The Northern bases are to be
+noted also for another grand error: the projection of the roll
+beyond the square plinth, of which the corner is seen, in various
+degrees of advancement, in the three examples. 13 is the
+base whose profile is No. 26 in <a href="#plate_10">Plate X.</a>; 14 is 24 in the same
+plate; and 15 is 28.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_11"><img src="images/img288.jpg" width="402" height="650" alt="PLANS OF BASES." title="PLANS OF BASES." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">PLANS OF BASES.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. The Italian bases are the following; all, except 7
+and 10, being Venetian: 1 and 2, upper colonnade, St. Mark&rsquo;s;
+3, Ca&rsquo; Falier; 4, lower colonnade, and 5, transept, St. Mark&rsquo;s;
+6, from the Church of St. John and Paul; 7, from the tomb
+near St. Anastasia, Verona, described above (<a href="#page142">p. 142</a>); 8 and 9,
+Fon daco de&rsquo; Turchi, Venice; 10, tomb of Can Mastino della
+Scala, Verona; 11, San Stefano, Venice; 12, Ducal Palace,
+Venice, upper colonnade. The Nos. 3, 8, 9, 11 are the bases
+whose profiles are respectively Nos. 18, 11, 13, and 20 in <a href="#plate_10">Plate
+X.</a> The flat surfaces of the basic plinths are here shaded; and
+in the lower corner of the square occupied by each quadrant is
+put, also shaded, the central profile of each spur, from its root
+at the roll of the base to its point; those of Nos. 1 and 2 being
+conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly, that I took
+no note of their profiles; but they would probably be as here
+given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of comparison,
+reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to
+shafts of very different size, 9 being some six or seven inches
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page289"></a>289</span>
+in diameter, and 6, three or four feet, the proportionate size of
+the roll varies accordingly, being largest, as in 9, where the
+base is smallest, and in 6 and 12 the leaf profile is given on a
+larger scale than the plan, or its character could not have been
+exhibited.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_12"><img src="images/img289.jpg" width="411" height="650" alt="DECORATION OF BASES." title="DECORATION OF BASES." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">DECORATION OF BASES.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. Now, in all these spurs, the reader will observe that
+the narrowest are for the most part the earliest. No. 2, from
+the upper colonnade of St. Mark&rsquo;s, is the only instance I ever
+saw of the double spur, as transitive between the square and
+octagon plinth; the truncated form, 1, is also rare and very
+ugly. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are the general conditions of the
+Byzantine spur; 8 is a very rare form of plan in Byzantine
+work, but proved to be so by its rude level profile; while 7,
+on the contrary, Byzantine in plan, is eminently Gothic in the
+profile. 9 to 12 are from formed Gothic buildings, equally
+refined in their profile and plan.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. The character of the profile is indeed much altered
+by the accidental nature of the surface decoration; but the
+importance of the broad difference between the raised and flat
+profile will be felt on glancing at the examples 1 to 6 in <a href="#plate_12">Plate
+XII.</a> The three upper examples are the Romanesque types,
+which occur as parallels with the Byzantine types, 1 to 3 of
+<a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a> Their plans would be nearly the same; but instead
+of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws, as
+high as they are broad; and the third, from St. Michele of
+Pavia, appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a
+claw enforced by the transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio,
+Milan; 2 from Vienne, France. The 4th type, <a href="#plate_12">Plate XII.</a>,
+almost like the extremity of a man&rsquo;s foot, is a Byzantine form
+(perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St. Mark&rsquo;s;
+and the two next show the unity of the two principles, forming
+the perfect Italian Gothic types,&mdash;5, from tomb of Can
+Signorio della Scala, Verona; 6, from San Stefano, Venice
+(the base 11 of <a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a>, in perspective). The two other
+bases, 10 and 12 of <a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a>, are conditions of the same kind,
+showing the varieties of rise and fall in exquisite modulation;
+the 10th, a type more frequent at Verona than Venice, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page290"></a>290</span>
+which the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising out
+of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by
+sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work;
+a kind of band, or fillet, appears to hold, and even compress,
+the <i>centre</i> of the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of
+St. Peter&rsquo;s, Oxford, which has also spurs at its angles; and
+long bands flow over the base of the angle shaft of the Ducal
+Palace of Venice, next the Porta della Carta.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. When the main contours of the base are once determined,
+its decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely
+given, in <a href="#plate_12">Plate XII.</a>, three examples to which I shall need to
+refer, hereafter. No. 9 is a very early and curious one; the
+decoration of the base 6 in <a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a>, representing a leaf turned
+over and flattened down; or, rather, the idea of the turned
+leaf, worked as well as could be imagined on the flat contour
+of the spur. Then 10 is the perfect, but simplest possible
+development of the same idea, from the earliest bases of the
+upper colonnade of the Ducal Palace, that is to say, the bases
+of the sea façade; and 7 and 8 are its lateral profile and transverse
+section. Finally, 11 and 12 are two of the spurs of the
+later shafts of the same colonnade on the Piazzetta side (No.
+12 of <a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a>). No. 11 occurs on one of these shafts only,
+and is singularly beautiful. I suspect it to be earlier than the
+other, which is the characteristic base of the rest of the series,
+and already shows the loose, sensual, ungoverned character of
+fifteenth century ornament in the dissoluteness of its rolling.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. I merely give these as examples ready to my hand,
+and necessary for future reference; not as in anywise representative
+of the variety of the Italian treatment of the general
+contour, far less of the endless caprices of the North. The
+most beautiful base I ever saw, on the whole, is a Byzantine
+one in the Baptistery of St. Mark&rsquo;s, in which the spur profile
+approximates to that of No. 10 in <a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a>; but it is formed
+by a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two
+wings, as they half close, form the upper part of the spur,
+and the rise of it in the front is formed by exactly the action
+of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake: &ldquo;quei drizzo, volando,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page291"></a>291</span>
+suso il petto.&rdquo; But it requires noble management to confine
+such a fancy within such limits. The greater number of the
+best bases are formed of leaves; and the reader may amuse
+himself as he will by endless inventions of them, from types
+which he may gather among the weeds at the nearest roadside.
+The value of the vegetable form is especially here, as above
+noted, <a href="#chap_20">Chap. XX.</a>, § <span class="scs">XXXII</span>., its capability of unity with the
+mass of the base, and of being suggested by few lines; none
+but the Northern Gothic architects are able to introduce entire
+animal forms in this position with perfect success. There is a
+beautiful instance at the north door of the west front of Rouen;
+a lizard pausing and curling himself round a little in the angle;
+one expects him the next instant to lash round the shaft and
+vanish: and we may with advantage compare this base with
+those of Renaissance Scuola di San Rocca<a name="FnAnchor_79" href="#Footnote_79"><span class="sp">79</span></a> at Venice, in
+which the architect, imitating the mediĉval bases, which he
+did not understand, has put an elephant, four inches higher,
+in the same position.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. I have not in this chapter spoken at all of the profiles
+which are given in Northern architecture to the projections
+of the lower members of the base, <i>b</i> and <i>c</i> in Fig. II., nor of
+the methods in which both these, and the rolls of the mouldings
+in <a href="#plate_10">Plate X.</a>, are decorated, especially in Roman architecture,
+with superadded chain work or chasing of various patterns.
+Of the first I have not spoken, because I shall have no occasion
+to allude to them in the following essay; nor of the second,
+because I consider them barbarisms. Decorated rolls and decorated
+ogee profiles, such, for instance, as the base of the Arc
+de l&rsquo;Etoile at Paris, are among the richest and farthest refinements
+of decorative appliances; and they ought always to be
+reserved for jambs, cornices, and archivolts: if you begin with
+them in the base, you have no power of refining your decorations
+as you ascend, and, which is still worse, you put your
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page292"></a>292</span>
+most delicate work on the jutting portions of the foundation,&mdash;the
+very portions which are most exposed to abrasion. The
+best expression of a base is that of stern endurance,&mdash;the look
+of being able to bear roughing; or, if the whole building is so
+delicate that no one can be expected to treat even its base with
+unkindness,<a name="FnAnchor_80" href="#Footnote_80"><span class="sp">80</span></a> then at least the expression of quiet, prefatory
+simplicity. The angle spur may receive such decoration as we
+have seen, because it is one of the most important features in
+the whole building; and the eye is always so attracted to it
+that it cannot be in rich architecture left altogether blank;
+the eye is stayed upon it by its position, but glides, and ought
+to glide, along the basic rolls to take measurement of their
+length: and even with all this added fitness, the ornament of
+the basic spur is best, in the long run, when it is boldest and
+simplest. The base above described, § <span class="scs">XVIII</span>., as the most beautiful
+I ever saw, was not for that reason the best I ever saw:
+beautiful in its place, in a quiet corner of a Baptistery sheeted
+with jasper and alabaster, it would have been utterly wrong,
+nay, even offensive, if used in sterner work, or repeated along
+a whole colonnade. The base No. 10 of <a href="#plate_12">Plate XII.</a> is the
+richest with which I was ever perfectly satisfied for general
+service; and the basic spurs of the building which I have
+named as the best Gothic monument in the world (<a href="#page141">p. 141</a>),
+have no ornament upon them whatever. The adaptation,
+therefore, of rich cornice and roll mouldings to the level and
+ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be
+one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance
+architects ever committed; and that nothing can afterwards
+redeem the effeminacy and vulgarity of the buildings in which
+it prominently takes place.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. I have also passed over, without present notice, the
+fantastic bases formed by couchant animals, which sustain
+many Lombardic shafts. The pillars they support have independent
+bases of the ordinary kind; and the animal form
+beneath is less to be considered as a true base (though often
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page293"></a>293</span>
+exquisitely combined with it, as in the shaft on the south-west
+angle of the cathedral of Genoa) than as a piece of sculpture,
+otherwise necessary to the nobility of the building, and deriving
+its value from its special positive fulfilment of expressional
+purposes, with which we have here no concern. As the embodiment
+of a wild superstition, and the representation of
+supernatural powers, their appeal to the imagination sets at
+utter defiance all judgment based on ordinary canons of law;
+and the magnificence of their treatment atones, in nearly every
+case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should not
+admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a
+nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid;
+but by the Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life,
+we need not fear being led astray: the visions of a distempered
+fancy are not indeed permitted to replace the truth, or set
+aside the laws of science: but the imagination which is
+thoroughly under the command of the intelligent will,<a name="FnAnchor_81" href="#Footnote_81"><span class="sp">81</span></a> has a
+dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by law; and
+we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons
+in the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry
+an excuse for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to
+be called upon, in other cases, to admire a systemless architecture,
+because it may happen to have sprung from an irrational
+religion.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_78" href="#FnAnchor_78"><span class="fn">78</span></a> Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and value
+of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of the single or
+double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested by the writer of the
+Essay on the Ĉsthetics of Gothic Architecture in the British Quarterly for
+August, 1849:&mdash;&ldquo;The Attic base <i>recedes</i> at the point where, if it suffered
+from superincumbent weight, it would bulge out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_79" href="#FnAnchor_79"><span class="fn">79</span></a> I have put in <a href="#app_24">Appendix 24</a>, &ldquo;Renaissance Bases,&rdquo; my memorandum
+written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had better
+delay referring to it, until we have completed our examination of ornaments
+in shafts and capitals.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_80" href="#FnAnchor_80"><span class="fn">80</span></a> <a href="#app_25">Appendix 25</a>, &ldquo;Romanist Decoration of Bases.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_81" href="#FnAnchor_81"><span class="fn">81</span></a> In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in <a href="#app_8">Appendix 8</a>),
+this command of the will over its action is as distinct as it is stern. The
+fancy is, in the early work of the nation, visibly diseased; but never the
+will, nor the reason.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page294"></a>294</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">No</span> subject has been more open ground of dispute
+among architects than the decoration of the wall veil, because
+no decoration appeared naturally to grow out of its construction;
+nor could any curvatures be given to its surface large
+enough to produce much impression on the eye. It has become,
+therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of various
+effects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned
+to the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may perhaps
+conclude, from what was advanced in the Fifth Chapter, that
+there is one kind of decoration which will, indeed, naturally
+follow on its construction. For it is perfectly natural that the
+different kinds of stone used in its successive courses should
+be of different colors; and there are many associations and
+analogies which metaphysically justify the introduction of
+horizontal bands of color, or of light and shade. They are, in
+the first place, a kind of expression of the growth or age of
+the wall, like the rings in the wood of a tree; then they are a
+farther symbol of the alternation of light and darkness, which
+was above noted as the source of the charm of many inferior
+mouldings: again, they are valuable as an expression of horizontal
+space to the imagination, space of which the conception
+is opposed, and gives more effect by its opposition, to the
+enclosing power of the wall itself (this I spoke of as probably
+the great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind):
+and again they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural
+courses of rocks, and beds of the earth itself. And to all these
+powerful imaginative reasons we have to add the merely ocular
+charm of interlineal opposition of color; a charm so great,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page295"></a>295</span>
+that all the best colorists, without a single exception, depend
+upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial effects, some
+vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being made
+central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of
+Tintoret&rsquo;s great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised
+on the bars of blue, which cross the white turban of the
+executioner.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_13" id="plate_13"><img src="images/img295.jpg" width="650" height="402" alt="WALL VEIL DECORATIONS." title="WALL VEIL DECORATIONS." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">WALL VEIL DECORATIONS.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. There are, therefore, no ornaments more deeply suggestive
+in their simplicity than these alternate bars of horizontal
+colors; nor do I know any buildings more noble than those
+of the Pisan Romanesque, in which they are habitually employed;
+and certainly none so graceful, so attractive, so enduringly
+delightful in their nobleness. Yet, of this pure and
+graceful ornamentation, Professor Willis says, &ldquo;a practice more
+destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived:&rdquo;
+and modern architects have substituted for it the ingenious ornament
+of which the reader has had one specimen above, <a href="#fig_3">Fig.
+III.</a>, <a href="#page061">p. 61</a>, and with which half the large buildings in London
+are disfigured, or else traversed by mere straight lines, as, for
+instance, the back of the Bank. The lines on the Bank may,
+perhaps, be considered typical of accounts; but in general the
+walls, if left destitute of them, would have been as much
+fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of white
+paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may
+have free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two examples
+of the old and the Renaissance ornament side by side
+on the opposite page. That on the right is Romanesque, from
+St. Pietro of Pistoja; that on the left, modern English, from
+the Arthur Club-house, St. James&rsquo;s Street.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark
+the division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled,
+and right when they are marked by color? First, because
+the color separation is a natural one. You build with different
+kinds of stone, of which, probably, one is more costly than
+another; which latter, as you cannot construct your building
+of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars. But the chiselling
+of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and labor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page296"></a>296</span>
+in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those
+monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building
+is <i>weaker</i> than it was before, by just as much stone as has
+been cut away from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I
+have repeatedly urged, straight lines are ugly things as <i>lines</i>,
+but admirable as limits of colored spaces; and the joints of the
+stones, which are painful in proportion to their regularity, if
+drawn as lines, are perfectly agreeable when marked by variations
+of hue.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling,
+is equally true of divisions of bricks by pointing. Nor, of
+course, is the mere horizontal bar the only arrangement in
+which the colors of brickwork or masonry can be gracefully
+disposed. It is rather one which can only be employed with
+advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold. When
+the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into chequered
+patterns. We shall have several interesting examples
+to study in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal
+Palace. The town of Moulins, in France, is one of the most
+remarkable on this side the Alps for its chequered patterns in
+bricks. The church of Christchurch, Streatham, lately built,
+though spoiled by many grievous errors (the iron work in
+the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the inhabitants
+of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the variety
+of effects which are possible with no other material than
+brick.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. We have yet to notice another effort of the Renaissance
+architects to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by
+what is called Rustication. There is sometimes an obscure
+trace of the remains of the imitation of something organic in
+this kind of work. In some of the better French eighteenth
+century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like a final
+degradation of Flamboyant leafage; and some of our modern
+English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of
+elephants for their type; but, for the most part, it resembles
+nothing so much as worm casts; nor these with any precision.
+If it did, it would not bring it within the sphere of our properly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page297"></a>297</span>
+imitative ornamentation. I thought it unnecessary to
+warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of refuse or
+corruption; and that, while he might legitimately take the
+worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to
+study the worm cast or coprolite.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rustication
+gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones.
+Not so; at least to any one who knows the look of a hard
+stone. You may, by rustication, make your good marble or
+granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by sand-eels, or like
+half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of stalactite, or
+like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own mud;
+but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do
+not think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth
+sheets of rock, glistening like sea waves, and that ring under
+the hammer like a brazen bell,&mdash;that is her preparation for
+first stories. She does rusticate sometimes: crumbly sand-stones,
+with their ripple-marks filled with red mud; dusty lime-stones,
+which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities; spongy
+lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into
+ropy coils and bubbling hollows;&mdash;these she rusticates, indeed,
+when she wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them;
+but not when she needs to lay foundations with them. Then she
+seeks the polished surface and iron heart, not rough looks and
+incoherent substance.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impossible
+to institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite,
+from mere inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations
+of elaborate bas-relief. The architect has perhaps more license
+in them, and more power of producing good effect with rude
+design than in any other features of the building; the chequer
+and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude bas-reliefs of
+the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate panelling
+and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to
+be noted of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expression
+of firm and massive substance, and of broad surface, and
+that architecture instantly declined when linear design was substituted
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page298"></a>298</span>
+for massive, and the sense of weight of wall was lost
+in a wilderness of upright or undulating rods. Of the richest
+and most delicate wall veil decoration by inlaid work, as
+practised in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, I
+have given the reader two characteristic examples in Plates <a href="#plate_20">XX.</a>
+and <a href="#plate_21">XXI.</a></p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_61"><img src="images/img298a.jpg" width="350" height="162" alt="Fig. LXI." title="Fig. LXI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. There are, however, three spaces in which the wall
+veil, peculiarly limited in shape, was always felt to be fitted
+for surface decoration of the most elaborate kind; and in these
+spaces are found the most majestic instances of its treatment,
+even to late periods. One
+of these is the spandril
+space, or the filling between
+any two arches,
+commonly of the shape
+<i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_61">Fig. LXI.</a>; the half
+of which, or the flank
+filling of any arch, is
+called a spandril. In
+Chapter XVII., on Filling of Apertures, the reader will find
+another of these spaces noted, called the tympanum, and commonly
+of the form <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_61">Fig. LXI.</a>: and finally, in Chapter
+XVIII., he will find the third space described, that between
+an arch and its protecting gable, approximating generally to
+the form <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_61">Fig. LXI.</a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. The methods of treating these spaces might alone
+furnish subject for three very interesting essays; but I shall
+only note the most essential points respecting them.</p>
+
+<p>(1.) The Spandril. It was observed in Chapter XII., that
+this portion of the arch load might frequently be lightened
+with great advantage by piercing it with a circle, or with a
+group of circles; and the roof of the Euston Square railroad
+station was adduced as an example. One of the spandril
+decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the &ldquo;Seven
+Lamps,&rdquo; <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a> fig. 4. It is little more than one of these
+Euston Square spandrils, with its circles foliated.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XIV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_14"><img src="images/img298b.jpg" width="650" height="373" alt="SPANDRIL DECORATION." title="SPANDRIL DECORATION." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">SPANDRIL DECORATION.<br />
+                      <span class="f80">THE DUCAL PALACE.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Sometimes the circle is entirely pierced; at other times it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page299"></a>299</span>
+is merely suggested by a mosaic or light tracery on the wall
+surface, as in the plate opposite, which is one of the spandrils
+of the Ducal Palace at Venice. It was evidently intended
+that all the spandrils of this building should be decorated in
+this manner, but only two of them seem to have been completed.<a name="FnAnchor_82" href="#Footnote_82"><span class="sp">82</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. The other modes of spandril filling may be broadly
+reduced to four heads. 1. Free figure sculpture, as in the
+Chapter-house of Salisbury, and very superbly along the west
+front of Bourges, the best Gothic spandrils I know. 2. Radiated
+foliage, more or less referred to the centre, or to the bottom
+of the spandril for its origin; single figures with expanded
+wings often answering the same purpose. 3. Trefoils; and 4,
+ordinary wall decoration continued into the spandril space, as
+in <a href="#plate_13">Plate XIII.</a>, above, from St. Pietro at Pistoja, and in Westminster
+Abbey. The Renaissance architects introduced spandril
+fillings composed of colossal human figures reclining on
+the sides of the arch, in precarious lassitude; but these cannot
+come under the head of wall veil decoration.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. (2.) The Tympanum. It was noted that, in Gothic
+architecture, this is for the most part a detached slab of stone,
+having no constructional relation to the rest of the building.
+The plan of its sculpture is therefore quite arbitrary; and, as
+it is generally in a conspicuous position, near the eye, and
+above the entrance, it is almost always charged with a series of
+rich figure sculptures, solemn in feeling and consecutive in
+subject. It occupies in Christian sacred edifices very nearly
+the position of the pediment in Greek sculpture. This latter
+is itself a kind of tympanum, and charged with sculpture in
+the same manner.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. (3.) The Gable. The same principles apply to it
+which have been noted respecting the spandril, with one more
+of some importance. The chief difficulty in treating a gable
+lies in the excessive sharpness of its upper point. It may, indeed,
+on its outside apex, receive a finial; but the meeting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page300"></a>300</span>
+of the inside lines of its terminal mouldings is necessarily both
+harsh and conspicuous, unless artificially concealed. The most
+beautiful victory I have ever seen obtained over this difficulty
+was by placing a sharp shield, its point, as usual, downwards,
+at the apex of the gable, which exactly reversed the offensive
+lines, yet without actually breaking them; the gable being
+completed behind the shield. The same thing is done in the
+Northern and Southern Gothic: in the porches of Abbeville
+and the tombs of Verona.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. I believe there is little else to be noted of general
+laws of ornament respecting the wall veil. We have next to
+consider its concentration in the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>Now the principal beauty of a shaft is its perfect proportion
+to its work,&mdash;its exact expression of necessary strength.
+If this has been truly attained, it will hardly need, in some
+cases hardly bear, more decoration than is given to it by its
+own rounding and taper curvatures; for, if we cut ornaments
+in intaglio on its surface, we weaken it; if we leave them in
+relief, we overcharge it, and the sweep of the line from its
+base to its summit, though deduced in Chapter VIII., from
+necessities of construction, is already one of gradated curvature,
+and of high decorative value.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV</span>. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that decorations
+are admissible on colossal and on diminutive shafts, which are
+wrong upon those of middle size. For, when the shaft is
+enormous, incisions or sculpture on its sides (unless colossal
+also), do not materially interfere with the sweep of its curve,
+nor diminish the efficiency of its sustaining mass. And if it
+be diminutive, its sustaining function is comparatively of so
+small importance, the injurious results of failure so much less,
+and the relative strength and cohesion of its mass so much
+greater, that it may be suffered in the extravagance of ornament
+or outline which would be unendurable in a shaft of middle
+size, and impossible in one of colossal. Thus, the shafts
+drawn in <a href="#plate_13">Plate XIII.</a>, of the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; though given as
+examples of extravagance, are yet pleasing in the general effect
+of the arcade they support; being each some six or seven
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page301"></a>301</span>
+feet high. But they would have been monstrous, as well as
+unsafe, if they had been sixty or seventy.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. Therefore, to determine the general rule for shaft
+decoration, we must ascertain the proportions representative of
+the mean bulk of shafts: they might easily be calculated from
+a sufficient number of examples, but it may perhaps be assumed,
+for our present general purpose, that the mean standard
+would be of some twenty feet in height, by eight or nine
+in circumference: then this will be the size on which decoration
+is most difficult and dangerous: and shafts become more
+and more fit subjects for decoration, as they rise farther above,
+or fall farther beneath it, until very small and very vast shafts
+will both be found to look blank unless they receive some
+chasing or imagery; blank, whether they support a chair or
+table on the one side, or sustain a village on the ridge of an
+Egyptian architrave on the other.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. Of the various ornamentation of colossal shafts, there
+are no examples so noble as the Egyptian; these the reader
+can study in Mr. Roberts&rsquo; work on Egypt nearly as well, I
+imagine, as if he were beneath their shadow, one of their chief
+merits, as examples of method, being the perfect decision and
+visibility of their designs at the necessary distance: contrast
+with these the incrustations of bas-relief on the Trajan pillar,
+much interfering with the smooth lines of the shaft, and yet
+themselves untraceable, if not invisible.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII</span>. On shafts of middle size, the only ornament which
+has ever been accepted as right, is the Doric fluting, which,
+indeed, gave the effect of a succession of unequal lines of
+shade, but lost much of the repose of the cylindrical gradation.
+The Corinthian fluting, which is a mean multiplication and
+deepening of the Doric, with a square instead of a sharp ridge
+between each hollow, destroyed the serenity of the shaft altogether,
+and is always rigid and meagre. Both are, in fact,
+wrong in principle; they are an elaborate weakening<a name="FnAnchor_83" href="#Footnote_83"><span class="sp">83</span></a> of the
+shaft, exactly opposed (as above shown) to the ribbed form,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page302"></a>302</span>
+which is the result of a group of shafts bound together, and
+which is especially beautiful when special service is given to
+each member.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_62"><img src="images/img303.jpg" width="150" height="315" alt="Fig. LXII" title="Fig. LXII" /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decoration
+may be wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that
+the form of the shaft be clearly visible. This I hold to be
+absolutely essential, and that barbarism begins wherever the
+sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply cut, as to break the
+contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity. Thus, in
+<a href="#plate_21">Plate XXI.</a> (<a href="#app_8">Appendix 8</a>), the richly sculptured shaft of the
+lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and become
+a shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the building,
+though of some value as adding to its imaginative and
+fantastic character. Had all the shafts been like it, the
+façade would have been entirely spoiled; the inlaid pattern,
+on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft of the
+upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with
+its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid
+shaft ornaments of this noble church (another example of them
+is given in <a href="#plate_12">Plate XII.</a> of the &ldquo;Seven Lamps&rdquo;). The same
+rule would condemn the Caryatid; which I entirely agree
+with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both for this and other reasons)
+one of the chief errors of the Greek schools; and, more
+decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft ornament,
+almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed,
+which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder
+joints, as in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many
+other buildings in London; or in rusticating portions of the
+shafts, or wrapping fleeces about them, as at the entrance of
+Burlington House, in Piccadilly; or tying drapery round
+them in knots, as in the new buildings above noticed (<a href="#chap_20">Chap.
+20</a>, § <span class="scs">VII</span>.), at Paris. But, within the limits thus defined, there
+is no feature capable of richer decoration than the shaft; the
+most beautiful examples of all I have seen, are the slender
+pillars, encrusted with arabesques, which flank the portals of
+the Baptistery and Duomo at Pisa, and some others of the
+Pisan and Lucchese churches; but the varieties of sculpture
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page303"></a>303</span>
+and inlaying, with which the small Romanesque shafts, whether
+Italian or Northern, are adorned when they occupy important
+positions, are quite endless, and nearly all admirable. Mr.
+Digby Wyatt has given a beautiful example of inlaid work so
+employed, from the cloisters of the Lateran, in his work on
+early mosaic; an example which unites the surface decoration
+of the shaft with the adoption of the spiral contour. This
+latter is often all the decoration which is needed, and none can
+be more beautiful; it has been spoken against, like many other
+good and lovely things, because it has been too often used in
+extravagant degrees, like the well-known twisting of the pillars
+in Raffaelle&rsquo;s &ldquo;Beautiful gate.&rdquo; But that extravagant condition
+was a Renaissance barbarism: the old Romanesque builders
+kept their spirals slight and pure; often, as in the example
+from St. Zeno, in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a> below, giving only half a turn
+from the base of the shaft to its head, and nearly always observing
+what I hold to be an imperative law, that no twisted
+shaft shall be single, but composed of at least two distinct
+members, twined with each other. I suppose
+they followed their own right feeling in doing
+this, and had never studied natural shafts;
+but the type they <i>might</i> have followed was
+caught by one of the few great painters who
+were not affected by the evil influence of the
+fifteenth century, Benozzo Gozzoli, who, in
+the frescoes of the Ricardi Palace, among
+stems of trees for the most part as vertical as
+stone shafts, has suddenly introduced one of
+the shape given in <a href="#fig_62">Fig. LXII.</a> Many forest
+trees present, in their accidental contortions,
+types of most complicated spiral shafts, the
+plan being originally of a grouped shaft rising from several
+roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find models for every
+kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous, as he will
+find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the earth
+itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting; but the
+shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page304"></a>304</span>
+silver, is fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple
+moss, veined with grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of
+the rolling heaven, with flitting fancies of blue shadow and
+burning gold.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_82" href="#FnAnchor_82"><span class="fn">82</span></a> Vide end of <a href="#app_20">Appendix 20</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_83" href="#FnAnchor_83"><span class="fn">83</span></a> Vide, however, their defence in the Essay above quoted, <a href="#page251">p. 251</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page305"></a>305</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_27" id="chap_27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">There</span> are no features to which the attention of architects
+has been more laboriously directed, in all ages, than these
+crowning members of the wall and shaft; and it would be vain
+to endeavor, within any moderate limits, to give the reader any
+idea of the various kinds of admirable decoration which have
+been invented for them. But, in proportion to the effort and
+straining of the fancy, have been the extravagances into which
+it has occasionally fallen; and while it is utterly impossible
+severally to enumerate the instances either of its success or its
+error, it is very possible to note the limits of the one and the
+causes of the other. This is all that we shall attempt in the
+present chapter, tracing first for ourselves, as in previous instances,
+the natural channels by which invention is here to be
+directed or confined, and afterwards remarking the places
+where, in real practice, it has broken bounds.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. The reader remembers, I hope, the main points respecting
+the cornice and capital, established above in the
+Chapters on Construction. Of these I must, however, recapitulate
+thus much:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. That both the cornice and capital are, with reference to
+the <i>slope</i> of their profile or bell, to be divided into two great
+orders; in one of which the ornament is convex, and in the
+other concave. (Ch. VI., § v.)</p>
+
+<p>2. That the capital, with reference to the method of twisting
+the cornice round to construct it, and to unite the circular
+shaft with the square abacus, falls into five general forms, represented
+in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>, <a href="#page119">p. 119</a>.</p>
+
+<p>3. That the most elaborate capitals were formed by true or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page306"></a>306</span>
+simple capitals with a common cornice added above their abacus.
+(Ch. IX., § <span class="scs">XXIV</span>.)</p>
+
+<p>We have then, in considering decoration, first to observe
+the treatment of the two great orders of the cornice; then their
+gathering into the five of the capital; then the addition of the
+secondary cornice to the capital when formed.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. The two great orders or families of cornice were above
+distinguished in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, <a href="#page069">p. 69</a>.; and it was mentioned in the
+same place that a third family arose from their combination.
+We must deal with the two great opposed groups first.</p>
+
+<p>They were distinguished in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a> by circular curves
+drawn on opposite sides of the same line. But we now know
+that in these smaller features the circle is usually the least interesting
+curve that we can use; and that it will be well, since
+the capital and cornice are both active in their expression, to
+use some of the more abstract natural lines. We will go back,
+therefore, to our old friend the salvia leaf; and taking the
+same piece of it we had before, <i>x y</i>, <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a>, we will apply it
+to the cornice line; first within it, giving the concave cornice,
+then without, giving the convex cornice. In all the figures,
+<i>a</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>c</i>, <i>d</i>, <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, the dotted line is at the same slope, and
+represents an average profile of the root of cornices (<i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>,
+<a href="#page069">p. 69</a>); the curve of the salvia leaf is applied to it in each case,
+first with its roundest curvature up, then with its roundest
+curvature down; and we have thus the two varieties, <i>a</i> and <i>b</i>,
+of the concave family, and <i>c</i> and <i>d</i>, of the convex family.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_15"><img src="images/img306.jpg" width="384" height="650" alt="CORNICE PROFILES." title="CORNICE PROFILES." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">CORNICE PROFILES.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. These four profiles will represent all the simple cornices
+in the world; represent them, I mean, as central types:
+for in any of the profiles an infinite number of slopes may be
+given to the dotted line of the root (which in these four figures
+is always at the same angle); and on each of these innumerable
+slopes an innumerable variety of curves may be fitted,
+from every leaf in the forest, and every shell on the shore, and
+every movement of the human fingers and fancy; therefore, if
+the reader wishes to obtain something like a numerical representation
+of the number of possible and beautiful cornices
+which may be based upon these four types or roots, and among
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page307"></a>307</span>
+which the architect has leave to choose according to the circumstances
+of his building and the method of its composition,
+let him set down a figure 1 to begin with, and write ciphers
+after it as fast as he can, without stopping, for an hour.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V.</span> None of the types are, however, found in perfection
+of curvature, except in the best work. Very often cornices
+are worked with circular segments (with a noble, massive effect,
+for instance, in St. Michele of Lucca), or with rude approximation
+to finer curvature, especially <i>a</i>, <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, which occurs
+often so small as to render it useless to take much pains
+upon its curve. It occurs perfectly pure in the condition represented
+by 1 of the series 1-6, in <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, on many of the
+Byzantine and early Gothic buildings of Venice; in more
+developed form it becomes the profile of the bell of the capital
+in the later Venetian Gothic, and in much of the best Northern
+Gothic. It also represents the Corinthian capital, in which
+the curvature is taken from the bell to be added in some excess
+to the nodding leaves. It is the most graceful of all simple
+profiles of cornice and capital.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI.</span> <i>b</i> is a much rarer and less manageable type: for this
+evident reason, that while <i>a</i> is the natural condition of a line
+rooted and strong beneath, but bent out by superincumbent
+weight, or nodding over in freedom, <i>b</i> is yielding at the base
+and rigid at the summit. It has, however, some exquisite uses,
+especially in combination, as the reader may see by glancing
+in advance at the inner line of the profile 14 in <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII.</span> <i>c</i> is the leading convex or Doric type, as <i>a</i> is the
+leading concave or Corinthian. Its relation to the best Greek
+Doric is exactly what the relation of <i>a</i> is to the Corinthian;
+that is to say, the curvature must be taken from the straighter
+limb of the curve and added to the bolder bend, giving it a
+sudden turn inwards (as in the Corinthian a nod outwards),
+as the reader may see in the capital of the Parthenon in the
+British Museum, where the lower limb of the curve is <i>all but</i>
+a right line.<a name="FnAnchor_84" href="#Footnote_84"><span class="sp">84</span></a> But these Doric and Corinthian lines are mere
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page308"></a>308</span>
+varieties of the great families which are represented by the
+central lines <i>a</i> and <i>c</i>, including not only the Doric capital, but
+all the small cornices formed by a slight increase of the curve
+of <i>c</i>, which are of so frequent occurrence in Greek ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII.</span> <i>d</i> is the Christian Doric, which I said (Chap. I., § <span class="scs">XX</span>.)
+was invented to replace the antique: it is the representative
+of the great Byzantine and Norman families of convex cornice
+and capital, and, next to the profile <i>a</i>, the most important of
+the four, being the best profile for the convex capital, as <i>a</i> is
+for the concave; <i>a</i> being the best expression of an elastic line
+inserted vertically in the shaft, and <i>d</i> of an elastic line inserted
+horizontally and rising to meet vertical pressure.</p>
+
+<p>If the reader will glance at the arrangements of boughs of
+trees, he will find them commonly dividing into these two
+families, <i>a</i> and <i>d</i>: they rise out of the trunk and nod from it
+as <i>a</i>, or they spring with sudden curvature out from it, and
+rise into sympathy with it, as at <i>d</i>; but they only accidentally
+display tendencies to the lines <i>b</i> or <i>c</i>. Boughs which fall as
+they spring from the tree also describe the curve <i>d</i> in the
+plurality of instances, but reversed in arrangement; their junction
+with the stem being at the top of it, their sprays bending
+out into rounder curvature.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX.</span> These then being the two primal groups, we have
+next to note the combined group, formed by the concave and
+convex lines joined in various proportions of curvature, so as
+to form together the reversed or ogee curve, represented in
+one of its most beautiful states by the glacier line <i>a</i>, on <a href="#plate_7">Plate
+VII.</a> I would rather have taken this line than any other to
+have formed my third group of cornices by, but as it is too
+large, and almost too delicate, we will take instead that of the
+Matterhorn side, <i>e f</i>, <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a> For uniformity&rsquo;s sake I keep
+the slope of the dotted line the same as in the primal forms;
+and applying this Matterhorn curve in its four relative positions
+to that line, I have the types of the four cornices or capitals
+of the third family, <i>e</i>, <i>f</i>, <i>g</i>, <i>h</i>, on <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a></p>
+
+<p>These are, however, general types only thus far, that their
+line is composed of one short and one long curve, and that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page309"></a>309</span>
+they represent the four conditions of treatment of every such
+line; namely, the longest curve concave in <i>e</i> and <i>f</i>, and convex
+in <i>g</i> and <i>h</i>; and the point of contrary flexure set high in <i>e</i>
+and <i>g</i>, and low in <i>f</i> and <i>h</i>. The relative depth of the arcs, or
+nature of their curvature, cannot be taken into consideration
+without a complexity of system which my space does not
+admit.</p>
+
+<p>Of the four types thus constituted, <i>e</i> and <i>f</i> are of great importance;
+the other two are rarely used, having an appearance
+of weakness in consequence of the shortest curve being concave:
+the profiles <i>e</i> and <i>f</i>, when used for cornices, have usually
+a fuller sweep and somewhat greater equality between the
+branches of the curve; but those here given are better representatives
+of the structure applicable to capitals and cornices
+indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X.</span> Very often, in the farther treatment of the profiles <i>e</i>
+or <i>f</i>, another limb is added to their curve in order to join it to
+the upper or lower members of the cornice or capital. I do
+not consider this addition as forming another family of cornices,
+because the leading and effective part of the curve is in
+these, as in the others, the single ogee; and the added bend is
+merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below: still this
+group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of ornamentation
+that we must have it sufficiently represented. We
+shall obtain a type of it by merely continuing the line of the
+Matterhorn side, of which before we took only a fragment.
+The entire line <i>e</i> to <i>g</i> on <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a>, is evidently composed of
+three curves of unequal lengths, which if we call the shortest
+1, the intermediate one 2, and the longest 3, are there arranged
+in the order 1, 3, 2, counting upwards. But evidently we might
+also have had the arrangements 1, 2, 3, and 2, 1, 3, giving us
+three distinct lines, altogether independent of position, which
+being applied to one general dotted slope will each give four
+cornices, or twelve altogether. Of these the six most important
+are those which have the shortest curve convex: they are
+given in light relief from <i>k</i> to <i>p</i>, <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, and, by turning
+the page upside down, the other six will be seen in dark relief,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page310"></a>310</span>
+only the little upright bits of shadow at the bottom are
+not to be considered as parts of them, being only admitted in
+order to give the complete profile of the more important cornices
+in light.</p>
+
+<p class="mb">§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. In these types, as in <i>e</i> and <i>f</i>, the only general condition
+is, that their line shall be composed of three curves of different
+lengths and different arrangements (the depth of arcs
+and radius of curvatures being unconsidered). They are arranged
+in three couples, each couple being two positions of the
+same entire line; so that numbering the component curves
+in order of magnitude and counting upwards, they will read&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" summary="data">
+<tr><td>
+<p><i>k</i></p>
+<p><i>l</i></p>
+<p><i>m</i></p>
+<p><i>n</i></p>
+<p><i>o</i></p>
+<p><i>p</i></p></td>
+
+<td>
+<p>1, 2, 3,</p>
+<p>3, 2, 1,</p>
+<p>1, 3, 2,</p>
+<p>2, 3, 1,</p>
+<p>2, 1, 3,</p>
+<p>3, 1, 2.</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="mt"><i>m</i> and <i>n</i>, which are the <i>Matterhorn line</i>, are the most beautiful
+and important of all the twelve; <i>k</i> and <i>l</i> the next; <i>o</i> and
+<i>p</i> are used only for certain conditions of flower carving on
+the surface. The reverses (dark) of <i>k</i> and <i>l</i> are also of
+considerable service; the other four hardly ever used in good
+work.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. If we were to add a fourth curve to the component
+series, we should have forty-eight more cornices: but
+there is no use in pursuing the system further, as such arrangements
+are very rare and easily resolved into the simpler
+types with certain arbitrary additions fitted to their special
+place; and, in most cases, distinctly separate from the main
+curve, as in the inner line of No. 14, which is a form of the
+type <i>e</i>, the longest curve, <i>i.e.</i>, the lowest, having deepest curvature,
+and each limb opposed by a short contrary curve at its
+extremities, the convex limb by a concave, the concave by a
+convex.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. Such, then, are the great families of profile lines
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page311"></a>311</span>
+into which all cornices and capitals may be divided; but their
+best examples unite two such profiles in a mode which we
+cannot understand till we consider the further ornament
+with which the profiles are charged. And in doing this we
+must, for the sake of clearness, consider, first the nature
+of the designs themselves, and next the mode of cutting
+them.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XVI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_16" id="plate_16"><img src="images/img311.jpg" width="407" height="650" alt="CORNICE DECORATION." title="CORNICE DECORATION." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">CORNICE DECORATION.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV.</span> In <a href="#plate_16">Plate XVI.</a>, opposite, I have thrown together a
+few of the most characteristic mediĉval examples of the treatment
+of the simplest cornice profiles: the uppermost, <i>a</i>, is the
+pure root of cornices from St. Mark&rsquo;s. The second, <i>d</i>, is the
+Christian Doric cornice, here lettered <i>d</i> in order to avoid confusion,
+its profile being <i>d</i> of <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a> in bold development,
+and here seen on the left-hand side, truly drawn, though filled
+up with the ornament to show the mode in which the angle
+is turned. This is also from St. Mark&rsquo;s. The third, <i>b</i>, is <i>b</i>
+of <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, the pattern being inlaid in black because its office
+was in the interior of St. Mark&rsquo;s, where it was too dark to see
+sculptured ornament at the required distance. (The other two
+simple profiles, <i>a</i> and <i>c</i> of <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, would be decorated in
+the same manner, but require no example here, for the profile
+<i>a</i> is of so frequent occurrence that it will have a page to itself
+alone in the next volume; and c may be seen over nearly every
+shop in London, being that of the common Greek egg cornice.)
+The fourth, <i>e</i> in <a href="#plate_16">Plate XVI.</a>, is a transitional cornice, passing
+from Byzantine into Venetian Gothic: <i>f</i> is a fully developed
+Venetian Gothic cornice founded on Byzantine traditions; and
+<i>g</i> the perfect Lombardic-Gothic cornice, founded on the Pisan
+Romanesque traditions, and strongly marked with the noblest
+Northern element, the Lombardic vitality restrained by classical
+models. I consider it a perfect cornice, and of the highest
+order.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV.</span> Now in the design of this series of ornaments there
+are two main points to be noted; the first, that they all, except
+<i>b</i>, are distinctly rooted in the lower part of the cornice, and
+spring to the top. This arrangement is constant in all the best
+cornices and capitals; and it is essential to the expression of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page312"></a>312</span>
+the supporting power of both. It is exactly opposed to the
+system of <i>running</i> cornices and <i>banded</i><a name="FnAnchor_85" href="#Footnote_85"><span class="sp">85</span></a> capitals, in which
+the ornament flows along them horizontally, or is twined round
+them, as the mouldings are in the early English capital, and the
+foliage in many decorated ones. Such cornices have arisen
+from a mistaken appliance of the running ornaments, which
+are proper to archivolts, jambs, &amp;c., to the features which have
+definite functions of support. A tendril may nobly follow the
+outline of an arch, but must not creep along a cornice, nor
+swathe or bandage a capital; it is essential to the expression of
+these features that their ornament should have an elastic and
+upward spring; and as the proper profile for the curve is that
+of a tree bough, as we saw above, so the proper arrangement
+of its farther ornament is that which best expresses rooted and
+ascendant strength like that of foliage.</p>
+
+<p>There are certain very interesting exceptions to the rule (we
+shall see a curious one presently); and in the carrying out of
+the rule itself, we may see constant licenses taken by the great
+designers, and momentary violations of it, like those above
+spoken of, respecting other ornamental laws&mdash;violations which
+are for our refreshment, and for increase of delight in the
+general observance; and this is one of the peculiar beauties
+of the cornice <i>g</i>, which, rooting itself in strong central clusters,
+suffers some of its leaves to fall languidly aside, as the drooping
+outer leaves of a natural cluster do so often; but at the
+very instant that it does this, in order that it may not lose any
+of its expression of strength, a fruit-stalk is thrown up above
+the languid leaves, absolutely vertical, as much stiffer and
+stronger than the rest of the plant as the falling leaves are
+weaker. Cover this with your finger, and the cornice falls to
+pieces, like a bouquet which has been untied.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI</span>. There are some instances in which, though the real
+arrangement is that of a running stem, throwing off leaves up
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page313"></a>313</span>
+and down, the positions of the leaves give nearly as much
+elasticity and organisation to the cornice, as if they had been
+rightly rooted; and others, like <i>b</i>, where the reversed portion
+of the ornament is lost in the shade, and the general expression
+of strength is got by the lower member. This cornice will,
+nevertheless, be felt at once to be inferior to the rest; and
+though we may often be called upon to admire designs of
+these kinds, which would have been exquisite if not thus misplaced,
+the reader will find that they are both of rare occurrence,
+and significative of declining style; while the greater
+mass of the banded capitals are heavy and valueless, mere
+aggregations of confused sculpture, swathed round the extremity
+of the shaft, as if she had dipped it into a mass of melted
+ornament, as the glass-blower does his blow-pipe into the
+metal, and brought up a quantity adhering glutinously to its
+extremity. We have many capitals of this kind in England:
+some of the worst and heaviest in the choir of York. The
+later capitals of the Italian Gothic have the same kind of effect,
+but owing to another cause: for their structure is quite pure,
+and based on the Corinthian type: and it is the branching
+form of the heads of the leaves which destroys the effect of
+their organisation. On the other hand, some of the Italian
+cornices which are actually composed by running tendrils,
+throwing off leaves into oval interstices, are so massive in their
+treatment, and so marked and firm in their vertical and arched
+lines, that they are nearly as suggestive of support as if they
+had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice of this
+kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (<a href="#plate_6">Plate VI.</a> in the &ldquo;Seven
+Lamps,&rdquo; and XXI. here), and with exquisite propriety; for
+that cornice is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a
+foundation to that which is above it, and therefore unites the
+strength and elasticity of the lines proper to the cornice with
+the submission and prostration of those proper to the foundation.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII.</span> This, then, is the first point needing general notice
+in the designs in <a href="#plate_16">Plate XVI.</a> The second is the difference
+between the freedom of the Northern and the sophistication
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page314"></a>314</span>
+of the classical cornices, in connection with what has been
+advanced in <a href="#app_8">Appendix 8</a>. The cornices, <i>a</i>, <i>d</i>, and <i>b</i>, are of
+the same date, but they show a singular difference in the
+workman&rsquo;s temper: that at <i>b</i> is a single copy of a classical
+mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it,
+which are, in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman
+egg and arrow mouldings. But the cornices <i>a</i> and <i>d</i> are
+copies of nothing of the kind: the idea of them has indeed
+been taken from the Greek honeysuckle ornament, but the
+chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or Byzantine, in
+temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists: this work is
+as energetic as its original; energetic, not in the quantity of
+work, but in the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil,
+may cover large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or
+accumulate his dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it
+is gathered weariness still. The man who cut those two
+uppermost cornices had no time to spare: did as much cornice
+as he could in half an hour; but would not endure the slightest
+trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an edge. His
+work is absolutely unreproveable; keen, and true, as Nature&rsquo;s
+own; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every
+line of it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in
+him: we shall see something come of that cornice: The fellow
+who inlaid the other (<i>b</i>), will stay where he is for ever; and
+when he has inlaid one leaf up, will inlay another down,&mdash;and
+so undulate up and down to all eternity: but the man of <i>a</i>
+and <i>d</i> will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in handicrafts,
+nor stubbornness in stone.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII.</span> But there is something else noticeable in those two
+cornices, besides the energy of them: as opposed either to <i>b</i>,
+or the Greek honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are <i>natural</i>
+designs. The Greek egg and arrow cornice is a nonsense
+cornice, very noble in its lines, but utterly absurd in meaning.
+Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at least since
+Leda&rsquo;s time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows, nor
+the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles;
+they are all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page315"></a>315</span>
+of nothing,&mdash;pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But
+those Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive;
+there is not the tenth of the work in them that there is in the
+Greek arrows, but, as far as that work will go, it has consistent
+intention; with the fewest possible incisions, and those of the
+easiest shape, they suggest the true image, of clusters of
+leaves, each leaf with its central depression from root to point,
+and that distinctly visible at almost any distance from the eye,
+and in almost any light.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIX</span>. Here, then, are two great new elements visible;
+energy and naturalism:&mdash;Life, with submission to the laws of
+God, and love of his works; this is Christianity, dealing with
+her classical models. Now look back to what I said in <a href="#chap_1">Chap.
+1.</a> § <span class="scs">XX</span>. of this dealing of hers, and invention of the new Doric
+line; then to what is above stated (§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>.) respecting that new
+Doric, and the boughs of trees; and now to the evidence in
+the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see
+how the whole is beginning to come together.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XX</span>. We said that something would come of these two
+cornices, <i>a</i> and <i>d</i>. In <i>e</i> and <i>f</i> we see that something <i>has</i> come
+of them: <i>e</i> is also from St. Mark&rsquo;s, and one of the earliest
+examples in Venice of the transition from the Byzantine to
+the Gothic cornice. It is already singularly developed; flowers
+have been added between the clusters of leaves, and the
+leaves themselves curled over: and observe the well-directed
+thought of the sculptor in this curling;&mdash;the old incisions are
+retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the proofs
+of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand
+for the <i>under</i> surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns
+over, on the top of it you see true <i>ribs</i>. Look at the upper
+and under surface of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps
+we are making.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXI</span>. The fifth example (<i>f</i>) was cut in 1347; it is from
+the tomb of Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and
+Paul, and it exhibits the character of the central Venetian
+Gothic fully developed. The lines are all now soft and undulatory,
+though elastic; the sharp incisions have become deeply-gathered
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page316"></a>316</span>
+folds; the hollow of the leaf is expressed completely
+beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised into
+several lobes, and their ribs delicately drawn above. (The
+flower between is only accidentally absent; it occurs in most
+cornices of the time.)</p>
+
+<p>But in both these cornices the reader will notice that while
+the naturalism of the sculpture is steadily on the increase, the
+classical formalism is still retained. The leaves are accurately
+numbered, and sternly set in their places; they are leaves in
+office, and dare not stir nor wave. They have the shapes of
+leaves, but not the functions, &ldquo;having the form of knowledge,
+but denying the power thereof.&rdquo; What is the meaning of this?</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXII</span>. Look back to the <span class="scs">XXXIII</span>rd paragraph of the first
+chapter, and you will see the meaning of it. These cornices
+are the Venetian Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element
+struggling with the Formalism of the Papacy,&mdash;the Papacy
+being entirely heathen in all its principles. That officialism
+of the leaves and their ribs means Apostolic succession, and I
+don&rsquo;t know how much more, and is already preparing for the
+transition to old Heathenism again, and the Renaissance.<a name="FnAnchor_86" href="#Footnote_86"><span class="sp">86</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIII.</span> Now look to the last cornice (<i>g</i>). That is Protestantism,&mdash;a
+slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism,
+in those falling leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The
+forms all broken through, and sent heaven knows where, but
+the root held fast; and the strong sap in the branches; and,
+best of all, good fruit ripening and opening straight towards
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page317"></a>317</span>
+heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the leaves
+lie in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>Now, observe. The cornice <i>f</i> represents Heathenism and
+Papistry, animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature.
+The good in it, the life of it, the veracity and liberty of it,
+such as it has, are Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and
+saplessness are the Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra
+Angelico in the monk&rsquo;s dress,&mdash;Christianity before the Reformation.
+The cornice <i>g</i> has the Lombardic life element in its
+fulness, with only some color and shape of Classicalism mingled
+with it&mdash;the good of classicalism; as much method and
+Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The
+continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root,
+the simplicity of the great profile,&mdash;all these are the healthy
+classical elements retained: the rest is reformation, new
+strength, and recovered liberty.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIV</span>. There is one more point about it especially noticeable.
+The leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character,
+but they are of no particular species: and after being
+something like cabbage-leaves in the beginning, one of them
+suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end. Now I don&rsquo;t know
+what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a classical character;&mdash;it
+is eminently characteristic of Southern work; and
+markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which
+would have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor
+two things in one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element;
+but whether a good or bad element, I am not sure;&mdash;whether
+it is the last trace of Centaurism and other monstrosity dying
+away; or whether it has a figurative purpose, legitimate in
+architecture (though never in painting), and has been rightly
+retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working of
+that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns
+a law in its members warring against the law of its mind.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXV</span>. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the
+spirit both of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to
+return to the question proposed in § <span class="scs">XIII</span>., and observe the
+modifications of form of profile which resulted from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page318"></a>318</span>
+changing contours of the leafage; for up to § <span class="scs">XIII</span>., we had, as
+usual, considered the possible conditions of form in the abstract;&mdash;the
+modes in which they have been derived from
+each other in actual practice require to be followed in their
+turn. How the Greek Doric or Greek ogee cornices were
+invented is not easy to determine, and, fortunately, is little to
+our present purpose; for the mediĉval ogee cornices have an
+independent development of their own, from the first type of
+the concave cornice <i>a</i> in <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a></p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_63"><img src="images/img318.jpg" width="300" height="174" alt="Fig. LXIII." title="Fig. LXIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVI.</span> That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly
+pure, but in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a
+meagreness in its junction
+with the wall beneath it, where
+it was set as here at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_63">Fig.
+LXIII.</a>, which could only be
+conquered by concealing such
+junction in a bar of shadow.
+There were two ways of getting
+this bar: one by a projecting
+roll at the foot of the cornice (<i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_63">Fig. LXIII.</a>), the other by
+slipping the whole cornice a little forward (<i>c</i>. <a href="#fig_63">Fig. LXIII.</a>).
+From these two methods arise two groups of cornices and
+capitals, which we shall pursue in succession.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVII.</span> First group. With the roll at the base (<i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_63">Fig.
+LXIII.</a>). The chain of its succession is represented from 1
+to 6, in <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>: 1 and 2 are the steps already gained, as in
+<a href="#fig_63">Fig. LXIII.</a>; and in them the profile of cornice used is <i>a</i> of
+<a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, or a refined condition of <i>b</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, <a href="#page069">p. 69</a>, above.
+Now, keeping the same refined profile, substitute the condition
+of it, <i>f</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a> (and there accounted for), above the roll
+here, and you have 3, <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a> This superadded abacus
+was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle; but you
+know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your
+simplest chamfer on it (<i>a</i> or <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_53">Fig. LIII.</a>, page 287, above),
+but on the visible side only, and you have fig. 4, <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>
+(the top stone being made deeper that you may have room to
+chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is the profile of Lombardic and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page319"></a>319</span>
+Venetian early capitals and cornices, by tens of thousands;
+and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with this only
+difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the top
+of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through
+a series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a
+diviner:&mdash;but how slowly! a stone dial which marches but 45
+degrees in three centuries, and through the intermediate condition
+5 arrives at 6, and so stays.</p>
+
+<p>In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same
+height in order to make the comparison more easy; the depth
+chosen is about intermediate between that which is customary
+in cornices on the one hand, which are often a little shorter,
+and capitals on the other, which are often a little deeper.<a name="FnAnchor_87" href="#Footnote_87"><span class="sp">87</span></a>
+And it is to be noted that the profiles 5 and 6 establish themselves
+in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in cornices to the
+latest times.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">Fig. LXIV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright1">
+    <a name="fig_64"><img src="images/img319.jpg" width="250" height="155" alt="Fig. LXIV." title="Fig. LXIV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXVIII.</span> Second group (c, <a href="#fig_63">Fig. LXIII.</a>). If the lower
+angle, which was quickly felt to be
+hard, be rounded off, we have the
+form <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_64">Fig. LXIV.</a> The front of
+the curved line is then decorated, as
+we have seen; and the termination
+of the decorated surface marked by
+an incision, as in an ordinary chamfer,
+as at <i>b</i> here. This I believe to
+have been the simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page320"></a>320</span>
+cornices; but they are farther complicated by the curves given
+to the leafage which flows over them. In the ordinary Greek
+cornices, and in <i>a</i> and <i>d</i> of <a href="#plate_16">Plate XVI.</a>, the decoration is
+<i>incised</i> from the outside profile, without any suggestion of an
+interior surface of a different contour. But in the leaf cornices
+which follow, the decoration is represented as <i>overlaid</i>
+on one of the early profiles, and has another outside contour
+of its own; which is, indeed, the true profile of the cornice,
+but beneath which, more or less, the simpler profile is seen
+or suggested, which terminates all the incisions of the chisel.
+This under profile will often be found to be some condition of
+the type <i>a</i> or <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_64">Fig. LXIV.</a>; and the leaf profile to be another
+ogee with its fullest curve up instead of down, lapping over
+the cornice edge above, so that the entire profile might be considered
+as made up of two ogee curves laid, like packed herrings,
+head to tail. Figures 8 and 9 of <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a> exemplify
+this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a heavier contour, doubtless composed
+in the same manner, but of which I had not marked
+the innermost profile, and which I have given here only to
+complete the series which, from 7 to 12 inclusive, exemplifies
+the gradual restriction of the leaf outline, from its boldest projection
+in the cornice to its most modest service in the capital.
+This change, however, is not one which indicates difference of
+age, but merely of office and position: the cornice 7 is from
+the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1350) in St. Mark&rsquo;s,
+8 from a canopy over a door of about the same period, 9 from
+the tomb of the Dogaressa Agnese Venier (1411), 10 from that
+of Pietro Cornaro (1361),<a name="FnAnchor_88" href="#Footnote_88"><span class="sp">88</span></a> and 11 from that of Andrea Morosini
+(1347), all in the church of San Giov. and Paola, all these
+being cornice profiles; and, finally, 12 from a capital of the
+Ducal Palace, of fourteen century work.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXIX</span>. Now the reader will doubtless notice that in the
+three examples, 10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from
+that of 7, 8, or 9. This difference is peculiarly significant. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page321"></a>321</span>
+have always desired that the reader should theoretically consider
+the capital as a concentration of the cornice; but in practice
+it often happens that the cornice is, on the contrary, an
+unrolled capital; and one of the richest early forms of the
+Byzantine cornice (not given in <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, because its separate
+character and importance require examination apart) is
+nothing more than an unrolled continuation of the lower range
+of acanthus leaves on the Corinthian capital. From this cornice
+others appear to have been derived, like <i>e</i> in <a href="#plate_16">Plate XVI.</a>,
+in which the acanthus outline has become confused with that
+of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the centre of the Corinthian
+capital introduced between them; and thus their forms
+approach more and more to those derived from the cornice
+itself. Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, <a href="#plate_15">Plate
+XV.</a>, the profile is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice
+derived from a capital; while, if the leaf have the contour of
+7 or 8, the profile is either actually of a cornice or of a capital
+derived from a cornice. Where the Byzantines use the acanthus,
+the Lombards use the Persepolitan water-leaf; but the
+connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly the same.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXX.</span> Thus far, however, we have considered the characters
+of profile which are common to the cornice and capital
+both. We have now to note what farther decorative features
+or peculiarities belong to the capital itself, or result from the
+theoretical gathering of the one into the other.</p>
+
+<p>Look back to <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>, <a href="#page110">p. 110</a>. The five types there
+given, represented the five different methods of concentration
+of the root of cornices, <i>a</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a> Now, as many profiles
+of cornices as were developed in <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a> from this cornice
+root, there represented by the dotted slope, so many may be
+applied to each of the five types in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>,&mdash;applied simply
+in <i>a</i> and <i>b</i>, but with farther modifications, necessitated by
+their truncations or spurs, in <i>c</i>, <i>d</i>, and <i>e</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such
+length and slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition
+comes into effect described in Chapter IX. § <span class="scs">XXIV</span>., and any
+one of the cornices in <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a> may become the <i>abacus</i> of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page322"></a>322</span>
+capital formed out of any other, or out of itself. The infinity
+of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well be supposed, be
+exhibited or catalogued in the space at present permitted to
+us: but the reader, once master of the principle, will easily be
+able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples that
+may occur to him, and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise,
+put before him a few of those which he will meet with most
+frequently in his Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points,
+not hitherto touched upon, in the disposition of the abacus.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXI.</span> In <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a> the capital at the top, on the left
+hand, is the rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian
+Doric cornice, <i>d</i> of <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a> The shaft is octagonal, and
+the capital is not cut to fit it, but is square at the base; and
+the curve of its profile projects on two of its sides more than
+on the other two, so as to make the abacus oblong, in order to
+carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of the upper
+lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward
+stretching of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to
+have done, is very remarkable. There is here no second superimposed
+abacus.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXII.</span> The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the
+simple but perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which
+the first example fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried
+is exactly the same in size and shape; but instead of being
+trusted to a single shaft, it has two of smaller area (compare
+<a href="#chap_8">Chap. VIII.</a>, § <span class="scs">XIII</span>.), and all the expansion necessary is now
+gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out of one
+stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle,
+and nothing can be simpler or purer; it is composed of 2, in
+<a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, used for the capital itself, with <i>c</i> of <a href="#fig_63">Fig. LXIII.</a>
+used for the abacus; the reader could hardly have a neater
+little bit of syntax for a first lesson. If the section be taken
+through the side of the bell, the capital profile is the root of
+cornices, <i>a</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, with the added roll. This capital is
+somewhat remarkable in having its sides perfectly straight,
+some slight curvature being usual on so bold a scale; but it is
+all the better as a first example, the method of reduction being
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page323"></a>323</span>
+of order <i>d</i>, in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>, <a href="#page110">p. 110</a>, and with a concave cut, as
+in <a href="#fig_21">Fig. XXI.</a>, <a href="#page109">p. 109</a>. These two capitals are from the cloister
+of the duomo of Verona.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XVII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_17"><img src="images/img323a.jpg" width="417" height="650" alt="CAPITALS." title="CAPITALS." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">CAPITALS.<br />
+                      <span class="f80">CONCAVE GROUP.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXV.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_65"><img src="images/img323b.jpg" width="600" height="271" alt="Fig. LXV." title="Fig. LXV." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIII</span>. The lowermost figure in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a> represents
+an exquisitely finished example of the same type, from St.
+Zeno of Verona. Above, at 2, in <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a>, the plan of the
+shafts was given, but I inadvertently reversed their position:
+in comparing that plan with <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a>, <a href="#plate_2">Plate II.</a> must be
+held upside down. The capitals, with the band connecting
+them, are all cut out of one block; their profile is an adaptation
+of 4 of <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>, with a plain headstone superimposed.
+This method of reduction is that of order <i>d</i> in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>,
+but the peculiarity of treatment of their truncation is highly
+interesting. <a href="#fig_65">Fig. LXV.</a> represents the plans of the capitals
+at the base, the shaded parts being the bells: the open line,
+the roll with its connecting band. The bell of the one, it will
+be seen, is the exact reverse of that of the other: the angle
+truncations are, in both, curved horizontally as well as uprightly;
+but their curve is convex in the one, and in the other
+concave. <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a> will show the effect of both, with the
+farther incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one
+with the concave truncation, which join with the rest of its
+singularly bold and keen execution in giving the impression
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page324"></a>324</span>
+of its rather having been cloven into its form by the sweeps of
+a sword, than by the dull travail of a chisel. Its workman
+was proud of it, as well he might be: he has written his name
+upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as
+kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, <span class="scs">ADAMINUS
+DE SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT</span>.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIV.</span> The reader will easily understand that the gracefulness
+of this kind of truncation, as he sees it in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a>,
+soon suggested the idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline,
+and laying four healing leaves, as it were, upon the wounds
+which the sword had made. These four leaves, on the truncations
+of the capital, correspond to the four leaves which we
+saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the
+base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one
+of the most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic workmen
+ever invented; represented by two perfect types in the
+capitals of the Piazzetta columns of Venice. But this pure
+group is an isolated one; it remains in the first simplicity of its
+conception far into the thirteenth century, while around it rise
+up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old Corinthian,
+and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant
+growth among the primal four. The varieties of their grouping
+we shall enumerate hereafter: one general characteristic of
+them all must be noted here.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXV.</span> The reader has been told repeatedly<a name="FnAnchor_89" href="#Footnote_89"><span class="sp">89</span></a> that there
+are two, and only two, real orders of capitals, originally represented
+by the Corinthian and the Doric; and distinguished by
+the concave or convex contours of their bells, as shown by the
+dotted lines at <i>e</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, <a href="#page065">p. 65</a>. And hitherto, respecting the
+capital, we have been exclusively concerned with the methods
+in which these two families of simple contours have gathered
+themselves together, and obtained reconciliation to the abacus
+above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph introduces
+us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the chiselling
+of which the characters described above, § <span class="scs">XXVIII</span>., which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page325"></a>325</span>
+are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and
+divide the families of the capital.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVI.</span> Whatever the nature of the ornament be, it must
+clearly have relief of some kind, and must present projecting
+surfaces separated by incisions. But it is a very material question
+whether the contour, hitherto broadly considered as that
+of the entire bell, shall be that of the <i>outside</i> of the projecting
+and relieved ornaments, or of the <i>bottoms of the incisions</i>
+which divide them; whether, that is to say, we shall first cut
+out the bell of our capital quite smooth, and then cut farther
+into it, with incisions, which shall leave ornamental forms in
+relief, or whether, in originally cutting the contour of the bell,
+we shall leave projecting bits of stone, which we may afterwards
+work into the relieved ornament.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVII.</span> Now, look back to <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, <a href="#page065">p. 65</a>. Clearly, if to
+ornament the already hollowed profile, <i>b</i>, we cut deep incisions
+into it, we shall so far weaken it at the top, that it will nearly
+lose all its supporting power. Clearly, also, if to ornament
+the already bulging profile <i>c</i> we were to leave projecting pieces
+of stone outside of it, we should nearly destroy all its relation
+to the original sloping line X, and produce an unseemly and
+ponderous mass, hardly recognizable as a cornice profile. It is
+evident, on the other hand, that we can afford to cut into this
+profile without fear of destroying its strength, and that we can
+afford to leave projections outside of the other, without fear of
+destroying its lightness. Such is, accordingly, the natural disposition
+of the sculpture, and the two great families of capitals
+are therefore distinguished, not merely by their concave and
+convex contours, but by the ornamentation being left outside
+the bell of the one, and cut into the bell of the other; so that,
+in either case, the ornamental portions will fall <i>between the
+dotted lines</i> at <i>e</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, and the pointed oval, or vesica piscis,
+which is traced by them, may be called the Limit of ornamentation.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXVIII.</span> Several distinctions in the quantity and style of
+the ornament must instantly follow from this great distinction
+in its position. First, in its quantity. For, observe: since in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page326"></a>326</span>
+the Doric profile, <i>c</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a>, the contour itself is to be composed
+of the surface of the ornamentation, this ornamentation
+must be close and united enough to form, or at least suggest, a
+continuous surface; it must, therefore, be rich in quantity and
+close in aggregation; otherwise it will destroy the massy character
+of the profile it adorns, and approximate it to its opposite,
+the concave. On the other hand, the ornament left projecting
+from the concave, must be sparing enough, and dispersed
+enough, to allow the concave bell to be clearly seen beneath it;
+otherwise it will choke up the concave profile, and approximate
+it to its opposite, the convex.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XXXIX</span>. And, secondly, in its style. For, clearly, as the
+sculptor of the concave profile must leave masses of rough
+stone prepared for his outer ornament, and cannot finish them
+at once, but must complete the cutting of the smooth bell
+beneath first, and then return to the projecting masses (for if
+he were to finish these latter first, they would assuredly, if
+delicate or sharp, be broken as he worked on; since, I say, he
+must work in this foreseeing and predetermined method, he is
+sure to reduce the system of his ornaments to some definite
+symmetrical order before he begins); and the habit of conceiving
+beforehand all that he has to do, will probably render him not
+only more orderly in its arrangement, but more skilful and
+accurate in its execution, than if he could finish all as he
+worked on. On the other hand, the sculptor of the convex
+profile has its smooth surface laid before him, as a piece of
+paper on which he can sketch at his pleasure; the incisions he
+makes in it are like touches of a dark pencil; and he is at
+liberty to roam over the surface in perfect freedom, with light
+incisions or with deep; finishing here, suggesting there, or
+perhaps in places leaving the surface altogether smooth. It is
+ten to one, therefore, but that, if he yield to the temptation, he
+becomes irregular in design, and rude in handling; and we
+shall assuredly find the two families of capitals distinguished,
+the one by its symmetrical, thoroughly organised, and exquisitely
+executed ornament, the other by its rambling, confused,
+and rudely chiselled ornament: But, on the other hand, while
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page327"></a>327</span>
+we shall often have to admire the disciplined precision of the
+one, and as often to regret the irregular rudeness of the other,
+we shall not fail to find balancing qualities in both. The
+severity of the disciplinarian capital represses the power of the
+imagination; it gradually degenerates into Formalism; and
+the indolence which cannot escape from its stern demand of
+accurate workmanship, seeks refuge in copyism of established
+forms, and loses itself at last in lifeless mechanism. The license
+of the other, though often abused, permits full exercise to the
+imagination: the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the
+niceties of chiselling, wanders over its orbed field in endless
+fantasy; and, when generous as well as powerful, repays the
+liberty which has been granted to it with interest, by developing
+through the utmost wildness and fulness of its thoughts, an
+order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of
+the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is
+vaster.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XVIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_18"><img src="images/img327.jpg" width="401" height="650" alt="CAPITALS." title="CAPITALS." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">CAPITALS.<br />
+                      <span class="f80">CONVEX GROUP.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XL.</span> And now the reader shall judge whether I had not
+reason to cast aside the so-called Five orders of the Renaissance
+architects, with their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that
+there were only two real orders, and that there could never be
+more.<a name="FnAnchor_90" href="#Footnote_90"><span class="sp">90</span></a> For we now find that these two great and real orders
+are representative of the two great influences which must for
+ever divide the heart of man: the one of Lawful Discipline,
+with its perfection and order, but its danger of degeneracy
+into Formalism; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor
+and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLI.</span> I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of
+the most elaborate developments of either order; they will be better
+given on a larger scale: but the examples in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a> and
+XVIII. represent the two methods of ornament in their earliest
+appliance. The two lower capitals in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a> are a pure
+type of the concave school; the two in the centre of <a href="#plate_18">Plate
+XVIII.</a>, of the convex. At the top of <a href="#plate_18">Plate XVIII.</a> are two
+Lombardic capitals; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page328"></a>328</span>
+that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan.
+They both have the concave angle truncation; but being of
+date prior to the time when the idea of the concave bell was
+developed, they are otherwise left square, and decorated with
+the surface ornament characteristic of the convex school. The
+relation of the designs to each other is interesting; the cross
+being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly relieved
+in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the
+southern portico of St. Mark&rsquo;s; the shafts having been of different
+lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally intended
+for their present place, they have double abaci, of which
+the uppermost is the cornice running round the whole façade.
+The zigzagged capital is highly curious, and in its place very
+effective and beautiful, although
+one of the exceptions which it
+was above noticed that we should
+sometimes find to the law stated
+in § <span class="scs">XV.</span> above.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXVI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_66"><img src="images/img328.jpg" width="300" height="293" alt="Fig. LXVI." title="Fig. LXVI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLII.</span> The lower capital,
+which is also of the true convex
+school, exhibits one of the conditions
+of the spurred type, <i>e</i> of
+<a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>, respecting which one
+or two points must be noticed.</p>
+
+<p>If we were to take up the
+plan of the simple spur, represented
+at <i>e</i> in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a>, <a href="#page110">p. 110</a>, and treat it, with the salvia
+leaf, as we did the spur of the base, we should have for the
+head of our capital a plan like <a href="#fig_66">Fig. LXVI.</a>, which is actually
+that of one of the capitals of the Fondaco de&rsquo; Turchi at Venice;
+with this only difference, that the intermediate curves between
+the spurs would have been circular: the reason they are not so,
+here, is that the decoration, instead of being confined to the
+spur, is now spread over the whole mass, and contours are
+therefore given to the intermediate curves which fit them for
+this ornament; the inside shaded space being the head of the
+shaft, and the outer, the abacus. The reader has in <a href="#fig_66">Fig. LXVI.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page329"></a>329</span>
+a characteristic type of the plans of the spurred capitals,
+generally preferred by the sculptors of the convex school, but
+treated with infinite variety, the spurs often being cut into
+animal forms, or the incisions between them multiplied, for
+richer effect; and in our own Norman capital the type <i>c</i> of
+<a href="#fig_22">Fig. XXII.</a> is variously subdivided by incisions on its slope,
+approximating in general effect to many conditions of the real
+spurred type, <i>e</i>, but totally differing from them in principle.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXVII.</td>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXVIII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_67"><img src="images/img329a.jpg" width="300" height="286" alt="Fig. LXVII." title="Fig. LXVII." /></a></td>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_68"><img src="images/img329b.jpg" width="300" height="298" alt="Fig. LXVIII." title="Fig. LXVIII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLIII</span>. The treatment of the spur in the concave school is
+far more complicated, being borrowed in nearly every case
+from the original Corinthian. Its plan may be generally
+represented by <a href="#fig_67">Fig. LXVII.</a> The spur itself is carved into
+a curling tendril or concave leaf, which supports the projecting
+angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides fall back
+behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other ornament
+in their centres. The mediĉval architects often put
+another square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded
+portion of <a href="#fig_67">Fig. LXVII.</a>, and some massy conditions of this
+form, elaborately ornamented, are very beautiful; but it is apt
+to become rigid and effeminate, as assuredly it is in the original
+Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and meagre in its upper
+tendrils and abacus.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLIV</span>. The lowest capital in <a href="#plate_18">Plate XVIII.</a> is from St.
+Mark&rsquo;s, and singular in having double spurs; it is therefore to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page330"></a>330</span>
+be compared with the doubly spurred base, also from St Mark&rsquo;s,
+in <a href="#plate_11">Plate XI.</a> In other respects it is a good example of the
+union of breadth of mass with subtlety of curvature, which
+characterises nearly all the spurred capitals of the convex
+school. Its plan is given in <a href="#fig_68">Fig. LXVIII.</a>: the inner shaded
+circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the bottom
+of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded
+portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a
+ship&rsquo;s bow, with the Doric profile; the surfaces so obtained
+are then charged with arborescent ornament.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLV.</span> I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of
+the treatment of the spur, because I am afraid of confusing the
+reader&rsquo;s mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his conception
+of the differences between the two great orders, which it
+has been my principal object to develope throughout this
+chapter. If all my readers lived in London, I could at once
+fix this difference in their minds by a simple, yet somewhat
+curious illustration. In many parts of the west end of London,
+as, for instance, at the corners of Belgrave Square, and
+the north side of Grosvenor Square, the Corinthian capitals of
+newly-built houses are put into cages of wire. The wire cage
+is the exact form of the typical capital of the convex school;
+the Corinthian capital, within, is a finished and highly decorated
+example of the concave. The space between the cage
+and capital is the limit of ornamentation.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLVI.</span> Those of my readers, however, to whom this illustration
+is inaccessible, must be content with the two profiles,
+13 and 14, on <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a> If they will glance along the line
+of sections from 1 to 6, they will see that the profile 13 is their
+final development, with a superadded cornice for its abacus. It
+is taken from a capital in a very important ruin of a palace,
+near the Rialto of Venice, and hereafter to be described; the
+projection, outside of its principal curve, is the profile of its
+<i>superadded</i> leaf ornamentation; it may be taken as one of the
+simplest, yet a perfect type of the concave group.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLVII.</span> The profile 14 is that of the capital of the main
+shaft of the northern portico of St. Mark&rsquo;s, the most finished
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page331"></a>331</span>
+example I ever met with of the convex family, to which, in
+spite of the central inward bend of its profile, it is marked as
+distinctly belonging, by the bold convex curve at its root,
+springing from the shaft in the line of the Christian Doric
+cornice, and exactly reversing the structure of the other profile,
+which rises from the shaft, like a palm leaf from its
+stem. Farther, in the profile 13, the innermost line is that
+of the bell; but in the profile 14, the outermost line is that
+of the bell, and the inner line is the limit of the incisions of
+the chisel, in undercutting a reticulated veil of ornament, surrounding
+a flower like a lily; most ingeniously, and, I hope,
+justly, conjectured by the Marchese Selvatico to have been intended
+for an imitation of the capitals of the temple of Solomon,
+which Hiram made, with &ldquo;nets of checker work, and
+wreaths of chain work for the chapiters that were on the top
+of the pillars ... and the chapiters that were upon the top of
+the pillars were of lily work in the porch.&rdquo; (1 Kings, vii. 17,
+19.)</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XLVIII.</span> On this exquisite capital there is imposed an
+abacus of the profile with which we began our investigation
+long ago, the profile <i>a</i> of <a href="#fig_5">Fig. V.</a> This abacus is formed by
+the cornice already given, <i>a</i>, of <a href="#plate_16">Plate XVI.</a>: and therefore we
+have, in this lovely Venetian capital, the summary of the results
+of our investigation, from its beginning to its close: the
+type of the first cornice; the decoration of it, in its emergence
+from the classical models; the gathering into the capital; the
+superimposition of the secondary cornice, and the refinement
+of the bell of the capital by triple curvature in the two limits
+of chiselling. I cannot express the exquisite refinements of
+the curves on the small scale of <a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>; I will give them
+more accurately in a larger engraving; but the scale on which
+they are here given will not prevent the reader from perceiving,
+and let him note it thoughtfully, that the outer curve
+of the noble capital is the one which was our first example of
+associated curves; that I have had no need, throughout the
+whole of our inquiry, to refer to any other ornamental line
+than the three which I at first chose, the simplest of those
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page332"></a>332</span>
+which Nature set by chance before me; and that this lily, of
+the delicate Venetian marble, has but been wrought, by the
+highest human art, into the same line which the clouds disclose,
+when they break from the rough rocks of the flank of the
+Matterhorn.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_84" href="#FnAnchor_84"><span class="fn">84</span></a> In very early Doric it was an absolute right line; and that capital is
+therefore derived from the pure cornice root, represented by the dotted line.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_85" href="#FnAnchor_85"><span class="fn">85</span></a> The word banded is used by Professor Willis in a different sense;
+which I would respect, by applying it in his sense always to the Impost,
+and in mine to the capital itself. (This note is not for the general reader,
+who need not trouble himself about the matter.)</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_86" href="#FnAnchor_86"><span class="fn">86</span></a> The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the one
+side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes, as here, I have
+to declare its lifelessness, at other times (<a href="#chap_25">Chap. XXV.</a>, § <span class="scs">XVII</span>.) its lasciviousness.
+There is, of course, no contradiction in this: but the reader
+might well ask how I knew the change from the base 11 to the base 12, in
+<a href="#plate_12">Plate XII.</a>, to be one from temperance to luxury; and from the cornice <i>f</i>
+to the cornice <i>g</i>, in <a href="#plate_16">Plate XVI.</a>, to be one from formalism to vitality. I
+know it, both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell
+at length hereafter, and by the context of the works of the time. But the
+outward signs might in both ornaments be the same, distinguishable only
+as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of both. The blush of shame
+cannot always be told from the blush of indignation.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_87" href="#FnAnchor_87"><span class="fn">87</span></a> The reader must always remember that a cornice, in becoming a
+capital, must, if not originally bold and deep, have depth added to its profile,
+in order to reach the just proportion of the lower member of the shaft
+head; and that therefore the small Greek egg cornices are utterly incapable
+of becoming capitals till they have totally changed their form and depth.
+The Renaissance architects, who never obtained hold of a right principle
+but they made it worse than a wrong one by misapplication, caught the
+idea of turning the cornice into a capital, but did not comprehend the
+necessity of the accompanying change of depth. Hence we have pilaster
+heads formed of small egg cornices, and that meanest of all mean heads
+of shafts, the coarse Roman Doric profile chopped into a small egg and
+arrow moulding, both which may be seen disfiguring half the buildings in
+London.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_88" href="#FnAnchor_88"><span class="fn">88</span></a> I have taken these dates roughly from Selvatico; their absolute accuracy
+to within a year or two, is here of no importance.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_89" href="#FnAnchor_89"><span class="fn">89</span></a> <a href="#chap_1">Chap. I.</a> § <span class="scs">XIX</span>., <a href="#app_7">Appendix 7</a>: and <a href="#chap_6">Chap. VI.</a> § <span class="scs">V</span>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_90" href="#FnAnchor_90"><span class="fn">90</span></a> <a href="#chap_1">Chap. I.</a>, § <span class="scs">XIX</span>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page333"></a>333</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE.</h5>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XIX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_19" id="plate_19"><img src="images/img333.jpg" width="650" height="414" alt="ARCHIVOLT DECORATION." title="ARCHIVOLT DECORATION." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">ARCHIVOLT DECORATION.<br />
+                      <span class="f80">AT VERONA.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">If</span> the windows and doors of some of our best northern
+Gothic buildings were built up, and the ornament of their
+archivolts concealed, there would often remain little but masses
+of dead wall and unsightly buttress; the whole vitality of the
+building consisting in the graceful proportions or rich mouldings
+of its apertures. It is not so in the south, where, frequently,
+the aperture is a mere dark spot on the variegated
+wall; but there the column, with its horizontal or curved
+architrave, assumes an importance of another kind, equally
+dependent upon the methods of lintel and archivolt decoration.
+These, though in their richness of minor variety they defy all
+exemplification, may be very broadly generalized.</p>
+
+<p>Of the mere lintel, indeed, there is no specific decoration,
+nor can be; it has no organism to direct its ornament, and
+therefore may receive any kind and degree of ornament, according
+to its position. In a Greek temple, it has meagre horizontal
+lines; in a Romanesque church, it becomes a row of
+upright niches, with an apostle in each; and may become anything
+else at the architect&rsquo;s will. But the arch head has a natural
+organism, which separates its ornament into distinct families,
+broadly <span class="correction" title="comma changed to period">definable.</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. In speaking of the arch-line and arch masonry, we
+considered the arch to be cut straight through the wall; so
+that, if half built, it would have the appearance at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_69">Fig.
+LXIX.</a> But in the chapter on Form of Apertures, we found
+that the side of the arch, or jamb of the aperture, might often
+require to be bevelled, so as to give the section <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_69">Fig. LXIX.</a>
+It is easily conceivable that when two ranges of voussoirs were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page334"></a>334</span>
+used, one over another, it would be easier to leave those beneath,
+of a smaller diameter, than to bevel them to accurate
+junction with those outside. Whether influenced
+by this facility, or by decorative instinct,
+the early northern builders often
+substitute for the bevel the third condition,
+<i>c</i>, of <a href="#fig_69">Fig. LXIX.</a>; so that, of the three
+forms in that figure, <i>a</i> belongs principally
+to the south, <i>c</i> to the north, and <i>b</i> indifferently
+to both.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXIX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_69"><img src="images/img334.jpg" width="130" height="400" alt="Fig. LXIX." title="Fig. LXIX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. If the arch in the northern building
+be very deep, its depth will probably be attained
+by a succession of steps, like that in
+<i>c</i>; and the richest results of northern archivolt
+decoration are entirely based on the
+aggregation of the ornament of these several
+steps; while those of the south are only the
+complete finish and perfection of the ornament
+of one. In this ornament of the single
+arch, the points for general note are very few.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. It was, in the first instance, derived from the classical
+architrave,<a name="FnAnchor_91" href="#Footnote_91"><span class="sp">91</span></a> and the early Romanesque arches are nothing but
+such an architrave, bent round. The horizontal lines of the
+latter become semicircular, but their importance and value remain
+exactly the same; their continuity is preserved across all
+the voussoirs, and the joints and functions of the latter are
+studiously concealed. As the builders get accustomed to the
+arch, and love it better, they cease to be ashamed of its structure:
+the voussoirs begin to show themselves confidently, and
+fight for precedence with the architrave lines; and there is an
+entanglement of the two structures, in consequence, like the
+circular and radiating lines of a cobweb, until at last the architrave
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page335"></a>335</span>
+lines get worsted, and driven away outside of the voussoirs;
+being permitted to stay at all only on condition of their
+dressing themselves in mediĉval costume, as in the plate opposite.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. In other cases, however, before the entire discomfiture
+of the architrave, a treaty of peace is signed between the adverse
+parties on these terms: That the architrave shall entirely
+dismiss its inner three meagre lines, and leave the space
+of them to the voussoirs, to display themselves after their
+manner; but that, in return for this concession, the architrave
+shall have leave to expand the small cornice which usually
+terminates it (the reader had better look at the original form
+in that of the Erechtheum, in the middle of the Elgin room of
+the British Museum) into bolder prominence, and even to put
+brackets under it, as if it were a roof cornice, and thus mark
+with a bold shadow the terminal line of the voussoirs. This
+condition is seen in the arch from St. Pietro of Pistoja, <a href="#plate_13">Plate
+XIII.</a>, above.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly
+determined, and victorious, the architrave cornice is compelled
+to relinquish its classical form, and take the profile of a
+Gothic cornice or dripstone; while, in other cases, as in much
+of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced to disappear altogether.
+But the voussoirs then concede, on the other hand, so much
+of their dignity as to receive a running ornament of foliage or
+animals, like a classical frieze, and continuous round the arch.
+In fact, the contest between the adversaries may be seen running
+through all the early architecture of Italy: success inclining
+sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other, and
+various kinds of truce or reconciliation being effected between
+them: sometimes merely formal, sometimes honest and affectionate,
+but with no regular succession in time. The greatest
+victory of the voussoir is to annihilate the cornice, and receive
+an ornament of its own outline, and entirely limited
+by its own joints: and yet this may be seen in the very early
+apse of Murano.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. The most usual condition, however, is that unity of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page336"></a>336</span>
+the two members above described, § <span class="scs">V</span>., and which may be
+generally represented by the archivolt section
+<i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_70">Fig. LXX.</a>; and from this descend
+a family of Gothic archivolts of the highest
+importance. For the cornice, thus attached
+to the arch, suffers exactly the same
+changes as the level cornice, or capital; receives,
+in due time, its elaborate ogee profile
+and leaf ornaments, like Fig. 8 or 9 of
+<a href="#plate_15">Plate XV.</a>; and, when the shaft loses its
+shape, and is lost in the later Gothic jamb,
+the archivolt has influence enough to introduce
+this ogee profile in the jamb also,
+through the banded impost: and we immediately find ourselves
+involved in deep successions of ogee mouldings in sides
+of doors and windows, which never would have been thought
+of, but for the obstinate resistance of the classical architrave
+to the attempts of the voussoir at its degradation or banishment.</p>
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft2">
+    <a name="fig_70"><img src="images/img336.jpg" width="150" height="254" alt="Fig. LXX." title="Fig. LXX." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. This, then, will be the first great head under which
+we shall in future find it convenient to arrange a large number
+of archivolt decorations. It is the distinctively Southern
+and Byzantine form, and typically represented by the section
+<i>a</i>, of <a href="#fig_70">Fig. LXX.</a>; and it is susceptible of almost every species
+of surface ornament, respecting which only this general law
+may be asserted: that, while the outside or vertical surface
+may properly be decorated, and yet the soffit or under surface
+left plain, the soffit is never to be decorated, and the outer
+surface left plain. Much beautiful sculpture is, in the best
+Byzantine buildings, half lost by being put under soffits; but
+the eye is led to discover it, and even to demand it, by the
+rich chasing of the outside of the voussoirs. It would have
+been an hypocrisy to carve them externally only. But there
+is not the smallest excuse for carving the soffit, and not the
+outside; for, in that case, we approach the building under the
+idea of its being perfectly plain; we do not look for the soffit
+decoration, and, of course, do not see it: or, if we do, it is
+merely to regret that it should not be in a better place. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page337"></a>337</span>
+the Renaissance architects, it may, perhaps, for once, be considered
+a merit, that they put their bad decoration systematically
+in the places where we should least expect it, and can
+seldomest see it:&mdash;Approaching the Scuola di San Rocco, you
+probably will regret the extreme plainness and barrenness of
+the window traceries; but, if you will go very close to the
+wall beneath the windows, you may, on sunny days, discover a
+quantity of panel decorations which the ingenious architect has
+concealed under the soffits.</p>
+
+<p>The custom of decorating the arch soffit with panelling is a
+Roman application of the Greek roof ornament, which, whatever
+its intrinsic merit (compare <a href="#chap_29">Chap. XXIX.</a> § <span class="scs">IV</span>.), may
+rationally be applied to waggon vaults, as of St. Peter&rsquo;s, and
+to arch soffits under which one walks. But the Renaissance
+architects had not wit enough to reflect that people usually do
+not walk through windows.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. So far, then, of the Southern archivolt: In <a href="#fig_69">Fig.
+LXIX.</a>, above, it will be remembered that <i>c</i> represents the
+simplest form of the Northern. In the farther development
+of this, which we have next to consider, the voussoirs, in consequence
+of their own negligence or over-confidence, sustain a
+total and irrecoverable defeat. That archivolt is in its earliest
+conditions perfectly pure and undecorated,&mdash;the simplest and
+rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when it falls on the pier,
+and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire section of
+masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the crosslet
+shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern
+design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and
+fixed development of this type of archivolt than for any other
+architectural transition with which I am acquainted. But
+there it is, pure and firmly established, as early as the building
+of St. Michele of Pavia; and we have thenceforward only to
+observe what comes of it.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. We find it first, as I said, perfectly barren; cornice
+and architrave altogether ignored, the existence of such things
+practically denied, and a plain, deep-cut recess with a single
+mighty shadow occupying their place. The voussoirs, thinking
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page338"></a>338</span>
+their great adversary utterly defeated, are at no trouble
+to show themselves; visible enough in both the upper and
+under archivolts, they are content to wait the time when, as
+might have been hoped, they should receive a new decoration
+peculiar to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XI</span>. In this state of paralysis, or expectation, their flank
+is turned by an insidious chamfer. The edges of the two great
+blank archivolts are felt to be painfully conspicuous; all the
+four are at once beaded or chamfered, as at <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_70">Fig. LXX.</a>; a
+rich group of deep lines, running concentrically with the arch,
+is the result on the instant, and the fate of the voussoirs is
+sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle, and unconditionally;
+the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover
+the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from
+grouped shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable richness
+of the fully developed Gothic jamb and arch; farther
+complicated in the end by the addition of niches to their
+recesses, as above described.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XII</span>. The voussoirs, in despair, go over to the classical
+camp, in hope of receiving some help or tolerance from their
+former enemies. They receive it indeed: but as traitors should,
+to their own eternal dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at
+the joints, or rusticated, or cut into masks and satyrs&rsquo; heads,
+and so set forth and pilloried in the various detestable forms of
+which the simplest is given above in <a href="#plate_13">Plate XIII.</a> (on the left);
+and others may be seen in nearly every large building in London,
+more especially in the bridges; and, as if in pure spite at
+the treatment they had received from the archivolt, they are
+now not content with vigorously showing their lateral joints,
+but shape themselves into right-angled steps at their heads,
+cutting to pieces their limiting line, which otherwise would
+have had sympathy with that of the arch, and fitting themselves
+to their new friend, the Renaissance Ruled Copy-book wall.
+It had been better they had died ten times over, in their own
+ancient cause, than thus prolonged their existence.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIII</span>. We bid them farewell in their dishonor, to return
+to our victorious chamfer. It had not, we said, obtained so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page339"></a>339</span>
+easy a conquest, unless by the help of certain forms of the
+grouped shaft. The chamfer was quite enough to decorate
+the archivolts, if there were no more than two; but if, as
+above noticed in § <span class="scs">III</span>., the archivolt was very deep, and composed
+of a succession of such steps, the multitude of chamferings
+were felt to be weak and insipid, and instead of dealing
+with the outside edges of the archivolts, the group was softened
+by introducing solid shafts in their dark inner angles.
+This, the manliest and best condition of the early northern
+jamb and archivolt, is represented in section at fig. 12 of <a href="#plate_2">Plate
+II.</a>; and its simplest aspect in <a href="#plate_5">Plate V.</a>, from the Broletto of
+Como,&mdash;an interesting example, because there the voussoirs
+being in the midst of their above-described southern contest
+with the architrave, were better prepared for the flank attack
+upon them by the shaft and chamfer, and make a noble resistance,
+with the help of color, in which even the shaft itself
+gets slightly worsted, and cut across in several places, like
+General Zach&rsquo;s column at Marengo.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XIV.</span> The shaft, however, rapidly rallies, and brings up its
+own peculiar decorations to its aid; and the intermediate archivolts
+receive running or panelled ornaments, also, until we reach
+the exquisitely rich conditions of our own Norman archivolts,
+and of the parallel Lombardic designs, such as the entrance of
+the Duomo, and of San Fermo, at Verona. This change,
+however, occupies little time, and takes place principally in
+doorways, owing to the greater thickness of wall, and depth of
+archivolt; so that we find the rich shafted succession of ornament,
+in the doorway and window aperture, associated with the
+earliest and rudest double archivolt, in the nave arches, at St.
+Michele of Pavia. The nave arches, therefore, are most
+usually treated by the chamfer, and the voussoirs are there
+defeated much sooner than by the shafted arrangements, which
+they resist, as we saw, in the south by color; and even in the
+north, though forced out of their own shape, they take that of
+birds&rsquo; or monsters&rsquo; heads, which for some time peck and pinch
+the rolls of the archivolt to their hearts&rsquo; content; while the
+Norman zigzag ornament allies itself with them, each zigzag
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page340"></a>340</span>
+often restraining itself amicably between the joints of each
+voussoir in the ruder work, and even in the highly finished
+arches, distinctly presenting a concentric or sunlike arrangement
+of lines; so much so, as to prompt the conjecture, above
+stated, <a href="#chap_20">Chap. XX.</a> § <span class="scs">XXVI</span>., that all such ornaments were intended
+to be typical of light issuing from the orb of the arch.
+I doubt the intention, but acknowledge the resemblance;
+which perhaps goes far to account for the never-failing delightfulness
+of this zigzag decoration. The diminution of the zigzag,
+as it gradually shares the defeat of the voussoir, and is at
+last overwhelmed by the complicated, railroad-like fluency of
+the later Gothic mouldings, is to me one of the saddest sights
+in the drama of architecture.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XV</span>. One farther circumstance is deserving of especial note
+in <a href="#plate_5">Plate V.</a>, the greater depth of the voussoirs at the top of
+the arch. This has been above alluded to as a feature of good
+construction, <a href="#chap_11">Chap. XI.</a>, § <span class="scs">III</span>.; it is to be noted now as one
+still more valuable in decoration: for when we arrive at the
+deep succession of concentric archivolts, with which northern
+portals, and many of the associated windows, are headed, we
+immediately find a difficulty in reconciling the outer curve
+with the inner. If, as is sometimes the case, the width of the
+group of archivolts be twice or three times that of the inner
+aperture, the inner arch may be distinctly pointed, and the
+outer one, if drawn with concentric arcs, approximate very
+nearly to a round arch. This is actually the case in the later
+Gothic of Verona; the outer line of the archivolt having a
+hardly perceptible point, and every inner arch of course forming
+the point more distinctly, till the innermost becomes a
+lancet. By far the nobler method, however, is that of the
+pure early Italian Gothic; to make every outer arch a <i>magnified
+fac-simile</i> of the innermost one, every arc including the
+same number of degrees, but degrees of a larger circle. The
+result is the condition represented in <a href="#plate_5">Plate V.</a>, often found in
+far bolder development; exquisitely springy and elastic in its
+expression, and entirely free from the heaviness and monotony
+of the deep northern archivolts.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page341"></a>341</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVI.</span> We have not spoken of the intermediate form, <i>b</i>, of
+<a href="#fig_69">Fig. LXIX.</a> (which its convenience for admission of light has
+rendered common in nearly all architectures), because it has
+no transitions peculiar to itself: in the north it sometimes
+shares the fate of the outer architrave, and is channelled into
+longitudinal mouldings; sometimes remains smooth and massy,
+as in military architecture, or in the simpler forms of domestic
+and ecclesiastical. In Italy it receives surface decoration like
+the architrave, but has, perhaps, something of peculiar expression
+in being placed between the tracery of the window within,
+and its shafts and tabernacle work without, as in the Duomo
+of Florence: in this position it is always kept smooth in surface,
+and inlaid (or painted) with delicate arabesques; while
+the tracery and the tabernacle work are richly sculptured.
+The example of its treatment by colored voussoirs, given in
+<a href="#plate_19">Plate XIX.</a>, may be useful to the reader as a kind of central
+expression of the aperture decoration of the pure Italian
+Gothic;&mdash;aperture decoration proper; applying no shaft work
+to the jambs, but leaving the bevelled opening unenriched;
+using on the outer archivolt the voussoirs and concentric
+architrave in reconcilement (the latter having, however, some
+connection with the Norman zigzag); and beneath them, the
+pure Italian two-pieced and mid-cusped arch, with rich cusp
+decoration. It is a Veronese arch, probably of the thirteenth
+century, and finished with extreme care; the red portions are
+all in brick, delicately cast: and the most remarkable feature
+of the whole is the small piece of brick inlaid on the angle of
+each stone voussoir, with a most just feeling, which every
+artist will at once understand, that the color ought not to be
+let go all at once.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVII.</span> We have traced the various conditions of treatment
+in the archivolt alone; but, except in what has been said of
+the peculiar expression of the voussoirs, we might throughout
+have spoken in the same terms of the jamb. Even a parallel
+to the expression of the voussoir may be found in the Lombardic
+and Norman divisions of the shafts, by zigzags and
+other transverse ornamentation, which in the end are all swept
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page342"></a>342</span>
+away by the canaliculated mouldings. Then, in the recesses
+of these and of the archivolts alike, the niche and statue decoration
+develops itself; and the vaulted and cavernous apertures
+are covered with incrustations of fretwork, and with every
+various application of foliage to their fantastic mouldings.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">XVIII</span>. I have kept the inquiry into the proper ornament
+of the archivolt wholly free from all confusion with the questions
+of beauty in tracery; for, in fact, all tracery is a mere
+multiplication and entanglement of small archivolts, and its
+cusp ornament is a minor condition of that proper to the spandril.
+It does not reach its completely defined form until the
+jamb and archivolt have been divided into longitudinal mouldings;
+and then the tracery is formed by the innermost group
+of the shafts or fillets, bent into whatever forms or foliations
+the designer may choose; but this with a delicacy of adaptation
+which I rather choose to illustrate by particular examples,
+of which we shall meet with many in the course of our inquiry,
+than to delay the reader by specifying here. As for the conditions
+of beauty in the disposition of the tracery bars, I see
+no hope of dealing with the subject fairly but by devoting, if
+I can find time, a separate essay to it&mdash;which, in itself, need
+not be long, but would involve, before it could be completed,
+the examination of the whole mass of materials lately collected
+by the indefatigable industry of the English architects who
+have devoted their special attention to this subject, and which
+are of the highest value as illustrating the chronological succession
+or mechanical structure of tracery, but which, in most
+cases, touch on their ĉsthetic merits incidentally only. Of
+works of this kind, by far the best I have met with is Mr.
+Edmund Sharpe&rsquo;s, on Decorated Windows, which seems to me,
+as far as a cursory glance can enable me to judge, to exhaust
+the subject as respects English Gothic; and which may be
+recommended to the readers who are interested in the subject,
+as containing a clear and masterly enunciation of the general
+principles by which the design of tracery has been regulated,
+from its first development to its final degradation.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_91" href="#FnAnchor_91"><span class="fn">91</span></a> The architrave is properly the horizontal piece of stone laid across the
+tops of the pillars in Greek buildings, and commonly marked with horizontal
+lines, obtained by slight projections of its surface, while it is protected
+above in the richer orders, by a small cornice.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page343"></a>343</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ROOF.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I.</span> <span class="sc">The</span> modes of decoration hitherto considered, have been
+common to the exteriors and interiors of all noble buildings;
+and we have taken no notice of the various kinds of ornament
+which require protection from weather, and are necessarily
+confined to interior work. But in the case of the roof, the
+exterior and interior treatments become, as we saw in construction,
+so also in decoration, separated by broad and bold
+distinctions. One side of a wall is, in most cases, the same as
+another, and if its structure be concealed, it is mostly on the
+inside; but, in the roof, the anatomical structure, out of which
+decoration should naturally spring, is visible, if at all, in the
+interior only: so that the subject of internal ornament becomes
+both wide and important, and that of external, comparatively
+subordinate.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II.</span> Now, so long as we were concerned principally with
+the outside of buildings, we might with safety leave expressional
+character out of the question for the time, because it is
+not to be expected that all persons who pass the building, or
+see it from a distance, shall be in the temper which the building
+is properly intended to induce; so that ornaments somewhat
+at variance with this temper may often be employed
+externally without painful effect. But these ornaments would
+be inadmissible in the interior, for those who enter will for the
+most part either be in the proper temper which the building
+requires, or desirous of acquiring it. (The distinction is not
+rigidly observed by the mediĉval builders, and grotesques, or
+profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in bosses,
+crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page344"></a>344</span>
+ornament: but we do not find the interior wall covered with
+hunting and battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.)
+And thus the interior expression of the roof or ceiling becomes
+necessarily so various, and the kind and degree of fitting decoration
+so dependent upon particular circumstances, that it is
+nearly impossible to classify its methods, or limit its application.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III.</span> I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching
+rather the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as
+regards interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs
+are necessarily divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams;&mdash;surfaces,
+flat or carved; ribs, traversing these in the directions
+where main strength is required; or beams, filling the hollow
+of the dark gable with the intricate roof-tree, or supporting
+the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs and beams are simply and
+unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty about decoration;
+the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye is
+satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in
+plain waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when
+the ceiling is flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their
+services may receive ornamentation independent of their structure.
+I have never myself seen a flat ceiling satisfactorily
+decorated, except by painting: there is much good and fanciful
+panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it
+always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceilings
+of Venice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal
+Palace, have in their vast panellings some of the noblest paintings
+(on stretched canvas) which the world possesses: and
+this is all very well for the ceiling; but one would rather have
+the painting in a better place, especially when the rain soaks
+through its canvas, as I have seen it doing through many a
+noble Tintoret. On the whole, flat ceilings are as much to be
+avoided as possible; and, when necessary, perhaps a panelled
+ornamentation with rich colored patterns is the most satisfying,
+and loses least of valuable labor. But I leave the question
+to the reader&rsquo;s thought, being myself exceedingly undecided
+respecting it: except only touching one point&mdash;that a blank
+ceiling is not to be redeemed by a decorated ventilator.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page345"></a>345</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. I have a more confirmed opinion, however, respecting
+the decoration of curved surfaces. The majesty of a roof is
+never, I think, so great, as when the eye can pass undisturbed
+over the course of all its curvatures, and trace the dying of the
+shadows along its smooth and sweeping vaults. And I would
+rather, myself, have a plain ridged Gothic vault, with all its
+rough stones visible, to keep the sleet and wind out of a cathedral
+aisle, than all the fanning and pendanting and foliation
+that ever bewildered Tudor weight. But mosaic or fresco
+may of course be used as far as we can afford or obtain them;
+for these do not break the curvature. Perhaps the most
+solemn roofs in the world are the apse conchas of the Romanesque
+basilicas, with their golden ground and severe figures.
+Exactly opposed to these are the decorations which disturb the
+serenity of the curve without giving it interest, like the vulgar
+panelling of St. Peter&rsquo;s and the Pantheon; both, I think, in
+the last degree detestable.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. As roofs internally may be divided into surfaces and
+ribs, externally they may be divided into surfaces, and points,
+or ridges; these latter often receiving very bold and distinctive
+ornament. The outside surface is of small importance in
+central Europe, being almost universally low in slope, and
+tiled throughout Spain, South France, and North Italy: of
+still less importance where it is flat, as a terrace; as often in
+South Italy and the East, mingled with low domes: but the
+larger Eastern and Arabian domes become elaborate in ornamentation:
+I cannot speak of them with confidence; to the
+mind of an inhabitant of the north, a roof is a guard against
+wild weather; not a surface which is forever to bask in
+serene heat, and gleam across deserts like a rising moon. I
+can only say, that I have never seen any drawing of a richly
+decorated Eastern dome that made me desire to see the original.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Our own northern roof decoration is necessarily simple.
+Colored tiles are used in some cases with quaint effect;
+but I believe the dignity of the building is always greater
+when the roof is kept in an undisturbed mass, opposing itself
+to the variegation and richness of the walls. The Italian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page346"></a>346</span>
+round tile is itself decoration enough, a deep and rich fluting,
+which all artists delight in; this, however, is fitted exclusively
+for low pitch of roofs. On steep domestic roofs, there is no
+ornament better than may be obtained by merely rounding,
+or cutting to an angle, the lower extremities of the flat tiles
+or shingles, as in Switzerland: thus the whole surface is
+covered with an appearance of scales, a fish-like defence
+against water, at once perfectly simple, natural, and effective
+at any distance; and the best decoration of sloping stone
+roofs, as of spires, is a mere copy of this scale armor; it
+enriches every one of the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral
+of Coutances, and of many Norman and early Gothic buildings.
+Roofs covered or edged with lead have often patterns
+designed upon the lead, gilded and relieved with some dark
+color, as on the house of Jaques C&oelig;ur at Bourges; and I
+imagine the effect of this must have been singularly delicate
+and beautiful, but only traces of it now remain. The northern
+roofs, however, generally stand in little need of surface
+decoration, the eye being drawn to the fantastic ranges of
+their dormer windows, and to the finials and fringes on their
+points and ridges.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. Whether dormer windows are legitimately to be
+classed as decorative features, seems to me to admit of doubt.
+The northern spire system is evidently a mere elevation and
+exaggeration of the domestic turret with its look-out windows,
+and one can hardly part with the grotesque lines of the projections,
+though nobody is to be expected to live in the spire:
+but, at all events, such windows are never to be allowed in
+places visibly inaccessible, or on less than a natural and serviceable
+scale.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. Under the general head of roof-ridge and point
+decoration, we may include, as above noted, the entire race
+of fringes, finials, and crockets. As there is no use in any of
+these things, and as they are visible additions and parasitical
+portions of the structure, more caution is required in their use
+than in any other features of ornament, and the architect and
+spectator must both be in felicitous humor before they can be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page347"></a>347</span>
+well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally most
+admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most
+power; and I think there is almost always a certain spirit of
+playfulness in them, adverse to the grandest architectural
+effects, or at least to be kept in severe subordination to the
+serener character of the prevalent lines. But as they are opposed
+to the seriousness of majesty on the one hand, so they
+are to the weight of dulness on the other; and I know not any
+features which make the contrast between continental domestic
+architecture, and our own, more humiliatingly felt, or which give
+so sudden a feeling of new life and delight, when we pass from
+the streets of London to those of Abbeville or Rouen, as the
+quaint points and pinnacles of the roof gables and turrets.
+The commonest and heaviest roof may be redeemed by a spike
+at the end of it, if it is set on with any spirit; but the foreign
+builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar feeling in this, and
+gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of its back,
+and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like
+the dorsal fins and spines of a fish: but our spikes have a dull,
+screwed on, look; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machinery;
+and our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if
+they were meant to catch ashes out of the London smoke-clouds.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be considered
+in architecture, what points and flashes of light are in
+the color of painting, or of nature. There are some landscapes
+whose best character is sparkling, and there is a possibility of
+repose in the midst of brilliancy, or embracing it,&mdash;as on the
+fields of summer sea, or summer land:</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+<p class="ind03">&ldquo;Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold,</p>
+<p>And on the dews that drench the furze,</p>
+<p>And on the silvery gossamers,</p>
+<p><i>That twinkle into green and gold</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst
+of a jewellery of light; but, for the most part, it is better to
+avoid breaking up either lines or masses by too many points,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page348"></a>348</span>
+and to make the few points used exceedingly precious. So
+the best crockets and finials are set, like stars, along the lines,
+and at the points, which they adorn, with considerable intervals
+between them, and exquisite delicacy and fancy of sculpture
+in their own designs; if very small, they may become
+more frequent, and describe lines by a chain of points; but
+their whole value is lost if they are gathered into bunches or
+clustered into tassels and knots; and an over-indulgence in
+them always marks lowness of school. In Venice, the addition
+of the finial to the arch-head is the first sign of degradation;
+all her best architecture is entirely without either crockets
+or finials; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be classed,
+with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to the
+diminution or expansion of the crocket. The absolutely perfect
+use of the crocket is found, I think, in the tower of Giotto,
+and in some other buildings of the Pisan school. In the
+North they generally err on one side or other, and are either
+florid and huge, or mean in outline, looking as if they had
+been pinched out of the stonework, as throughout the entire
+cathedral of Amiens; and are besides connected with the generally
+spotty system which has been spoken of under the head
+of archivolt decoration.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. Employed, however, in moderation, they are among
+the most delightful means of delicate expression; and the
+architect has more liberty in their individual treatment than
+in any other feature of the building. Separated entirely from
+the structural system, they are subjected to no shadow of any
+other laws than those of grace and chastity; and the fancy
+may range without rebuke, for materials of their design,
+through the whole field of the visible or imaginable creation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page349"></a>349</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap_30"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h3>
+
+<h5>THE VESTIBULE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">I</span>. <span class="sc">I have</span> hardly kept my promise. The reader has decorated
+but little for himself as yet; but I have not, at least,
+attempted to bias his judgment. Of the simple forms of decoration
+which have been set before him, he has always been
+left free to choose; and the stated restrictions in the methods
+of applying them have been only those which followed on the
+necessities of construction previously determined. These having
+been now defined, I do indeed leave my reader free to
+build; and with what a freedom! All the lovely forms of the
+universe set before him, whence to choose, and all the lovely
+lines that bound their substance or guide their motion; and
+of all these lines,&mdash;and there are myriads of myriads in every
+bank of grass and every tuft of forest; and groups of them
+divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every
+several member of bird and beast,&mdash;of all these lines, for the
+principal forms of the most important members of architecture,
+I have used but Three! What, therefore, must be the
+infinity of the treasure in them all! There is material enough
+in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals,
+but suppose we were satisfied with less exhaustive appliance,
+and built a score of cathedrals, each to illustrate a single
+flower? that would be better than trying to invent new
+styles, I think. There is quite difference of style enough, between
+a violet and a harebell, for all reasonable purposes.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">II</span>. Perhaps, however, even more strange than the struggle
+of our architects to invent new styles, is the way they commonly
+speak of this treasure of natural infinity. Let us take
+our patience to us for an instant, and hear one of them, not
+among the least intelligent:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page350"></a>350</span></p>
+
+<p class="quote">&ldquo;It is not true that all natural forms are beautiful. We may hardly
+be able to detect this in Nature herself; but when the forms are separated
+from the things, and exhibited alone (by sculpture or carving), we then see
+that they are not all fitted for ornamental purposes; and indeed that very
+few, perhaps none, are so fitted without correction. Yes, I say <i>correction</i>,
+for though it is the highest aim of every art to imitate nature, this is not to
+be done by imitating any natural form, but by <i>criticising</i> and <i>correcting</i> it,&mdash;criticising
+it by Nature&rsquo;s rules gathered from all her works, but never completely
+carried out by her in any one work; correcting it, by rendering it
+more natural, <i>i.e.</i> more conformable to the general tendency of Nature, according
+to that noble maxim recorded of Raffaelle, &lsquo;that the artist&rsquo;s object
+was to make things not as Nature makes them, but as she <span class="scs">WOULD</span> make
+them;&rsquo; as she ever tries to make them, but never succeeds, though her aim
+may be deduced from a comparison of her efforts; just as if a number of
+archers had aimed unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark
+were then removed, we could by the examination of their arrow marks
+point out the most probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty
+of being nearer to it than any of their shots.&rdquo;<a name="FnAnchor_92" href="#Footnote_92"><span class="sp">92</span></a></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">III</span>. I had thought that, by this time, we had done with
+that stale, second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying
+of Raffaelle&rsquo;s; or that at least, in these days of purer Christian
+light, men might have begun to get some insight into the
+meaning of it: Raffaelle was a painter of humanity, and assuredly
+there is something the matter with humanity, a few
+<i>dovrebbe&rsquo;s</i>, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us
+heard of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments,
+conjecture that we are not quite what God, or nature, would
+have us to be. Raffaelle <i>had</i> something to mend in Humanity:
+I should have liked to have seen him mending a daisy!&mdash;or a
+pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard seed, or any other of
+God&rsquo;s slightest works. If he had accomplished that, one
+might have found for him more respectable employment,&mdash;to
+set the stars in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously
+scattered as they are, and to be of all manner of shapes and
+sizes,&mdash;except the ideal shape, and the proper size); or to give
+us a corrected view of the ocean; that, at least, seems a very
+irregular and improveable thing; the very fishermen do not
+know, this day, how far it will reach, driven up before the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page351"></a>351</span>
+west wind:&mdash;perhaps Some One else does, but that is not our
+business. Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,&mdash;of
+the great irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is
+not out of time. One,&mdash;two:&mdash;here comes a well-formed wave
+at last, trembling a little at the top, but, on the whole, orderly.
+So, crash among the shingle, and up as far as this grey pebble;
+now stand by and watch! Another:&mdash;Ah, careless wave! why
+couldn&rsquo;t you have kept your crest on? it is all gone away into
+spray, striking up against the cliffs there&mdash;I thought as much&mdash;missed
+the mark by a couple of feet! Another:&mdash;How now,
+impatient one! couldn&rsquo;t you have waited till your friend&rsquo;s reflux
+was done with, instead of rolling yourself up with it in
+that unseemly manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, and
+a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder slow rise, and
+crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave; not
+so fast; not so fast; where are you coming to?&mdash;By our architectural
+word, this is too bad; two yards over the mark, and
+ever so much of you in our face besides; and a wave which we
+had some hope of, behind there, broken all to pieces out at sea,
+and laying a great white table-cloth of foam all the way to the
+shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off it! Alas, for
+these unhappy arrow shots of Nature; she will never hit her
+mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them,
+into the ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. Let us
+send for a Greek architect to do it for her. He comes&mdash;the
+great Greek architect, with measure and rule. Will he not
+also make the weight for the winds? and weigh out the waters
+by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a way for the
+lightning of the thunder? He sets himself orderly to his work,
+and behold! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing
+into which the great Greek architect improves the sea&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <img src="images/img351.jpg" width="650" height="99" alt="the sea" title="the sea" /></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="grk" title="Thálatta, thálatta:">&#920;&#940;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#964;&#945; &#920;&#940;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#964;&#945;:</span> Was it this, then, that they wept to see
+from the sacred mountain&mdash;those wearied ones?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page352"></a>352</span></p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IV</span>. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and
+were not also the leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort,
+as far as may be without mark of sin, even the countenance of
+man? Or would it be pleasanter and better to have us all
+alike, and numbered on our foreheads, that we might be known
+one from the other?</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">V</span>. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man&rsquo;s art? Have
+we only to copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the
+universe? Not so. We have work to do upon it; there is
+not any one of us so simple, nor so feeble, but he has work to
+do upon it. But the work is not to improve, but to explain.
+This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable, in its
+whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long
+contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to
+reach; then set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath
+him; extricating it from infinity, as one gathers a violet
+out of grass; one does not improve either violet or grass in
+gathering it, but one makes the flower visible; and then the
+human being has to make its power upon his own heart visible
+also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has raised
+up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul.
+And sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to
+set it in strange lights, and display it in a thousand ways before
+unknown: ways specially directed to necessary and noble purposes,
+for which he had to choose instruments out of the wide
+armory of God. All this he may do: and in this he is only
+doing what every Christian has to do with the written, as well
+as the created word, &ldquo;rightly <i>dividing</i> the word of truth.&rdquo;
+Out of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather
+and set forth things new and old, to choose them for the season
+and the work that are before him, to explain and manifest them
+to others, with such illustration and enforcement as may be in
+his power, and to crown them with the history of what, by
+them, God has done for his soul. And, in doing this, is he
+improving the Word of God? Just such difference as there is
+between the sense in which a minister may be said to improve
+a text, to the people&rsquo;s comfort, and the sense in which an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page353"></a>353</span>
+atheist might declare that he could improve the Book, which,
+if any man shall add unto, there shall be added unto him the
+plagues that are written therein; just such difference is there
+between that which, with respect to Nature, man is, in his
+humbleness, called upon to do, and that which, in his insolence,
+he imagines himself capable of doing.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VI</span>. Have no fear, therefore, reader, in judging between
+nature and art, so only that you love both. If you can love
+one only, then let it be Nature; you are safe with her: but do
+not then attempt to judge the art, to which you do not care to
+give thought, or time. But if you love both, you may judge
+between them fearlessly; you may estimate the last, by its
+making you remember the first, and giving you the same kind
+of joy. If, in the square of the city, you can find a delight,
+finite, indeed, but pure and intense, like that which you have
+in a valley among the hills, then its art and architecture are
+right; but if, after fair trial, you can find no delight in them,
+nor any instruction like that of nature, I call on you fearlessly
+to condemn them.</p>
+
+<p>We are forced, for the sake of accumulating our power and
+knowledge, to live in cities; but such advantage as we have
+in association with each other is in great part counterbalanced
+by our loss of fellowship with nature. We cannot all have
+our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to meditate in at
+eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as far as
+may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us
+with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness,
+like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate
+imagery of the flowers we can no more gather, and of the
+living creatures now far away from us in their own solitude.
+If ever you felt or found this in a London Street,&mdash;if ever it
+furnished you with one serious thought, or one ray of true and
+gentle pleasure,&mdash;if there is in your heart a true delight in its
+grim railings and dark casements, and wasteful finery of shops,
+and feeble coxcombry of club-houses,&mdash;it is well: promote the
+building of more like them. But if they never taught you
+anything, and never made you happier as you passed beneath
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page354"></a>354</span>
+them, do not think they have any mysterious goodness nor
+occult sublimity. Have done with the wretched affectation,
+the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy: for, as surely as
+you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is
+better than the wood pavement, cut into hexagons; and as
+surely as you know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland
+are better than the choke-damp of the vault, or the gas-light of
+the ball-room, you may know, as I told you that you should,
+that the good architecture, which has life, and truth, and joy
+in it, is better than the bad architecture, which has death, dishonesty,
+and vexation of heart in it, from the beginning to the
+end of time.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VII</span>. And now come with me, for I have kept you too
+long from your gondola: come with me, on an autumnal
+morning, through the dark gates of Padua, and let us take the
+broad road leading towards the East.</p>
+
+<p>It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine
+festoons full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic,
+and their clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an
+embankment above the Brenta, and runs between the river
+and the broad plain, which stretches to the north in endless
+lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows slowly, but
+strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that
+neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its
+monotonous banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy
+twisted for an instant into its opaque surface, and vanishing,
+as if something had been dragged into it and gone down.
+Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the dyke on its
+northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen trembling
+in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than
+it did at first. Presently you pass one of the much vaunted
+&ldquo;villas on the Brenta:&rdquo; a glaring, spectral shell of brick and
+stucco, its windows with painted architraves like picture-frames,
+and a court-yard paved with pebbles in front of it, all
+burning in the thick glow of the feverish sunshine, but fenced
+from the high road, for magnificence sake, with goodly posts
+and chains; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese variations,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page355"></a>355</span>
+painted red and green; a third composed for the greater
+part of dead-wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it,
+each with a pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad
+perspective; and a fourth, with stucco figures set on the top
+of its garden-wall: some antique, like the kind to be seen at
+the corner of the New Road, and some of clumsy grotesque
+dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This is the architecture
+to which her studies of the Renaissance have conducted
+modern Italy.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">VIII</span>. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense
+white the walls of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change
+horses. Another dreary stage among the now divided
+branches of the Brenta, forming irregular and half-stagnant
+canals; with one or two more villas on the other side of them,
+but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have
+recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin,
+black, and rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull
+water, with what were once small gardens beside them, kneaded
+into mud, and with blighted fragments of gnarled hedges and
+broken stakes for their fencing; and here and there a few
+fragments of marble steps, which have once given them
+graceful access from the water&rsquo;s edge, now settling into the
+mud in broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green weed.
+At last the road turns sharply to the north, and there is an
+open space, covered with bent grass, on the right of it: but do
+not look that way.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">IX</span>. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of
+the little inn at Mestre, glad of a moment&rsquo;s rest in shade.
+The table is (always, I think) covered with a cloth of nominal
+white and perennial grey, with plates and glasses at due intervals,
+and small loaves of a peculiar white bread, made with oil,
+and more like knots of flour than bread. The view from its
+balcony is not cheerful: a narrow street, with a solitary brick
+church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some
+coventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco
+about their windows; and, between them and the street, a
+ditch with some slow current in it, and one or two small houses
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page356"></a>356</span>
+beside it, one with an arbor of roses at its door, as in an English
+tea-garden; the air, however, about us having in it nothing
+of roses, but a close smell of garlic and crabs, warmed by
+the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is much
+vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain
+wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage: we
+appease their rivalry with our best patience, and follow them
+down the narrow street.</p>
+
+<p>§ <span class="scs">X</span>. We have but walked some two hundred yards when
+we come to a low wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal,
+with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter
+we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation;
+another glance undeceives us,&mdash;it is covered with the black
+boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they
+be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide
+away; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually
+beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is
+something clearer than any water we have seen lately, and of
+a pale green; the banks only two or three feet above it, of
+mud and rank grass, with here and there a stunted tree; gliding
+swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as if they
+were dragged by upon a painted scene.</p>
+
+<p>Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each
+heaving up the side of the boat slightly as her silver beak
+shoots forward. We lose patience, and extricate ourselves
+from the cushions: the sea air blows keenly by, as we stand
+leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In front, nothing to
+be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west, the tower
+of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen purple
+shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon,
+feebly defined against the afternoon sky,&mdash;the Alps of
+Bassano. Forward still: the endless canal bends at last, and
+then breaks into intricate angles about some low bastions, now
+torn to pieces and staggering in ugly rents towards the water,&mdash;the
+bastions of the fort of Malghera. Another turn, and
+another perspective of canal; but not interminable. The
+silver beak cleaves it fast,&mdash;it widens: the rank grass of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page357"></a>357</span>
+banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots
+along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but
+a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching to
+the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Malamocco
+to the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a
+low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to let the
+tide through it;&mdash;this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous
+above all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there
+rises, out of the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused
+brick buildings, which, but for the many towers which
+are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English
+manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and apparently
+at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line;
+but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of
+black smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which
+issues from the belfry of a church.</p>
+
+<p>It is Venice.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_92" href="#FnAnchor_92"><span class="fn">92</span></a> Garbett on Design, p. 74.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page358"></a>358</span></p>
+<hr class="art" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page359"></a>359</span></p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_1"></a>1. FOUNDATION OF VENICE.</h5>
+
+
+<p><span class="sc">I find</span> the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any:
+the following sentence from De Monaci may perhaps interest the
+reader.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and
+whose ways are past finding out, willing both to save the innocent
+blood, and that a great power, beneficial to the whole world,
+should arise in a spot strange beyond belief, moved the chief
+men of the cities of the Venetian province (which from the
+border of Pannonia, extended as far as the Adda, a river of Lombardy),
+both in memory of past, and in dread of future distress,
+to establish states upon the nearer islands of the inner gulphs of
+the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they might retreat
+for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de Glauconibus,
+and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalburtus
+Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua,
+by the command of their King and the desire of the citizens,
+laid the foundations of the new commonwealth, under good
+auspices, on the island of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to
+the mouth of the deep river now called the Brenta, in the year
+of Our Lord, as many writers assure us, four hundred and twenty-one,
+on the 25th day of March.&rdquo;<a name="FnAnchor_93" href="#Footnote_93"><span class="sp">93</span></a></p>
+
+<p>It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice
+was founded by good Christians: &ldquo;La qual citade è stada hedificada
+da veri e boni Christiani:&rdquo; which information I found in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page360"></a>360</span>
+the MS. copy of the Zancarol Chronicle, in the library of St.
+Mark&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded
+by Sansovino, will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice:
+&ldquo;Fu interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce <span class="sc">Venetia</span> voglia dire
+<i>VENI ETIAM</i>, cioè, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante
+volte verrai, sempre vedrai nuove cose, enuove bellezze.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_2"></a>2. POWER OF THE DOGES.</h5>
+
+<p>The best authorities agree in giving the year 697 as that of
+the election of the first doge, Paul Luke Anafeste. He was
+elected in a general meeting of the commonalty, tribunes, and
+clergy, at Heraclea, &ldquo;divinis rebus procuratis,&rdquo; as usual, in all
+serious work, in those times. His authority is thus defined by
+Sabellico, who was not likely to have exaggerated it:&mdash;&ldquo;Penes
+quem decus omne imperii ac majestas esset: cui jus concilium
+cogendi quoties de republica aliquid referri oporteret; qui tribunos
+annuos in singulas insulas legeret, a quibus ad Ducem
+esset provocatio. Cĉterum, si quis dignitatem, ecclesiam, sacerdotumve
+cleri populique suffragio esset adeptus, ita demum id
+ratum haberetur si dux ipse auctor factus esset.&rdquo; (Lib. I.) The
+last clause is very important, indicating the subjection of the
+ecclesiastical to the popular and ducal (or patrician) powers,
+which, throughout her career, was one of the most remarkable
+features in the policy of Venice. The appeal from the tribunes
+to the doge is also important; and the expression &ldquo;decus omne
+imperii,&rdquo; if of somewhat doubtful force, is at least as energetic
+as could have been expected from an historian under the influence
+of the Council of Ten.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_3" id="app_3"></a>3. SERRAR DEL CONSIGLIO.</h5>
+
+<p>The date of the decree which made the right of sitting in the
+grand council hereditary, is variously given; the Venetian historians
+themselves saying as little as they can about it. The thing
+was evidently not accomplished at once, several decrees following
+in successive years: the Council of Ten was established without
+any doubt in 1310, in consequence of the conspiracy of Tiepolo.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page361"></a>361</span>
+The Venetian verse, quoted by Mutinelli (Annali Urbani di
+Venezia, p. 153), is worth remembering.</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+<p class="ind03">&ldquo;Del mille tresento e diese</p>
+<p>A mezzo el mese delle ceriese</p>
+<p>Bagiamonte passò el ponte</p>
+<p>E per esso fo fatto el Consegio di diese.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The reader cannot do better than take 1297 as the date of the
+beginning of the change of government, and this will enable him
+exactly to divide the 1100 years from the election of the first doge
+into 600 of monarchy and 500 of aristocracy. The coincidence
+of the numbers is somewhat curious; 697 the date of the establishment
+of the government, 1297 of its change, and 1797 of its fall.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_4"></a>4. S. PIETRO DI CASTELLO.</h5>
+
+<p>It is credibly reported to have been founded in the seventh
+century, and (with somewhat less of credibility) in a place where
+the Trojans, conducted by Antenor, had, after the destruction
+of Troy, built &ldquo;un castello, chiamato prima Troja, poscia Olivolo,
+interpretato, luogo pieno.&rdquo; It seems that St. Peter appeared in
+person to the Bishop of Heraclea, and commanded him to found
+in his honor, a church in that spot of the rising city on the
+Rialto: &ldquo;ove avesse veduto una mandra di buoi e di pecore pascolare
+unitamente. Questa fu la prodigiosa origine della Chiesa
+di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso Participazio
+IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della
+Nuova citta.&rdquo; (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di
+Venezia. Padua, 1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen
+and sheep feeding together, we need St. Peter, I think, to tell
+us. The title of Bishop of Castello was first taken in 1091: St.
+Mark&rsquo;s was not made the cathedral church till 1807. It may be
+thought hardly fair to conclude the small importance of the old
+St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the wretched
+modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken
+of as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in
+the older building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sansovino;
+who only says that when it was destroyed by fire (as everything
+in Venice was, I think, about three times in a century), in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page362"></a>362</span>
+the reign of Vital Michele, it was rebuilt &ldquo;with good thick walls,
+maintaining, <i>for all that</i>, the order of its arrangement taken
+from the Greek mode of building.&rdquo; This does not seem the
+description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a highly ornate
+cathedral. The present church is among the least interesting in
+Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea on a
+small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a
+wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level
+of lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended
+before its mildewed façade and solitary tower.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_5"></a>5. PAPAL POWER IN VENICE.</h5>
+
+<p>I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-eighth
+book of Daru for some account of the restraints to which
+the Venetian clergy were subjected. I have not myself been able
+to devote any time to the examination of the original documents
+bearing on this matter, but the following extract from a letter
+of a friend, who will not at present permit me to give his name,
+but who is certainly better conversant with the records of the
+Venetian State than any other Englishman, will be of great value
+to the general reader:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth
+century, churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and
+declared ineligible to civil employment; and in the same year,
+1410, the Council of Ten, with the Giunta, decreed that whenever
+in the state&rsquo;s councils matters concerning ecclesiastical
+affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk of Venetian beneficed
+clergymen were to be expelled; and, in the year 1434, the <span class="scs">RELATIONS</span>
+of churchmen were declared ineligible to the post of ambassador
+at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their
+territories to bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope
+by the senate, which elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at
+the end of the sixteenth century, to be liable to examination by
+his Holiness, as an act of confirmation of installation; but of
+course, everything depended on the relative power at any given
+time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few days after the
+accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the Signory, cap in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page363"></a>363</span>
+hand, to <span class="scs">ALLOW</span> him to confer the archbishopric of Zara on a
+dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six
+years later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of
+Cambrai, that furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara
+on Cipico <span class="scs">WITHOUT</span> asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite
+Abbey of Vangadizza, in the Polesine, fell vacant through the
+death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose family it had been since
+some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome received the
+news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow,
+requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he
+heard from the senate. The pope talked of &lsquo;poor cardinals&rsquo;
+and of his nephew, but made no positive reply; and, as Francesco
+Contarini was withdrawing, said to him: &lsquo;My Lord ambassador,
+with this opportunity we will inform you that, to our very great
+regret, we understand that the chiefs of the Ten mean to turn
+sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close the church
+doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain hours.
+This is precisely the sacristan&rsquo;s office; we don&rsquo;t know why their
+lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to interfere
+in this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical jurisdiction;
+and even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there
+not the patriarch, who is at any rate your own; why not apply
+to him, who could remedy these irregularities? These are matters
+which cause us very notable displeasure; we say so that they
+may be written and known: it is decided by the councils and
+canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms any resolve
+against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without incurring
+censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon&rsquo;s correspondent]
+may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our
+predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare
+that we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we
+blame it, and let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the
+rest, every one may take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas
+à Becket, whose festival is celebrated this very day, suffered
+martyrdom for the ecclesiastical liberty; it is our duty likewise
+to support and defend it.&rsquo; Contarini says: &lsquo;This remonstrance
+was delivered with some marks of anger, which induced me to
+tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords chiefs
+of the Ten is in our country supreme; that it does not do its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page364"></a>364</span>
+business unadvisedly, or condescend to unworthy matters; and
+that, therefore, should those Lords have come to any public
+declaration of their will, it must be attributed to orders anterior,
+and to immemorial custom and authority, recollecting that, on
+former occasions likewise, similar commissions were given to
+prevent divers incongruities; wherefore an upright intention,
+such as this, ought not to be taken in any other sense than its
+own, especially as the parishes of Venice were in her own gift,&rsquo;
+&amp;c. &amp;c. The pope persisted in bestowing the abbacy on his
+nephew, but the republic would not give possession, and a compromise
+was effected by its being conferred on the Venetian
+Matteo Priuli, who allowed the cardinal five thousand ducats per
+annum out of its revenues. A few years before this, this very
+same pope excommunicated the State, because she had imprisoned
+two churchmen for heinous crimes; the strife lasted for
+more than a year, and ended through the mediation of Henry
+IV., at whose suit the prisoners were delivered to the French
+ambassador, who made them over to a papal commissioner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In January, 1484, a tournament was in preparation on St.
+Mark&rsquo;s Square: some murmurs had been heard about the distribution
+of the prizes having been pre-arranged, without regard to
+the &lsquo;best man.&rsquo; One of the chiefs of the Ten was walking along
+Rialto on the 28th January, when a young priest, twenty-two
+years old, a sword-cutlers son, and a Bolognese, and one of
+Perugia, both men-at-arms under Robert Sansoverino, fell upon
+a clothier with drawn weapons. The chief of the Ten desired
+they might be seized, but at the moment the priest escaped; he
+was, however, subsequently retaken, and in that very evening
+hanged by torch-light between the columns with the two soldiers.
+Innocent VIII. was less powerful than Paul IV.; Venice weaker
+in 1605 than in 1484.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;* * * The exclusion from the Grand Council, whether at
+the end of the fourteenth or commencement of the following
+century, of the Venetian ecclesiastics, (as induced either by the
+republic&rsquo;s acquisitions on the main land then made, and which,
+through the rich benefices they embraced, might have rendered
+an ambitious churchman as dangerous in the Grand Council as a
+victorious condottiere; or from dread of their allegiance being
+divided between the church and their country, it being acknowledged
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page365"></a>365</span>
+that no man can serve two masters,) did not render them
+hostile to their fatherland, whose interests were, with very few
+exceptions, eagerly fathered by the Venetian prelates at Rome,
+who, in their turn, received all honor at Venice, where state receptions
+given to cardinals of the houses of Correr, Grimani,
+Cornaro, Pisani, Contarini, Zeno, Delfino, and others, vouch for
+the good understanding that existed between the &lsquo;Papalists&rsquo; and
+their countrymen. The Cardinal Grimani was instrumental in
+detaching Julius II. from the league of Cambrai; the Cardinal
+Cornaro always aided the state to obtain anything required of
+Leo X.; and, both before and after their times, all Venetians
+that had a seat in the Sacred College were patriots rather than
+pluralists: I mean that they cared more for Venice than for their
+benefices, admitting thus the soundness of that policy which denied
+them admission into the Grand Council.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To this interesting statement, I shall add, from the twenty-eighth
+book of Daru, two passages, well deserving consideration
+by us English in present days:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pour être parfaitement assurée contre les envahissements
+de la puissance ecclésiastique, Venise commença par lui ôter
+tout prétexte d&rsquo;intervenir dans les affaires de l&rsquo;Etat; elle resta
+invariablement fidèle au dogme. Jamais aucune des opinions
+nouvelles n&rsquo;y prit la moindre faveur; jamais aucun hérésiarque
+ne sortit de Venise. Les conciles, les disputes, les guerres de
+religion, se passèrent sans qu&rsquo;elle y prit jamais la moindre part.
+Inébranlable dans sa foi, elle ne fut pas moins invariable dans
+son système de tolérance. Non seulement ses sujets de la religion
+grecque conservèrent l&rsquo;exercise de leur culte, leurs évêques et
+leurs prêtres; mais les Protestantes, les Arméniens, les Mahomitans,
+les Juifs, toutes les religions, toutes les sectes qui se trouvaient
+dans Venise, avaient des temples, et la sépulture dans les
+églises n&rsquo;était point refusé aux hérétiques. Une police vigilante
+s&rsquo;appliquait avec le même soin à éteindre les discordes, et à empêcher
+les fanatiques et les novateurs de troubler l&rsquo;Etat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p style="letter-spacing: 3em; " class="center">********</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Si on considère que c&rsquo;est dans un temps où presque toutes
+les nations tremblaient devant la puissance pontificale, que les
+Vénitiens surent tenir leur clergé dans la dépendance, et braver
+souvent les censures ecclésiastiques et les interdits, sans encourir
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page366"></a>366</span>
+jamais aucun reproche sur la pureté de leur foi, on sera forcé de
+reconnaître que cette république avait dévancé de loin les autres
+peuples dans cette partie de la science du gouvernement. La
+fameuse maxime, &lsquo;Siamo veneziani, poi christiani,&rsquo; n&rsquo;était qu&rsquo;une
+formule énergique qui ne prouvait point quils voulussent placer
+l&rsquo;intérêt de la religion après celui de l&rsquo;Etat, mais qui annonçait
+leur invariable résolution de ne pas souffrir qu&rsquo;un pouvoir
+étranger portât atteinte aux droits de la république.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dans toute la durée de son existence, an milieu des revers
+comme dans la prospérité cet inébranlable gouvernement ne fit
+qu&rsquo;une seule fois des concessions à la cour de Borne, et ce fut
+pour détacher le Pape Jules II. de la ligue de Cambrai.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jamais il ne se relâcha du soin de tenir le clergé dans une
+nullité absolue relativement aux affaires politiques; on peut en
+juger par la conduite qu&rsquo;il tint avec l&rsquo;ordre religieux le plus redoutable
+et le plus accoutumé à s&rsquo;immiscer dans les secrets de
+l&rsquo;Etat et dans les intérêts temporels.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The main points, next stated, respecting the Jesuits are,
+that the decree which permitted their establishment in Venice
+required formal renewal every three years; that no Jesuit could
+stay in Venice more than three years; that the slightest disobedience
+to the authority of the government was instantly punished
+by imprisonment; that no Venetian could enter the order without
+express permission from the government; that the notaries
+were forbidden to sanction any testamentary disposal of property
+to the Jesuits; finally, that the heads of noble families were forbidden
+to permit their children to be educated in the Jesuits&rsquo;
+colleges, on pain of degradation from their rank.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let it be observed that the enforcement of absolute exclusion
+of the clergy from the councils of the state, dates exactly
+from the period which I have marked for the commencement of
+the decline of the Venetian power. The Romanist is welcome
+to his advantage in this fact, if advantage it be; for I do not
+bring forward the conduct of the senate of Venice, as Daru does,
+by way of an example of the general science of government.
+The Venetians accomplished therein what we ridiculously call a
+separation of &ldquo;Church and State&rdquo; (as if the State were not, in
+all Christendom, necessarily also the Church<a name="FnAnchor_94" href="#Footnote_94"><span class="sp">94</span></a>), but <i>ought</i> to call
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page367"></a>367</span>
+a separation of lay and clerical officers. I do not point out this
+separation as subject of praise, but as the witness borne by the
+Venetians against the principles of the Papacy. If they were to
+blame, in yielding to their fear of the ambitious spirit of Rome
+so far as to deprive their councils of all religious element, what
+excuse are we to offer for the state, which, with Lords Spiritual
+of her own faith already in her senate, permits the polity of
+Rome to be represented by lay members? To have sacrificed
+religion to mistaken policy, or purchased security with ignominy,
+would have been no new thing in the world&rsquo;s history; but to be
+at once impious and impolitic, and seek for danger through dishonor,
+was reserved for the English parliament of 1829.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad to have this opportunity of referring to, and farther
+enforcing, the note on this subject which, not without deliberation,
+I appended to the &ldquo;Seven Lamps;&rdquo; and of adding to it the
+following passage, written by my father in the year 1839, and
+published in one of the journals of that year:&mdash;a passage remarkable
+as much for its intrinsic value, as for having stated, twelve
+years ago, truths to which the mind of England seems but now,
+and that slowly, awakening.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We hear it said, that it cannot be merely the Roman religion
+that causes the difficulty [respecting Ireland], for we were once
+all Roman Catholics, and nations abroad of this faith are not as
+the Irish. It is totally overlooked, that when we were so, our
+government was despotic, and fit to cope with this dangerous
+religion, as most of the Continental governments yet are. In
+what Roman Catholic state, or in what age of Roman Catholic
+England, did we ever hear of such agitation as now exists in
+Ireland by evil men taking advantage of an anomalous state of
+things&mdash;Roman Catholic ignorance in the people, Protestant
+toleration in the government? We have yet to feel the tremendous
+difficulty in which Roman Catholic emancipation has involved
+us. Too late we discover that a Roman Catholic is wholly
+incapable of being safely connected with the British constitution,
+as it now exists, <i>in any near relation</i>. The present constitution
+is no longer fit for Catholics. It is a creature essentially Protestant,
+growing with the growth, and strengthening with the
+strength, of Protestantism. So entirely is Protestantism interwoven
+with the whole frame of our constitution and laws, that I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page368"></a>368</span>
+take my stand on this, against all agitators in existence, that the
+Roman religion is totally incompatible with the British constitution.
+We have, in trying to combine them, got into a maze of
+difficulties; we are the worse, and Ireland none the better. It
+is idle to talk of municipal reform or popular Lords Lieutenant.
+The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is not strong enough
+for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a Republican
+would not shrink from sending half the misguided population
+and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an industrious
+Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you
+cannot convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to
+wear the mild restraints of a Protestant Government. It was,
+moreover, a strange logic that begot the idea of admitting
+Catholics to administer any part of our laws or constitution.
+It was admitted by all that, by the very act of abandoning the
+Roman religion, we became a free and enlightened people. It
+was only by throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that
+we attained to the freedom of thought which has advanced us in
+the scale of society. We are so much advanced by adopting and
+adhering to a reformed religion, that to prove our liberal and
+unprejudiced views, we throw down the barriers betwixt the two
+religions, of which the one is the acknowledged cause of light
+and knowledge, the other the cause of darkness and ignorance.
+We are so much altered to the better by leaving this
+people entirely, and giving them neither part nor lot amongst
+us, that it becomes proper to mingle again with them. We have
+found so much good in leaving them, that we deem it the best
+possible reason for returning to be among them. No fear of
+their Church again shaking us, with all our light and knowledge.
+It is true, the most enlightened nations fell under the spell of
+her enchantments, fell into total darkness and superstition; but
+no fear of us&mdash;we are too well informed! What miserable reasoning!
+infatuated presumption! I fear me, when the Roman
+religion rolled her clouds of darkness over the earlier ages, that
+she quenched as much light, and knowledge, and judgment as
+our modern Liberals have ever displayed. I do not expect a
+statesman to discuss the point of Transubstantiation betwixt
+Protestant and Catholic, nor to trace the narrow lines which divide
+Protestant sectarians from each other; but can any statesman
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page369"></a>369</span>
+that shall have taken even a cursory glance at the face of
+Europe, hesitate a moment on the choice of the Protestant religion?
+If he unfortunately knew nothing of its being the true
+one in regard to our eternal interests, he is at least bound to see
+whether it be not the best for the worldly prosperity of a people.
+He may be but moderately imbued with pious zeal for the salvation
+of a kingdom, but at least he will be expected to weigh the
+comparative merits of religion, as of law or government; and
+blind, indeed, must he be if he does not discern that, in neglecting
+to cherish the Protestant faith, or in too easily yielding to
+any encroachments on it, he is foregoing the use of a state engine
+more powerful than all the laws which the uninspired legislators
+of the earth have ever promulgated, in promoting the happiness,
+the peace, prosperity, and the order, the industry, and the wealth,
+of a people; in forming every quality valuable or desirable in a
+subject or a citizen; in sustaining the public mind at that point
+of education and information that forms the best security for the
+state, and the best preservative for the freedom of a people,
+whether religious or political.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XX.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_20"><img src="images/img369.jpg" width="650" height="209" alt="WALL VEIL DECORATION." title="WALL VEIL DECORATION." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">WALL VEIL DECORATION.<br />
+                      <span class="f80">CA&rsquo; TREVISAN.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_6"></a>6. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS.</h5>
+
+<p>There having been three principal styles of architecture in
+Venice,&mdash;the Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renaissance,
+it will be shown, in the sequel, that the Renaissance itself
+is divided into three correspondent families: Renaissance engrafted
+on Byzantine, which is earliest and best; Renaissance engrafted
+on Gothic, which is second, and second best; Renaissance
+on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and worst of all. The
+palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine are those
+noticed by Commynes: they are characterized by an ornamentation
+very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with,
+early Byzantine work; namely, groups of colored marble circles
+inclosed in interlacing bands. I have put on the opposite page
+one of these ornaments, from the Ca&rsquo; Trevisan, in which a most
+curious and delicate piece of inlaid design is introduced into a
+band which is almost exactly copied from the church of Theotocos
+at Constantinople, and correspondent with others in St.
+Mark&rsquo;s. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the treatment
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page370"></a>370</span>
+of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower compartment,
+while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are
+visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch
+plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded
+wings. Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices &ldquo;of every
+clean fowl and of every clean beast.&rdquo; The color is given with
+green and white marbles, the dove relieved on a ground of greyish
+green, and all is exquisitely finished.</p>
+
+<p>In <a href="#plate_1">Plate I.</a>, <a href="#page013">p. 13</a>, the upper figure is from the same palace
+(Ca&rsquo; Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If
+we take five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter
+being <span class="correction" title="originally 'two-thsrds'">two-thirds</span> of the diameter next above it, and arrange the
+circles so proportioned, in contact with each other, in the manner
+shown in the plate, we shall find that an increase quite imperceptible
+in the diameter of the circles in the angles, will enable
+us to inscribe the whole in a square. The lines so described will
+then run in the centre of the white bands. I cannot be certain
+that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan design, because
+it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at its
+measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide
+with the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in <a href="#plate_1">Plate I.</a> is
+from the front of the Ca&rsquo; Dario, and probably struck the eye
+of Commynes in its first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, considers
+both the Ca&rsquo; Trevisan (which once belonged to Bianca
+Cappello) and the Ca&rsquo; Dario, as buildings of the sixteenth century.
+I defer the discussion of the question at present, but have,
+I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca&rsquo; Dario to have
+been built about 1486, and the Ca&rsquo; Trevisan not much later.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_7"></a>7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDERS.</h5>
+
+<p>Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general importance
+is that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was
+taken (Vitruvius says) from a woman&rsquo;s hair, curled; but its lateral
+processes look more like rams&rsquo; horns: be that as it may, it
+is a mere piece of agreeable extravagance, and if, instead of rams&rsquo;
+horns, you put ibex horns, or cows&rsquo; horns, or an ass&rsquo;s head at
+once, you will have ibex orders, or ass orders, or any number of
+other orders, one for every head or horn. You may have heard
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page371"></a>371</span>
+of another order, the Composite, which is Ionic and Corinthian
+mixed, and is one of the worst of ten thousand forms referable
+to the Corinthian as their head: it may be described as a spoiled
+Corinthian. And you may have also heard of another order,
+called Tuscan (which is no order at all, but a spoiled Doric): and
+of another called Roman Doric, which is Doric more spoiled,
+both which are simply among the most stupid variations ever invented
+upon forms already known. I find also in a French pamphlet
+upon architecture,<a name="FnAnchor_95" href="#Footnote_95"><span class="sp">95</span></a> as applied to shops and dwelling houses,
+a sixth order, the &ldquo;Ordre Français,&rdquo; at least as good as any of
+the three last, and to be hailed with acclamation, considering
+whence it comes, there being usually more tendency on the other
+side of the channel to the confusion of &ldquo;orders&rdquo; than their multiplication:
+but the reader will find in the end that there are in
+very deed only two orders, of which the Greek, Doric, and Corinthian
+are the first examples, and <i>they</i> not perfect, nor in anywise
+sufficiently representative of the vast families to which they belong;
+but being the first and the best known, they may properly
+be considered as the types of the rest. The essential distinctions
+of the two great orders he will find explained in §§ <span class="scs">XXXV</span>. and
+<span class="scs">XXXVI</span>. of <a href="#chap_27">Chap. XXVII.</a>, and in the passages there referred to;
+but I should rather desire that these passages might be read in the
+order in which they occur.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_8" id="app_8"></a>8. THE NORTHERN ENERGY.</h5>
+
+<p>I have sketched above, in the First Chapter, the great events
+of architectural history in the simplest and fewest words I could;
+but this indraught of the Lombard energies upon the Byzantine
+rest, like a wild north wind descending into a space of rarified
+atmosphere, and encountered by an Arab simoom from the south,
+may well require from us some farther attention; for the differences
+in all these schools are more in the degrees of their impetuosity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page372"></a>372</span>
+and refinement (these qualities being, in most cases, in
+inverse ratio, yet much united by the Arabs) than in the style of
+the ornaments they employ. The same leaves, the same animals,
+the same arrangement, are used by Scandinavians, ancient Britons,
+Saxons, Normans, Lombards, Romans, Byzantines, and
+Arabians; all being alike descended through classic Greece from
+Egypt and Assyria, and some from Ph&oelig;nicia. The belts which
+encompass the Assyrian bulls, in the hall of the British Museum,
+are the same as the belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian
+tumuli; their method of ornamentation is the same as that of the
+gate of Mycenĉ, and of the Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of
+Milan, and of the church of Theotocos at Constantinople; the
+essential differences among the great schools are their differences
+of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it is absurd
+to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and
+Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is
+irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard
+temper, and Byzantine temper.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools,
+it appears to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distinguished
+from the Byzantine by their energy and love of excitement,
+but the Lombard stands alone in his love of jest: Neither
+an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in his architecture; the Lombard
+has great difficulty in ever being thoroughly serious; thus
+they represent three conditions of humanity, one in perfect rest,
+the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace and dignity;
+the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a restless
+fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not
+burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of enjoying
+jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lombard
+in the South, showing itself, however, in endless invention,
+with a refreshing firmness and order directing the whole of it.
+The excitement is greatest in the earliest times, most of all shown
+in St. Michele of Pavia; and I am strongly disposed to connect
+much of its peculiar manifestations with the Lombard&rsquo;s habits of
+eating and drinking, especially his carnivorousness. The Lombard
+of early times seems to have been exactly what a tiger
+would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous imagination,
+strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of northern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page373"></a>373</span>
+mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him pacing
+up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking
+on the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you
+have the Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply
+of vegetables, and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement
+diminishes; it is still strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons
+and Rouen; it dies away gradually in the later Gothic, and is
+quite extinct in the fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>I think I shall best illustrate this general idea by simply
+copying the entries in my diary which were written when, after
+six months&rsquo; close study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came
+again to the Lombard work of Verona and Pavia. There are
+some other points alluded to in these entries not pertaining to the
+matter immediately in hand; but I have left them, as they will be
+of use hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;(Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the
+Duomo here with St. Mark&rsquo;s, the first thing that strikes one is
+the low relief, the second, the greater motion and spirit, with
+infinitely less grace and science. With the Byzantine, however
+rude the cutting, every line is lovely, and the animals or men are
+placed in any attitudes which secure ornamental effect, sometimes
+impossible ones, always severe, restrained, or languid. With the
+Romanesque workmen all the figures show the effort (often successful)
+to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much fighting,
+and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally,
+straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces
+and drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is
+graceful, fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,&mdash;the
+mark of a school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to
+them, and never likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but
+with an exquisite sense of beauty, and much solemn religious
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark&rsquo;s is Byzantine, the
+law is somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged
+in every trade, and in the preparation of viands of all kinds; a
+crowded kind of London Christmas scene, interleaved (literally)
+by the superb balls of leafage, unique in sculpture; but even this
+is strongly opposed to the wild war and chase passion of the
+Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as sharp, precise,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page374"></a>374</span>
+and accurate, as that of St. Mark&rsquo;s is careless. The Byzantines
+seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together; and, in
+general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four
+months in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect
+<i>feeling</i> here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard
+surface ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing
+can possibly be more chaste, pure, or solemn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of
+St. Zeno;<a name="FnAnchor_96" href="#Footnote_96"><span class="sp">96</span></a> the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt
+above them is to our present purpose:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is covered by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of
+jesting subject:&mdash;two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long
+staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between
+them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right
+angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur
+horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through
+the stag&rsquo;s throat, and is sticking there. Several capital hunts
+with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in them; the
+leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with the
+edges outwards, sharp, and deep cut: snails and frogs filling up
+the intervals, as if suspended in the air, with some saucy puppies
+on their hind legs, two or three nondescript beasts; and, finally,
+on the centre of one of the arches on the south side, an elephant
+and castle,&mdash;a very strange elephant, yet cut as if the carver had
+seen one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Observe this elephant and castle; we shall meet with him
+farther north.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These sculptures of St. Zeno are, however, quite quiet and
+tame compared with those of St. Michele of Pavia, which are
+designed also in a somewhat gloomier mood; significative, as I
+think, of indigestion. (Note that they are much earlier than
+St. Zeno; of the seventh century at latest. There is more of
+nightmare, and less of wit in them.) Lord Lindsay has described
+them admirably, but has not said half enough; the state of mind
+represented by the west front is more that of a feverish dream,
+than resultant from any determined architectural purpose, or
+even from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One
+capital is covered with a mass of grinning heads, other heads
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page375"></a>375</span>
+grow out of two bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures
+are all fighting, or devouring, or struggling which shall be uppermost,
+and yet in an ineffectual way, as if they would fight for
+ever, and come to no decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs
+did I notice, nor a single peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely
+Byzantine), but mermaids with <i>two</i> tails (the sculptor having
+perhaps seen double at the time), strange, large fish, apes, stags
+(bulls?), dogs, wolves, and horses, griffins, eagles, long-tailed
+birds (cocks?), hawks, and dragons, without end, or with a dozen
+of ends, as the case may be; smaller birds, with rabbits, and small
+nondescripts, filling the friezes. The actual leaf, which is used
+in the best Byzantine mouldings at Venice, occurs in parts of
+these Pavian designs. But the Lombard animals are all <i>alive</i>,
+and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring: the Byzantine
+birds peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with
+their noses. The cinque cento birds in Venice hold it up daintily,
+like train-bearers; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at
+it hungrily and naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it
+like tigers, and tear it off with writhing lips and glaring eyes.
+They are exactly like Jip with the bit of geranium, worrying
+imaginary cats in it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The notice of the leaf in the above extract is important,&mdash;it
+is the vine-leaf; used constantly both by Byzantines and Lombards,
+but by the latter with especial frequency, though at this
+time they were hardly able to indicate what they meant. It
+forms the most remarkable generality of the St. Michele decoration;
+though, had it not luckily been carved on the façade,
+twining round a stake, and with grapes, I should never have
+known what it was meant for, its general form being a succession
+of sharp lobes, with incised furrows to the point of each.
+But it is thrown about in endless change; four or five varieties
+of it might be found on every cluster of capitals: and not content
+with this, the Lombards hint the same form even in their
+griffin wings. They love the vine very heartily.</p>
+
+<p>In St. Michele of Lucca we have perhaps the noblest instance
+in Italy of the Lombard spirit in its later refinement. It is
+some four centuries later than St. Michele of Pavia, and the
+method of workmanship is altogether different. In the Pavian
+church, nearly all the ornament is cut in a coarse sandstone, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page376"></a>376</span>
+bold relief: a darker and harder stone (I think, not serpentine,
+but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of ages that I could
+not be certain) is used for the capitals of the western door, which
+are especially elaborate in their sculpture;&mdash;two devilish apes,
+or apish devils, I know not which, with bristly moustaches and
+edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands impertinently on
+their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes near them;
+but all is pure bossy sculpture; there is no inlaying, except of
+some variegated tiles in the shape of saucers set concave (an ornament
+used also very gracefully in St. Jacopo of Bologna): and
+the whole surface of the church is enriched with the massy reliefs,
+well preserved everywhere above the reach of human
+animals, but utterly destroyed to some five or six feet from the
+ground; worn away into large cellular hollows and caverns, some
+almost deep enough to render the walls unsafe, entirely owing to
+the uses to which the recesses of the church are dedicated by
+the refined and high-minded Italians. But St. Michele of Lucca
+is wrought entirely in white marble and green serpentine; there
+is hardly any relieved sculpture except in the capitals of the
+shafts and cornices, and all the designs of wall ornament are
+inlaid with exquisite precision&mdash;white on dark ground; the
+ground being cut out and filled with serpentine, the figures left
+in solid marble. The designs of the Pavian church are encrusted
+on the walls; of the Lucchese, incorporated with them; small
+portions of real sculpture being introduced exactly where the
+eye, after its rest on the flatness of the wall, will take most delight
+in the piece of substantial form. The entire arrangement is
+perfect beyond all praise, and the morbid restlessness of the old
+designs is now appeased. Geometry seems to have acted as a
+febrifuge, for beautiful geometrical designs are introduced amidst
+the tumult of the hunt; and there is no more seeing double,
+nor ghastly monstrosity of conception; no more ending of everything
+in something else; no more disputing for spare legs among
+bewildered bodies; no more setting on of heads wrong side foremost.
+The fragments have come together: we are out of the
+Inferno with its weeping down the spine; we are in the fair
+hunting-fields of the Lucchese mountains (though they had their
+tears also),&mdash;with horse, and hound, and hawk; and merry blast
+of the trumpet.&mdash;Very strange creatures to be hunted, in all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page377"></a>377</span>
+truth; but still creatures with a single head, and that on their
+shoulders, which is exactly the last place in the Pavian church
+where a head is to be looked for.</p>
+
+<p>My good friend Mr. Cockerell wonders, in one of his lectures,
+why I give so much praise to this &ldquo;crazy front of Lucca.&rdquo; But
+it is not crazy; not by any means. Altogether sober, in comparison
+with the early Lombard work, or with our Norman.
+Crazy in one sense it is: utterly neglected, to the breaking of
+its old stout heart; the venomous nights and salt frosts of the
+Maremma winters have their way with it&mdash;&ldquo;Poor Tom&rsquo;s a
+cold!&rdquo; The weeds that feed on the marsh air, have twisted
+themselves into its crannies; the polished fragments of serpentine
+are spit and rent out of their cells, and lie in green ruins
+along its ledges; the salt sea winds have eaten away the fair
+shafting of its star window into a skeleton of crumbling rays.
+It cannot stand much longer; may Heaven only, in its benignity,
+preserve it from restoration, and the sands of the Serchio give it
+honorable grave.</p>
+
+<p>In the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; <a href="#plate_6">Plate VI.</a>, I gave a faithful drawing
+of one of its upper arches, to which I must refer the reader; for
+there is a marked piece of character in the figure of the horseman
+on the left of it. And in making this reference, I would say a few
+words about those much abused plates of the &ldquo;Seven Lamps."&rdquo;
+They are black, they are overbitten, they are hastily drawn, they
+are coarse and disagreeable; how disagreeable to many readers
+I venture not to conceive. But their truth is carried to an extent
+never before attempted in architectural drawing. It does
+not in the least follow that because a drawing is delicate, or looks
+careful, it has been carefully drawn from the thing represented;
+in nine instances out of ten, careful and delicate drawings are
+made at home. It is not so easy as the reader, perhaps, imagines,
+to finish a drawing altogether on the spot, especially of details
+seventy feet from the ground; and any one who will try the
+position in which I have had to do some of my work&mdash;standing,
+namely, on a cornice or window sill, holding by one arm round
+a shaft, and hanging over the street (or canal, at Venice), with
+my sketch-book supported against the wall from which I was
+drawing, by my breast, so as to leave my right hand free&mdash;will
+not thenceforward wonder that shadows should be occasionally
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page378"></a>378</span>
+carelessly laid in, or lines drawn with some unsteadiness. But,
+steady, or infirm, the sketches of which those plates in the
+&ldquo;Seven Lamps&rdquo; are fac-similes, were made from the architecture
+itself, and represent that architecture with its actual shadows at
+the time of day at which it was drawn, and with every fissure
+and line of it as they now exist; so that when I am speaking of
+some new point, which perhaps the drawing was not intended to
+illustrate, I can yet turn back to it with perfect certainty that
+if anything be found in it bearing on matters now in hand, I may
+depend upon it just as securely as if I had gone back to look again
+at the building.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary that my readers should understand this
+thoroughly, and I did not before sufficiently explain it; but I
+believe I can show them the use of this kind of truth, now that
+we are again concerned with this front of Lucca. They will find a
+drawing of the entire front in Gally Knight&rsquo;s &ldquo;Architecture of
+Italy.&rdquo; It may serve to give them an idea of its general disposition,
+and it looks very careful and accurate; but every bit of the
+ornament on it is <i>drawn out of the artist&rsquo;s head</i>. There is not
+<i>one line</i> of it that exists on the building. The reader will therefore,
+perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more value,
+upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its delicate
+fiction.<a name="FnAnchor_97" href="#Footnote_97"><span class="sp">97</span></a></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">XXI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter">
+    <a name="plate_21"><img src="images/img378.jpg" width="419" height="650" alt="WALL VEIL DECORATION." title="WALL VEIL DECORATION." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption">WALL VEIL DECORATION.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="mb">As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church
+somewhat more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favorite
+church should suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had
+this, as far as might be, fac-similied by line engraving (<a href="#plate_21">Plate
+XXI.</a>). It represents the southern side of the lower arcade of the
+west front; and may convey some idea of the exquisite finish and
+grace of the whole; but the old plate, in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page379"></a>379</span>
+gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a more faithful
+impression of the present aspect of the work, and especially
+of the seats of the horsemen; the limb straight, and well down
+on the stirrup (the warrior&rsquo;s seat, observe, not the jockey&rsquo;s), with
+a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice
+under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn;
+it was supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, however,
+the reader has lost the thread of my story while I have been
+recommending my veracity to him. I was insisting upon the
+healthy tone of this Lucca work as compared with the old spectral
+Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian church ride without
+stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here: civilisation
+had done its work; there was reaping of corn in the Val d&rsquo;Arno,
+though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north,
+though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone,
+and its rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more
+meat-eating, then, I think). I do not know a more interesting
+group of cathedrals than that of Lyons, Vienne, and Valencia:
+a more interesting indeed, generally, than beautiful; but there
+is a row of niches on the west front of Lyons, and a course of
+panelled decoration about its doors, which is, without exception,
+the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic I ever beheld, and
+with which I know nothing that is even comparable, except the
+work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the &ldquo;Seven
+Lamps,&rdquo; p. 159; work of about the same date, and exactly the same
+plan; quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished
+in execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote
+down hastily, and in their own course, the subjects of some of
+the quatrefoils of Lyons; of which I here give the reader the
+sequence:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;1. Elephant and castle; less graphic than the St. Zeno one.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards,
+hoofed; the head has a horn behind, with drapery
+over it, which ends in another head.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;3. A boar hunt; the boar under a tree, very spirited.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own
+tail, which ends in a head.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page380"></a>380</span></p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;6. St. Peter awakened by the angel in prison; full of spirit,
+the prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch, the angel
+eager, St. Peter startled, and full of motion.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;7. St. Peter led out by the angel.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;8. The miraculous draught of fishes; fish and all, in the
+small space.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&nbsp;9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nautilus
+shells, with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends
+of their horns.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">10. A man with an axe striking at a dog&rsquo;s head, which comes
+out of a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches
+into a stem with two large leaves.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian; his body very full of arrows.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker
+cage.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">13. Noah building the ark on shores.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">14. A vine leaf with a dragon&rsquo;s head and tail, the one biting
+the other.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">15. A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">16. An eel or muraena growing into a bunch of flowers, which
+turns into two wings.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">17. A sprig of hazel, with nuts, thrown all around the quatrefoils
+with a squirrel in centre, apparently attached to
+the tree only by its enormous tail, richly furrowed into
+hair, and nobly sweeping.</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">18. Four hares fastened together by the ears, galloping in a
+circle. Mingled with these grotesques are many <i>sword</i>
+and <i>buckler</i> combats, the bucklers being round and
+conical like a hat; I thought the first I noticed,
+carried by a man at full gallop on horseback, had been
+a small umbrella.</p>
+
+<p class="mt">This list of subjects may sufficiently illustrate the feverish
+character of the Northern Energy; but influencing the treatment
+of the whole there is also the Northern love of what is called the
+Grotesque, a feeling which I find myself, for the present, quite
+incapable either of analysing or defining, though we all have a
+distinct idea attached to the word: I shall try, however, in the
+next volume.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page381"></a>381</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_9"></a>9. WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE NORTH.</h5>
+
+<p>I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the origin of the
+vaulting shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirmations
+of it in Dahl&rsquo;s work on the wooden churches of Norway.
+The inside view of the church of Borgund shows the timber construction
+of one shaft run up through a crossing architrave, and
+continued into the clerestory; while the church of Urnes is in
+the exact form of a basilica; but the wall above the arches is
+formed of planks, with a strong upright above each capital. The
+passage quoted from Stephen Eddy&rsquo;s Life of Bishop Wilfrid, at
+p. 86 of Churton&rsquo;s &ldquo;Early English Church,&rdquo; gives us one of the
+transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches.
+&ldquo;At Ripon he built a new church of <i>polished stone</i>, with columns
+variously ornamented, and porches.&rdquo; Mr. Churton adds: &ldquo;It
+was perhaps in bad imitation of the marble buildings he had seen
+in Italy, that he washed the walls of this original York Minster,
+and made them &lsquo;whiter than snow.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_10"></a>10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA.</h5>
+
+<p>The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess themselves
+of the body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church
+by the caliph for the <i>sake of its marbles</i>: the Arabs and
+Venetians, though bitter enemies, thus building on the same
+models; these in reverence for the destroyed church, and those
+with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat prolix account of
+the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above quoted) the main
+points are, that &ldquo;il Califa de&rsquo; Saraceni, per fabbricarsi un Palazzo
+presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle Chiese d&rsquo; Cristiani
+si togliessero i più scelti marmi;&rdquo; and that the Venetians, &ldquo;videro
+sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un Cristiano per aver
+infranto un marmo.&rdquo; I heartily wish that the same kind of
+punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_11"></a>11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE.</h5>
+
+<p>I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me
+to be suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page382"></a>382</span>
+second volume of &ldquo;Modern Painters,&rdquo; as compared with the
+first, induced, I believe, this suspicion, very justifiably, in the
+minds of many of its readers. The difference resulted, however,
+from the simple fact, that the first was written in great haste
+and indignation, for a special purpose and time;&mdash;the second,
+after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in inquiries which
+could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my opinions remaining
+then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the
+subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther
+doubt of them may be entertained by any who may think them
+worth questioning, I shall here, once for all, express them in the
+plainest and fewest words I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner
+is not only the greatest (professed) landscape painter who ever
+lived, but that he has in him as much as would have furnished all
+the rest with such power as they had; and that if we put Nicolo
+Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the group, he
+would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others, by
+uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough
+stated. And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year
+1845, the best; and believe that those persons who only like his
+early pictures do not, in fact, like him at all. They do <i>not</i> like
+that which is essentially <i>his</i>. They like that in which he resembles
+other men; which he had learned from Loutherbourg, Claude,
+or Wilson; that which is indeed his own, they do not care for.
+Not that there is not much of his own in his early works; they are
+all invaluable in their way; but those persons who can find no
+beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot
+distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier
+pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his
+pictures painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest;
+and that his entire power is best represented by such pictures as
+the Temeraire, the Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others,
+painted exactly at the time when the public and the press were
+together loudest in abuse of him.</p>
+
+<p style="width: 20%; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-top: 2em; margin-left: 2em;
+	float: right; clear: right; text-align: left; text-indent: 0;">
+Turner. Tintoret.<br />
+Massaccio.<br />
+John Bellini.<br />
+Albert Durer.<br />
+Giorgione.<br />
+Paul Veronese.<br />
+Titian.<br />
+Rubens.<br />
+Correggio.<br />
+Orcagna.<br />
+Benozzo Gozzoli.<br />
+Giotto.<br />
+Raffaelle.<br />
+Perugino.</p>
+
+<p>I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above,
+<i>professed</i> landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should
+hardly have put Gainsborough. The landscape of the great
+figure painters is often majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret&rsquo;s
+especially shows exactly the same power and feeling as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page383"></a>383</span>
+Turner&rsquo;s. If with Turner I were to rank the historical painters
+as landscapists, estimating rather the power they show, than
+the actual value of the landscape they
+produced, I should class those, whose
+landscapes I have studied, in some such
+order as this at the side of the page:&mdash;associating
+with the landscape of Perugino
+that of Francia and Angelico, and
+the other severe painters of religious
+subjects. I have put Turner and Tintoret
+side by side, not knowing which is,
+in landscape, the greater; I had nearly
+associated in the same manner the noble
+names of John Bellini and Albert Durer;
+but Bellini must be put first, for his
+profound religious peace yet not separated
+from the other, if but that we
+might remember his kindness to him in
+Venice; and it is well we should take note of it here, for it furnishes
+us with a most interesting confirmation of what was said
+in the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the
+religious painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in
+Jackson&rsquo;s &ldquo;Essay on Wood-engraving,&rdquo; from Albert Durer&rsquo;s
+Diary:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me
+not to eat or drink with their painters, of whom several are my
+enemies, and copy my picture in the church, and others of mine,
+wherever they can find them, and yet they blame them, <i>and say
+they are not according to ancient art, and therefore not good</i>.
+Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me highly to several gentlemen,
+and wishes to have something of my doing: he called on
+me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for him,
+for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all surprised
+that I should be so much thought of by a person of his
+reputation: he is very old, but is still the best painter of them
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance
+painters, side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon
+to leave them to their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page384"></a>384</span>
+in perfection, envying, stealing, and lying, but without wit
+enough to lie to purpose.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_12"></a>12. ROMANIST MODERN ART.</h5>
+
+<p>It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism
+should be deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and
+picturesqueness have given it over the weak sentimentalism of
+the English people; I call it a miserable influence, for of all
+motives to sympathy with the Church of Rome, this I unhesitatingly
+class as the basest: I can, in some measure, respect the other
+feelings which have been the beginnings of apostasy; I can respect
+the desire for unity which would reclaim the Romanist by love,
+and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the proselyte to
+priestly power; I say I can respect these feelings, though I cannot
+pardon unprincipled submission to them, nor enough wonder at
+the infinite fatuity of the unhappy persons whom they have betrayed:&mdash;Fatuity,
+self-inflicted, and stubborn in resistance to
+God&rsquo;s Word and man&rsquo;s reason!&mdash;to talk of the authority of the
+Church, as if the Church were anything else than the whole
+company of Christian men, or were ever spoken of in Scripture<a name="FnAnchor_98" href="#Footnote_98"><span class="sp">98</span></a>
+as other than a company to be taught and fed, not to teach and
+feed.&mdash;Fatuity! to talk of a separation of Church and State, as
+if a Christian state, and every officer therein, were not necessarily
+a part of the Church,<a name="FnAnchor_99" href="#Footnote_99"><span class="sp">99</span></a> and as if any state officer could do his
+duty without endeavoring to aid and promote religion, or any
+clerical officer do his duty without seeking for such aid and accepting
+it:&mdash;Fatuity! to seek for the unity of a living body of
+truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page385"></a>385</span>
+wood, and thence to expect anything else than plague, and consumption
+by worms undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as
+fatuity! to ask for any better interpreter of God&rsquo;s Word than
+God, or to expect knowledge of it in any other way than the
+plainly ordered way: if <i>any</i> man will do he shall know. But
+of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the Romanist
+Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by
+broken glass; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine
+of an organ-pipe; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on
+priests&rsquo; petticoats; jangled into a change of conscience by the
+chimes of a belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark
+as this, no imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible.
+I had hardly believed that it was a thing possible, though vague
+stories had been told me of the effect, on some minds, of mere
+scarlet and candles, until I came on this passage in Pugin&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Remarks on articles in the Rambler&rdquo;:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Those who have lived in want and privation are the best
+qualified to appreciate the blessings of plenty; thus, those who
+have been devout and sincere members of the separated portion
+of the English Church; who have prayed, and hoped, and loved,
+through all the poverty of the maimed rites which it has retained&mdash;to
+them does the realisation of all their longing desires appear
+truly ravishing. * * * Oh! then, what delight! what joy
+unspeakable! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them,
+in all its pristine life and glory!&mdash;the stoups are filled to the
+brim; the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred
+imagery and rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced,
+sustained by sculptured shafts, the relics of the saints
+repose beneath, the body of Our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated
+stone; the lamps of the sanctuary burn bright; the
+saintly portraitures in the glass windows shine all gloriously; and
+the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the cope chests are
+filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax, and chrismatory
+are there, and thurible, and cross.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one
+should have thought; but he has been brought forward, and
+partly received, as an example of the effect of ceremonial splendor
+on the mind of a great architect. It is very necessary, therefore,
+that all those who have felt sorrow at this should know at once
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page386"></a>386</span>
+that he is not a great architect, but one of the smallest possible
+or conceivable architects; and that by his own account and
+setting forth of himself. Hear him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so unfortunate
+as myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine
+things, studying fine things, designing fine things, and realising
+very poor ones. I have never had the chance of producing a
+single fine ecclesiastical building, except my own church, where I
+am both paymaster and architect; but everything else, either
+for want of adequate funds or injudicious interference and
+control, or some other contingency, is more or less a failure.<span style="letter-spacing: 2em; ">&nbsp;***</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;St. George&rsquo;s was spoilt by the very instructions laid down
+by the committee, that it was to hold 3000 people on the floor at
+a limited price; in consequence, height, proportion, everything,
+was sacrificed to meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by
+the style being restricted to lancet,&mdash;a period well suited to a
+Cistercian abbey in a secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the
+centre of a crowded town.<span style="letter-spacing: 2em; ">&nbsp;***</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being
+reduced on the original estimate; to effect this, which was a
+great sum in proportion to the entire cost, the area of the church
+was contracted, the walls lowered, tower and spire reduced, the
+thickness of walls diminished, and stone arches omitted.&rdquo; (Remarks,
+&amp;c., by A. Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850.)</p>
+
+<p>Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a
+pediment, and Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a
+clay platter; but Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral?
+Let his ineffableness be assured of this, once for all, that no difficulty
+or restraint ever happened to a man of real power, but his
+power was the more manifested in the contending with, or conquering
+it; and that there is no field so small, no cranny so contracted,
+but that a great spirit can house and manifest itself
+therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can gather
+itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there
+was in you, had it been Buonarroti&rsquo;s own, you had room enough
+for it in a single niche: you might have put the whole power of
+it into two feet cube of Caen stone. St. George&rsquo;s was not high
+enough for want of money? But was it want of money that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page387"></a>387</span>
+made you put that blunt, overloaded, laborious ogee door into
+the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that you sunk the tracery
+of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in parsimony that
+you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of diseased
+crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the
+belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which
+nobody can ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in mere incapability
+of better things.</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry to have to speak thus of any living architect; and
+there is much in this man, if he were rightly estimated, which
+one might both regard and profit by. He has a most sincere
+love for his profession, a heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes
+and piscinas; and though he will never design so much as a pix
+or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better than most of the experimental
+architects of the day. Employ him by all means, but on
+small work. Expect no cathedrals from him; but no one, at
+present, can design a better finial. That is an exceedingly beautiful
+one over the western door of St. George&rsquo;s; and there is
+some spirited impishness and switching of tails in the supporting
+figures at the imposts. Only do not allow his good designing of
+finials to be employed as an evidence in matters of divinity, nor
+thence deduce the incompatibility of Protestantism and art. I
+should have said all that I have said above, of artistical apostasy,
+if Giotto had been now living in Florence, and if art were still
+doing all that it did once for Rome. But the grossness of the
+error becomes incomprehensible as well as unpardonable, when
+we look to what level of degradation the human intellect has
+sunk at this instant in Italy. So far from Romanism now producing
+anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has
+been given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance
+half so grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art
+wherever the Romanist priesthood gets possession of it. It
+amounts to absolute infatuation. The noblest pieces of mediĉval
+sculpture in North Italy, the two griffins at the central (west)
+door of the cathedral of Verona, were daily permitted to be brought
+into service, when I was there in the autumn of 1849, by a
+washerwoman living in the Piazza, who tied her clothes-lines to
+their beaks: and the shafts of St. Mark&rsquo;s at Venice were used
+by a salesman of common caricatures to fasten his prints upon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page388"></a>388</span>
+(Compare <a href="#app_25">Appendix 25</a>); and this in the face of the continually
+passing priests: while the quantity of noble art annually destroyed
+in altarpieces by candle-droppings, or perishing by pure
+brutality of neglect, passes all estimate. I do not know, as I
+have repeatedly stated, how far the splendor of architecture, or
+other art, is compatible with the honesty and usefulness of religious
+service. The longer I live, the more I incline to severe
+judgment in this matter, and the less I can trust the sentiments
+excited by painted glass and colored tiles. But if there be indeed
+value in such things, our plain duty is to direct our strength
+against the superstition which has dishonored them; there are
+thousands who might possibly be benefited by them, to whom
+they are now merely an offence, owing to their association with
+idolatrous ceremonies. I have but this exhortation for all who
+love them,&mdash;not to regulate their creeds by their taste in colors,
+but to hold calmly to the right, at whatever present cost to their
+imaginative enjoyment; sure that they will one day find in
+heavenly truth a brighter charm than in earthly imagery, and
+striving to gather stones for the eternal building, whose walls
+shall be salvation, and whose gates shall be praise.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_13"></a>13. MR. FERGUSSON&rsquo;S SYSTEM.</h5>
+
+<p>The reader may at first suppose this division of the attributes of
+buildings into action, voice, and beauty, to be the same division
+as Mr. Fergusson&rsquo;s, now well known, of their merits, into technic,
+ĉsthetic and phonetic.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no connection between the two systems; mine,
+indeed, does not profess to be a system, it is a mere arrangement
+of my subject, for the sake of order and convenience in its treatment:
+but, as far as it goes, it differs altogether from Mr. Fergusson&rsquo;s
+in these two following respects:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The action of a building, that is to say its standing or consistence,
+depends on its good construction; and the first part
+of the foregoing volume has been entirely occupied with the consideration
+of the constructive merit of buildings: but construction
+is not their only technical merit. There is as much of
+technical merit in their expression, or in their beauty, as in
+their construction. There is no more mechanical or technical
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page389"></a>389</span>
+admirableness in the stroke of the painter who covers them with
+fresco, than in the dexterity of the mason who cements their
+stones: there is just as much of what is technical in their beauty,
+therefore, as in their construction; and, on the other hand, there
+is often just as much intellect shown in their construction as
+there is in either their expression or decoration. Now Mr.
+Fergusson means by his &ldquo;Phonetic&rdquo; division, whatever expresses
+intellect: my constructive division, therefore, includes part of
+his phonetic: and my expressive and decorative divisions include
+part of his technical.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, Mr. Fergusson tries to make the same divisions fit
+the <i>subjects</i> of art, and art itself; and therefore talks of technic,
+ĉsthetic, and phonetic, <i>arts</i>, (or, translating the Greek,) of artful
+arts, sensitive arts, and talkative arts; but I have nothing to
+do with any division of the arts, I have to deal only with the
+merits of <i>buildings</i>. As, however, I have been led into reference
+to Mr. Fergusson&rsquo;s system, I would fain say a word or two to
+effect Mr. Fergusson&rsquo;s extrication from it. I hope to find in him
+a noble ally, ready to join with me in war upon affectation, falsehood,
+and prejudice, of every kind: I have derived much instruction
+from his most interesting work, and I hope for much more
+from its continuation; but he must disentangle himself from his
+system, or he will be strangled by it; never was anything so ingeniously
+and hopelessly wrong throughout; the whole of it is
+founded on a confusion of the instruments of man with his capacities.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fergusson would have us take&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&ldquo;First, man&rsquo;s muscular action or power.&rdquo; (Technics.)</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&ldquo;Secondly, those developments of sense <i>by</i> which <i>he does!!</i>
+as much as by his muscles.&rdquo; (Ĉsthetics.)</p>
+
+<p class="nomarg">&ldquo;Lastly, his intellect, or to confine this more correctly to its
+external action, <i>his power of speech!!!</i>&rdquo; (Phonetics.)</p>
+
+<p>Granting this division of humanity correct, or sufficient, the
+writer then most curiously supposes that he may arrange the arts
+as if there were some belonging to each division of man,&mdash;never
+observing that every art must be governed by, and addressed to,
+one division, and executed by another; executed by the muscular,
+addressed to the sensitive or intellectual; and that, to be an
+art at all, it must have in it work of the one, and guidance from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page390"></a>390</span>
+the other. If, by any lucky accident, he had been led to arrange
+the arts, either by their objects, and the things to which they
+are addressed, or by their means, and the things by which they
+are executed, he would have discovered his mistake in an instant.
+As thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="margin-left: 1em; " summary="Contents">
+
+<tr><td style="text-align: right; vertical-align: top; ">
+<p>These arts are addressed to the,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>or executed by,&mdash;</p></td>
+
+<td>
+<p>Muscles!!</p>
+<p>Senses,</p>
+<p>Intellect;</p>
+<p>Muscles,</p>
+<p>Senses!!</p>
+<p>Intellect.</p></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Indeed it is true that some of the arts are in a sort addressed to
+the muscles, surgery for instance; but this is not among Mr.
+Fergusson&rsquo;s technic, but his politic, arts! and all the arts may,
+in a sort, be said to be performed by the senses, as the senses guide
+both muscles and intellect in their work: but they guide them
+as they receive information, or are standards of accuracy, but
+not as in themselves capable of action. Mr. Fergusson is, I believe,
+the first person who has told us of senses that act or do, they
+having been hitherto supposed only to sustain or perceive. The
+weight of error, however, rests just as much in the original division
+of man, as in the endeavor to fit the arts to it. The slight
+omission of the soul makes a considerable difference when it
+begins to influence the final results of the arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fergusson calls morals and religion &ldquo;Politick arts&rdquo; (as if
+religion were an art at all! or as if both were not as necessary to
+individuals as to societies); and therefore, forming these into a
+body of arts by themselves, leaves the best of the arts to do without
+the soul and the moral feeling as rest they may. Hence
+&ldquo;expression,&rdquo; or &ldquo;phonetics,&rdquo; is of intellect only (as if men
+never expressed their <i>feelings!</i>); and then, strangest and worst
+of all, intellect is entirely resolved into talking! There can be
+no intellect but it must talk, and all talking must be intellectual.
+I believe people do sometimes talk without understanding; and I
+think the world would fare ill if they never understood without
+talking. The intellect is an entirely silent faculty, and has nothing
+to do with parts of speech any more than the moral part has.
+A man may feel and know things without expressing either the
+feeling or knowledge; and the talking is a <i>muscular</i> mode of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page391"></a>391</span>
+communicating the workings of the intellect or heart&mdash;muscular,
+whether it be by tongue or by sign, or by carving or writing,
+or by expression of feature; so that to divide a man into muscular
+and talking parts, is to divide him into body in general, and
+tongue in particular, the endless confusion resulting from which
+arrangement is only less marvellous in itself, than the resolution
+with which Mr. Fergusson has worked through it, and in spite
+of it, up to some very interesting and suggestive truths; although
+starting with a division of humanity which does not in the least
+raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has his muscular, ĉsthetic,
+and talking part as much as man, only he talks with his tail,
+and says, &ldquo;I am angry with you, and should like to bite you,&rdquo;
+more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could,
+were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between
+the brute and man is not so much that the one has fewer means
+of expression than the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to express,
+and that we do not understand its expressions. Animals
+can talk to one another intelligibly enough when they have anything
+to say, and their captains have words of command just as
+clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in watching
+the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being, a
+melancholy sense of its dumbness; but the fault is still in its intelligence,
+more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to
+systematise its cries or signs, and form them into language.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no end to the fallacies and confusions of Mr.
+Fergusson&rsquo;s arrangement. It is a perfect entanglement of gun-cotton,
+and explodes into vacuity wherever one holds a light to
+it. I shall leave him to do so with the rest of it for himself, and
+should perhaps have left it to his own handling altogether, but for
+the intemperateness of the spirit with which he has spoken on a
+subject perhaps of all others demanding gentleness and caution.
+No man could more earnestly have desired the changes lately introduced
+into the system of the University of Oxford than I did
+myself: no man can be more deeply sensible than I of grievous
+failures in the practical working even of the present system: but
+I believe that these failures may be almost without exception
+traced to one source, the want of evangelical, and the excess of
+rubrical religion among the tutors; together with such rustinesses
+and stiffnesses as necessarily attend the continual operation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page392"></a>392</span>
+of any intellectual machine. The fault is, at any rate, far
+less in the system than in the imperfection of its administration;
+and had it been otherwise, the terms in which Mr. Fergusson
+speaks of it are hardly decorous in one who can but be imperfectly
+acquainted with its working. They are sufficiently answered
+by the structure of the essay in which they occur; for if
+the high powers of mind which its author possesses had been
+subjected to the discipline of the schools, he could not have
+wasted his time on the development of a system which their simplest
+formulĉ of logic would have shown him to be untenable.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fergusson will, however, find it easier to overthrow his
+system than to replace it. Every man of science knows the difficulty
+of arranging a <i>reasonable</i> system of classification, in any
+subject, by any one group of characters; and that the best classifications
+are, in many of their branches, convenient rather than
+reasonable: so that, to any person who is really master of his
+subject, many different modes of classification will occur at different
+times; one of which he will use rather than another, according
+to the point which he has to investigate. I need only
+instance the three arrangements of minerals, by their external
+characters, and their positive or negative bases, of which the first
+is the most useful, the second the most natural, the third the
+most simple; and all in several ways unsatisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>But when the subject becomes one which no single mind can
+grasp, and which embraces the whole range of human occupation
+and enquiry, the difficulties become as great, and the methods as
+various, as the uses to which the classification might be put; and
+Mr. Fergusson has entirely forgotten to inform us what is the
+object to which his arrangements are addressed. For observe:
+there is one kind of arrangement which is based on the rational
+connection of the sciences or arts with one another; an arrangement
+which maps them out like the rivers of some great country,
+and marks the points of their junction, and the direction and
+force of their united currents; and this without assigning to any
+one of them a superiority above another, but considering them
+all as necessary members of the noble unity of human science
+and effort. There is another kind of classification which contemplates
+the order of succession in which they might most usefully be
+presented to a single mind, so that the given mind should obtain
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page393"></a>393</span>
+the most effective and available knowledge of them all: and,
+finally, the most usual classification contemplates the powers of
+mind which they each require for their pursuit, the objects to
+which they are addressed, or with which they are concerned; and
+assigns to each of them a rank superior or inferior, according to
+the nobility of the powers they require, or the grandeur of the
+subjects they contemplate.</p>
+
+<p>Now, not only would it be necessary to adopt a different
+classification with respect to each of these great intentions, but
+it might be found so even to vary the order of the succession
+of sciences in the case of every several mind to which they were
+addressed; and that their rank would also vary with the power
+and specific character of the mind engaged upon them. I once
+heard a very profound mathematician remonstrate against the
+impropriety of Wordsworth&rsquo;s receiving a pension from government,
+on the ground that he was &ldquo;only a poet.&rdquo; If the study
+of mathematics had always this narrowing effect upon the sympathies,
+the science itself would need to be deprived of the rank
+usually assigned to it; and there could be no doubt that, in the
+effect it had on the mind of this man, and of such others, it was
+a very contemptible science indeed. Hence, in estimating the
+real rank of any art or science, it is necessary for us to conceive
+it as it would be grasped by minds of every order. There are
+some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no one has
+risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and
+others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general
+meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown
+around them: thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible
+of all the sciences, has been raised to unjust dignity by Johnson.<a name="FnAnchor_100" href="#Footnote_100"><span class="sp">100</span></a>
+And the subject is farther complicated by the question of usefulness;
+for many of the arts and sciences require considerable intellectual
+power for their pursuit, and yet become contemptible
+by the slightness of what they accomplish: metaphysics, for instance,
+exercising intelligence of a high order, yet useless to the
+mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet, as it has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page394"></a>394</span>
+become so by the want of the true intelligence which its inquiries
+need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it may
+in future vindicate for itself a higher rank than a man of common
+sense usually concedes to it.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the mere attempt at arrangement must be useful,
+even where it does nothing more than develop difficulties.
+Perhaps the greatest fault of men of learning is their so often
+supposing all other branches of science dependent upon or inferior
+to their own best beloved branch; and the greatest deficiency of
+men comparatively unlearned, their want of perception of the
+connection of the branches with each other. He who holds the
+tree only by the extremities, can perceive nothing but the separation
+of its sprays. It must always be desirable to prove to
+those the equality of rank, to these the closeness of sequence, of
+what they had falsely supposed subordinate or separate. And,
+after such candid admission of the co-equal dignity of the truly
+noble arts and sciences, we may be enabled more justly to estimate
+the inferiority of those which indeed seem intended for
+the occupation of inferior powers and narrower capacities. In
+<a href="#app_14">Appendix 14</a>, following, some suggestions will be found as to
+the principles on which classification might be based; but the
+arrangement of all the arts is certainly not a work which could
+with discretion be attempted in the Appendix to an essay on a
+branch of one of them.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_14"></a>14. DIVISIONS OF HUMANITY.</h5>
+
+<p>The reader will probably understand this part of the subject
+better if he will take the trouble briefly to consider the actions
+of the mind and body of man in the sciences and arts, which
+give these latter the relations of rank usually attributed to them.</p>
+
+<p>It was above observed (<a href="#app_13">Appendix 13</a>) that the arts were
+generally ranked according to the nobility of the powers they
+require, that is to say, the quantity of the being of man which
+they engaged or addressed. Now their rank is not a very important
+matter as regards each other, for there are few disputes
+more futile than that concerning the respective dignity of arts,
+all of which are necessary and honorable. But it is a very important
+matter as regards themselves; very important whether
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page395"></a>395</span>
+they are practised with the devotion and regarded with the respect
+which are necessary or due to their perfection. It does not
+at all matter whether architecture or sculpture be the nobler art;
+but it matters much whether the thought is bestowed upon buildings,
+or the feeling is expressed in statues, which make either
+deserving of our admiration. It is foolish and insolent to imagine
+that the art which we ourselves practise is greater than any other;
+but it is wise to take care that in our own hands it is as noble as
+we can make it. Let us take some notice, therefore, in what
+degrees the faculties of man may be engaged in his several arts:
+we may consider the entire man as made up of body, soul, and
+intellect (Lord Lindsay, meaning the same thing, says inaccurately&mdash;sense,
+intellect, and spirit&mdash;forgetting that there is a moral
+sense as well as a bodily sense, and a spiritual body as well as a
+natural body, and so gets into some awkward confusion, though
+right in the main points). Then, taking the word soul as a
+short expression of the moral and responsible part of being, each
+of these three parts has a passive and active power. The body
+has senses and muscles; the soul, feeling and resolution; the
+intellect, understanding and imagination. The scheme may be
+put into tabular form, thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="80%" summary="data">
+
+<tr class="f80"> <td class="tc1">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tc1">Passive or Receptive Part.</td>
+     <td class="tc1">Active or Motive Part.</td></tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc5">
+<p>Body</p>
+<p>Soul</p>
+<p>Intellect</p> </td>
+
+<td class="tc5">
+<p>Senses.</p>
+<p>Feeling.</p>
+<p>Understanding.</p> </td>
+
+<td class="tc5">
+<p>Muscles.</p>
+<p>Resolution.</p>
+<p>Imagination.</p></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>In this scheme I consider memory a part of understanding, and
+conscience I leave out, as being the voice of God in the heart,
+inseparable from the system, yet not an essential part of it. The
+sense of beauty I consider a mixture of the Senses of the body
+and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Now all these parts of the human system have a reciprocal
+action on one another, so that the true perfection of any of them
+is not possible without some relative perfection of the others, and
+yet any one of the parts of the system may be brought into a
+morbid development, inconsistent with the perfection of the
+others. Thus, in a healthy state, the acuteness of the senses
+quickens that of the feelings, and these latter quicken the understanding,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page396"></a>396</span>
+and then all the three quicken the imagination, and
+then all the four strengthen the resolution; while yet there is a
+danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid feeling
+may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over
+shrewd and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or
+that the understanding and imagination together may take place
+of, or undermine, the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere
+bodily frame there is a delightful perfection of the senses, consistent
+with the utmost health of the muscular system, as in the
+quick sight and hearing of an active savage: another false delicacy
+of the senses, in the Sybarite, consequent on their over indulgence,
+until the doubled rose-leaf is painful; and this inconsistent
+with muscular perfection. Again; there is a perfection of
+muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in that of the
+fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles are
+guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil:
+another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acuteness
+of sense, as in the effort of battle, in which a soldier does not
+perceive his wounds. So that it is never so much the question,
+what is the solitary perfection of a given part of the man, as
+what is its balanced perfection in relation to the whole of him:
+and again, the perfection of any single power is not merely to
+be valued by the mere rank of the power itself, but by the harmony
+which it indicates among the other powers. Thus, for
+instance, in an archer&rsquo;s glance along his arrow, or a hunter&rsquo;s
+raising of his rifle, there is a certain perfection of sense and
+finger which is the result of mere practice, of a simple bodily
+perfection; but there is a farther value in the habit which results
+from the resolution and intellect necessary to the forming of it:
+in the hunter&rsquo;s raising of his rifle there is a quietness implying
+far more than mere practice,&mdash;implying courage, and habitual
+meeting of danger, and presence of mind, and many other such
+noble characters. So also in a musician&rsquo;s way of laying finger on
+his instrument, or a painter&rsquo;s handling of his pencil, there are
+many qualities expressive of the special sensibilities of each,
+operating on the production of the habit, besides the sensibility
+operating at the moment of action. So that there are three distinct
+stages of merit in what is commonly called mere bodily
+dexterity: the first, the dexterity given by practice, called command
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page397"></a>397</span>
+of tools or of weapons; the second stage, the dexterity or
+grace given by character, as the gentleness of hand proceeding
+from modesty or tenderness of spirit, and the steadiness of it
+resulting from habitual patience coupled with decision, and the
+thousand other characters partially discernible, even in a man&rsquo;s
+writing, much more in his general handiwork; and, thirdly, there
+is the perfection of action produced by the operation of <i>present</i>
+strength, feeling, or intelligence on instruments thus <i>previously</i>
+perfected, as the handling of a great painter is rendered more
+beautiful by his immediate care and feeling and love of his subject,
+or knowledge of it, and as physical strength is increased by
+strength of will and greatness of heart. Imagine, for instance,
+the difference in manner of fighting, and in actual muscular
+strength and endurance, between a common soldier, and a man
+in the circumstances of the Horatii, or of the temper of Leonidas.</p>
+
+<p class="mb">Mere physical skill, therefore, the mere perfection and power
+of the body as an instrument, is manifested in three stages:</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" summary="data"><tr><td>
+<p>First, Bodily power by practice;</p>
+<p>Secondly, Bodily power by moral habit;</p>
+<p>Thirdly, Bodily power by immediate energy;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="mt noind">and the arts will be greater or less, cĉteris paribus, according to
+the degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith&rsquo;s
+work at his anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting,
+and riding, admit something of the second; while the fine arts
+admit (merely through the channel of the <span class="correction" title="corrected from 'bodly'">bodily</span> dexterities) an
+expression almost of the whole man.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, though the higher arts <i>admit</i> this higher bodily
+perfection, they do not all <i>require</i> it in equal degrees, but can
+dispense with it more and more in proportion to their dignity.
+The arts whose chief element is bodily dexterity, may be classed
+together as arts of the third order, of which the highest will be
+those which admit most of the power of moral habit and energy,
+such as riding and the management of weapons; and the rest may
+be thrown together under the general title of handicrafts, of
+which it does not much matter which are the most honorable,
+but rather, which are the most necessary and least injurious to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page398"></a>398</span>
+health, which it is not our present business to examine. Men
+engaged in the practice of these are <span class="correction" title="changed from 'calld'">called</span> artizans, as opposed
+to artists, who are concerned with the fine arts.</p>
+
+<p>The next step in elevation of art is the addition of the intelligences
+which have no connection with bodily dexterity; as, for
+instance, in hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals
+and their places of abode; in architecture, of mathematics; in
+painting, of harmonies of color; in music, of those of sound; all
+this pure science being joined with readiness of expedient in
+applying it, and with shrewdness in apprehension of difficulties,
+either present or probable.</p>
+
+<p>It will often happen that intelligence of this kind is possessed
+without bodily dexterity, or the need of it; one man directing
+and another executing, as for the most part in architecture, war,
+and seamanship. And it is to be observed, also, that in proportion
+to the dignity of the art, the bodily dexterities needed even
+in its subordinate agents become less important, and are more
+and more replaced by intelligence; as in the steering of a ship,
+the bodily dexterity required is less than in shooting or fencing,
+but the intelligence far greater: and so in war, the mere swordsmanship
+and marksmanship of the troops are of small importance
+in comparison with their disposition, and right choice of the
+moment of action. So that arts of this second order must be
+estimated, not by the quantity of bodily dexterity they require,
+but by the quantity and dignity of the knowledge needed in their
+practice, and by the degree of subtlety needed in bringing such
+knowledge into play. War certainly stands first in the general
+mind, not only as the greatest of the arts which I have called of
+the second order, but as the greatest of all arts. It is not, however,
+easy to distinguish the respect paid to the Power, from
+that rendered to the Art of the soldier; the honor of victory
+being more dependent, in the vulgar mind, on its results, than
+its difficulties. I believe, however, that taking into consideration
+the greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be
+practised, the multitude of circumstances to be known and regarded
+in it, and the subtleties both of apprehension and stratagem
+constantly demanded by it, as well as the multiplicity of
+disturbing accidents and doubtful contingencies against which it
+must make provision on the instant, it must indeed rank as far
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page399"></a>399</span>
+the first of the arts of the second order; and next to this great
+art of killing, medicine being much like war in its stratagems
+and watchings against its dark and subtle death-enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Then the arts of the first order will be those in which the
+Imaginative part of the intellect and the Sensitive part of the
+soul are joined: as poetry, architecture, and painting; these
+forming a kind of cross, in their part of the scheme of the human
+being, with those of the second order, which wed the Intelligent
+part of the intellect and Resolute part of the soul. But the
+reader must feel more and more, at every step, the impossibility
+of classing the arts themselves, independently of the men by
+whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may
+be made noble by the quantity of human strength and being
+which a great man will pour into it; and an art, great in itself,
+be made mean by the meanness of the mind occupied in it. I do
+not intend, when I call painting an art of the first, and war an art
+of the second, order, to class Dutch landscape painters with good
+soldiers; but I mean, that if from such a man as Napoleon we
+were to take away the honor of all that he had done in law and
+civil government, and to give him the reputation of his soldiership
+only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that
+of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But
+I will not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all
+the arts of the first order it would be found that all that a man
+has, or is, or can be, he can fully express in them, and give to
+any of them, and find it not enough.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_15"></a>15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS.</h5>
+
+<p>The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader
+to form of architecture, may in some sort also be formed of
+painting, owing to the close connection between execution and
+expression in the latter; as between structure and expression
+in the former. We ought to be able to tell good painting by a
+side glance as we pass along a gallery; and, until we can do so,
+we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all: not that I class this
+easily visible excellence of painting with the great expressional
+qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have again
+and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page400"></a>400</span>
+always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among
+some of the more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the
+business of a painter is to <i>paint</i>, and so altogether to despise
+those men, Veronese and Rubens for instance, who were painters,
+par excellence, and in whom the expressional qualities are subordinate.
+Now it is well, when we have strong moral or poetical
+feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as the best part of
+the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of small
+account, the painter&rsquo;s language in which that feeling is conveyed,
+for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed
+be a just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a <i>painter</i>, and it
+was wrong of him to paint. He had much better put his morality
+into sermons, and his poetry into verse, than into a language of
+which he was not master. And this mastery of the language is
+that of which we should be cognizant by a glance of the eye;
+and if that be not found, it is wasted time to look farther: the
+man has mistaken his vocation, and his expression of himself
+will be cramped by his awkward efforts to do what he was not
+fit to do. On the other hand, if the man be a painter indeed,
+and have the gift of colors and lines, what is in him will come
+from his hand freely and faithfully; and the language itself is
+so difficult and so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the
+man is great, and that his works are worth reading. So that I
+have never yet seen the case in which this true artistical excellence,
+visible by the eye-glance, was not the index of some true
+expressional worth in the work. Neither have I ever seen a good
+expressional work without high artistical merit: and that this is
+ever denied is only owing to the narrow view which men are apt
+to take both of expression and of art; a narrowness consequent
+on their own especial practice and habits of thought. A man
+long trained to love the monk&rsquo;s visions of Fra Angelico, turns
+in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of Rubens
+which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But is he
+right in his indignation? He has forgotten, that while Angelico
+prayed and wept in his <i>olive shade</i>, there was different work
+doing in the dank fields of Flanders;&mdash;wild seas to be banked
+out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be
+drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful
+breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page401"></a>401</span>
+walls against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands
+and gross stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of
+harvest homes and Christmas feasts, which were to be the reward
+of it; rough affections, and sluggish imagination; fleshy, substantial,
+ironshod humanities, but humanities still; humanities
+which God had his eye upon, and which won, perhaps, here and
+there, as much favor in his sight as the wasted aspects of the
+whispering monks of Florence (Heaven forbid it should not be
+so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen
+and reapers still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in
+Rubens&rsquo; masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with
+his large human rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by
+birth, and feeling, and education, and place; and, when he
+chose, lordly in conception also? He had his faults, perhaps
+great and lamentable faults, though more those of his time and
+his country than his own; he has neither cloister breeding nor
+boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals or
+annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in him,
+that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king&rsquo;s court, knight&rsquo;s
+camp, or peasant&rsquo;s cottage. On the other hand, a man trained here
+in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow
+that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico.
+But he is just as wrong as the other. Fra Angelico is as true a
+master of the art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that
+<span class="correction" title="changed from 'necesary'">necessary</span> for his. We have been taught in England to think there
+can be no virtue but in a loaded brush and rapid hand; but if
+we can shake our common sense free of such teaching, we shall
+understand that there is art also in the delicate point and in the
+hand which trembles as it moves; not because it is more liable
+to err, but because there is more danger in its error, and more
+at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a colorist
+and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and beautiful,
+that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-play
+and brilliancy of it: However closely it may be surrounded
+by other works of the same school, glowing with enamel and
+gold, Angelico&rsquo;s may be told from them at a glance, like so many
+huge pieces of opal lying among common marbles. So again
+with Giotto; the Arena chapel is not only the most perfect expressional
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page402"></a>402</span>
+work, it is the prettiest piece of wall decoration and
+fair color, in North Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the
+technical and expressional parts of architecture;&mdash;not a true or
+entire correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the
+building must be also best; but so much of correspondence as
+that good building is necessary to good expression, comes before
+it, and is to be primarily looked for: and the more, because
+the manner of building is capable of being determinately estimated
+and classed; but the expressional character not so: we
+can at once determine the true value of technical qualities, we can
+only approximate to the value of expressional qualities: and
+besides this, the looking for the technical qualities first will
+enable us to cast a large quantity of rubbish aside at once, and
+so to narrow the difficult field of inquiry into expression: we
+shall get rid of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, and Renaissance
+Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one
+great rubbish heap; and shall not need to trouble ourselves about
+their expression, or anything else concerning them. Then taking
+the buildings which have been rightly put together, and which
+show common sense in their structure, we may look for their
+farther and higher excellences; but on those which are absurd
+in their first steps we need waste no time.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_16"></a>16. STRENGTH OF SHAFTS.</h5>
+
+<p>I could have wished, before writing this chapter, to have given
+more study to the difficult subject of the strength of shafts of
+different materials and structure; but I cannot enter into every
+inquiry which general criticism might suggest, and this I believe
+to be one which would have occupied the reader with less profit
+than many others: all that is necessary for him to note is, that
+the great increase of strength gained by a tubular form in iron
+shafts, of given solid contents, is no contradiction to the general
+principle stated in the text, that the strength of materials is
+most available when they are most concentrated. The strength
+of the tube is owing to certain properties of the arch formed by
+its sides, not to the dispersion of its materials: and the principle
+is altogether inapplicable to stone shafts. No one would think of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page403"></a>403</span>
+building a pillar of a succession of sandstone rings; however
+strong it might be, it would be still stronger filled up, and the
+substitution of such a pillar for a solid one of the same contents
+would lose too much space; for a stone pillar, even when solid,
+must be quite as thick as is either graceful or convenient, and
+in modern churches is often too thick as it is, hindering sight of
+the preacher, and checking the sound of his voice.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_17"></a>17. ANSWER TO MR. GARBETT.</h5>
+
+<p>Some three months ago, and long after the writing of this
+passage, I met accidentally with Mr. Garbett&rsquo;s elementary Treatise
+on Design. (Weale, 1850.) If I had cared about the reputation
+of originality, I should have been annoyed&mdash;and was so, at first,
+on finding Mr. Garbett&rsquo;s illustrations of the subject exactly the
+same as mine, even to the choice of the elephant&rsquo;s foot for the
+parallel of the Doric pillar: I even thought of omitting, or rewriting,
+great part of the chapter, but determined at last to let it
+stand. I am striving to speak plain truths on many simple and
+trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of what I say has
+been said before, and am quite willing to give up all claim to
+originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any one
+cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not
+as mine, but as the truth, which may be all the world&rsquo;s, if they look
+for it. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frank Howard promised at
+some discussion respecting the &ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; reported in the
+&ldquo;Builder,&rdquo; to pluck all my borrowed feathers off me; but I did
+not see the end of the discussion, and do not know to this day
+how many feathers I have left: at all events the elephant&rsquo;s foot
+must belong to Mr. Garbett, though, strictly speaking, neither
+he nor I can be quite justified in using it, for an elephant in
+reality stands on tiptoe; and this is by no means the expression
+of a Doric shaft. As, however, I have been obliged to speak of
+this treatise of Mr. Garbett&rsquo;s, and desire also to recommend it
+as of much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is
+impossible for me to pass altogether without notice, as if unanswerable,
+several passages in which the writer has objected to
+views stated in the &ldquo;Seven Lamps.&rdquo; I should at any rate have
+noticed the passage quoted above, (<a href="#chap_30">Chap. 30th</a>,) which runs
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page404"></a>404</span>
+counter to the spirit of all I have ever written, though without
+referring to me; but the references to the &ldquo;Seven Lamps&rdquo; I
+should not have answered, unless I had desired, generally, to
+recommend the book, and partly also, because they may serve
+as examples of the kind of animadversion which the &ldquo;Seven
+Lamps&rdquo; had to sustain from architects, very generally; which
+examples being once answered, there will be little occasion for
+my referring in future to other criticisms of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>The first reference to the &ldquo;Seven Lamps&rdquo; is in the second
+page, where Mr. Garbett asks a question, &ldquo;Why are not convenience
+and stability enough to constitute a fine building?&rdquo;&mdash;which
+I should have answered shortly by asking another, &ldquo;Why
+we have been made men, and not bees nor termites:&rdquo; but Mr.
+Garbett has given a very pretty, though partial, answer to it
+himself, in his 4th to 9th pages,&mdash;an answer which I heartily beg
+the reader to consider. But, in page 12, it is made a grave
+charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament interchangeably.
+I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one
+day, will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to
+head his pages thus:&mdash;&ldquo;Beauty not dependent on ornament, <i>or
+superfluous</i> features.&rdquo; What right has he to assume that ornament,
+rightly so called, ever was, or can be, superfluous? I have
+said before, and repeatedly in other places, that the most beautiful
+things are the most useless; I never said superfluous. I said
+useless in the well-understood and usual sense, as meaning, inapplicable
+to the service of the body. Thus I called peacocks and
+lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome
+(taking Juvenal&rsquo;s word for it), and that dried lilies made bad
+hay: but I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the
+world could get on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer,
+I suppose the peacock&rsquo;s blue eyes to be very useless to him; not
+dangerous indeed, as to their first master, but of small service,
+yet I do not think there is a superfluous eye in all his tail; and
+for lilies, though the great King of Israel was not &ldquo;arrayed&rdquo;
+like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us which are their superfluous
+leaves? Is there no Diogenes among lilies? none to be
+found content to drink dew, but out of silver? The fact is, I
+never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament
+meant a thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page405"></a>405</span>
+at architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little
+more than many women do of the other kind of ornament&mdash;the
+only true kind,&mdash;St. Peter&rsquo;s kind,&mdash;&ldquo;Not that outward adorning,
+but the inner&mdash;of the heart.&rdquo; I do not mean that architects
+cannot conceive this better ornament, but they do not understand
+that it is the <i>only</i> ornament; that <i>all</i> architectural ornament is
+this, and nothing but this; that a noble building never has any
+extraneous or superfluous ornament; that all its parts are necessary
+to its loveliness, and that no single atom of them could be
+removed without harm to its life. You do not build a temple
+and then dress it.<a name="FnAnchor_101" href="#Footnote_101"><span class="sp">101</span></a> You create it in its loveliness, and leave it,
+as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well
+adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words
+ornament and beauty interchangeably, in order that architects
+may understand this: I assume that their building is to be a perfect
+creature capable of nothing less than it has, and needing
+nothing more. It may, indeed, receive additional decoration
+afterwards, exactly as a woman may gracefully put a bracelet on
+her arm, or set a flower in her hair: but that additional decoration
+is <i>not</i> the <i>architecture</i>. It is of curtains, pictures, statues,
+things that may be taken away from the building, and not hurt
+it. What has the architect to do with these? He has only to
+do with what is part of the building itself, that is to say, its own
+inherent beauty. And because Mr. Garbett does not understand
+or acknowledge this, he is led on from error to error; for we
+next find him endeavoring to define beauty as distinct from ornament,
+and saying that &ldquo;Positive beauty may be produced by a
+studious collation of whatever will display design, order, and
+congruity.&rdquo; (<a href="#page014">p. 14</a>.) Is that so? There is a highly studious
+collation of whatever will display design, order, and congruity,
+in a skull, is there not?&mdash;yet small beauty. The nose is a decorative
+feature,&mdash;yet slightly necessary to beauty, it seems to me;
+now, at least, for I once thought I must be wrong in considering
+a skull disagreeable. I gave it fair trial: put one on my bed-room
+chimney-piece, and looked at it by sunrise every morning,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page406"></a>406</span>
+and by moonlight every night, and by all the best lights I could
+think of, for a month, in vain. I found it as <span class="correction" title="corrected from 'sugly'">ugly</span> at last as I
+did at first. So, also, the hair is a decoration, and its natural
+curl is of little use; but can Mr. Garbett conceive a bald beauty;
+or does he prefer a wig, because that is a &ldquo;<i>studious</i> collation&rdquo;
+of whatever will produce design, order, and congruity? So the
+flush of the cheek is a decoration,&mdash;God&rsquo;s painting of the temple
+of his spirit,&mdash;and the redness of the lip; and yet poor Viola
+thought it beauty truly blent; and I hold with her.</p>
+
+<p>I have answered enough to this count.</p>
+
+<p>The second point questioned is my assertion, &ldquo;Ornament
+cannot be overcharged if it is good, and is always overcharged
+when it is bad.&rdquo; To which Mr. Garbett objects in these terms:
+&ldquo;I must contend, on the contrary, that the very best ornament
+may be overcharged by being misplaced.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A short sentence with two mistakes in it.</p>
+
+<p>First. Mr. Garbett cannot get rid of his unfortunate notion
+that ornament is a thing to be manufactured separately, and fastened
+on. He supposes that an ornament may be called good in
+itself, in the stonemason&rsquo;s yard or in the ironmonger&rsquo;s shop:
+Once for all, let him put this idea out of his head. We may say
+of a thing, considered separately, that it is a pretty thing; but
+before we can say it is a good ornament, we must know what it
+is to adorn, and how. As, for instance, a ring of gold is a pretty
+thing; it is a good ornament on a woman&rsquo;s finger; not a good
+ornament hung through her under lip. A hollyhock, seven feet
+high, would be a good ornament for a cottage-garden; not a good
+ornament for a lady&rsquo;s head-dress. Might not Mr. Garbett have
+seen this without my showing? and that, therefore, when I said
+&ldquo;<i>good</i>&rdquo; ornament, I said &ldquo;well-placed&rdquo; ornament, in one word,
+and that, also, when Mr. Garbett says &ldquo;it may be overcharged
+by being misplaced,&rdquo; he merely says it may be overcharged by
+being <i>bad</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly. But, granted that ornament <i>were</i> independent of
+its position, and might be pronounced good in a separate form,
+as books are good, or men are good.&mdash;Suppose I had written to
+a student in Oxford, &ldquo;You cannot have too many books, if they
+be good books;&rdquo; and he had answered me, &ldquo;Yes, for if I have
+many, I have no place to put them in but the coal-cellar.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page407"></a>407</span>
+Would that in anywise affect the general principle that he could
+not have too many books?</p>
+
+<p>Or suppose he had written, &ldquo;I must not have too many, they
+confuse my head.&rdquo; I should have written back to him: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+buy books to put in the coal-hole, nor read them if they confuse
+your head; you cannot have too many, if they be good: but if
+you are too lazy to take care of them, or too dull to profit by
+them, you are better without them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Exactly in the same tone, I repeat to Mr. Garbett, &ldquo;You
+cannot have too much ornament, if it be good: but if you are
+too indolent to arrange it, or too dull to take advantage of it,
+assuredly you are better without it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other points bearing on this question have already been
+stated in the close of the 21st chapter.</p>
+
+<p>The third reference I have to answer, is to my repeated assertion,
+that the evidence of manual labor is one of the chief sources
+of value in ornament, (&ldquo;Seven Lamps,&rdquo; p. 49, &ldquo;Modern
+Painters,&rdquo; § 1, Chap. III.,) to which objection is made in these
+terms: &ldquo;We must here warn the reader against a remarkable
+error of Ruskin. The value of ornaments in architecture depends
+<i>not in the slightest degree</i> on the <i>manual labor</i> they contain. If
+it did, the finest ornaments ever executed would be the stone
+chains that hang before certain Indian rock-temples.&rdquo; Is that
+so? Hear a parallel argument. &ldquo;The value of the Cornish
+mines depends not in the slightest degree on the quantity of copper
+they contain. If it did, the most valuable things ever produced
+would be copper saucepans.&rdquo; It is hardly worth my while
+to answer this; but, lest any of my readers should be confused
+by the objection, and as I hold the fact to be of great importance,
+I may re-state it for them with some explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Observe, then, the appearance of labor, that is to say, the
+evidence of the past industry of man, is always, in the abstract,
+intensely delightful: man being meant to labor, it is delightful
+to see that he <i>has</i> labored, and to read the record of his active
+and worthy existence.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence of labor becomes painful only when it is a <i>sign
+of Evil greater, as Evil, than the labor is great, as Good</i>. As,
+for instance, if a man has labored for an hour at what might
+have been done by another man in a moment, this evidence of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page408"></a>408</span>
+his labor is also evidence of his weakness; and this weakness is
+greater in rank of evil, than his industry is great in rank of
+good.</p>
+
+<p>Again, if a man have labored at what was not worth accomplishing,
+the signs of his labor are the signs of his folly, and his
+folly dishonors his industry; we had rather he had been a wise
+man in rest than a fool in labor.</p>
+
+<p>Again, if a man have labored without accomplishing anything,
+the signs of his labor are the signs of his disappointment; and
+we have more sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure
+in sympathy with his work.</p>
+
+<p>Now, therefore, in ornament, whenever labor replaces what
+was better than labor, that is to say, skill and thought; wherever
+it substitutes itself for these, or <i>negatives these by its existence</i>,
+then it is positive evil. Copper is an evil when it alloys gold, or
+poisons food: not an evil, as copper; good in the form of pence,
+seriously objectionable when it occupies the room of guineas.
+Let Danaë cast it out of her lap, when the gold comes from
+heaven; but let the poor man gather it up carefully from the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>Farther, the evidence of labor is not only a good when added
+to other good, but the utter absence of it destroys good in human
+work. It is only good for God to create without toil; that which
+man can create without toil is worthless: machine ornaments
+are no ornaments at all. Consider this carefully, reader: I could
+illustrate it for you endlessly; but you feel it yourself every hour
+of your existence. And if you do not know that you feel it,
+take up, for a little time, the trade which of all manual trades
+has been most honored: be for once a carpenter. Make for
+yourself a table or a chair, and see if you ever thought any table
+or chair so delightful, and what strange beauty there will be in
+their crooked limbs.</p>
+
+<p>I have not noticed any other animadversions on the &ldquo;Seven
+Lamps&rdquo; in Mr. Garbett&rsquo;s volume; but if there be more, I must
+now leave it to his own consideration, whether he may not, as in
+the above instances, have made them incautiously: I may, perhaps,
+also be permitted to request other architects, who may
+happen to glance at the preceding pages, not immediately to
+condemn what may appear to them false in general principle. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page409"></a>409</span>
+must often be found deficient in technical knowledge; I may
+often err in my statements respecting matters of practice or of
+special law. But I do not write thoughtlessly respecting principles;
+and my statements of these will generally be found worth
+reconnoitring before attacking. Architects, no doubt, fancy
+they have strong grounds for supposing me wrong when they
+seek to invalidate my assertions. Let me assure them, at least,
+that I mean to be their friend, although they may not immediately
+recognise me as such. If I could obtain the public ear,
+and the principles I have advocated were carried into general
+practice, porphyry and serpentine would be given to them instead
+of limestone and brick; instead of tavern and shop-fronts
+they would have to build goodly churches and noble dwelling-houses;
+and for every stunted Grecism and stucco Romanism,
+into which they are now forced to shape their palsied thoughts,
+and to whose crumbling plagiarisms they must trust their doubtful
+fame, they would be asked to raise whole streets of bold, and
+rich, and living architecture, with the certainty in their hearts
+of doing what was honorable to themselves, and good for all men.</p>
+
+<p>Before I altogether leave the question of the influence of labor
+on architectural effect, the reader may expect from me a word or
+two respecting the subject which this year must be interesting to
+all&mdash;the applicability, namely, of glass and iron to architecture
+in general, as in some sort exemplified by the Crystal Palace.</p>
+
+<p>It is thought by many that we shall forthwith have great part
+of our architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of
+beauty will result from the studied employment of these materials.</p>
+
+<p>It may be told in a few words how far this is possible; how
+far eternally impossible.</p>
+
+<p>There are two means of delight in all productions of art&mdash;color
+and form.</p>
+
+<p>The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art
+are those of works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect.
+The best and noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by
+the touch of the human hand on an opaque surface, upon which
+it can command any tint required, without subjection to alteration
+by fire or other mechanical means. No color is so noble as
+the color of a good painting on canvas or gesso.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page410"></a>410</span></p>
+
+<p>This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most
+part, in architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of
+the natural colors of stones, which are far nobler than any abstract
+hues producible by human art.</p>
+
+<p>The delight which we receive from glass painting is one altogether
+inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by
+over indulgence. Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise
+some palaces like Aladdin&rsquo;s with colored glass for jewels, which
+shall be new in the annals of human splendor, and good in their
+place; but not if they superseded nobler edifices.</p>
+
+<p>Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent
+bodies: but form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque
+bodies, without lustre.</p>
+
+<p>This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or
+refined form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless
+matter. You cannot see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfection,
+even of a cameo or bronze. You cannot perfectly see the
+form of a humming-bird, on account of its burnishing; but you
+can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble work in form can
+ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous glass or
+enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its
+form: therefore you can never have any noble architecture in
+transparent or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however,
+opaque; and both it and opaque enamel may, perhaps, be rendered
+quite lustreless; and, therefore, fit to receive noble form.</p>
+
+<p>Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel
+made fine in paste or grain, and you may have an architecture
+as noble as cast or struck architecture even can be: as noble,
+therefore, as coins can be, or common cast bronzes, and such
+other multiplicable things;<a name="FnAnchor_102" href="#Footnote_102"><span class="sp">102</span></a>&mdash;eternally separated from all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page411"></a>411</span>
+good and great things by a gulph which not all the tubular
+bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries
+cast into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass
+one inch of. All art which is worth its room in this world, all
+art which is not a piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot
+or two of earth which, if unencumbered by it, would have grown
+corn or violets, or some better thing, is <i>art which proceeds from
+an individual mind, working through instruments which assist,
+but do not supersede, the muscular action of the human hand,
+upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most securely
+retain, the impressions of such human labor</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of
+the quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly
+expressed upon it for ever:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>First, of thought and moral purpose;</p>
+<p>Secondly, of technical skill;</p>
+<p>Thirdly, of bodily industry.</p>
+
+<p>The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses
+is very great. So far it is good.</p>
+
+<p>The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single
+and very admirable thought of Mr. Paxton&rsquo;s, probably not a bit
+brighter than thousands of thoughts which pass through his
+active and intelligent brain every hour,&mdash;that it might be possible
+to build a greenhouse larger than ever greenhouse was built before.
+This thought, and some very ordinary algebra, are as
+much as all that glass can represent of human intellect. &ldquo;But
+one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this intolerable deal of
+sack.&rdquo; Alas!</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+<p class="ind03">&ldquo;The earth hath bubbles as the water hath:</p>
+<p>And this is of them.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_18"></a>18. EARLY ENGLISH CAPITALS.</h5>
+
+<p>The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capitals
+is, indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exaggerated
+force of effect, like the &ldquo;<i>black</i> touches&rdquo; of second-rate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page412"></a>412</span>
+draughtsmen, which I have noticed as characteristic of nearly
+all northern work, associated with the love of the grotesque: but
+the main section of the capital is indeed a dripstone rolled round,
+as above described; and dripstone sections are continually found
+in northern work, where not only they cannot increase force of
+effect, but are entirely invisible except on close examination; as,
+for instance, under the uppermost range of stones of the foundation
+of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base of All
+Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye. I much doubt
+if any of the Fellows be aware of its existence.</p>
+
+<p>Many readers will be surprised and displeased by the disparagement
+of the early English capital. That capital has, indeed,
+one character of considerable value; namely, the boldness with
+which it stops the mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them
+from the shaft, contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their
+vertical lines. Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its
+place, not unpleasing; and we English love it from association,
+it being always found in connection with our purest and loveliest
+Gothic arches, and never in multitudes large enough to satiate
+the eye with its form. The reader who sits in the Temple church
+every Sunday, and sees no architecture during the week but that
+of Chancery Lane, may most justifiably quarrel with me for what
+I have said of it. But if every house in Fleet Street or Chancery
+Lane were Gothic, and all had early English capitals, I would
+answer for his making peace with me in a fortnight.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_19"></a>19. TOMBS NEAR ST. ANASTASIA.</h5>
+
+<p>Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to
+me, and I have taken no pains to discover; their value being not
+in any evidence they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic
+merit as examples of composition. Two of them are within the
+gate, one on the top of it, and this latter is on the whole the best,
+though all are beautiful; uniting the intense northern energy in
+their figure sculpture with the most serene classical restraint in
+their outlines, and unaffected, but masculine simplicity of construction.</p>
+
+<p>I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page
+154, in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page413"></a>413</span>
+I shall always express the same points by the same letters, whenever
+I have to give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the
+reader need never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base
+or span of the centre arch will always be <i>a b</i>; its vertex will always
+be V; the points of the cusps will be <i>c c</i>; <i>p p</i> will be the
+bases of perpendiculars let fall from V and <i>c</i> on <i>a b</i>; and <i>d</i> the
+base of a perpendicular from the point of the cusp to the arch
+line. Then <i>a b</i> will always be a span of the arch, V <i>p</i> its perpendicular
+height, V <i>a</i> the chord of its side arcs, <i>d c</i> the depth of
+its cusps, <i>c c</i> the horizontal interval between the cusps, <i>a c</i> the
+length of the chord of the lower arc of the cusp, V <i>c</i> the length
+of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp, (whether continuous
+or not,) and <i>c p</i> the length of a perpendicular from the point of
+the cusp on <i>a b</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we do not want all these measures for a single arch,
+but it often happens that some of them are attainable more easily
+than others; some are often unattainable altogether, and it is
+necessary therefore to have expressions for whichever we may be
+able to determine.</p>
+
+<p>V <i>p</i> or V <i>a</i>, <i>a b</i>, and <i>d c</i> are always essential; then either <i>a c</i>
+and V <i>c</i> or <i>c c</i> and <i>c p</i>: when I have my choice, I always take <i>a b</i>,
+V <i>p</i>, <i>d c</i>, <i>c c</i>, and <i>c p</i>, but <i>c p</i> is not to be generally obtained so
+accurately as the cusp arcs.</p>
+
+<p>The measures of the present arch are:</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" summary="data">
+<tr><td class="tc2">
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><i>a b</i>,</p>
+<p>V <i>p</i>,</p>
+<p>V <i>c</i>,</p>
+<p><i>a c</i>,</p>
+<p><i>d c</i>,</p></td>
+
+<td class="tc5" style="padding-left: 1em; ">
+<p class="f80">Ft.&nbsp;&nbsp;In.</p>
+<p>3 ,, 8</p>
+<p>4 ,, 0</p>
+<p>2 ,, 4&frac12;</p>
+<p>2 ,, 0&frac14;</p>
+<p>0 ,, 3&frac12;</p>
+
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_20"></a>20. SHAFTS OF DUCAL PALACE.</h5>
+
+<p>The shortness of the thicker ones at the angles is induced by
+the greater depth of the enlarged capitals: thus the 36th shaft is
+10 ft. 4&#8531; in. in circumference at its base, and 10 ,, 0&frac12;<a name="FnAnchor_103" href="#Footnote_103"><span class="sp">103</span></a> in circumference
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page414"></a>414</span>
+under the fillet of its capital; but it is only 6 ,, 1&frac34;
+high, while the minor intermediate shafts, of which the thickest
+is 7 ,, 8 round at the base, and 7 ,, 4 under capital, are yet on the
+average 7 ,, 7 high. The angle shaft towards the sea (the 18th)
+is nearly of the proportions of the 36th, and there are three
+others, the 15th, 24th, and 26th, which are thicker than the
+rest, though not so thick as the angle ones. The 24th and 26th
+have both party walls to bear, and I imagine the 15th must in
+old time have carried another, reaching across what is now the
+Sala del Gran Consiglio.</p>
+
+<p>They measure respectively round at the base,</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" summary="data">
+<tr><td class="tc2">
+<p>The 15th,</p>
+<p>24th,</p>
+<p>26th,</p></td>
+
+<td class="tc5" style="padding-left: 1em; ">
+<p>8 ,, 2</p>
+<p>9 ,, 6&frac12;</p>
+<p>8 ,, 0&frac12;</p>
+
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The other pillars towards the sea, and those to the 27th inclusive
+of the Piazzetta, are all seven feet round at the base, and then
+there is a most curious and delicate crescendo of circumference
+to the 36th, thus:</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" summary="data">
+<tr><td class="tc2">
+<p>The 28th,</p>
+<p>29th,</p>
+<p>30th,</p>
+<p>31st,</p>
+<p>32nd,</p></td>
+
+<td class="tc5" style="padding-left: 1em; ">
+<p>7 ,, 3</p>
+<p>7 ,, 4</p>
+<p>7 ,, 6</p>
+<p>7 ,, 7</p>
+<p>7 ,, 5</p></td>
+
+<td class="tc2" style="padding-left: 5em; vertical-align: top; ">
+<p>The 33rd,</p>
+<p>34th,</p>
+<p>35th,</p>
+<p>36th,</p></td>
+
+<td class="tc5" style="padding-left: 1em; vertical-align: top; ">
+<p>&nbsp;7 ,, 6</p>
+<p>&nbsp;7 ,, 8</p>
+<p>&nbsp;7 ,, 8</p>
+<p>10 ,, 4&#8531;</p>
+
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The shafts of the upper arcade, which are above these thicker
+columns, are also thicker than their companions, measuring on the
+average, 4 ,, 8&frac12; in circumference, while those of the sea façade,
+except the 29th, average 4 ,, 7&frac12; in circumference. The 29th,
+which is of course above the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in
+circumference, which little piece of evidence will be of no small
+value to us by-and-by. The 35th carries the angle of the palace,
+and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which comes above the 24th and
+carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, is strengthened
+by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over the 26th, is
+5 ,, 4&frac12; round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it carries the party
+wall of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room containing part of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page415"></a>415</span>
+St. Mark&rsquo;s library, coming between the two saloons; a room
+which, in remembrances of the help I have received in all my inquiries
+from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant,
+I shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as &ldquo;Mr. Lorenzi&rsquo;s.&rdquo;<a name="FnAnchor_104" href="#Footnote_104"><span class="sp">104</span></a></p>
+
+<p>I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades
+of the Ducal Palace, those which refer to <a href="#plate_14">Plate XIV.</a>, which
+represents one of its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower
+arcade was intended to have been occupied by an ornament resembling
+the one given in that plate. The mass of the building
+being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches is left within
+the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the slabs of
+fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the
+design was ever completed, or the marbles have been since removed,
+but there are now only two spandrils retaining their fillings,
+and vestiges of them in a third. The two complete spandrils
+are on the sea façade, above the 3rd and 10th capitals (<i>vide</i>
+method of numbering, Chap. I., page 30); that is to say, connecting
+the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the 9th with the 10th.
+The latter is the one given in <a href="#plate_14">Plate XIV.</a> The white portions
+of it are all white marble, the dental band surrounding the circle
+is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and never
+found in Venice to my recollection, except in work at least anterior
+to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with
+the three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner
+disc is green serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating
+leaves are grey marble. The three triangles are equilateral. The
+two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each side, and the lower 1 ,, 2.</p>
+
+<p>The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10&frac12;; its field is
+slightly raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at
+A, on the left. A <i>a</i> is part of the red marble field; <i>a b</i> the section
+of the dentil moulding let into it; <i>b c</i> the entire breadth
+of the rayed zone, represented on the other side of the spandril
+by the line C <i>f</i>; <i>c d</i> is the white marble band let in, with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page416"></a>416</span>
+dogtooth on the face of it; <i>b c</i> is 7&frac34; inches across; <i>c d</i> 3&frac34;; and at
+B are given two joints of the dentil (mentioned above, in the
+chapter on dentils, as unique in Venice) of their actual size. At
+C is given one of the inlaid leaves; its measure being (in inches)
+C <i>f</i> 7&frac34;; C <i>h</i> &frac34;; <i>f g</i> &frac34;; <i>f e</i> 4&frac34;, the base of the smaller leaves being
+of course <i>f e</i> - <i>f g</i> = 4. The pattern which occupies the other
+spandril is similar, except that the field <i>b c</i>, instead of the intersecting
+arcs, has only triangles of grey marble, arranged like
+rays, with their bases towards the centre. There being twenty
+round the circle, the reader can of course draw them for himself;
+they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their points,
+and being in contact at their bases: it has lost its central boss.
+The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, through
+which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colors (another
+proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are
+certainly, in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with
+purple, and the grey seem warmed with green.</p>
+
+<p>A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the
+21st capital; but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted
+in the other spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the
+slight meagreness in the effect of the lower story, which is almost
+the only fault of the building.</p>
+
+<p>This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a marked
+characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages, and
+is carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already
+distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in
+<a href="#app_6">Appendix 6</a>. Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have already
+an example in <a href="#plate_1">Plate I.</a> In <a href="#plate_7">Plate VII.</a> we have an earlier
+condition of it, one of the discs being there sculptured, the
+others surrounded by sculptured bands: here we have, on the
+Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because likest to
+the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament
+among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr.
+Donaldson&rsquo;s restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus,
+this ornament is conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly
+on the Arabian buildings of Cairo.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page417"></a>417</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_21"></a>21. ANCIENT REPRESENTATIONS OF WATER.</h5>
+
+<p>I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an enquiry
+into the effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and
+especially the Greek, mind, and knowing that my friend, Mr. C.
+Newton, had devoted much thought to the elucidation of the
+figurative and symbolic language of ancient art, I asked him to
+draw up for me a few notes of the facts which he considered
+most interesting, as illustrative of its methods of representing
+nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the representation
+of water; because this is one of the natural objects
+whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment,
+for it is one of universal interest, and of more closely similar
+aspect in all parts of the world than any other. Waves, currents,
+and eddies are much liker each other, everywhere, than
+either land or vegetation. Rivers and lakes, indeed, differ
+widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from the angry Northern
+ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot of Nubian
+palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterranean
+is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway
+moss.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with
+the following data. One or two of the types which he describes
+have been already noticed in the main text; but it is well that
+the reader should again contemplate them in the position which
+they here occupy in a general system. I recommend his special
+attention to Mr. Newton&rsquo;s definitions of the terms &ldquo;figurative&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;symbolic,&rdquo; as applied to art, in the beginning of the paper.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>In ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian,
+Assyrian, Greek, and Roman races, water is, for the most part,
+represented conventionally rather than naturally.</p>
+
+<p>By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect
+an imitation of nature as the technical means of art will allow:
+on the other hand, representation is said to be conventional,
+either when a confessedly inadequate imitation is accepted in default
+of a better, or when imitation is not attempted at all, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page418"></a>418</span>
+it is agreed that other modes of representation, those by figures
+or by symbols, shall be its substitute and equivalent.</p>
+
+<p>In figurative representation there is always <i>impersonation</i>;
+the sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is
+conceived to be actuated by a will, and invested with such mental
+attributes as constitute personality.</p>
+
+<p>The sensible <i>symbol</i>, whether borrowed from organic or from
+inorganic nature, is not a personification at all, but the conventional
+sign or equivalent of some object or notion, to which it
+may perhaps bear no visible resemblance, but with which the
+intellect or the imagination has in some way associated it.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a
+woman crowned with towers; here the artist has selected for the
+expression of his idea a human form animated with a will and
+motives of action analogous to those of humanity generally. Or,
+again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a figurative representation
+of a river, and, in the conception of the artist, this animal form
+may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind.</p>
+
+<p>This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality
+is embodied is changed.</p>
+
+<p>Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea; a man
+ploughing with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman
+colony. In neither of these instances is there impersonation.
+The dolphin is not invested, like the figure of Neptune, with
+any of the attributes of the human mind; it has animal instincts,
+but no will; it represents to us its native element, only as a part
+may be taken for a whole.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female
+figure, <i>personify</i>, but rather <i>typifies</i> the town, standing as the
+visible representation of a real event, its first foundation. To
+our mental perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems
+no more than man; there is no blending of his personal nature
+with the impersonal nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes
+from the one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the
+symbolic, are three distinct kinds of representation, they are
+constantly combined in one composition, as we shall see in the
+following examples, cited from the art of successive races in
+chronological order.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page419"></a>419</span></p>
+
+<p>In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the
+conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two frescoes
+from tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170: the subject of the
+first of these is an oblong pond, ground-plan and elevation being
+strangely confused in the design. In this pond water is represented
+by parallel zigzag lines, in which fish are swimming about.
+On the surface are birds and lotos flowers; the herbage at the
+edge of the pond is represented by a border of symmetrical fan-shaped
+flowers; the field beyond by rows of trees, arranged round
+the sides of the pond at right angles to each other, and in defiance
+of all laws of perspective.</p>
+
+<table style="float: right; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXXI.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figright2">
+    <a name="fig_71"><img src="images/img419.jpg" width="130" height="90" alt="Fig. LXXI." title="Fig. LXXI." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river
+with papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag
+lines arranged vertically and in parallel lines, so
+as to resemble herring-bone masonry, thus.
+There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding,
+and in both each fish is drawn very distinctly,
+not as it would appear to the eye viewed through
+water. The mode of representing this element
+in Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic
+writing, where the sign of water is a zigzag line; this line is, so
+to speak, a picture of water written in short hand. In the
+Egyptian Pantheon there was but one aquatic deity, the god of
+the Nile; his type is, therefore, the only figurative representation
+of water in Egyptian art. (Birch, &ldquo;Gallery of British Museum
+Antiquities,&rdquo; Pl. 13.) In Assyrian sculpture we have very curious
+conventionally imitative representations of water. On
+several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men are
+seen crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses
+swimming (see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is represented
+by masses of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses
+of hair, and terminating in curls or volutes; these wavy lines
+express the general character of a deep and rapid current, like
+that of the Tigris. Fish are but sparingly introduced, the idea
+of surface being sufficiently expressed by the floating figures and
+boats. In the representation of these there is the same want of
+perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just cited.</p>
+
+<p>In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been discovered,
+the god Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish&rsquo;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page420"></a>420</span>
+tail. Of the character and attributes of this deity we know but
+little.</p>
+
+<p>The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag
+line, occurs on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a
+war galley (see Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably
+struck in Assyria, not long after the conquest of it by the Persians.</p>
+
+<p>In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more
+varied. Two conventional imitations, the wave moulding and
+the Mĉander, are well known. Both are probably of the most
+remote antiquity; both have been largely employed as an architectural
+ornament, and subordinately as a decoration of vases,
+costume, furniture and implements. In the wave moulding we
+have a conventional representation of the small crisping waves
+which break upon the shore of the Mediterranean, the sea of the
+Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>Their regular succession, and equality of force and volume,
+are generalised in this moulding, while the minuter varieties
+which distinguish one wave from another are merged in the
+general type. The character of ocean waves is to be &ldquo;for ever
+changing, yet the same for ever;&rdquo; it is this eternity of recurrence
+which the early artist has expressed in this hieroglyphic.</p>
+
+<p>With this profile representation of water may be compared
+the sculptured waves out of which the head and arms of Hyperion
+are rising in the pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room,
+No. (65) 91, Museum Marbles, vi. pl. 1). Phidias has represented
+these waves like a mass of overlapping tiles, thus generalising
+their rippling movement. In the Mĉander pattern the
+graceful curves of nature are represented by angles, as in the
+Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representation
+of the labyrinth on the coins of the Cnossus is rectangular;
+on later coins we find the curvilinear form introduced.</p>
+
+<p>In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and
+the Mĉander are sometimes used singly for the idea of water,
+but more frequently combined with figurative representation.
+The number of aquatic deities in the Greek Pantheon led to the
+invention of a great variety of beautiful types. Some of these
+are very well known. Everybody is familiar with the general
+form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the Nymphs and River
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page421"></a>421</span>
+Gods; but the modes in which these types were combined with
+conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful
+study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty
+of the language of art formed out of these elements.</p>
+
+<p>This class of representations may be divided into two principal
+groups, those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh
+water.</p>
+
+<p>The power of the ocean and the great features of marine
+scenery are embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus and the
+Nereids, that is to say, in human forms moving through the
+liquid element in chariots, or on the back of dolphins, or who
+combine the human form with that of the fish-like Tritons. The
+sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called Hippocamps, being
+composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a horse,
+the legs terminating in web-feet: this union seems to express
+speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise
+the movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here
+selected to show how these types were combined with symbols
+and conventional imitation.</p>
+
+<p>In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenormant
+et De Witte, Mon. Céram., i. pl. 27), of which the subject
+is, Europa crossing the sea on the back of the bull. In this design
+the sea is represented by a variety of expedients. First, the
+swimming action of the bull suggests the idea of the liquid
+medium through which he moves. Behind him stands Nereus,
+his staff held perpendicularly in his hand; the top of his staff
+comes nearly to the level of the bull&rsquo;s back, and is probably
+meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards
+the surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle
+depth is another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and
+the bottom is indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are
+two echini.</p>
+
+<p>On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archéol., iii.
+pl. 50), we have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the
+fulness of details with which it is made out.</p>
+
+<p>This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in
+feeling, that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography
+now under consideration. The mosaic lines the floor
+and sides of a bath, and, as was commonly the case in the baths
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page422"></a>422</span>
+of the ancients, serves as a figurative representation of the water
+it contained.</p>
+
+<p>On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and
+islands on which fishermen stand; on the floor are fish, crabs,
+and shrimps.</p>
+
+<p>These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the
+sea: the same symbols of the submarine world appear on many
+other ancient designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon
+upheaves the island of Cos to overwhelm the Giant Polydotes,
+the island is represented as an immense mass of rock; the parts
+which have been under water are indicated by a dolphin, a
+shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water by a goat and a
+serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5).</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the
+types, for instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted
+without being viewed in relation to the whole context
+of mythography to which they belong. If we find, for example,
+on one coin of Tarentum a shell, on another a dolphin, on a
+third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder of the town, riding
+on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this latter group
+expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on the
+coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of
+the greater design, having been detached from it, as we may detach
+words from sentences.</p>
+
+<p>The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have
+cited above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms
+of expression. We have, for instance, on coins several representations
+of ancient harbors.</p>
+
+<p>Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern
+Messina in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor
+to a sickle, and on the coins of the town we find a curved object,
+within the area of which is a dolphin. On this curve are four
+square elevations placed at equal distances. It has been conjectured
+that these projections are either towers or the large stones
+to which galleys were moored still to be seen in ancient harbors
+(see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p. 40). With this
+archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some examples
+of the Roman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at
+Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, Pl. II.,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page423"></a>423</span>
+No. 30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two
+recumbent male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the
+foot of the rock a stream is flowing: this is a representation of
+the rock of the Acropolis of Corinth: the female figure is a
+statue of Aphrodite, whose temple surmounted the rock. The
+stream is the fountain Pirene. The two recumbent figures are
+impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and Cenchreia,
+between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon. ii., c.
+16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two
+harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of
+a nymph.</p>
+
+<p>On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a
+semicircular form, the whole arc being marked with small equal
+divisions, to denote the archways under which the ancient galleys
+were drawn, <i>subductĉ</i>; at the either horn or extremity of
+the harbor is a temple; in the centre of the mouth, a statue of
+Neptune. (Millingen, Médailles Inéd., Pl. II., No. 19. Compare
+also <span class="correction" title="originally 'Milligen'">Millingen</span>, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831, pp.
+50-61, Pl. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246;
+and the harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in
+which there is a representation of the Roman fleet and a reclining
+figure of Neptune.)</p>
+
+<p>In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent
+water naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785),
+of which the subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is rendered
+by wavy lines drawn in black on a red ground, and something
+like the effect of light playing on the surface of the water
+is given. On each side of the ship are shapeless masses of rock
+on which the Sirens stand.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of
+the sea is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful
+body, terminating in two barking dogs and two serpent tails.
+Sometimes drowning men, the <i>rari nantes in gurgite vasto</i>, appear
+caught up in the coils of these tails. Below are dolphins.
+Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show the manner in
+which she twists the course of ships. For varieties of her type
+see Monum. dell&rsquo;Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Tavv. 52-3.</p>
+
+<p>The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the
+following heads&mdash;rivers, lakes, fountains.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page424"></a>424</span></p>
+
+<p>There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very
+frequently employed in ancient mythography.</p>
+
+<p>In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form
+combined with that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic
+coin of Metapontum in Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen,
+Ancient Coins of Greek Cities and Kings,) the river Achelous is
+represented with the figure of a man with a shaggy beard and
+bull&rsquo;s horns and ears. On a vase of the best period of Greek
+art (Brit. Mus. No. 789; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of Lit., New
+Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented with
+a satyr&rsquo;s head and long bull&rsquo;s horns on the forehead; his form,
+human to the waist, terminates in a fish&rsquo;s tail; his hair falls down
+his back; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a
+combination of the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles,
+in the commencement of the Trachiniĉ.</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p class="grk" style="padding-left: 12em;" title="Achelôon legô,">
+ <i>&#8125;&#913;&#967;&#949;&#955;&#8183;&#959;&#957; &#955;&#941;&#947;&#969;,</i></p>
+<p class="grk" title="os m&rsquo; en trisin morphaisin exêtei patros,">
+ <i>&#959;&#962; &#956;&#8125; &#7952;&#957; &#964;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#7984;&#957; &#956;&#959;&#961;&#966;&#945;&#8150;&#963;&#953;&#957;
+ &#7952;&#958;&#8132;&#949;&#953; &#960;&#945;&#964;&#961;&#8056;&#962;,</i></p>
+<p class="grk" title="phoitôn enargês auros allot&rsquo; aiolos,">
+ <i>&#966;&#959;&#953;&#964;&#8182;&#957; &#7952;&#957;&#945;&#961;&#947;&#8052;&#962; &#945;&#8166;&#961;&#959;&#962;
+ &#7940;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#964;&#8125; &#945;&#7984;&#8057;&#955;&#959;&#962;,</i></p>
+<p class="grk" title="drajôn heliktos, allot&rsquo; andreiô kytei">
+ <i>&#948;&#961;&#940;&#954;&#969;&#957; &#7953;&#955;&#953;&#954;&#964;&#8056;&#962;, &#7940;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#964;&#8125;
+ &#7940;&#957;&#948;&#961;&#949;&#953;&#8179; &#954;&#973;&#964;&#949;&#943;</i></p>
+<p class="grk" title="bouprôros, ek de daskiou geneiados">
+ <i>&#946;&#959;&#965;&#960;&#961;&#8179;&#961;&#959;&#962;, &#7952;&#954; &#948;&#8050;
+ &#948;&#945;&#963;&#954;&#943;&#959;&#965; &#947;&#949;&#957;&#949;&#953;&#940;&#948;&#959;&#962;</i></p>
+<p class="grk" title="krounoi dierrainonto krênaiou potou.">
+ <i>&#954;&#961;&#959;&#965;&#957;&#959;&#8054; &#948;&#953;&#949;&#8164;&#8165;&#945;&#943;&#957;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#959;
+ &#954;&#961;&#951;&#957;&#945;&#943;&#959;&#965; &#960;&#959;&#964;&#959;&#8166;.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is
+united at the waist with the shoulders of a bull&rsquo;s body, in which
+it terminates. This occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No.
+452.) On the coins of &OElig;niadĉ in Acarnia, and on those of Ambracia,
+all of the period after Alexander the Great, the Achelous
+has a bull&rsquo;s body, and head with a human face. In this variety
+of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in the first
+variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion of
+the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears
+to the human head. On the analogy between these, varieties in
+the type of the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses
+of the marine goddess Thetis are represented, see
+Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb. ii. pp. 106-113. It is probable that,
+in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and also of the Achelous, the
+singular combinations and transformations are intended to express
+the changeful nature of the element water.</p>
+
+<p>Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page425"></a>425</span>
+represented by this combination of the bull and human form,
+which maybe called, for convenience, the Androtauric type. On
+the coins of Sicily, of the archaic and also of the finest period
+of art, rivers are most usually represented by a youthful male
+figure, with small budding horns; the hair has the lank and
+matted form which characterises aquatic deities in Greek mythography.
+The name of the river is often inscribed round the
+head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always
+represented standing, never reclining.</p>
+
+<p>The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium,
+in Magna Grĉcia, has been considered, with great probability,
+a representation of this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which
+are of a very early period, the head of the bull is turned round;
+on those of Thurium, he stoops his head, butting: the first of
+these actions has been thought to symbolise the winding course
+of the river, the second, its headlong current. On the coins of
+Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the adjunct
+of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The
+ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles.
+This probably represents the river bank. Two bulls&rsquo; head
+occur on the coins of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured
+by Mr. Burgon that the two rivers of the place are expressed
+under this type.</p>
+
+<p>The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining
+position, though probably not so much employed in earlier
+Greek art as the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar
+to us, from its subsequent adoption in Roman mythography.
+The earliest example we have of a reclining river-god is in the
+figure in the Elgin Room commonly called the Ilissus, but more
+probably the Cephissus. This occupied one angle in the western
+pediment of the Parthenon; the other Athenian river, the
+Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a male
+and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed,
+is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition
+first led the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position.
+The head of the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether
+he had bull&rsquo;s horns, like the Sicilian figures already described.
+His form is youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page426"></a>426</span>
+there is a flow like that of waves, but the idea of water is not
+suggested by any other symbol. When we compare this figure
+with that of the Nile (Visconti, Mus. Pio Clem., i., Pl. 38), and
+the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre, both of which are of the
+Roman period, we see how in these later types the artist multiplied
+symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the original
+simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in
+the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal
+bearded figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the
+vegetable produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are
+sixteen naked boys, who represent the sixteen cubits, the height
+to which the river rose in a favorable year. The statue is
+placed on a basement divided into three compartments, one above
+another. In the uppermost of these, waves are flowing over in
+one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the other two
+compartments are the animals and plants of the river; the bas-reliefs
+on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated symbolic
+panorama of the Nile.</p>
+
+<p>The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the
+base are, in two compartments, scenes taken from the early
+Roman myths; flocks, herds, and other objects on the banks of
+the river. (Visconti, Mus. P. Cl. i., Pl. 39; Millin, Galerie Mythol.,
+i. p. 77, Pl. 74, Nos. 304, 308.)</p>
+
+<p>In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two interesting
+representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these
+we have, within a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full
+face, with dishevelled hair, and with a dolphin on either side; on
+the reverse a female figure sailing on a swan, below which a wave
+moulding, and above, a dolphin.</p>
+
+<p>On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with
+the youthful head of a river-god, inscribed &ldquo;Hipparis&rdquo; on the
+obverse. On some smaller coins we have the swan flying over
+the rippling waves, which are represented by the wave moulding.
+When we examine the chart of Sicily, made by the Admiralty
+survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a lake through which
+the river Hipparis flows.</p>
+
+<p>We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented
+both their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan
+flying over the waves would represent a lake; the figure associated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page427"></a>427</span>
+with it being no doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place:
+the head, in a circle of wave pattern, may express that part of
+the river which flows through the lake.</p>
+
+<p>Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing
+from a lion&rsquo;s head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl.
+Vasenb., taf. <span class="scs">CXXXIV</span>.), where Hercules stands, receiving a
+shower-bath from a hot spring at Thermĉ in Sicily. On the
+coins of Syracuse the fountain Arethusa is represented by a
+female head seen to the front; the flowing lines of her dishevelled
+hair suggest, though they do not directly imitate, the bubbling
+action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which it rises is
+symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type presents
+a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle
+of wave pattern described above.</p>
+
+<p>These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek
+mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind
+of figurative and symbolic language is employed, but there is a
+constant tendency to multiply accessories and details, as we have
+shown in the later representations of harbors and river-gods cited
+above. In these crowded compositions the eye is fatigued and
+distracted by the quantity it has to examine; the language of art
+becomes more copious but less terse and emphatic, and addresses
+itself to minds far less intelligent than the refined critics who
+were the contemporaries of Phidias.</p>
+
+<p>Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining
+male figures, generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in
+their hands, and leaning on urns from which water is flowing.
+On the coins of many Syrian cities, struck in imperial times, the
+city is represented by a turreted female figure seated on rocks,
+and resting her feet on the shoulder of a youthful male figure,
+who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms, and who is
+sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Müller (Denkmäler
+d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind in
+the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.</p>
+
+<p>On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representations
+of the Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in
+their military expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured
+wavy lines, in which boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli,
+Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this rude conventional imitation is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page428"></a>428</span>
+combined with a figure. In a recess in the river bank is a reclining
+river-god, terminating at the waist. This is either meant
+for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the river,
+and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have
+here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation.</p>
+
+<p>On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav.
+15) a storm of rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius,
+who has a vast outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the
+Townley collection, in the British Museum, is a Roman helmet
+found at Ribchester in Lancashire, with a mask or vizor attached.
+The helmet is richly embossed with figures in a battle scene;
+round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair in the forehead is so
+treated as to give the idea of waves washing the base of the
+turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of a
+town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great
+battle was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant.
+London, iv., Pl. 1-4).</p>
+
+<p>In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori,
+Inscript. Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female
+figures, one of whom is certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the
+earth; another, Thetis, or the sea; the centre of the three seems
+to represent Aphrodite associated, as on the coins of Camarina,
+with the element of fresh water.</p>
+
+<p>This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an
+arched veil. Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows
+a tall water plant, and below the swan other water plants, and a
+stork seated on a <i>hydria</i>, or pitcher, from which water is flowing.
+The swan, the stork, the water plants, and the <i>hydria</i> must all
+be regarded as symbols of fresh water, the latter emblem being
+introduced to show that the element is fit for the use of man.</p>
+
+<p>Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures
+of nymphs reclining with urns, or standing holding before them
+a large shell.</p>
+
+<p>One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is
+the mosaic of Palestrina (Barthélemy, in Bartoli, Peint. Antiques)
+which may be described as a kind of rude panorama of
+some district of Upper Egypt, a bird&rsquo;s-eye view, half man, half
+picture, in which the details are neither adjusted to a scale, nor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page429"></a>429</span>
+drawn according to perspective, but crowded together, as they
+would be in an ancient bas-relief.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_22"></a>22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION.</h5>
+
+<p>I do not mean what I have here said of the Inventive power
+of the Arab to be understood as in the least applying to the detestable
+ornamentation of the Alhambra.<a name="FnAnchor_105" href="#Footnote_105"><span class="sp">105</span></a> The Alhambra is no
+more characteristic of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of
+Gothic: it is a late building, a work of the Spanish dynasty in
+its last decline, and its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to
+be transferred to patterns of carpets or bindings of books, together
+with their marbling, and mottling, and other mechanical
+recommendations. The Alhambra ornament has of late been
+largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment of Regent
+Street and Oxford Street.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_23"></a>23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER.</h5>
+
+<p>Let B A C, <a href="#fig_72">Fig. LXXII.</a>, be the original angle of the wall.
+Inscribe within it a circle, <i>p</i> Q N <i>p</i>, of the size of the bead
+required, touching A B, A C, in <i>p</i>, <i>p</i>; join <i>p</i>, <i>p</i>, and draw B C
+parallel to it, touching the circle.</p>
+
+<p>Then the lines B C, <i>p p</i> are the limits of the possible chamfers
+constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the
+line Q <i>q</i>, N <i>d</i>, <i>r u</i>, <i>g c</i>, &amp;c., or from any other point chosen as a
+centre in the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers
+in straight lines, as <i>a b</i>, <i>e f</i>. There are, of course, an infinite
+number of chamfers to be struck between B C and <i>p p</i>, from
+every point in Q A produced to infinity; thus we have infinity
+multiplied into infinity to express the number of possible chamfers
+of this species, which are peculiarly Italian chamfers; together
+with another singly infinite group of the straight chamfers,
+<i>a b</i>, <i>e f</i>, &amp;c., of which the one formed by the line <i>a b</i>,
+passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal early
+Gothic chamfer of Venice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page430"></a>430</span></p>
+
+<p>Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A <i>l</i> or
+A <i>m</i>, radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken,
+from which, with any radii not greater than the distance between
+such points and Q, an infinite number of curves may be
+struck, such as <i>t u</i>, <i>r s</i>, N <i>n</i> (all which are here struck from
+centres on the line A C). These lines represent the great class
+of the northern chamfers, of which the number is infinity
+raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N <i>n</i> (for
+northern) represents the average condition; the shallower chamfers
+of the same group, <i>r s</i>, <i>t u</i>, &amp;c., occurring often in Italy.
+The lines <i>r u</i>, <i>t u</i>, and <i>a b</i> may be taken approximating to the
+most frequent conditions of the southern chamfer.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption1">Fig. LXXII.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter2">
+    <a name="fig_72"><img src="images/img430.jpg" width="500" height="427" alt="Fig. LXXII." title="Fig. LXXII." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give
+a relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the
+North and South; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invariably
+fall within the line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or
+inclined to A C at an angle greater than A C Q, and often perpendicular
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page431"></a>431</span>
+to it; but never inclined to it at an angle less than
+A C Q.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_24"></a>24. RENAISSANCE BASES.</h5>
+
+<p>The following extract from my note-book refers also to some
+features of late decoration of shafts.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting
+examples of Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars are
+surrounded each by a wreath, one of vine, another of laurel,
+another of oak, not indeed arranged with the fantasticism of
+early Gothic; but, especially the laurel, reminding one strongly
+of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as beautiful, of Veronese
+and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and richly interlaced&mdash;the
+last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work&mdash;and the
+vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as
+those of the Noah,<a name="FnAnchor_106" href="#Footnote_106"><span class="sp">106</span></a> though more injured by time. The capitals
+are far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more
+masculine in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of support,
+though of course showing the tendency to error in this
+respect; and finally, at the angles of the pure Attic bases, on
+the square plinth, are set couchant animals; one, an elephant
+four inches high, very curiously and cleverly cut, and all these
+details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy, and affection quite
+worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the marked fault
+of being utterly detached from the architecture. The wreaths
+round the columns look as if they would drop off the next
+moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect
+of mice who had got there by accident: one feels them ridiculously
+diminutive, and utterly useless.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to
+there being no other groups of figures near them, to accustom
+the eye to the proportion, and to the needless choice of the
+largest animals, elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position
+so completely insignificant, and to be expressed on so contemptible
+a scale,&mdash;not in a bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture,
+but as independent figures. The whole building is a most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page432"></a>432</span>
+curious illustration of the appointed fate of the Renaissance
+architects,&mdash;to caricature whatever they imitated, and misapply
+whatever they learned.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5><a name="app_25"></a>25. ROMANIST DECORATION OF BASES.</h5>
+
+<p>I have spoken above (<a href="#app_12">Appendix 12</a>) of the way in which the
+Roman Catholic priests everywhere suffer their churches to be
+desecrated. But the worst instances I ever saw of sacrilege and
+brutality, daily permitted in the face of all men, were the uses
+to which the noble base of St. Mark&rsquo;s was put, when I was last
+in Venice. Portions of nearly all cathedrals may be found
+abandoned to neglect; but this base of St. Mark&rsquo;s is in no
+obscure position. Full fronting the western sun&mdash;crossing the
+whole breadth of St. Mark&rsquo;s Place&mdash;the termination of the most
+noble square in the world&mdash;the centre of the most noble city&mdash;its
+purple marbles were, in the winter of 1849, the customary
+<i>gambling tables</i> of the idle children of Venice; and the parts
+which flank the Great Entrance, that very entrance where
+&ldquo;Barbarossa flung his mantle off,&rdquo; were the counters of a common
+bazaar for children&rsquo;s toys, carts, dolls, and small pewter
+spoons and dishes, German caricatures and books of the Opera,
+mixed with those of the offices of religion; the caricatures being
+fastened with twine round the porphyry shafts of the church.
+One Sunday, the 24th of February, 1850, the book-stall being
+somewhat more richly laid out than usual, I noted down the
+titles of a few of the books in the order in which they lay, and I
+give them below. The irony conveyed by the juxtaposition of
+the three in Italics appears too shrewd to be accidental; but the
+fact was actually so.</p>
+
+<p>Along the edge of the white plinth were a row of two kinds
+of books,</p>
+
+<p class="l1">Officium Beatĉ Virg. M.; and Officium Hebdomadĉ
+sanctĉ, juxta Formam Missalis et Breviarii Romani
+sub Urbano VIII. correcti.</p>
+
+<p>Behind these lay, side by side, the following:</p>
+
+<p class="l1">Don Desiderio. Dramma Giocoso per Musica.</p>
+<p class="l1">Breve Esposizione della Carattere di vera Religione.</p>
+
+<p>On the top of this latter, keeping its leaves open,</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page433"></a>433</span></p>
+
+<p class="l1">La Figlia del Reggimento. Melodramma comica.</p>
+<p class="l1"><i>Carteggio di Madama la Marchesa di Pompadour, ossia raccolta di Lettere scritte della Medesima.</i></p>
+<p class="l1"><i>Istruzioni di morale Condotta per le Figlie.</i></p>
+<p class="l1"><i>Francesca di Rimini. Dramma per Musica.</i></p>
+
+<p>Then, a little farther on, after a mass of plays:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="l1">Orazioni a Gesu Nazareno e a Maria addolorata.</p>
+<p class="l1">Semiramide; Melodramma tragico da rappresentarsi nel Gran Teatro il Fenice.</p>
+<p class="l1">Modo di orare per l&rsquo;Acquisto del S. Giubileo, conceduto a tutto il Mondo Cattolico da S. S. Gregorio XVI.</p>
+<p class="l1">Le due illustre Rivali, Melodramma in Tre Atti, da <span class="correction" title="space between 'rappresent'
+and 'arsi' removed">rappresentarsi</span> nel nuovo Gran Teatro il Fenice.</p>
+<p class="l1">Il Cristiano secondo il Cuore di Gesu, per la Pratica delle sue Virtu.</p>
+<p class="l1">Traduzione <span class="correction" title="corrected from 'del'">dell</span>&rsquo; Idioma Italiana.</p>
+<p class="l1">La chiava Chinese; Commedia del Sig. Abate Pietro Chiari.</p>
+<p class="l1">La Pelarina; Intermezzo de Tre Parti per Musica.</p>
+<p class="l1">Il Cavaliero e la Dama; Commedia in Tre Atti in Prosa.</p>
+
+<p>I leave these facts without comment. But this being the
+last piece of Appendix I have to add to the present volume, I
+would desire to close its pages with a question to my readers&mdash;a
+statistical question, which, I doubt not, is being accurately
+determined for us all elsewhere, and which, therefore, it seems
+to me, our time would not be wasted in determining for ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>There has now been peace between England and the continental
+powers about thirty-five years, and during that period the
+English have visited the continent at the rate of many thousands
+a year, staying there, I suppose, on the average, each two or
+three months; nor these an inferior kind of English, but the
+kind which ought to be the best&mdash;the noblest born, the best
+taught, the richest in time and money, having more leisure,
+knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation.
+These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the condition
+of the states in which the Papal religion is professed, and
+being, at the same time, the most enlightened section of a great
+Protestant nation, would have been animated with some desire
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page434"></a>434</span>
+to dissipate the Romanist errors, and to communicate to others
+the better knowledge which they possessed themselves. I doubt
+not but that He who gave peace upon the earth, and gave it by
+the hand of England, expected this much of her, and has
+watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they crossed
+the sea, and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and
+of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller
+nor his courier were at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but
+that such accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and
+that a day will come when they will be made clearly legible to
+us, and when we shall see added together, on one side of the
+account book, a great sum, the certain portion, whatever it may
+be, of this thirty-five years&rsquo; spendings of the rich English,
+accounted for in this manner:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>To wooden spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at
+Geneva, and elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell
+cameos and bits of mosaic bought at Rome, so much; to coral
+horns and lava brooches bought at Naples, so much; to glass
+beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa, so much; to pictures,
+and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much; to avant-couriers
+and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so
+much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights,
+so much; to ball-dresses and general vanities, so much. This, I
+say, will be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other
+will be <span class="correction" title="originally 'written,'">written:</span></p>
+
+<p>To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland,
+and Piedmont, so much.</p>
+
+<p>Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in
+time?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_93" href="#FnAnchor_93"><span class="fn">93</span></a> Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_94" href="#FnAnchor_94"><span class="fn">94</span></a> Compare <a href="#app_12">Appendix 12</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_95" href="#FnAnchor_95"><span class="fn">95</span></a> L&rsquo;Artiste en Bâtiments, par Louis Berteaux: Dijon, 1848. My printer
+writes at the side of the page a note, which I insert with thanks:&mdash;&ldquo;This
+is not the first attempt at a French order. The writer has a Treatise by
+Sebastian Le Clerc, a great man in his generation, which contains a Roman
+order, a Spanish order, which the inventor appears to think very grand,
+and a <i>new</i> French order nationalised by the Gallic cock crowing and clapping
+its wings in the capital.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_96" href="#FnAnchor_96"><span class="fn">96</span></a> The lower group in <a href="#plate_17">Plate XVII.</a></p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_97" href="#FnAnchor_97"><span class="fn">97</span></a> One of the upper stories is also in Gally Knight&rsquo;s plate represented as
+merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in reality, covered with as delicate
+inlaying as the rest. The whole front is besides out of proportion, and
+out of perspective, at once; and yet this work is referred to as of authority,
+by our architects. Well may our architecture fall from its place among the
+fine arts, as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted
+to the Greek architecture, which is <i>utterly useless</i> to us&mdash;or worse. <i>One</i>
+most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our English abbeys,&mdash;Mr.
+E. Sharpe&rsquo;s &ldquo;Architectural Parallels&rdquo;&mdash;almost a model of what I should
+like to see done for the Gothic of all Europe.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_98" href="#FnAnchor_98"><span class="fn">98</span></a> Except in the single passage &ldquo;tell it unto the Church,&rdquo; which is simply
+the <i>extension</i> of what had been commanded before, i.e., tell the fault first
+&ldquo;between thee and him,&rdquo; then taking &ldquo;with thee one or two more,&rdquo; then,
+to all Christian men capable of hearing the cause: if he refuse to hear their
+common voice, &ldquo;let him be unto thee as a heathen man and publican:&rdquo;
+(But consider how Christ treated both.)</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_99" href="#FnAnchor_99"><span class="fn">99</span></a> One or two remarks on this subject, some of which I had intended to
+have inserted here, and others in <a href="#app_5">Appendix 5</a>, I have arranged in more consistent
+order, and published in a separate pamphlet, &ldquo;Notes on the Construction
+of Sheep-folds,&rdquo; for the convenience of readers interested in other
+architecture than that of Venetian palaces.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_100" href="#FnAnchor_100"><span class="fn">100</span></a> Not, however, by Johnson&rsquo;s <i>testimony</i>: Vide Adventurer, No. 39.
+&ldquo;Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,&mdash;the low drudgery
+of collating copies, comparing authorities, <i>digesting dictionaries</i>, or accumulating
+compilations.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_101" href="#FnAnchor_101"><span class="fn">101</span></a> We have done so&mdash;theoretically; just as one would reason on the
+human form from the bones outwards: but the Architect of human form
+frames all at once&mdash;bone and flesh.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_102" href="#FnAnchor_102"><span class="fn">102</span></a> Of course mere multiplicability, as of an engraving, does not diminish
+the intrinsic value of the work; and if the casts of sculpture could be as
+sharp as the sculpture itself, they would hold to it the relation of value
+which engravings hold to paintings. And, if we choose to have our churches
+all alike, we might cast them all in bronze&mdash;we might actually coin churches,
+and have mints of Cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the
+century to put milled edges for mouldings, and have a popular currency of
+religious subjects: a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not
+heard this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the results
+which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere mechanical
+applications of glass and iron.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_103" href="#FnAnchor_103"><span class="fn">103</span></a> I shall often have occasion to write measures in the current text, therefore
+the reader will kindly understand that whenever they are thus written,
+2 ,, 2, with double commas between, the first figures stand for English feet,
+the second for English inches.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_104" href="#FnAnchor_104"><span class="fn">104</span></a> I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my kind
+friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, for help given me in a thousand ways during
+my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages elucidatory of
+my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark&rsquo;s library.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_105" href="#FnAnchor_105"><span class="fn">105</span></a> I have not seen the building itself, but Mr. Owen Jones&rsquo;s work may,
+I suppose, be considered as sufficiently representing it for all purposes of
+criticism.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_106" href="#FnAnchor_106"><span class="fn">106</span></a> The sculpture of the Drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace, of
+which we shall have much to say hereafter.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="art" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="pg">
+<table class="pg" border="0" style="background-color: #ddddee;" cellpadding="10">
+<tr><td><a name="tntag" id="tntag"></a>
+<h4>Transcriber's Note:</h4>
+<p>This is the first volume of three.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The index is in Volume III, with links to all
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+
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+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</div>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,15727 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3), by
+John Ruskin
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3)
+
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 27, 2009  [eBook #30754]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STONES OF VENICE, VOLUME I (OF
+3)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Marius Masi, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 30754-h.htm or 30754-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30754/30754-h/30754-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30754/30754-h.zip)
+
+
+      Volumes II and III are available in the Project Gutenberg
+      Library:
+      Volume II--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30755
+      Volume III--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30756
+
+      Volume III contains the index for all three volumes. The
+      index in the html version of Volume III has links to the
+      the other two volumes.
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are
+      listed at the end of the text.
+
+      A number following a letter, such as d3, was printed as a
+      subscript in the original.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Complete Works of John Ruskin
+
+Volume VII
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+[Illustration: VENICE.
+               FROM A PAINTING BY
+               J. M. W. TURNER.]
+
+
+Library Edition
+
+The Complete Works of John Ruskin
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+VOLUMES I-II
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+National Library Association
+New York             Chicago
+
+
+
+
+THE
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+THE FOUNDATIONS
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In the course of arranging the following essay, I put many things aside
+in my thoughts to be said in the Preface, things which I shall now put
+aside altogether, and pass by; for when a book has been advertised a
+year and a half, it seems best to present it with as little preface as
+possible.
+
+Thus much, however, it is necessary for the reader to know, that, when I
+planned the work, I had materials by me, collected at different times of
+sojourn in Venice during the last seventeen years, which it seemed to me
+might be arranged with little difficulty, and which I believe to be of
+value as illustrating the history of Southern Gothic. Requiring,
+however, some clearer assurance respecting certain points of chronology,
+I went to Venice finally in the autumn of 1849, not doubting but that
+the dates of the principal edifices of the ancient city were either
+ascertained, or ascertainable without extraordinary research. To my
+consternation, I found that the Venetian antiquaries were not agreed
+within a century as to the date of the building of the facades of the
+Ducal Palace, and that nothing was known of any other civil edifice of
+the early city, except that at some time or other it had been fitted up
+for somebody's reception, and been thereupon fresh painted. Every date
+in question was determinable only by internal evidence, and it became
+necessary for me to examine not only every one of the older palaces,
+stone by stone, but every fragment throughout the city which afforded
+any clue to the formation of its styles. This I did as well as I could,
+and I believe there will be found, in the following pages, the only
+existing account of the details of early Venetian architecture on which
+dependence can be placed, as far as it goes. I do not care to point out
+the deficiencies of other works on this subject; the reader will find,
+if he examines them, either that the buildings to which I shall
+specially direct his attention have been hitherto undescribed, or else
+that there are great discrepancies between previous descriptions and
+mine: for which discrepancies I may be permitted to give this single and
+sufficient reason, that my account of every building is based on
+personal examination and measurement of it, and that my taking the pains
+so to examine what I had to describe, was a subject of grave surprise to
+my Italian friends. The work of the Marchese Selvatico is, however, to
+be distinguished with respect; it is clear in arrangement, and full of
+useful, though vague, information; and I have found cause to adopt, in
+great measure, its views of the chronological succession of the edifices
+of Venice. I shall have cause hereafter to quarrel with it on other
+grounds, but not without expression of gratitude for the assistance it
+has given me. Fontana's "Fabbriche di Venezia" is also historically
+valuable, but does not attempt to give architectural detail. Cicognara,
+as is now generally known, is so inaccurate as hardly to deserve
+mention.
+
+Indeed, it is not easy to be accurate in an account of anything, however
+simple. Zoologists often disagree in their descriptions of the curve of
+a shell, or the plumage of a bird, though they may lay their specimen on
+the table, and examine it at their leisure; how much greater becomes the
+likelihood of error in the description of things which must be in many
+parts observed from a distance, or under unfavorable circumstances of
+light and shade; and of which many of the distinctive features have been
+worn away by time. I believe few people have any idea of the cost of
+truth in these things; of the expenditure of time necessary to make sure
+of the simplest facts, and of the strange way in which separate
+observations will sometimes falsify each other, incapable of
+reconcilement, owing to some imperceptible inadvertency. I am ashamed of
+the number of times in which I have had to say, in the following pages,
+"I am not sure," and I claim for them no authority, as if they were
+thoroughly sifted from error, even in what they more confidently state.
+Only, as far as my time, and strength, and mind served me, I have
+endeavored down to the smallest matters, to ascertain and speak the
+truth.
+
+Nor was the subject without many and most discouraging difficulties,
+peculiar to itself. As far as my inquiries have extended, there is not a
+building in Venice, raised prior to the sixteenth century, which has not
+sustained essential change in one or more of its most important
+features. By far the greater number present examples of three or four
+different styles, it may be successive, it may be accidentally
+associated; and, in many instances, the restorations or additions have
+gradually replaced the entire structure of the ancient fabric, of which
+nothing but the name remains, together with a kind of identity,
+exhibited in the anomalous association of the modernized portions: the
+Will of the old building asserted through them all, stubbornly, though
+vainly, expressive; superseded by codicils, and falsified by
+misinterpretation; yet animating what would otherwise be a mere group of
+fantastic masque, as embarrassing to the antiquary, as to the
+mineralogist, the epigene crystal, formed by materials of one substance
+modelled on the perished crystals of another. The church of St. Mark's
+itself, harmonious as its structure may at first sight appear, is an
+epitome of the changes of Venetian architecture from the tenth to the
+nineteenth century. Its crypt, and the line of low arches which support
+the screen, are apparently the earliest portions; the lower stories of
+the main fabric are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with later
+Gothic interpolations; the pinnacles are of the earliest fully developed
+Venetian Gothic (fourteenth century); but one of them, that on the
+projection at the eastern extremity of the Piazzetta de Leoni, is of far
+finer, and probably earlier workmanship than all the rest. The southern
+range of pinnacles is again inferior to the northern and western, and
+visibly of later date. Then the screen, which most writers have
+described as part of the original fabric, bears its date inscribed on
+its architrave, 1394, and with it are associated a multitude of small
+screens, balustrades, decorations of the interior building, and probably
+the rose window of the south transept. Then come the interpolated
+traceries of the front and sides; then the crocketings of the upper
+arches, extravagances of the incipient Renaissance: and, finally, the
+figures which carry the waterspouts on the north side--utterly barbarous
+seventeenth or eighteenth century work--connect the whole with the
+plastered restorations of the year 1844 and 1845. Most of the palaces in
+Venice have sustained interpolations hardly less numerous; and those of
+the Ducal Palace are so intricate, that a year's labor would probably be
+insufficient altogether to disentangle and define them. I therefore gave
+up all thoughts of obtaining a perfectly clear chronological view of the
+early architecture; but the dates necessary to the main purposes of the
+book the reader will find well established; and of the evidence brought
+forward for those of less importance, he is himself to judge. Doubtful
+estimates are never made grounds of argument; and the accuracy of the
+account of the buildings themselves, for which alone I pledge myself,
+is of course entirely independent of them.
+
+In like manner, as the statements briefly made in the chapters on
+construction involve questions so difficult and so general, that I
+cannot hope that every expression referring to them will be found free
+from error: and as the conclusions to which I have endeavored to lead
+the reader are thrown into a form the validity of which depends on that
+of each successive step, it might be argued, if fallacy or weakness
+could be detected in one of them, that all the subsequent reasonings
+were valueless. The reader may be assured, however, that it is not so;
+the method of proof used in the following essay being only one out of
+many which were in my choice, adopted because it seemed to me the
+shortest and simplest, not as being the strongest. In many cases, the
+conclusions are those which men of quick feeling would arrive at
+instinctively; and I then sought to discover the reasons of what so
+strongly recommended itself as truth. Though these reasons could every
+one of them, from the beginning to the end of the book, be proved
+insufficient, the truth of its conclusions would remain the same. I
+should only regret that I had dishonored them by an ill-grounded
+defence; and endeavor to repair my error by a better one.
+
+I have not, however, written carelessly; nor should I in any wise have
+expressed doubt of the security of the following argument, but that it
+is physically impossible for me, being engaged quite as much with
+mountains, and clouds, and trees, and criticism of painting, as with
+architecture, to verify, as I should desire, the expression of every
+sentence bearing upon empirical and technical matters. Life is not long
+enough; nor does a day pass by without causing me to feel more bitterly
+the impossibility of carrying out to the extent which I should desire,
+the separate studies which general criticism continually forces me to
+undertake. I can only assure the reader, that he will find the certainty
+of every statement I permit myself to make, increase with its
+importance; and that, for the security of the final conclusions of the
+following essay, as well as for the resolute veracity of its account of
+whatever facts have come under my own immediate cognizance, I will
+pledge myself to the uttermost.
+
+It was necessary, to the accomplishment of the purpose of the work (of
+which account is given in the First Chapter), that I should establish
+some canons of judgment, which the general reader should thoroughly
+understand, and, if it pleased him, accept, before we took cognizance,
+together, of any architecture whatsoever. It has taken me more time and
+trouble to do this than I expected; but, if I have succeeded, the thing
+done will be of use for many other purposes than that to which it is now
+put. The establishment of these canons, which I have called "the
+Foundations," and some account of the connection of Venetian
+architecture with that of the rest of Europe, have filled the present
+volume. The second will, I hope, contain all I have to say about Venice
+itself.
+
+It was of course inexpedient to reduce drawings of crowded details to
+the size of an octavo volume,--I do not say impossible, but inexpedient;
+requiring infinite pains on the part of the engraver, with no result
+except farther pains to the beholder. And as, on the other hand, folio
+books are not easy reading, I determined to separate the text and the
+unreducible plates. I have given, with the principal text, all the
+illustrations absolutely necessary to the understanding of it, and, in
+the detached work, such additional text as has special reference to the
+larger illustrations.
+
+A considerable number of these larger plates were at first intended to
+be executed in tinted lithography; but, finding the result
+unsatisfactory, I have determined to prepare the principal subjects for
+mezzotinting,--a change of method requiring two new drawings to be made
+of every subject; one a carefully penned outline for the etcher, and
+then a finished drawing upon the etching. This work does not proceed
+fast, while I am also occupied with the completion of the text; but the
+numbers of it will appear as fast as I can prepare them.
+
+For the illustrations of the body of the work itself, I have used any
+kind of engraving which seemed suited to the subjects--line and
+mezzotint, on steel, with mixed lithographs and woodcuts, at
+considerable loss of uniformity in the appearance of the volume, but, I
+hope, with advantage, in rendering the character of the architecture it
+describes. And both in the plates and the text I have aimed chiefly at
+clear intelligibility; that any one, however little versed in the
+subject, might be able to take up the book, and understand what it meant
+forthwith. I have utterly failed of my purpose, if I have not made all
+the essential parts of the essay intelligible to the least learned, and
+easy to the most desultory readers, who are likely to take interest in
+the matter at all. There are few passages which even require so much as
+an acquaintance with the elements of Euclid, and these may be missed,
+without harm to the sense of the rest, by every reader to whom they may
+appear mysterious; and the architectural terms necessarily employed
+(which are very few) are explained as they occur, or in a note; so that,
+though I may often be found trite or tedious, I trust that I shall not
+be obscure. I am especially anxious to rid this essay of ambiguity,
+because I want to gain the ear of all kinds of persons. Every man has,
+at some time of his life, personal interest in architecture. He has
+influence on the design of some public building; or he has to buy, or
+build, or alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge
+of other arts be general or not; men may live without buying pictures or
+statues: but, in architecture, all must in some way commit themselves;
+they _must_ do mischief, and waste their money, if they do not know how
+to turn it to account. Churches, and shops, and warehouses, and
+cottages, and small row, and place, and terrace houses, must be built,
+and lived in, however joyless or inconvenient. And it is assuredly
+intended that all of us should have knowledge, and act upon our
+knowledge, in matters with which we are daily concerned, and not to be
+left to the caprice of architects or mercy of contractors. There is not,
+indeed, anything in the following essay bearing on the special forms and
+needs of modern buildings; but the principles it inculcates are
+universal; and they are illustrated from the remains of a city which
+should surely be interesting to the men of London, as affording the
+richest existing examples of architecture raised by a mercantile
+community, for civil uses, and domestic magnificence.
+
+  DENMARK HILL, _February_, 1851.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                    PAGE
+  Preface,                                           iii
+
+                          CHAPTER I.
+  The Quarry,                                          1
+
+                         CHAPTER II.
+  The Virtues of Architecture,                        36
+
+                         CHAPTER III.
+  The Six Divisions of Architecture,                  47
+
+                          CHAPTER IV.
+  The Wall Base,                                      52
+
+                          CHAPTER V.
+  The Wall Veil,                                      58
+
+                         CHAPTER VI.
+  The Wall Cornice,                                   63
+
+                         CHAPTER VII.
+  The Pier Base,                                      71
+
+                         CHAPTER VIII.
+  The Shaft,                                          84
+
+                          CHAPTER IX.
+  The Capital,                                       105
+
+                          CHAPTER X.
+  The Arch Line,                                     122
+
+                          CHAPTER XI.
+  The Arch Masonry,                                  132
+
+                         CHAPTER XII.
+  The Arch Load,                                     144
+
+                         CHAPTER XIII.
+  The Roof,                                          148
+
+                          CHAPTER XIV.
+  The Roof Cornice,                                  155
+
+                          CHAPTER XV.
+  The Buttress,                                      166
+
+                          CHAPTER XVI.
+  Form of Aperture,                                  174
+
+                         CHAPTER XVII.
+  Filling of Aperture,                               183
+
+                         CHAPTER XVIII.
+  Protection of Aperture,                            195
+
+                          CHAPTER XIX.
+  Superimposition,                                   200
+
+                          CHAPTER XX.
+  The Material of Ornament,                          211
+
+                          CHAPTER XXI.
+  Treatment of Ornament,                             236
+
+                         CHAPTER XXII.
+  The Angle,                                         259
+
+                         CHAPTER XXIII.
+  The Edge and Fillet,                               267
+
+                         CHAPTER XXIV.
+  The Roll and Recess,                               276
+
+                          CHAPTER XXV.
+  The Base,                                          281
+
+                         CHAPTER XXVI.
+  The Wall Veil and Shaft,                           294
+
+                         CHAPTER XXVII.
+  The Cornice and Capital,                           305
+
+                         CHAPTER XXVIII.
+  The Archivolt and Aperture,                        333
+
+                         CHAPTER XXIX.
+  The Roof,                                          343
+
+                          CHAPTER XXX.
+  The Vestibule,                                     349
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+   APPENDIX.
+
+   1. Foundation of Venice,                          359
+   2. Power of the Doges,                            360
+   3. Serrar del Consiglio,                          360
+   4. S. Pietro di Castello,                         361
+   5. Papal Power in Venice,                         362
+   6. Renaissance Ornament,                          369
+   7. Varieties of the Orders,                       370
+   8. The Northern Energy,                           371
+   9. Wooden Churches of the North,                  381
+  10. Church of Alexandria,                          381
+  11. Renaissance Landscape,                         381
+  12. Romanist Modern Art,                           384
+  13. Mr. Fergusson's System,                        388
+  14. Divisions of Humanity,                         394
+  15. Instinctive Judgments,                         399
+  16. Strength of Shafts,                            402
+  17. Answer to Mr. Garbett,                         403
+  18. Early English Capitals,                        411
+  19. Tombs near St. Anastasia,                      412
+  20. Shafts of the Ducal Palace,                    413
+  21. Ancient Representations of Water,              417
+  22. Arabian Ornamentation,                         429
+  23. Varieties of Chamfer,                          429
+  24. Renaissance Bases,                             431
+  25. Romanist Decoration of Bases,                  432
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES.
+
+
+                                                         Facing Page
+
+ Plate 1. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan and Ca' Dario,       13
+
+   "   2. Plans of Piers,                                        100
+
+   "   3. Arch Masonry,                                          134
+
+   "   4. Arch Masonry,                                          137
+
+   "   5. Arch Masonry, Bruletto of Como,                        141
+
+   "   6. Types of Towers,                                       207
+
+   "   7. Abstracts Lines,                                       222
+
+   "   8. Decorations by Disks, Ca' Badoari,                     241
+
+   "   9. Edge Decoration,                                       268
+
+   "  10. Profiles of Bases,                                     283
+
+   "  11. Plans of Bases,                                        288
+
+   "  12. Decorations of Bases,                                  289
+
+   "  13. Wall Veil Decorations,                                 295
+
+   "  14. Spandril Decorations, Ducal Palace,                    298
+
+   "  15. Cornice Profiles,                                      306
+
+   "  16. Cornice Decorations,                                   311
+
+   "  17. Capitals--Concave,                                     323
+
+   "  18. Capitals--Convex,                                      327
+
+   "  19. Archivolt Decoration, Verona,                          333
+
+   "  20. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan,                    369
+
+   "  21. Wall Veil Decoration, San Michele, Lucca,              378
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  THE QUARRY.
+
+
+Sec. I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean,
+three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands:
+the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great
+powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third,
+which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led
+through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
+
+The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
+for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
+of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a
+lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
+the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
+forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
+the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
+
+Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
+endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
+period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
+quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
+as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
+was the City, and which the Shadow.
+
+I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
+lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
+be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
+passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
+
+Sec. II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which
+might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange
+and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless
+chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred with
+brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the
+surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which
+we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but their
+results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as they bear
+upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind than that
+usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may, perhaps, in
+the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to form a
+clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of Venetian
+character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which the
+true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have gleaned from
+the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
+
+Sec. III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so during
+a period less than the half of her existence, and that including the days
+of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing severe
+examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the change in
+the form of her government, or altogether, as assuredly in great part,
+to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was composed.
+
+The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
+the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
+Rialto,[1] to the moment when the General-in-chief of the French army of
+Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this
+period, Two Hundred and Seventy-six[2] years were passed in a nominal
+subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in an
+agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears to have been
+entrusted to tribunes,[3] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the
+principal islands. For six hundred years,[4] during which the power of
+Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective
+monarchy, her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
+independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
+gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
+prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
+magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
+king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
+fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.
+
+Sec. IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the Venetian
+state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine hundred,
+the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by what
+was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final and
+absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
+establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
+the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
+doge on the other.
+
+Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
+interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order
+and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and
+noblest man whom they could find among them,[5] called their Doge or
+Leader, with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself
+around him, out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an
+aristocracy owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and
+wealth of some among the families of the fugitives from the older
+Venetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into
+a separate body.
+
+This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
+and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
+European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated,
+we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
+Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
+
+Sec. V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the
+most eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her
+life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed
+by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of
+Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and
+distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this
+period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs),
+Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
+
+I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
+Zeno, 8th May, 1418;[6] the _visible_ commencement from that of another
+of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who
+expired five years later. The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with
+pestilence and war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were
+made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace,
+significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at
+Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice, the first of
+the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk: in the same
+year was established the Inquisition of State,[7] and from this period
+her government takes the perfidious and mysterious form under which it
+is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror
+to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks
+the period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the
+Venetian power;[8] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of
+the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence
+of the diminution of her internal strength.
+
+Sec. VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between the
+establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
+diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
+at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
+determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
+question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
+individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
+Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
+itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
+enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
+Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
+of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
+people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
+disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
+nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
+three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
+call was heard.
+
+Sec. VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at many
+periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and the
+man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
+sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
+the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
+powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
+masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
+impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
+the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
+prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
+sign covenant with Death.[9]
+
+Sec. VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
+fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
+interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
+evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will
+be both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
+prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual
+religion.
+
+I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
+wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
+Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
+deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
+fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
+last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
+interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
+enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
+but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
+conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
+The fame of success remains, when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
+reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
+princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
+which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
+devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
+its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
+of her own private interests, at once broke her faith[10] and betrayed
+her religion.
+
+Sec. IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall be
+struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
+feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
+could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
+of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions,
+and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every
+great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are
+instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches
+the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course
+where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely
+trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to
+trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of
+Alexander III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by
+the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked
+by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only
+in her hastiest councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency
+whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or
+when they are sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the
+entire subjection of private piety to national policy is not only
+remarkable throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and
+tyrannies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but
+symbolised by a very singular circumstance in the building of the city
+itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was
+not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the
+chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the "Chiesa
+Ducale." The patriarchal church,[11] inconsiderable in size and mean in
+decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its
+name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the greater number of
+travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it less worthy of
+remark, that the two most important temples of Venice, next to the ducal
+chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to national effort, but to
+the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast
+organization of those great societies on the mainland of Italy, and
+countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the
+most wise, of all the princes of Venice,[12] who now rests beneath the
+roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not satirized by
+the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his
+tomb.
+
+Sec. X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which we
+have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
+Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep and constant tone of individual
+religion characterising the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
+greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
+immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct
+even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
+simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
+a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
+religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
+conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
+serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and
+a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
+motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
+spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
+its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
+it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
+demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
+presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
+short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
+national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
+several characteristics of the temper of our present English
+legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
+interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of
+my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment
+of which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be
+able to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.
+
+Sec. XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the
+policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a
+Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely,
+the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
+temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
+survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
+to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
+the portico of St. Mark's,[13] the central expression in most men's
+thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is
+true that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of
+her prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service
+thus rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years
+more than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement
+V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
+Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the
+great tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the
+doge or the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo
+blotted out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of
+ecclesiastics from all share in the councils of Venice became an
+enduring mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and
+of her defiance of it.
+
+To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
+will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.[14]
+The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
+of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
+that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
+themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
+theirs to avoid.
+
+Sec. XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the
+Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing
+it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when
+contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the
+restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill
+the annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should
+sometimes be ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under
+the mask of law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian
+spirit was subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy
+appears usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for
+every instance in which private passion sought its gratification
+through public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed
+to the public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with
+reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a
+branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was
+other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower
+only: from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of
+Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with
+forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice
+never sank under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were
+wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves
+of lilies.[15]
+
+Sec. XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief general
+interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would next
+endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the
+testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the
+arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connexion
+with the history of the state.
+
+1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
+
+It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
+as far back as 1418.
+
+Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
+and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
+sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
+animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
+Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
+sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
+larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
+rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
+subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the
+Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connexion
+between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
+surround her.
+
+Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
+Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
+school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
+artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
+natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up
+in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the
+vital religion of Venice had expired.
+
+Sec. XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
+observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were painted,
+in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna or St.
+Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of the
+Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the ducal
+palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a
+curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of one of
+Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal. The eye
+is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of Venice
+was in her wars, not in her worship.
+
+The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
+Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
+which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
+principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
+subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
+portraiture.
+
+The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
+Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
+had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
+
+Sec. XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
+Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must
+here give a general idea of its heads.
+
+Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,--
+
+"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
+l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
+grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les
+gallees y passent a travers et y ay ven navire de quatre cens tonneaux
+ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit
+en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les
+maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
+anciennes toutes painctes; les aultres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
+ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, a cent mils de
+la, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
+devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cite que j'aye jamais vene et qui
+plus faict d'honneur a ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
+saigement se gouverne, et ou le service de Dieu est le plus
+sollempnellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
+faultes, si je croy que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
+portent au service de l'Eglise."[16]
+
+[Illustration: Plate I. Wall-Veil-Decoration.
+                        CA'TREVISAN
+                        CA'DARIO.]
+
+Sec. XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons. Observe,
+first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of Venice: of
+which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with some
+glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real life
+had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
+instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
+palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
+their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
+and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
+fronts."
+
+On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
+which so struck the French ambassador.[17] He was right in his notice of
+the distinction. There had indeed come a change over Venetian
+architecture in the fifteenth century; and a change of some importance
+to us moderns: we English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe
+in general owes to it the utter degradation or destruction of her
+schools of architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may
+understand this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea
+of the connexion of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of
+Europe, from its origin forwards.
+
+Sec. XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is
+derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the East.
+The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various
+modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all:
+if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types
+of successive architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The
+Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque,
+massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else you
+can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English,
+French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks gave the
+shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The
+shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from
+the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael,
+Abraham, and Shem.
+
+Sec. XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his shaft
+system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier derivation in
+the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should be able to
+refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft was first
+perfected. But it may be incidentally observed, that if the Greeks did
+indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the
+earth have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture: and
+Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing
+member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the spiritualisation of both.
+
+Sec. XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are the
+roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
+orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
+more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex:
+those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the
+other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English,
+Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
+form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
+both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
+grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species.[18]
+
+Sec. XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was clumsily
+copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result, until they
+begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service; except only
+that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it, and the
+Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very
+beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized
+upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a
+new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the
+Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand,
+to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian
+architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time,
+very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many respects
+ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination,
+which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the
+Bosphorus and the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the
+people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-light. The
+architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange, gilded, and embalmed
+repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so would have remained
+for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.[19]
+But rough wakening was ordained for it.
+
+Sec. XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two
+great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at
+Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly
+so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by
+Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the
+reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art together in
+his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same; that is to
+say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome
+itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and
+entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found--Latins in Italy
+and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the
+general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the
+refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was
+elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek
+workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may
+conceive as extending in its various branches over all the central
+provinces of the empire, taking aspects more or less refined, according
+to its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power
+on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as
+that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking
+into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and
+incapable of advance or change.
+
+Sec. XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While in
+Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
+influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
+refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by
+inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of
+this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the
+empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
+and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art
+was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and
+borrowed art was organising itself into strength and consistency. The
+reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as
+broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately
+languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the
+imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early
+organisation, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely
+nominal extent.
+
+Sec. XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not susceptible
+of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps, appear, like the
+Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with the enervated
+Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with which they mingle,
+without materially affecting its intellectual character. But others,
+both south and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the
+beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks of the
+North Sea on the other. On the north and west the influence was of the
+Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two nations, pre-eminent
+above all the rest, represent to us the force of derived mind on either
+side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light
+gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done
+their work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a
+glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both horizons, and the
+fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over its golden
+paralysis.
+
+Sec. XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system to
+the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab
+was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship.
+The Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured
+representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.[20] The Arab
+banished all imagination of creature form from his temples, and
+proclaimed from their minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in
+their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they
+came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava
+stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and
+the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead
+water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the
+Roman wreck, is VENICE.
+
+The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
+proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of
+the world.
+
+Sec. XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
+importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
+the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between
+the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture
+expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
+necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
+
+Sec. XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to mark
+the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures were
+developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
+distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian
+Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
+well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
+mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
+with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
+sacred symbols.
+
+The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
+Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
+introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
+and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
+writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
+and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace
+it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates
+it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
+of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the
+dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
+
+Sec. XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious still,
+for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its decoration.
+The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of that of
+the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first, an
+imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas. Without
+staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader will
+easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles,
+the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from
+the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of
+flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part
+of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof.
+
+These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
+wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
+horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
+pillars, which were themselves also of wood.[21] Now, these uprights
+were necessarily thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed
+vertical square pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended
+and civilisation increased, these wooden structures were changed into
+stone; but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had
+been made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above
+the nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the
+great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft.
+In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century,
+and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of
+Pavia.
+
+Sec. XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
+walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
+Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the
+first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of
+the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of
+the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts
+in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
+Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be
+described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts,
+added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic
+superstitions.
+
+Sec. XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one of
+the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
+without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
+their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it
+ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of
+Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and
+spiritualisation of Northern work under its influence. The noblest
+buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque)
+Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools
+themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of
+the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards
+brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the
+Arab.
+
+Sec. XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great European
+styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession of
+architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central
+character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude
+that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and
+contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was
+the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at
+Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
+settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the
+mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the
+beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government;
+while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form,
+was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine
+workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the
+church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
+the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
+the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
+very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
+islands.
+
+Sec. XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the
+body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The
+first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
+destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
+obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
+architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
+is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs,[22] it being
+quite immaterial whether the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or
+both Arabic; the workmen being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the
+invention of new forms by their Arabian masters, and bringing these
+forms into use in whatever other parts of the world they were employed.
+
+To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with vestiges as
+remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first division of the
+following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist of three noble
+churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part of St.
+Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
+
+Sec. XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
+much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the
+arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes,
+not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and
+mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural
+for the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
+dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the
+mosque for Christian churches.
+
+I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
+in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
+position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
+elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
+two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in
+Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in
+almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second
+division of the following essay.
+
+Sec. XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in art
+from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But their
+especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long prevented
+them from receiving the influence of the art which that people had
+introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice
+of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primitive
+condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical architecture.
+It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab forms, which
+were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would probably, if
+left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab school, with
+which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found
+difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to
+have been built under this early Gothic influence. The churches of San
+Giacopo dell'Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine, and one or two
+more, furnish the only important examples of it. But, in the thirteenth
+century, the Franciscans and Dominicans introduced from the continent
+their morality and their architecture, already a distinct Gothic,
+curiously developed from Lombardic and Northern (German?) forms; and the
+influence of the principles exhibited in the vast churches of St. Paul
+and the Frari began rapidly to affect the Venetian-Arab school. Still
+the two systems never became united; the Venetian policy repressed the
+power of the church, and the Venetian artists resisted its example; and
+thenceforward the architecture of the city becomes divided into
+ecclesiastical and civil: the one an ungraceful yet powerful form of the
+Western Gothic, common to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian
+sympathies in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings; the
+other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed from the
+Venetian-Arab by the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan
+architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon the Arab forms of
+the most novel feature of the Franciscan work, its traceries. These
+various forms of Gothic, the _distinctive_ architecture of Venice,
+chiefly represented by the churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and
+San Stefano, on the ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and
+the other principal Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the
+subject of the third division of the essay.
+
+Sec. XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic) style
+of the Venetian work is centralised by the date 1180, and is transformed
+gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from the middle
+of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century; that is to
+say, over the precise period which I have described as the central epoch
+of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year 1418; Foscari
+became doge five years later, and in his reign the first marked signs
+appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe de Commynes
+notices as above, the change to which London owes St. Paul's, Rome St.
+Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be their
+noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has
+since practised.
+
+Sec. XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality in
+existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap.
+ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted
+at once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
+extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
+strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
+mainland into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
+the Cathedral of Como (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
+Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della
+Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all
+architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked
+the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the
+Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which
+brought about the Reformation.
+
+Sec. XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
+adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
+and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
+destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the
+heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he
+injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one
+of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It
+may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
+been a consequence of this error.
+
+The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
+rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
+return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
+Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
+Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
+Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio.
+
+Sec. XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a flood of
+folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then perverted
+into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representations of
+Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of
+men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity,
+nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups
+upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets
+with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused
+intellect; the base school of landscape[23] gradually usurps the place
+of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,--the
+Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of
+Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps,
+and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation
+of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and
+morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into
+one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution in
+France, and the condition of art in England (saved by her Protestantism
+from severer penalty) in the time of George II.
+
+Sec. XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done
+anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
+painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
+as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
+and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their
+works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very
+slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor
+mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation.
+Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the
+magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by
+men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino,
+Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its
+influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
+are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number
+regard it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with
+architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious business with
+it. It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three
+hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a
+nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous
+building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which
+we have to regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in
+it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of
+modern times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one
+destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our
+schools and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass
+through them.
+
+Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
+corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre
+of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline
+the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of
+the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in
+the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation,
+and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
+than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the
+grave.
+
+Sec. XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that effectual
+blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance. Destroy
+its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere else.
+This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay. I
+shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader with
+successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of the
+earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features with
+those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and pause, in
+the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as I have
+made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon two
+distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by
+particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the
+builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be
+bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite
+in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of
+the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
+be immediately useful in fixing in the readers mind the epoch above
+indicated for the commencement of decline.
+
+Sec. XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above attached
+to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The tomb of
+that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of the same
+general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the period, and it
+is one of the last which retains it. The classical element enters
+largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet
+unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a
+sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful
+but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of
+the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet--his
+head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are simply
+crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, but so
+pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have looked
+like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
+thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
+skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
+eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
+light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
+all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
+stern angles of the cheek and brow.
+
+This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
+most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
+respecting Venetian art.
+
+   "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel)
+   sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be
+   called one of the last links which connect the declining art of the
+   Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We
+   will not stay to particularise the defects of each of the seven
+   figures of the front and sides, which represent the cardinal and
+   theological virtues; nor will we make any remarks upon those which
+   stand in the niches above the pavilion, because we consider them
+   unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Florentine school,
+   which was then with reason considered the most notable in Italy."[24]
+
+It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
+been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
+mortality.
+
+Sec. XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another
+tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478, after a
+short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice.
+He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried
+to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea
+and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue
+distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb
+ever bestowed on her monarchs.
+
+Sec. XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of one of
+the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the
+tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative
+by translation.
+
+   "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
+   proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo sapore
+   antico che senza ombra d'imitazione traspare da tutta l'opera"--&c.
+   "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti intagli s'alza uno
+   stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il predetto stilobate si muta
+   leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novita di pensiero e di
+   effetto va coronato da un fregio il piu gentile che veder si
+   possa"--&c. "Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno l'_arca dove_ sta
+   chiuso il doge; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," &c.
+
+There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
+above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the
+dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this
+rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it
+here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
+unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
+and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico)
+
+   "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
+   scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts
+   attained by ministry of the chisel."
+
+To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
+attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
+ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
+keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
+feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
+off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
+Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
+finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
+veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
+far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes
+us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for
+it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the
+joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought
+it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
+wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the inner
+side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made
+monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled
+elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is
+chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and
+distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately
+imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side,
+is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
+work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.
+
+Sec. XLIII. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one; and I do
+not blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for
+regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
+not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a
+monstrous mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and,
+secondly, such utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an
+extreme of intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his
+breast, could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old
+man's countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by
+the solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the
+bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so
+much the zecchin?
+
+I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much
+talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this
+base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation
+of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a
+pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
+chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
+on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea
+by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
+lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
+Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
+its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from
+Venice for forgery_ in 1487.[25]
+
+Sec. XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter; but I
+pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting piece
+of evidence, which I promised.
+
+The ducal palace has two principal facades; one towards the sea, the
+other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the
+seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early
+part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while
+the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in
+age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have
+examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never
+examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one
+document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of
+referring,--the masonry of the palace itself.
+
+Sec. XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from
+the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
+stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins
+with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."[26] The
+ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which
+is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth
+century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and
+carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe, reader. The
+face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della Carta, was built
+at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside whose tomb you have
+been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his
+successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it
+is only disputed that the sea facade is earlier; of which, however, the
+proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the
+masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that
+in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the
+costumes of the figures introduced in the sea facade being purely
+Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel at
+Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is Renaissance-Classic:
+and the lions' heads between the arches change at the same point. And
+there are a multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels,
+with which I shall not at present trouble the reader.
+
+Sec. XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424 (remember
+my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow the
+principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent
+new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old
+ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea facade, eighteen
+on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six
+pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right to left,
+from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next the
+Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I thus have
+the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the 18th, and
+the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace; and the
+first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated, the 9th
+from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series,
+and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above
+twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth
+century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
+
+Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
+from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33rd,
+from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
+inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th, which is very nobly
+designed.
+
+Sec. XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of
+the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
+the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
+with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
+Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
+Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
+somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
+(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
+arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
+open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
+the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
+from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
+Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima
+in Deo."
+
+Sec. XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect chiselling,
+imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have lost their
+hard features and living expression; they have now all got Roman noses,
+and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems are, however,
+preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but she is
+praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone._
+
+Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
+become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light
+He gave; so that in the issue, when that light opened into the
+Reformation, on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient
+literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted?
+
+Sec. XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I shall
+depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the Renaissance
+workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself is not so
+easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the Renaissance
+work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very forcibly as I
+read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps," in "The
+Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's: "Mr.
+Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the Architect,
+"think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the difference
+of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a subject of
+opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume that there
+_is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it:
+but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply set their
+opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at present to which
+either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of
+the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with
+resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter
+could be otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity
+of partizanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that there
+_was_ a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputably
+discerned and divided from the bad; that the opposition in their very
+nature and essence was clearly visible; and that we were all of us just
+as unwise in disputing about the matter without reference to principle,
+as we should be for debating about the genuineness of a coin, without
+ringing it. I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it
+were conclusive; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base
+work, and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference to style
+or national feeling; that it must sanction the design of all truly great
+nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and
+reprobate the design of all foolish nations and times, Chinese or
+Mexican, or modern European: and that it must be easily applicable to
+all possible architectural inventions of human mind. I set myself,
+therefore, to establish such a law, in full belief that men are
+intended, without excessive difficulty, and by use of their general
+common sense, to know good things from bad; and that it is only because
+they will not be at the pains required for the discernment, that the
+world is so widely encumbered with forgeries and basenesses. I found the
+work simpler than I had hoped; the reasonable things ranged themselves
+in the order I required, and the foolish things fell aside, and took
+themselves away so soon as they were looked in the face. I had then,
+with respect to Venetian architecture, the choice, either to establish
+each division of law in a separate form, as I came to the features with
+which it was concerned, or else to ask the reader's patience, while I
+followed out the general inquiry first, and determined with him a code
+of right and wrong, to which we might together make retrospective
+appeal. I thought this the best, though perhaps the dullest way; and in
+these first following pages I have therefore endeavored to arrange those
+foundations of criticism, on which I shall rest in my account of
+Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple enough to be
+intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture before. To
+those who have, much of what is stated in them will be well known or
+self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a simplicity on which
+the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From that which appears a
+mere truism when first stated, they will find very singular consequences
+sometimes following,--consequences altogether unexpected, and of
+considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell on their
+importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done; for I believe
+most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion of right and
+wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture, and will be apt
+rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than dispute its
+usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair trial, being
+certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to
+induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at
+least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which
+may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference. And
+if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of Venice
+touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more
+subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and if thus
+I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of architecture and
+nearly every other art, which have for three centuries been predominant
+in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be serviceable for
+proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have hitherto hinted.
+For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the arts, and the
+Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done meanwhile? He
+boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why could it not
+support them when it was left to its own strength? How came it to yield
+to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose no barrier
+to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully conceived imagery
+of its worship to stage decoration? Shall we not rather find that
+Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown
+itself capable of a single great conception since the separation of
+Protestantism from its side?[27] So long as, corrupt though it might be,
+no clear witness had been borne against it, so that it still included in
+its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts were
+noble. But the witness was borne--the error made apparent; and Rome,
+refusing to hear the testimony or forsake the falsehood, has been struck
+from that instant with an intellectual palsy, which has not only
+incapacitated her from any further use of the arts which once were her
+ministers, but has made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and
+her worshippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these
+are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we enter the
+streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit ourselves to
+their undistinguished enchantment, and to look upon the last changes
+which were wrought on the lifted forms of her palaces, as we should on
+the capricious towering of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank
+into the deep of night; or whether, rather, we shall not behold in the
+brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence of
+her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface it, as they
+fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished it."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] Appendix 1, "Foundation of Venice."
+
+  [2] Appendix 2, "Power of the Doges."
+
+  [3] Sismondi, Hist. des Rep. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.
+
+  [4] Appendix 3, "Serrar del Consiglio."
+
+  [5] "Ha saputo trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti,
+    signoreggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un
+    ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino._) Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this,
+    indeed.
+
+  [6] Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.
+
+  [7] Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery
+    of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.
+
+  [8] Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as
+    before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right
+    of appointing the clergy of their territories.
+
+  [9] The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority
+    of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)
+
+  [10] By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian
+    prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)
+
+  [11] Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."
+
+  [12] Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, Sec. V.
+
+  [13]                         "In that temple porch,
+         (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
+         Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
+         And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
+         Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled
+         For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
+         On his stone pillow."
+
+    I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
+    believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all
+    libraries, and will never be removed from it. There is more true
+    expression of the spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in
+    that poem, than in all else that has been written of her.
+
+  [14] At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The Papal
+    Power in Venice."
+
+  [15] The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no
+    exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
+    They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the
+    attack of a foreign enemy.
+
+  [16] Memoires de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.
+
+  [17] Appendix 6, "Renaissance Ornaments."
+
+  [18] Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."
+
+  [19] The reader will find the _weak_ points of Byzantine
+    architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the
+    opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever
+    opened,--Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."
+
+  [20] Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."
+
+  [21] Appendix 9, "Wooden Churches of the North."
+
+  [22] Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."
+
+  [23] Appendix 11, "Renaissance Landscape."
+
+  [24] Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.
+
+  [25] Selvatico, p. 221.
+
+  [26] The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different
+    quality.
+
+  [27] Appendix 12, "Romanist Modern Art."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
+
+
+Sec. I. We address ourselves, then, first to the task of determining some
+law of right which we may apply to the architecture of all the world and
+of all time; and by help of which, and judgment according to which, we
+may easily pronounce whether a building is good or noble, as, by
+applying a plumb-line, whether it be perpendicular.
+
+The first question will of course be: What are the possible Virtues of
+architecture?
+
+In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of
+goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be
+graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of
+duty.
+
+Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches,--acting and
+talking:--acting, as to defend us from weather or violence; talking, as
+the duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and express feelings; or
+of churches, temples, public edifices, treated as books of history, to
+tell such history clearly and forcibly.
+
+We have thus, altogether, three great branches of architectural virtue,
+and we require of any building,--
+
+1. That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do in the best
+    way.
+
+2. That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to say in the
+    best words.
+
+3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, whatever it has to
+    do or say.[28]
+
+Sec. II. Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is evident that
+we can establish no general laws. First, because it is not a virtue
+required in all buildings; there are some which are only for covert or
+defence, and from which we ask no conversation. Secondly, because there
+are countless methods of expression, some conventional, some natural:
+each conventional mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be no
+subject of general laws. Every natural mode is instinctively employed
+and instinctively understood, wherever there is true feeling; and this
+instinct is above law. The choice of conventional methods depends on
+circumstances out of calculation, and that of natural methods on
+sensations out of control; so that we can only say that the choice is
+right, when we feel that the means are effective; and we cannot always
+say that it is wrong when they are not so.
+
+A building which recorded the Bible history by means of a series of
+sculptural pictures, would be perfectly useless to a person unacquainted
+with the Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of the Old and
+New Testaments might be written on its walls, and yet the building be a
+very inconvenient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been adorned
+with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, again, the power of exciting
+emotion must vary or vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or
+cold; and the building may be often blamed for what is the fault of its
+critic, or endowed with a charm which is of its spectator's creation. It
+is not, therefore, possible to make expressional character any fair
+criterion of excellence in buildings, until we can fully place ourselves
+in the position of those to whom their expression was originally
+addressed, and until we are certain that we understand every symbol, and
+are capable of being touched by every association which its builders
+employed as letters of their language. I shall continually endeavor to
+put the reader into such sympathetic temper, when I ask for his judgment
+of a building; and in every work I may bring before him I shall point
+out, as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its expression; nay, I
+must even depend on such peculiarities for much of my best evidence
+respecting the character of the builders. But I cannot legalize the
+judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it if it be refused. I can
+neither force the reader to feel this architectural rhetoric, nor compel
+him to confess that the rhetoric is powerful, if it have produced no
+impression on his own mind.
+
+Sec. III. I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for incidental
+notice only. But their other two virtues are proper subjects of
+law,--their performance of their common and necessary work, and their
+conformity with universal and divine canons of loveliness: respecting
+these there can be no doubt, no ambiguity. I would have the reader
+discern them so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he may, by a
+glance of the eye, distinguish the noble from the ignoble work. He can
+do this, if he permit free play to his natural instincts; and all that I
+have to do for him is to remove from those instincts the artificial
+restraints which prevent their action, and to encourage them to an
+unaffected and unbiassed choice between right and wrong.
+
+Sec. IV. We have, then, two qualities of buildings for subjects of
+separate inquiry: their action, and aspect, and the sources of virtue
+in both; that is to say, Strength and Beauty, both of these being
+less admired in themselves, than as testifying the intelligence or
+imagination of the builder.
+
+For we have a worthier way of looking at human than at divine
+architecture: much of the value both of construction and decoration, in
+the edifices of men, depends upon our being led by the thing produced or
+adorned, to some contemplation of the powers of mind concerned in its
+creation or adornment. We are not so led by divine work, but are content
+to rest in the contemplation of the thing created. I wish the reader to
+note this especially: we take pleasure, or _should_ take pleasure, in
+architectural construction altogether as the manifestation of an
+admirable human intelligence; it is not the strength, not the size, not
+the finish of the work which we are to venerate: rocks are always
+stronger, mountains always larger, all natural objects more finished;
+but it is the intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming physical
+difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and subject of our
+praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is less the actual
+loveliness of the thing produced, than the choice and invention
+concerned in the production, which are to delight us; the love and the
+thoughts of the workman more than his work: his work must always be
+imperfect, but his thoughts and affections may be true and deep.
+
+Sec. V. This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must insist upon
+at somewhat greater length, for I would fain do away with some of the
+ungrateful coldness which we show towards the good builders of old time.
+In no art is there closer connection between our delight in the work,
+and our admiration of the workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet
+we rarely ask for a builder's name. The patron at whose cost, the monk
+through whose dreaming, the foundation was laid, we remember
+occasionally; never the man who verily did the work. Did the reader ever
+hear of William of Sens as having had anything to do with Canterbury
+Cathedral? or of Pietro Basegio as in anywise connected with the Ducal
+Palace of Venice? There is much ingratitude and injustice in this; and
+therefore I desire my reader to observe carefully how much of his
+pleasure in building is derived, or should be derived, from admiration
+of the intellect of men whose names he knows not.
+
+Sec. VI. The two virtues of architecture which we can justly weigh, are,
+we said, its strength or good construction, and its beauty or good
+decoration. Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you say a
+building is well constructed or well built; you do not merely mean that
+it answers its purpose,--this is much, and many modern buildings fail of
+this much; but if it be verily well built, it must answer this purpose
+in the simplest way, and with no over-expenditure of means. We require
+of a light-house, for instance, that it shall stand firm and carry a
+light; if it do not this, assuredly it has been ill built; but it may do
+it to the end of time, and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds
+of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and have cost thousands
+of pounds more than it ought. To pronounce it well or ill built, we must
+know the utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best arrangements
+of stone for encountering them, and the quickest ways of effecting such
+arrangements: then only, so far as such arrangements have been chosen,
+and such methods used, is it well built. Then the knowledge of all
+difficulties to be met, and of all means of meeting them, and the quick
+and true fancy or invention of the modes of applying the means to the
+end, are what we have to admire in the builder, even as he is seen
+through this first or inferior part of his work. Mental power, observe:
+not muscular nor mechanical, nor technical, nor empirical,--pure,
+precious, majestic, massy intellect; not to be had at vulgar price, nor
+received without thanks, and without asking from whom.
+
+Sec. VII. Suppose, for instance, we are present at the building of a
+bridge: the bricklayers or masons have had their centring erected for
+them, and that centring was put together by a carpenter, who had the
+line of its curve traced for him by the architect: the masons are
+dexterously handling and fitting their bricks, or, by the help of
+machinery, carefully adjusting stones which are numbered for their
+places. There is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of
+hand something admirable; but this is not what I ask the reader to
+admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything that he
+can presently see and understand, but the choice of the curve, and the
+shaping of the numbered stones, and the appointment of that number;
+there were many things to be known and thought upon before these were
+decided. The man who chose the curve and numbered the stones, had to
+know the times and tides of the river, and the strength of its floods,
+and the height and flow of them, and the soil of the banks, and the
+endurance of it, and the weight of the stones he had to build with, and
+the kind of traffic that day by day would be carried on over his
+bridge,--all this specially, and all the great general laws of force and
+weight, and their working; and in the choice of the curve and numbering
+of stones are expressed not only his knowledge of these, but such
+ingenuity and firmness as he had, in applying special means to overcome
+the special difficulties about his bridge. There is no saying how much
+wit, how much depth of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind,
+courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone to the placing of a
+single stone of it. This is what we have to admire,--this grand power
+and heart of man in the thing; not his technical or empirical way of
+holding the trowel and laying mortar.
+
+Sec. VIII. Now there is in everything properly called art this concernment
+of the intellect, even in the province of the art which seems merely
+practical. For observe: in this bridge-building I suppose no reference
+to architectural principles; all that I suppose we want is to get safely
+over the river; the man who has taken us over is still a mere
+bridge-builder,--a _builder_, not an architect: he may be a rough,
+artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one truly fine thing
+all his days. I shall call upon you to despise him presently in a sort,
+but not as if he were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great man,
+infinite in memory, indefatigable in labor, exhaustless in expedient,
+unsurpassable in quickness of thought. Take good heed you understand him
+before you despise him.
+
+Sec. IX. But why is he to be in anywise despised? By no means despise him,
+unless he happen to be without a soul,[29] or at least to show no signs
+of it; which possibly he may not in merely carrying you across the
+river. He may be merely what Mr. Carlyle rightly calls a human beaver
+after all; and there may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater
+than a complication of animal faculties, an intricate bestiality,--nest
+or hive building in its highest development. You need something more
+than this, or the man is despicable; you need that virtue of building
+through which he may show his affections and delights; you need its
+beauty or decoration.
+
+Sec. X. Not that, in reality, one division of the man is more human than
+another. Theologists fall into this error very fatally and continually;
+and a man from whom I have learned much, Lord Lindsay, has hurt his
+noble book by it, speaking as if the spirit of the man only were
+immortal, and were opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the
+senses; whereas all the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal,
+immortal or mortal, according to the degree of their sanctification; and
+there is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine when it is
+once given to God, and no part of him which is not mortal by the second
+death, and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn from God. For
+to what shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts that perish?
+To our higher intellect?--yet are we not bidden to be wise as the
+serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant?--or to our affections?
+nay; these are more shared by the lower animals than our intelligence.
+Hamlet leaps into the grave of his beloved, and leaves it,--a dog had
+stayed. Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love;
+not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the
+thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it,--but in the dedication of
+them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.
+
+Sec. XI. It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections, which
+man leaves upon his work, are indeed more ennobling than the signs of
+his intelligence; but it is the balance of both whose expression we
+need, and the signs of the government of them all by Conscience; and
+Discretion, the daughter of Conscience. So, then, the intelligent part
+of man being eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure of
+his work, his affectionate part is to be shown in its decoration; and,
+that decoration may be indeed lovely, two things are needed: first, that
+the affections be vivid, and honestly shown; secondly, that they be
+fixed on the right things.
+
+Sec. XII. You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements in wrong order.
+Logically I have; practically I have not: for it is necessary first to
+teach men to speak out, and say what they like, truly; and, in the
+second place, to teach them which of their likings are ill set, and
+which justly. If a man is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he
+will not tell you what he likes, you can make nothing of him. Only get
+him to feel quickly and to speak plainly, and you may set him right. And
+the fact is, that the great evil of all recent architectural effort has
+not been that men liked wrong things: but that they either cared nothing
+about any, or pretended to like what they did not. Do you suppose that
+any modern architect likes what he builds, or enjoys it? Not in the
+least. He builds it because he has been told that such and such things
+are fine, and that he _should_ like them. He pretends to like them, and
+gives them a false relish of vanity. Do you seriously imagine, reader,
+that any living soul in London likes triglyphs?[30]--or gets any hearty
+enjoyment out of pediments?[31] You are much mistaken. Greeks did:
+English people never did,--never will. Do you fancy that the architect
+of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had any particular
+satisfaction in putting the blank triangle over the archway, instead of
+a useful garret window? By no manner of means. He had been told it was
+right to do so, and thought he should be admired for doing it. Very few
+faults of architecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are almost
+always hypocrisies.
+
+Sec. XIII. So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the decoration is
+that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. It matters not
+so much what the thing is, as that the builder should really love it and
+enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked
+hawthorns; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn,--it is a perfect
+Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try to gather it
+forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects
+liked hunting; so they covered their work with horses and hounds, and
+men blowing trumpets two yards long. The base Renaissance architects of
+Venice liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their work with
+comic masks and musical instruments. Even that was better than our
+English way of liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs.
+
+Sec. XIV. But the second requirement in decoration, is a sign of our
+liking the right thing. And the right thing to be liked is God's work,
+which He made for our delight and contentment in this world. And all
+noble ornamentation is the expression of man's delight in God's work.
+
+Sec. XV. So, then, these are the two virtues of building: first, the
+signs of man's own good work; secondly, the expression of man's delight
+in better work than his own. And these are the two virtues of which I
+desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at least in some measure;
+to have a definite opinion up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point
+he cannot form one. When the science of the building is great, great
+science is of course required to comprehend it; and, therefore, of
+difficult bridges, and light-houses, and harbor walls, and river dykes,
+and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly formed. But of common
+buildings, built in common circumstances, it is very possible for every
+man, or woman, or child, to form judgment both rational and rapid. Their
+necessary, or even possible, features are but few; the laws of their
+construction are as simple as they are interesting. The labor of a few
+hours is enough to render the reader master of their main points; and
+from that moment he will find in himself a power of judgment which can
+neither be escaped nor deceived, and discover subjects of interest where
+everything before had appeared barren. For though the laws are few and
+simple, the modes of obedience to them are not so. Every building
+presents its own requirements and difficulties; and every good building
+has peculiar appliances or contrivances to meet them. Understand the
+laws of structure, and you will feel the special difficulty in every new
+building which you approach; and you will know also, or feel
+instinctively,[32] whether it has been wisely met or otherwise. And an
+enormous number of buildings, and of styles of buildings, you will be
+able to cast aside at once, as at variance with these constant laws of
+structure, and therefore unnatural and monstrous.
+
+Sec. XVI. Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to consult your
+own natural choice and liking. There is a right and wrong in it; but you
+will assuredly like the right if you suffer your natural instinct to
+lead you. Half the evil in this world comes from people not knowing what
+they do like, not deliberately setting themselves to find out what they
+really enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance: they
+don't know _that_,--they rather think they like keeping it; and they
+_do_ keep it under this false impression, often to their great
+discomfort. Every body likes to do good; but not one in a hundred finds
+_this_ out. Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever
+really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
+
+So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs some little care to try
+experiments upon yourself: it needs deliberate question and upright
+answer. But there is no difficulty to be overcome, no abstruse reasoning
+to be gone into; only a little watchfulness needed, and thoughtfulness,
+and so much honesty as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all
+men, that you enjoy things, though great authorities say you should not.
+
+Sec. XVII. This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true humility, a
+trust that you have been so created as to enjoy what is fitting for you,
+and a willingness to be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It is
+the child's spirit, which we are then most happy when we most recover;
+only wiser than children in that we are ready to think it subject of
+thankfulness that we can still be pleased with a fair color or a dancing
+light. And, above all, do not try to make all these pleasures
+reasonable, nor to connect the delight which you take in ornament with
+that which you take in construction or usefulness. They have no
+connection; and every effort that you make to reason from one to the
+other will blunt your sense of beauty, or confuse it with sensations
+altogether inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and the world
+was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to
+be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to
+other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things
+in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at
+least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a
+peacock's would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time
+are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me
+the hay was none the better for them.
+
+Sec. XVIII. Our task therefore divides itself into two branches, and these
+I shall follow in succession. I shall first consider the construction of
+buildings, dividing them into their really necessary members or
+features; and I shall endeavor so to lead the reader forward from the
+foundation upwards, as that he may find out for himself the best way of
+doing everything, and having so discovered it, never forget it. I shall
+give him stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and trowels, and the
+ground, and then ask him to build; only helping him, as I can, if I find
+him puzzled. And when he has built his house or church, I shall ask him
+to ornament it, and leave it to him to choose the ornaments as I did to
+find out the construction: I shall use no influence with him whatever,
+except to counteract previous prejudices, and leave him, as far as may
+be, free. And when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his
+forms of decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence in
+what he has done. I shall assure him that no one in the world could, so
+far, have done better, and require him to condemn, as futile or
+fallacious, whatever has no resemblance to his own performances.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [28] Appendix 13, "Mr. Fergusson's System."
+
+  [29] Appendix 14, "Divisions of Humanity."
+
+  [30] Triglyph. Literally, "Three Cut." The awkward upright ornament
+    with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be seen
+    everywhere at the tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and modern.
+
+  [31] Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticoes, as on the
+    Mansion House or Royal Exchange.
+
+  [32] Appendix 15: "Instinctive Judgments."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE.
+
+
+Sec. I. The practical duties of buildings are twofold.
+
+They have either (1), to hold and protect something; or (2), to place or
+carry something.
+
+1. Architecture of Protection. This is architecture intended to
+   protect men or their possessions from violence of any kind, whether
+   of men or of the elements. It will include all churches, houses, and
+   treasuries; fortresses, fences, and ramparts; the architecture of the
+   hut and sheepfold; of the palace and the citadel: of the dyke,
+   breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when of living
+   creatures, is to be understood as including commodiousness and
+   comfort of habitation, wherever these are possible under the given
+   circumstances.
+
+2. Architecture of Position. This is architecture intended to carry
+   men or things to some certain places, or to hold them there. This
+   will include all bridges, aqueducts, and road architecture;
+   light-houses, which have to hold light in appointed places; chimneys
+   to carry smoke or direct currents of air; staircases; towers, which
+   are to be watched from or cried from, as in mosques, or to hold
+   bells, or to place men in positions of offence, as ancient moveable
+   attacking towers, and most fortress towers.
+
+Sec. II. Protective architecture has to do one or all of three things:
+to wall a space, to roof it, and to give access to it, of persons, light,
+and air; and it is therefore to be considered under the three divisions
+of walls, roofs, and apertures.
+
+We will take, first, a short, general view of the connection of these
+members, and then examine them in detail: endeavoring always to keep the
+simplicity of our first arrangement in view; for protective architecture
+has indeed no other members than these, unless flooring and paving be
+considered architecture, which it is only when the flooring is also a
+roof; the laying of the stones or timbers for footing being pavior's or
+carpenter's work, rather than architect's; and, at all events, work
+respecting the well or ill doing of which we shall hardly find much
+difference of opinion, except in points of aesthetics. We shall therefore
+concern ourselves only with the construction of walls, roofs, and
+apertures.
+
+Sec. III. 1. _Walls._--A wall is an even and united fence, whether of
+wood, earth, stone, or metal. When meant for purposes of mere partition
+or enclosure, it remains a wall proper: but it has generally also to
+sustain a certain vertical or lateral pressure, for which its strength
+is at first increased by some general addition to its thickness; but if
+the pressure becomes very great, it is gathered up into _piers_ to
+resist vertical pressure, and supported by _buttresses_ to resist
+lateral pressure.
+
+If its functions of partition or enclosure are continued, together with
+that of resisting vertical pressure, it remains as a wall veil between
+the piers into which it has been partly gathered; but if it is required
+only to resist the vertical or roof pressure, it is gathered up into
+piers altogether, loses its wall character, and becomes a group or line
+of piers.
+
+On the other hand, if the lateral pressure be slight, it may retain its
+character of a wall, being supported against the pressure by buttresses
+at intervals; but if the lateral pressure be very great, it is supported
+against such pressure by a continuous buttress, loses its wall
+character, and becomes a dyke or rampart.
+
+Sec. IV. We shall have therefore (A) first to get a general idea of a
+wall, and of right construction of walls; then (B) to see how this wall
+is gathered into piers; and to get a general idea of piers and the
+right construction of piers; then (C) to see how a wall is supported by
+buttresses, and to get a general idea of buttresses and the right
+construction of buttresses. This is surely very simple, and it is all we
+shall have to do with walls and their divisions.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. I.]
+
+Sec. V. 2. _Roofs._--A roof is the covering of a space, narrow or wide.
+It will be most conveniently studied by first considering the forms in
+which it may be carried over a narrow space, and then expanding these on
+a wide plan; only there is some difficulty here in the nomenclature, for
+an arched roof over a narrow space has (I believe) no name, except that
+which belongs properly to the piece of stone or wood composing such a
+roof, namely, lintel. But the reader will have no difficulty in
+understanding that he is first to consider roofs on the section only,
+thinking how best to construct a narrow bar or slice of them, of
+whatever form; as, for instance, _x_, _y_, or _z_, over the plan or area
+_a_, Fig. I. Having done this, let him imagine these several divisions,
+first moved along (or set side by side) over a rectangle, _b_, Fig. I.,
+and then revolved round a point (or crossed at it) over a polygon, _c_,
+or circle, _d_, and he will have every form of simple roof: the arched
+section giving successively the vaulted roof and dome, and the gabled
+section giving the gabled roof and spire.
+
+As we go farther into the subject, we shall only have to add one or two
+forms to the sections here given, in order to embrace all the
+_uncombined_ roofs in existence; and we shall not trouble the reader
+with many questions respecting cross-vaulting, and other modes of their
+combination.
+
+Sec. VI. Now, it also happens, from its place in buildings, that the
+sectional roof over a narrow space will need to be considered before we
+come to the expanded roof over a broad one. For when a wall has been
+gathered, as above explained, into piers, that it may better bear
+vertical pressure, it is generally necessary that it should be expanded
+again at the top into a continuous wall before it carries the true roof.
+Arches or lintels are, therefore, thrown from pier to pier, and a level
+preparation for carrying the real roof is made above them. After we have
+examined the structure of piers, therefore, we shall have to see how
+lintels or arches are thrown from pier to pier, and the whole prepared
+for the superincumbent roof; this arrangement being universal in all
+good architecture prepared for vertical pressures: and we shall then
+examine the condition of the great roof itself. And because the
+structure of the roof very often introduces certain lateral pressures
+which have much to do with the placing of buttresses, it will be well to
+do all this before we examine the nature of buttresses, and, therefore,
+between parts (B) and (C) of the above plan, Sec. IV. So now we shall have
+to study: (A) the construction of walls; (B) that of piers; (C) that of
+lintels or arches prepared for roofing; (D) that of roofs proper; and
+(E) that of buttresses.
+
+Sec. VII. 3. _Apertures._--There must either be intervals between the
+piers, of which intervals the character will be determined by that of
+the piers themselves, or else doors or windows in the walls proper. And,
+respecting doors or windows, we have to determine three things: first,
+the proper shape of the entire aperture; secondly, the way in which it
+is to be filled with valves or glass; and thirdly, the modes of
+protecting it on the outside, and fitting appliances of convenience to
+it, as porches or balconies. And this will be our division F; and if the
+reader will have the patience to go through these six heads, which
+include every possible feature of protective architecture, and to
+consider the simple necessities and fitnesses of each, I will answer for
+it, he shall never confound good architecture with bad any more. For, as
+to architecture of position, a great part of it involves necessities of
+construction with which the spectator cannot become generally
+acquainted, and of the compliance with which he is therefore never
+expected to judge,--as in chimneys, light-houses, &c.: and the other
+forms of it are so closely connected with those of protective
+architecture, that a few words in Chap. XIX. respecting staircases and
+towers, will contain all with which the reader need be troubled on the
+subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  THE WALL BASE.
+
+
+Sec. I. Our first business, then, is with Wall, and to find out wherein
+lies the true excellence of the "Wittiest Partition." For it is rather
+strange that, often as we speak of a "dead" wall, and that with
+considerable disgust, we have not often, since Snout's time, heard of a
+living one. But the common epithet of opprobrium is justly bestowed, and
+marks a right feeling. A wall has no business to be dead. It ought to
+have members in its make, and purposes in its existence, like an
+organized creature, and to answer its ends in a living and energetic
+way; and it is only when we do not choose to put any strength nor
+organization into it, that it offends us by its deadness. Every wall
+ought to be a "sweet and lovely wall." I do not care about its having
+ears; but, for instruction and exhortation, I would often have it to
+"hold up its fingers." What its necessary members and excellences are,
+it is our present business to discover.
+
+Sec. II. A wall has been defined to be an even and united fence of wood,
+earth, stone, or metal. Metal fences, however, seldom, if ever, take the
+form of walls, but of railings; and, like all other metal constructions,
+must be left out of our present investigation; as may be also walls
+composed merely of light planks or laths for purposes of partition or
+inclosure. Substantial walls, whether of wood or earth (I use the word
+earth as including clay, baked or unbaked, and stone), have, in their
+perfect form, three distinct members;--the Foundation, Body or Veil, and
+Cornice.
+
+Sec. III. The foundation is to the wall what the paw is to an animal. It
+is a long foot, wider than the wall, on which the wall is to stand, and
+which keeps it from settling into the ground. It is most necessary that
+this great element of security should be visible to the eye, and
+therefore made a part of the structure above ground. Sometimes, indeed,
+it becomes incorporated with the entire foundation of the building, a
+vast table on which walls or piers are alike set: but even then, the
+eye, taught by the reason, requires some additional preparation or foot
+for the wall, and the building is felt to be imperfect without it. This
+foundation we shall call the Base of the wall.
+
+Sec. IV. The body of the wall is of course the principal mass of it,
+formed of mud or clay, of bricks or stones, of logs or hewn timber; the
+condition of structure being, that it is of equal thickness everywhere,
+below and above. It may be half a foot thick, or six feet thick, or
+fifty feet thick; but if of equal thickness everywhere, it is still a
+wall proper: if to its fifty feet of proper thickness there be added so
+much as an inch of thickness in particular parts, that added thickness
+is to be considered as some form of buttress or pier, or other
+appliance.[33]
+
+In perfect architecture, however, the walls are generally kept of
+moderate thickness, and strengthened by piers or buttresses; and the
+part of the wall between these, being generally intended only to secure
+privacy, or keep out the slighter forces of weather, may be properly
+called a Wall Veil. I shall always use this word "Veil" to signify the
+even portion of a wall, it being more expressive than the term Body.
+
+Sec. V. When the materials with which this veil is built are very loose,
+or of shapes which do not fit well together, it sometimes becomes
+necessary, or at least adds to security, to introduce courses of more
+solid material. Thus, bricks alternate with rolled pebbles in the old
+walls of Verona, and hewn stones with brick in its Lombard churches. A
+banded structure, almost a stratification of the wall, is thus produced;
+and the courses of more solid material are sometimes decorated with
+carving. Even when the wall is not thus banded through its whole height,
+it frequently becomes expedient to lay a course of stone, or at least of
+more carefully chosen materials, at regular heights; and such belts or
+bands we may call String courses. These are a kind of epochs in the
+wall's existence; something like periods of rest and reflection in human
+life, before entering on a new career. Or else, in the building, they
+correspond to the divisions of its stories within, express its internal
+structure, and mark off some portion of the ends of its existence
+already attained.
+
+Sec. VI. Finally, on the top of the wall some protection from the weather
+is necessary, or some preparation for the reception of superincumbent
+weight, called a coping, or Cornice. I shall use the word Cornice for
+both; for, in fact, a coping is a roof to the wall itself, and is
+carried by a small cornice as the roof of the building by a large one.
+In either case, the cornice, small or large, is the termination of the
+wall's existence, the accomplishment of its work. When it is meant to
+carry some superincumbent weight, the cornice may be considered as its
+hand, opened to carry something above its head; as the base was
+considered its foot: and the three parts should grow out of each other
+and form one whole, like the root, stalk, and bell of a flower.
+
+These three parts we shall examine in succession; and, first, the Base.
+
+Sec. VII. It may be sometimes in our power, and it is always expedient,
+to prepare for the whole building some settled foundation, level and
+firm, out of sight. But this has not been done in some of the noblest
+buildings in existence. It cannot always be done perfectly, except at
+enormous expense; and, in reasoning upon the superstructure, we shall
+never suppose it to be done. The mind of the spectator does not
+conceive it; and he estimates the merits of the edifice on the
+supposition of its being built upon the ground. Even if there be a vast
+table land of foundation elevated for the whole of it, accessible by
+steps all round, as at Pisa, the surface of this table is always
+conceived as capable of yielding somewhat to superincumbent weight, and
+generally is so; and we shall base all our arguments on the widest
+possible supposition, that is to say, that the building stands on a
+surface either of earth, or, at all events, capable of yielding in some
+degree to its weight.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. II.]
+
+Sec. VIII. Now, let the reader simply ask himself how, on such a surface,
+he would set about building a substantial wall, that should be able to
+bear weight and to stand for ages. He would assuredly look about for the
+largest stones he had at his disposal, and, rudely levelling the ground,
+he would lay these well together over a considerably larger width than
+he required the wall to be (suppose as at _a_, Fig. II.), in order to
+equalise the pressure of the wall over a large surface, and form its
+foot. On the top of these he would perhaps lay a second tier of large
+stones, _b_, or even the third, _c_, making the breadth somewhat less
+each time, so as to prepare for the pressure of the wall on the centre,
+and, naturally or necessarily, using somewhat smaller stones above than
+below (since we supposed him to look about for the largest first), and
+cutting them more neatly. His third tier, if not his second, will
+probably appear a sufficiently secure foundation for finer work; for if
+the earth yield at all, it will probably yield pretty equally under the
+great mass of masonry now knit together over it. So he will prepare for
+the wall itself at once by sloping off the next tier of stones to the
+right diameter, as at _d_. If there be any joints in this tier within
+the wall, he may perhaps, for further security, lay a binding stone
+across them, _e_, and then begin the work of the wall veil itself,
+whether in bricks or stones.
+
+Sec. IX. I have supposed the preparation here to be for a large wall,
+because such a preparation will give us the best general type. But it is
+evident that the essential features of the arrangement are only two,
+that is to say, one tier of massy work for foundation, suppose _c_,
+missing the first two; and the receding tier or real foot of the wall,
+_d_. The reader will find these members, though only of brick, in most
+of the considerable and independent walls in the suburbs of London.
+
+Sec. X. It is evident, however, that the general type, Fig. II., will
+be subject to many different modifications in different circumstances.
+Sometimes the ledges of the tiers _a_ and _b_ may be of greater width;
+and when the building is in a secure place, and of finished masonry,
+these may be sloped off also like the main foot _d_. In Venetian
+buildings these lower ledges are exposed to the sea, and therefore left
+rough hewn; but in fine work and in important positions the lower ledges
+may be bevelled and decorated like the upper, or another added above
+_d_; and all these parts may be in different proportions, according to
+the disposition of the building above them. But we have nothing to do
+with any of these variations at present, they being all more or less
+dependent upon decorative considerations, except only one of very great
+importance, that is to say, the widening of the lower ledge into a stone
+seat, which may be often done in buildings of great size with most
+beautiful effect: it looks kind and hospitable, and preserves the work
+above from violence. In St. Mark's at Venice, which is a small and low
+church, and needing no great foundation for the wall veils of it, we
+find only the three members, _b_, _c_, and _d_. Of these the first rises
+about a foot above the pavement of St. Mark's Place, and forms an
+elevated dais in some of the recesses of the porches, chequered red and
+white; _c_ forms a seat which follows the line of the walls, while its
+basic character is marked by its also carrying certain shafts with
+which we have here no concern; _d_ is of white marble; and all are
+enriched and decorated in the simplest and most perfect manner possible,
+as we shall see in Chap. XXV. And thus much may serve to fix the type of
+wall bases, a type oftener followed in real practice than any other we
+shall hereafter be enabled to determine: for wall bases of necessity
+must be solidly built, and the architect is therefore driven into the
+adoption of the right form; or if he deviate from it, it is generally in
+meeting some necessity of peculiar circumstances, as in obtaining
+cellars and underground room, or in preparing for some grand features or
+particular parts of the wall, or in some mistaken idea of
+decoration,--into which errors we had better not pursue him until we
+understand something more of the rest of the building: let us therefore
+proceed to consider the wall veil.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [33] Many walls are slightly sloped or curved towards their tops,
+    and have buttresses added to them (that of the Queen's Bench Prison
+    is a curious instance of the vertical buttress and inclined wall);
+    but in all such instances the slope of the wall is properly to be
+    considered a condition of incorporated buttress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  THE WALL VEIL.
+
+
+Sec. I. The summer of the year 1849 was spent by the writer in researches
+little bearing upon his present subject, and connected chiefly with
+proposed illustrations of the mountain forms in the works of J. M. W.
+Turner. But there are sometimes more valuable lessons to be learned in
+the school of nature than in that of Vitruvius, and a fragment of
+building among the Alps is singularly illustrative of the chief feature
+which I have at present to develope as necessary to the perfection of
+the wall veil.
+
+It is a fragment of some size; a group of broken walls, one of them
+overhanging; crowned with a cornice, nodding some hundred and fifty feet
+over its massy flank, three thousand above its glacier base, and
+fourteen thousand above the sea,--a wall truly of some majesty, at once
+the most precipitous and the strongest mass in the whole chain of the
+Alps, the Mont Cervin.
+
+Sec. II. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower. It is a vast
+ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d'Erin,
+and lifting itself like a rearing horse with its face to the east. All
+the way along the flank of it, for half a day's journey on the Zmutt
+glacier, the grim black terraces of its foundations range almost without
+a break; and the clouds, when their day's work is done, and they are
+weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and rest till
+dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched along the grisly
+ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall gleaming in the moonlight,
+three thousand feet above.
+
+Sec. III. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down, as if by the
+single sweep of a sword, from the crest of it to the base; hewn concave
+and smooth, like the hollow of a wave: on each flank of it there is set
+a buttress, both of about equal height, their heads sloped out from the
+main wall about seven hundred feet below its summit. That on the north
+is the most important; it is as sharp as the frontal angle of a bastion,
+and sloped sheer away to the north-east, throwing out spur beyond spur,
+until it terminates in a long low curve of russet precipice, at whose
+foot a great bay of the glacier of the Col de Cervin lies as level as a
+lake. This spur is one of the few points from which the mass of the Mont
+Cervin is in anywise approachable. It is a continuation of the masonry
+of the mountain itself, and affords us the means of examining the
+character of its materials.
+
+Sec. IV. Few architects would like to build with them. The slope of the
+rocks to the north-west is covered two feet deep with their ruins, a
+mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull brick-red color, which yields
+beneath the foot like ashes, so that, in running down, you step one
+yard, and slide three. The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still
+disposed in thin courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that
+they look in places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a
+rock; and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the
+mountain were upheld by miracle; but surprise becomes more intelligent
+reverence for the great builder, when we find, in the middle of the mass
+of these dead leaves, a course of living rock, of quartz as white as the
+snow that encircles it, and harder than a bed of steel.
+
+Sec. V. It is one only of a thousand iron bands that knit the strength
+of the mighty mountain. Through the buttress and the wall alike, the
+courses of its varied masonry are seen in their successive order, smooth
+and true as if laid by line and plummet,[34] but of thickness and
+strength continually varying, and with silver cornices glittering along
+the edge of each, laid by the snowy winds and carved by the
+sunshine,--stainless ornaments of the eternal temple, by which "neither
+the hammer nor the axe, nor any tool, was heard while it was in
+building."
+
+Sec. VI. I do not, however, bring this forward as an instance of any
+universal law of natural building; there are solid as well as coursed
+masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious that the most noble
+cliff in Europe, which this eastern front of the Cervin is, I believe,
+without dispute, should be to us an example of the utmost possible
+stability of precipitousness attained with materials of imperfect and
+variable character; and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which
+do not display alternations between compact and friable conditions of
+their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes when the
+bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they are harder. And, although
+we are not hence to conclude that it is well to introduce courses of bad
+materials when we can get perfect material, I believe we may conclude
+with great certainty that it is better and easier to strengthen a wall
+necessarily of imperfect substance, as of brick, by introducing
+carefully laid courses of stone, than by adding to its thickness; and
+the first impression we receive from the unbroken aspect of a wall veil,
+unless it be of hewn stone throughout, is that it must be both thicker
+and weaker than it would have been, had it been properly coursed. The
+decorative reasons for adopting the coursed arrangement, which we shall
+notice hereafter, are so weighty, that they would alone be almost
+sufficient to enforce it; and the constructive ones will apply
+universally, except in the rare cases in which the choice of perfect or
+imperfect material is entirely open to us, or where the general system
+of the decoration of the building requires absolute unity in its
+surface.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. III.]
+
+Sec. VII. As regards the arrangement of the intermediate parts themselves,
+it is regulated by certain conditions of bonding and fitting the stones
+or bricks, which the reader need hardly be troubled to consider, and
+which I wish that bricklayers themselves were always honest enough to
+observe. But I hardly know whether to note under the head of aesthetic
+or constructive law, this important principle, that masonry is always
+bad which appears to have arrested the attention of the architect more
+than absolute conditions of strength require. Nothing is more
+contemptible in any work than an appearance of the slightest desire on
+the part of the builder to _direct attention_ to the way its stones are
+put together, or of any trouble taken either to show or to conceal it
+more than was rigidly necessary: it may sometimes, on the one hand, be
+necessary to conceal it as far as may be, by delicate and close fitting,
+when the joints would interfere with lines of sculpture or of mouldings;
+and it may often, on the other hand, be delightful to show it, as it is
+delightful in places to show the anatomy even of the most delicate human
+frame: but _studiously_ to conceal it is the error of vulgar painters,
+who are afraid to show that their figures have bones; and studiously to
+display it is the error of the base pupils of Michael Angelo, who turned
+heroes' limbs into surgeons' diagrams,--but with less excuse than
+theirs, for there is less interest in the anatomy displayed. Exhibited
+masonry is in most cases the expedient of architects who do not know how
+to fill up blank spaces, and many a building, which would have been
+decent enough if let alone, has been scrawled over with straight lines,
+as in Fig. III., on exactly the same principles, and with just the same
+amount of intelligence as a boy's in scrawling his copy-book when he
+cannot write. The device was thought ingenious at one period of
+architectural history; St. Paul's and Whitehall are covered with it, and
+it is in this I imagine that some of our modern architects suppose the
+great merit of those buildings to consist. There is, however, no excuse
+for errors in disposition of masonry, for there is but one law upon the
+subject, and that easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and
+all unnecessary expense, either in showing or concealing. Every one
+knows a building is built of separate stones; nobody will ever object to
+seeing that it is so, but nobody wants to count them. The divisions of a
+church are much like the divisions of a sermon; they are always right so
+long as they are necessary to edification, and always wrong when they
+are thrust upon the attention as divisions only. There may be neatness
+in carving when there is richness in feasting; but I have heard many a
+discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all carving and
+no meat.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [34] On the eastern side: violently contorted on the northern and
+    western.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  THE WALL CORNICE.
+
+
+Sec. I. We have lastly to consider the close of the wall's existence, or
+its cornice. It was above stated, that a cornice has one of two offices:
+if the wall have nothing to carry, the cornice is its roof, and defends
+it from the weather; if there is weight to be carried above the wall,
+the cornice is its hand, and is expanded to carry the said weight.
+
+There are several ways of roofing or protecting independent walls,
+according to the means nearest at hand: sometimes the wall has a true
+roof all to itself; sometimes it terminates in a small gabled ridge,
+made of bricks set slanting, as constantly in the suburbs of London; or
+of hewn stone, in stronger work; or in a single sloping face, inclined
+to the outside. We need not trouble ourselves at present about these
+small roofings, which are merely the diminutions of large ones; but we
+must examine the important and constant member of the wall structure,
+which prepares it either for these small roofs or for weights above, and
+is its true cornice.
+
+Sec. II. The reader will, perhaps, as heretofore, be kind enough to think
+for himself, how, having carried up his wall veil as high as it may be
+needed, he will set about protecting it from weather, or preparing it
+for weight. Let him imagine the top of the unfinished wall, as it would
+be seen from above with all the joints, perhaps uncemented, or
+imperfectly filled up with cement, open to the sky; and small broken
+materials filling gaps between large ones, and leaving cavities ready
+for the rain to soak into, and loosen and dissolve the cement, and
+split, as it froze, the whole to pieces. I am much mistaken if his
+first impulse would not be to take a great flat stone and lay it on the
+top; or rather a series of such, side by side, projecting well over the
+edge of the wall veil. If, also, he proposed to lay a weight (as, for
+instance, the end of a beam) on the wall, he would feel at once that the
+pressure of this beam on, or rather among, the small stones of the wall
+veil, might very possibly dislodge or disarrange some of them; and the
+first impulse would be, in this case, also to lay a large flat stone on
+the top of all to receive the beam, or any other weight, and distribute
+it equally among the small stones below, as at _a_, Fig. IV.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. IV.]
+
+Sec. III. We must therefore have our flat stone in either case; and let
+_b_, Fig. IV., be the section or side of it, as it is set across the
+wall. Now, evidently, if by any chance this weight happen to be thrown
+more on the edges of this stone than the centre, there will be a chance
+of these edges breaking off. Had we not better, therefore, put another
+stone, sloped off to the wall, beneath the projecting one, as at _c_.
+But now our cornice looks somewhat too heavy for the wall; and as the
+upper stone is evidently of needless thickness, we will thin it
+somewhat, and we have the form _d_. Now observe: the lower or bevelled
+stone here at _d_ corresponds to _d_ in the base (Fig. II., page 59).
+That was the foot of the wall; this is its hand. And the top stone here,
+which is a constant member of cornices, corresponds to the under stone
+_c_, in Fig. II., which is a constant member of bases. The reader has no
+idea at present of the enormous importance of these members; but as we
+shall have to refer to them perpetually, I must ask him to compare them,
+and fix their relations well in his mind: and, for convenience, I shall
+call the bevelled or sloping stone, X, and the upright edged stone, Y.
+The reader may remember easily which is which; for X is an intersection
+of two slopes, and may therefore properly mean either of the two sloping
+stones; and Y is a figure with a perpendicular line and two slopes, and
+may therefore fitly stand for the upright stone in relation to each of
+the sloping ones; and as we shall have to say much more about cornices
+than about bases, let X and Y stand for the stones of the cornice, and
+Xb and Yb for those of the base, when distinction is needed.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. V.]
+
+Sec. IV. Now the form at _d_, Fig. IV., is the great root and primal type
+of all cornices whatsoever. In order to see what forms may be developed
+from it, let us take its profile a little larger--_a_, Fig. V., with X
+and Y duly marked. Now this form, being the root of all cornices, may
+either have to finish the wall and so keep off rain; or, as so often
+stated, to carry weight. If the former, it is evident that, in its
+present profile, the rain will run back down the slope of X; and if the
+latter, that the sharp angle or edge of X, at _k_, may be a little too
+weak for its work, and run a chance of giving way. To avoid the evil in
+the first case, suppose we hollow the slope of X inwards, as at _b_; and
+to avoid it in the second case, suppose we strengthen X by letting it
+bulge outwards, as at c.
+
+Sec. V. These (_b_ and _c_) are the profiles of two vast families of
+cornices, springing from the same root, which, with a third arising
+from their combination (owing its origin to aesthetic considerations, and
+inclining sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other), have been
+employed, each on its third part of the architecture of the whole world
+throughout all ages, and must continue to be so employed through such
+time as is yet to come. We do not at present speak of the third or
+combined group; but the relation of the two main branches to each other,
+and to the line of origin, is given at _e_, Fig. V.; where the dotted
+lines are the representatives of the two families, and the straight line
+of the root. The slope of this right line, as well as the nature of the
+curves, here drawn as segments of circles, we leave undetermined: the
+slope, as well as the proportion of the depths of X and Y to each other,
+vary according to the weight to be carried, the strength of the stone,
+the size of the cornice, and a thousand other accidents; and the nature
+of the curves according to aesthetic laws. It is in these infinite fields
+that the invention of the architect is permitted to expatiate, but not
+in the alteration of primitive forms.
+
+Sec. VI. But to proceed. It will doubtless appear to the reader, that,
+even allowing for some of these permissible variations in the curve or
+slope of X, neither the form at _b_, nor any approximation to that form,
+would be sufficiently undercut to keep the rain from running back upon it.
+This is true; but we have to consider that the cornice, as the close of
+the wall's life, is of all its features that which is best fitted for
+honor and ornament. It has been esteemed so by almost all builders, and
+has been lavishly decorated in modes hereafter to be considered. But it
+is evident that, as it is high above the eye, the fittest place to
+receive the decoration is the slope of X, which is inclined towards the
+spectator; and if we cut away or hollow out this slope more than we have
+done at _b_, all decoration will be hid in the shadow. If, therefore,
+the climate be fine, and rain of long continuance not to be dreaded, we
+shall not hollow the stone X further, adopting the curve at _b_ merely
+as the most protective in our power. But if the climate be one in which
+rain is frequent and dangerous, as in alternations with frost, we may be
+compelled to consider the cornice in a character distinctly protective,
+and to hollow out X farther, so as to enable it thoroughly to accomplish
+its purpose. A cornice thus treated loses its character as the crown or
+honor of the wall, takes the office of its protector, and is called a
+DRIPSTONE. The dripstone is naturally the attribute of Northern
+buildings, and therefore especially of Gothic architecture; the true
+cornice is the attribute of Southern buildings, and therefore of Greek
+and Italian architecture; and it is one of their peculiar beauties, and
+eminent features of superiority.
+
+Sec. VII. Before passing to the dripstone, however, let us examine a
+little farther into the nature of the true cornice. We cannot, indeed,
+render either of the forms _b_ or _c_, Fig. V., perfectly protective from
+rain, but we can help them a little in their duty by a slight advance of
+their upper ledge. This, with the form _b_, we can best manage by cutting
+off the sharp upper point of its curve, which is evidently weak and
+useless; and we shall have the form _f_. By a slight advance of the upper
+stone _c_, we shall have the parallel form _g_.
+
+These two cornices, _f_ and _g_, are characteristic of early Byzantine
+work, and are found on all the most lovely examples of it in Venice. The
+type _a_ is rarer, but occurs pure in the most exquisite piece of
+composition in Venice--the northern portico of St. Mark's; and will be
+given in due time.
+
+Sec. VIII. Now the reader has doubtless noticed that these forms of
+cornice result, from considerations of fitness and necessity, far more
+neatly and decisively than the forms of the base, which we left only
+very generally determined. The reason is, that there are many ways of
+building foundations, and many _good_ ways, dependent upon the peculiar
+accidents of the ground and nature of accessible materials. There is
+also room to spare in width, and a chance of a part of the arrangement
+being concealed by the ground, so as to modify height. But we have no
+room to spare in width on the top of a wall, and all that we do must be
+thoroughly visible; and we can but have to deal with bricks, or stones
+of a certain degree of fineness, and not with mere gravel, or sand, or
+clay,--so that as the conditions are limited, the forms become
+determined; and our steps will be more clear and certain the farther we
+advance. The sources of a river are usually half lost among moss and
+pebbles, and its first movements doubtful in direction; but, as the
+current gathers force, its banks are determined, and its branches are
+numbered.
+
+Sec. IX. So far of the true cornice: we have still to determine the form
+of the dripstone.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. VI.]
+
+We go back to our primal type or root of cornice, _a_ of Fig. V. We take
+this at _a_ in Fig. VI., and we are to consider it entirely as a
+protection against rain. Now the only way in which the rain can be kept
+from running back on the slope of X is by a bold hollowing out of it
+upwards, _b_. But clearly, by thus doing, we shall so weaken the
+projecting part of it that the least shock would break it at the neck,
+_c_; we must therefore cut the whole out of one stone, which will give
+us the form _d_. That the water may not lodge on the upper ledge of
+this, we had better round it off; and it will better protect the joint
+at the bottom of the slope if we let the stone project over it in a
+roll, cutting the recess deeper above. These two changes are made in
+_e_: _e_ is the type of dripstones; the projecting part being, however,
+more or less rounded into an approximation to the shape of a falcon's
+beak, and often reaching it completely. But the essential part of the
+arrangement is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we find
+this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the builders have
+been _bred_ in a wet country, and that the rest of the building will be
+prepared for rough weather. The up cutting of the curve is sometimes all
+the distinction between the mouldings of far-distant countries and
+utterly strange nations.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. VII.]
+
+Fig. VII. representing a moulding with an outer and inner curve, the
+latter undercut. Take the outer line, and this moulding is one constant
+in Venice, in architecture traceable to Arabian types, and chiefly to
+the early mosques of Cairo. But take the inner line; it is a dripstone
+at Salisbury. In that narrow interval between the curves there is, when
+we read it rightly, an expression of another and mightier curve,--the
+orbed sweep of the earth and sea, between the desert of the Pyramids,
+and the green and level fields through which the clear streams of Sarum
+wind so slowly.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. VIII.]
+
+And so delicate is the test, that though pure cornices are often found
+in the north,--borrowed from classical models,--so surely as we find a
+true dripstone moulding in the South, the influence of Northern builders
+has been at work; and this will be one of the principal evidences which
+I shall use in detecting Lombard influence on Arab work; for the true
+Byzantine and Arab mouldings are all open to the sky and light, but the
+Lombards brought with them from the North the fear of rain, and in all
+the Lombardic Gothic we instantly recognize the shadowy dripstone: _a_,
+Fig. VIII., is from a noble fragment at Milan, in the Piazza dei
+Mercanti; _b_, from the Broletto of Como. Compare them with _c_ and
+_d_; both from Salisbury; _e_ and _f_ from Lisieux, Normandy; _g_ and
+_h_ from Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire.
+
+Sec. X. The reader is now master of all that he need know about the
+construction of the general wall cornice, fitted either to become a
+crown of the wall, or to carry weight above. If, however, the weight
+above become considerable, it may be necessary to support the cornice at
+intervals with brackets; especially if it be required to project far, as
+well as to carry weight; as, for instance, if there be a gallery on top
+of the wall. This kind of bracket-cornice, deep or shallow, forms a
+separate family, essentially connected with roofs and galleries; for if
+there be no superincumbent weight, it is evidently absurd to put
+brackets to a plain cornice or dripstone (though this is sometimes done
+in carrying out a style); so that, as soon as we see a bracket put to a
+cornice, it implies, or should imply, that there is a roof or gallery
+above it. Hence this family of cornices I shall consider in connection
+with roofing, calling them "roof cornices," while what we have hitherto
+examined are proper "wall cornices." The roof cornice and wall cornice
+are therefore treated in division D.
+
+We are not, however, as yet nearly ready for our roof. We have only
+obtained that which was to be the object of our first division (A); we
+have got, that is to say, a general idea of a wall and of the three
+essential parts of a wall; and we have next, it will be remembered, to
+get an idea of a pier and the essential parts of a pier, which were to
+be the subjects of our second division (B).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  THE PIER BASE.
+
+
+Sec. I. In Sec. III. of Chap. III., it was stated that when a wall had to
+sustain an addition of vertical pressure, it was first fitted to sustain
+it by some addition to its own thickness; but if the pressure became
+very great, by being gathered up into PIERS.
+
+I must first make the reader understand what I mean by a wall's being
+gathered up. Take a piece of tolerably thick drawing-paper, or thin
+Bristol board, five or six inches square. Set it on its edge on the
+table, and put a small octavo book on the edge or top of it, and it will
+bend instantly. Tear it into four strips all across, and roll up each
+strip tightly. Set these rolls on end on the table, and they will carry
+the small octavo perfectly well. Now the thickness or substance of the
+paper employed to carry the weight is exactly the same as it was before,
+only it is differently arranged, that is to say, "gathered up."[35] If
+therefore a wall be gathered up like the Bristol board, it will bear
+greater weight than it would if it remained a wall veil. The sticks into
+which you gather it are called _Piers_. A pier is a coagulated wall.
+
+Sec. II. Now you cannot quite treat the wall as you did the Bristol board,
+and twist it up at once; but let us see how you _can_ treat it. Let A,
+Fig. IX., be the plan of a wall which you have made inconveniently and
+expensively thick, and which still appears to be slightly too weak for
+what it must carry: divide it, as at B, into equal spaces, _a_, _b_,
+_a_, _b_, &c. Cut out a thin slice of it at every _a_ on each side, and
+put the slices you cut out on at every _b_ on each side, and you will
+have the plan at B, with exactly the same quantity of bricks. But your
+wall is now so much concentrated, that, if it was only slightly too weak
+before, it will be stronger now than it need be; so you may spare some
+of your space as well as your bricks by cutting off the corners of the
+thicker parts, as suppose _c_, _c_, _c_, _c_, at C: and you have now a
+series of square piers connected by a wall veil, which, on less space
+and with less materials, will do the work of the wall at A perfectly
+well.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. IX.]
+
+Sec. III. I do not say _how much_ may be cut away in the corners _c_,
+_c_,--that is a mathematical question with which we need not trouble
+ourselves: all that we need know is, that out of every slice we take
+from the "_b_'s" and put on at the "_a_'s," we may keep a certain
+percentage of room and bricks, until, supposing that we do not want the
+wall veil for its own sake, this latter is thinned entirely away, like
+the girdle of the Lady of Avenel, and finally breaks, and we have
+nothing but a row of square piers, D.
+
+Sec. IV. But have we yet arrived at the form which will spare most room,
+and use fewest materials. No; and to get farther we must apply the
+general principle to our wall, which is equally true in morals and
+mathematics, that the strength of materials, or of men, or of minds, is
+always most available when it is applied as closely as possible to a
+single point.
+
+Let the point to which we wish the strength of our square piers to be
+applied, be chosen. Then we shall of course put them directly under it,
+and the point will be in their centre. But now some of their materials
+are not so near or close to this point as others. Those at the corners
+are farther off than the rest.
+
+Now, if every particle of the pier be brought as near as possible to the
+centre of it, the form it assumes is the circle.
+
+The circle must be, therefore, the best possible form of plan for a
+pier, from the beginning of time to the end of it. A circular pier is
+called a pillar or column, and all good architecture adapted to vertical
+support is made up of pillars, has always been so, and must ever be so,
+as long as the laws of the universe hold.
+
+The final condition is represented at E, in its relation to that at D.
+It will be observed that though each circle projects a little beyond the
+side of the square out of which it is formed, the space cut off at the
+angles is greater than that added at the sides; for, having our
+materials in a more concentrated arrangement, we can afford to part with
+some of them in this last transformation, as in all the rest.
+
+Sec. V. And now, what have the base and the cornice of the wall been doing
+while we have been cutting the veil to pieces and gathering it together?
+
+The base is also cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the base
+of the column.
+
+The cornice is cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the capital
+of the column. Do not be alarmed at the new word, it does not mean a new
+thing; a capital is only the cornice of a column, and you may, if you
+like, call a cornice the capital of a wall.
+
+We have now, therefore, to examine these three concentrated forms of the
+base, veil, and cornice: first, the concentrated base, still called the
+BASE of the column; then the concentrated veil, called the SHAFT of the
+column; then the concentrated cornice, called the CAPITAL of the column.
+
+And first the Base:--
+
+[Illustration: Fig. X.]
+
+Sec. VI. Look back to the main type, Fig. II., page 55, and apply its
+profiles in due proportion to the feet of the pillars at E in Fig. IX.
+p. 72: If each step in Fig. II. were gathered accurately, the projection
+of the entire circular base would be less in proportion to its height
+than it is in Fig. II.; but the approximation to the result in Fig. X.
+is quite accurate enough for our purposes. (I pray the reader to observe
+that I have not made the smallest change, except this necessary
+expression of a reduction in diameter, in Fig. II. as it is applied in
+Fig. X., only I have not drawn the joints of the stones because these
+would confuse the outlines of the bases; and I have not represented the
+rounding of the shafts, because it does not bear at present on the
+argument.) Now it would hardly be convenient, if we had to pass between
+the pillars, to have to squeeze ourselves through one of those angular
+gaps or breches de Roland in Fig. X. Our first impulse would be to cut
+them open; but we cannot do this, or our piers are unsafe. We have but
+one other resource, to fill them up until we have a floor wide enough to
+let us pass easily: this we may perhaps obtain at the first ledge, we
+are nearly sure to get it at the second, and we may then obtain access
+to the raised interval, either by raising the earth over the lower
+courses of foundation, or by steps round the entire building.
+
+Fig. XI. is the arrangement of Fig. X. so treated.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XI.]
+
+Sec. VII. But suppose the pillars are so vast that the lowest chink in
+Fig. X. would be quite wide enough to let us pass through it. Is there
+then any reason for filling it up? Yes. It will be remembered that in
+Chap. IV. Sec. VIII. the chief reason for the wide foundation of the
+wall was stated to be "that it might equalise its pressure over a large
+surface;" but when the foundation is cut to pieces as in Fig. X., the
+pressure is thrown on a succession of narrowed and detached spaces of
+that surface. If the ground is in some places more disposed to yield than
+in others, the piers in those places will sink more than the rest, and
+this distortion of the system will be probably of more importance in
+pillars than in a wall, because the adjustment of the weight above is more
+delicate; we thus actually want the _weight_ of the stones between the
+pillars, in order that the whole foundation may be bonded into one, and
+sink together if it sink at all: and the more massy the pillars, the
+more we shall need to fill the intervals of their foundations. In the
+best form of Greek architecture, the intervals are filled up to the root
+of the shaft, and the columns have no independent base; they stand on
+the even floor of their foundation.
+
+Sec. VIII. Such a structure is not only admissible, but, when the column
+is of great thickness in proportion to its height, and the sufficient
+firmness, either of the ground or prepared floor, is evident, it is the
+best of all, having a strange dignity in its excessive simplicity. It
+is, or ought to be, connected in our minds with the deep meaning of
+primeval memorial. "And Jacob took the stone that he had put for his
+pillow, and set it up for a pillar." I do not fancy that he put a base
+for it first. If you try to put a base to the rock-piers of Stonehenge,
+you will hardly find them improved; and two of the most perfect
+buildings in the world, the Parthenon and Ducal palace of Venice, have
+no bases to their pillars: the latter has them, indeed, to its upper
+arcade shafts; and had once, it is said, a continuous raised base for
+its lower ones: but successive elevations of St. Mark's Place have
+covered this base, and parts of the shafts themselves, with an
+inundation of paving stones; and yet the building is, I doubt not, as
+grand as ever. Finally, the two most noble pillars in Venice, those
+brought from Acre, stand on the smooth marble surface of the Piazzetta,
+with no independent bases whatever. They are rather broken away beneath,
+so that you may look under parts of them, and stand (not quite erect,
+but leaning somewhat) safe by their own massy weight. Nor could any
+bases possibly be devised that would not spoil them.
+
+Sec. IX. But it is otherwise if the pillar be so slender as to look
+doubtfully balanced. It would indeed stand quite as safely without an
+independent base as it would with one (at least, unless the base be in
+the form of a socket). But it will not appear so safe to the eye. And
+here for the first time, I have to express and apply a principle, which
+I believe the reader will at once grant,--that features necessary to
+express security to the imagination, are often as essential parts of
+good architecture as those required for security itself. It was said
+that the wall base was the foot or paw of the wall. Exactly in the same
+way, and with clearer analogy, the pier base is the foot or paw of the
+pier. Let us, then, take a hint from nature. A foot has two offices, to
+bear up, and to hold firm. As far as it has to bear up, it is uncloven,
+with slight projection,--look at an elephant's (the Doric base of
+animality);[36] but as far as it has to hold firm, it is divided and
+clawed, with wide projections,--look at an eagle's.
+
+Sec. X. Now observe. In proportion to the massiness of the column, we
+require its foot to express merely the power of bearing up; in fact, it
+can do without a foot, like the Squire in Chevy Chase, if the ground
+only be hard enough. But if the column be slender, and look as if it
+might lose its balance, we require it to look as if it had hold of the
+ground, or the ground hold of it, it does not matter which,--some
+expression of claw, prop, or socket. Now let us go back to Fig. XI., and
+take up one of the bases there, in the state in which we left it. We may
+leave out the two lower steps (with which we have nothing more to do, as
+they have become the united floor or foundation of the whole), and, for
+the sake of greater clearness, I shall not draw the bricks in the shaft,
+nor the flat stone which carries them, though the reader is to suppose
+them remaining as drawn in Fig. XI.; but I shall only draw the shaft and
+its two essential members of base, Xb and Yb, as explained at p. 65,
+above: and now, expressing the rounding of these numbers on _a_ somewhat
+larger scale, we have the profile _a_, Fig. XII.; _b_, the perspective
+appearance of such a base seen from above; and _c_, the plan of it.
+
+Sec. XI. Now I am quite sure the reader is not satisfied of the stability
+of this form as it is seen at _b_; nor would he ever be so with the main
+contour of a circular base. Observe, we have taken some trouble to
+reduce the member Yb into this round form, and all that we have gained
+by so doing, is this unsatisfactory and unstable look of the base; of
+which the chief reason is, that a circle, unless enclosed by right
+lines, has never an appearance of fixture, or definite place,[37]--we
+suspect it of motion, like an orb of heaven; and the second is, that the
+whole base, considered as the foot of the shaft, has no grasp nor hold:
+it is a club-foot, and looks too blunt for the limb,--it wants at least
+expansion, if not division.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XII.]
+
+Sec. XII. Suppose, then, instead of taking so much trouble with the
+member Yb, we save time and labor, and leave it a square block. Xb must,
+however, evidently follow the pillar, as its condition is that it slope
+to the very base of the wall veil, and of whatever the wall veil
+becomes. So the corners of Yb will project beyond the circle of Xb, and
+we shall have (Fig. XII.) the profile _d_, the perspective appearance
+_e_, and the plan _f_. I am quite sure the reader likes _e_ much better
+than he did _b_. The circle is now placed, and we are not afraid of its
+rolling away. The foot has greater expansion, and we have saved labor
+besides, with little loss of space, for the interval between the bases
+is just as great as it was before,--we have only filled up the corners
+of the squares.
+
+But is it not possible to mend the form still further? There is surely
+still an appearance of separation between Xb and Yb, as if the one might
+slip off the other. The foot is expanded enough; but it needs some
+expression of grasp as well. It has no toes. Suppose we were to put a
+spur or prop to Xb at each corner, so as to hold it fast in the centre
+of Yb. We will do this in the simplest possible form. We will have the
+spur, or small buttress, sloping straight from the corner of Yb up to
+the top of Xb, and as seen from above, of the shape of a triangle.
+Applying such spurs in Fig. XII., we have the diagonal profile at _g_,
+the perspective _h_, and the plan _i_.
+
+Sec. XIII. I am quite sure the reader likes this last base the best,
+and feels as if it were the firmest. But he must carefully distinguish
+between this feeling or imagination of the eye, and the real stability
+of the structure. That this real stability has been slightly increased
+by the changes between _b_ and _h_, in Fig. XII., is true. There is in
+the base _h_ somewhat less chance of accidental dislocation, and
+somewhat greater solidity and weight. But this very slight gain of
+security is of no importance whatever when compared with the general
+requirements of the structure. The pillar must be _perfectly_ secure,
+and more than secure, with the base _b_, or the building will be unsafe,
+whatever other base you put to the pillar. The changes are made, not for
+the sake of the almost inappreciable increase of security they involve,
+but in order to convince the eye of the real security which the base _b_
+_appears_ to compromise. This is especially the case with regard to the
+props or spurs, which are absolutely useless in reality, but are of the
+highest importance as an expression of safety. And this will farther
+appear when we observe that they have been above quite arbitrarily
+supposed to be of a triangular form. Why triangular? Why should not the
+spur be made wider and stronger, so as to occupy the whole width of the
+angle of the square, and to become a complete expansion of Xb to the
+edge of the square? Simply because, whatever its width, it has, in
+reality, no supporting power whatever; and the _expression_ of support
+is greatest where it assumes a form approximating to that of the spur or
+claw of an animal. We shall, however, find hereafter, that it ought
+indeed to be much wider than it is in Fig. XII., where it is narrowed in
+order to make its structure clearly intelligible.
+
+Sec. XIV. If the reader chooses to consider this spur as an aesthetic
+feature altogether, he is at liberty to do so, and to transfer what we
+have here said of it to the beginning of Chap. XXV. I think that its
+true place is here, as an _expression_ of safety, and not a means of
+beauty; but I will assume only, as established, the form _e_ of Fig.
+XII., which is absolutely, as a construction, easier, stronger, and more
+perfect than _b_. A word or two now of its materials. The wall base, it
+will be remembered, was built of stones more neatly cut as they were
+higher in place; and the members, Y and X, of the pier base, were the
+highest members of the wall base gathered. But, exactly in proportion to
+this gathering or concentration in form, should, if possible, be the
+gathering or concentration of substance. For as the whole weight of the
+building is now to rest upon few and limited spaces, it is of the
+greater importance that it should be there received by solid masonry. Xb
+and Yb are therefore, if possible, to be each of a single stone; or,
+when the shaft is small, both cut out of one block, and especially if
+spurs are to be added to Xb. The reader must not be angry with me for
+stating things so self-evident, for these are all necessary steps in the
+chain of argument which I must not break. Even this change from detached
+stones to a single block is not without significance; for it is part of
+the real service and value of the member Yb to provide for the reception
+of the shaft a surface free from joints; and the eye always conceives it
+as a firm covering over all inequalities or fissures in the smaller
+masonry of the floor.
+
+Sec. XV. I have said nothing yet of the proportion of the height of Yb to
+its width, nor of that of Yb and Xb to each other. Both depend much on
+the height of shaft, and are besides variable within certain limits, at
+the architect's discretion. But the limits of the height of Yb may be
+thus generally stated. If it looks so thin as that the weight of the
+column above might break it, it is too low; and if it is higher than its
+own width, it is too high. The utmost admissible height is that of a
+cubic block; for if it ever become higher than it is wide, it becomes
+itself a part of a pier, and not the base of one.
+
+Sec. XVI. I have also supposed Yb, when expanded from beneath Xb, as
+always expanded into a square, and four spurs only to be added at the
+angles. But Yb may be expanded into a pentagon, hexagon, or polygon; and
+Xb then may have five, six, or many spurs. In proportion, however, as
+the sides increase in number, the spurs become shorter and less energetic
+in their effect, and the square is in most cases the best form.
+
+Sec. XVII. We have hitherto conducted the argument entirely on the
+supposition of the pillars being numerous, and in a range. Suppose,
+however, that we require only a single pillar: as we have free space
+round it, there is no need to fill up the first ranges of its
+foundations; nor need we do so in order to equalise pressure, since the
+pressure to be met is its own alone. Under such circumstances, it is
+well to exhibit the lower tiers of the foundation as well as Yb and Xb.
+The noble bases of the two granite pillars of the Piazzetta at Venice
+are formed by the entire series of members given in Fig. X., the lower
+courses expanding into steps, with a superb breadth of proportion to the
+shaft. The member Xb is of course circular, having its proper decorative
+mouldings, not here considered; Yb is octagonal, but filled up into a
+square by certain curious groups of figures representing the trades of
+Venice. The three courses below are octagonal, with their sides set
+across the angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet
+in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7 feet each
+side).
+
+Sec. XVIII. Detached buildings, like our own Monument, are not pillars,
+but towers built in imitation of Pillars. As towers they are barbarous,
+being dark, inconvenient, and unsafe, besides lying, and pretending to
+be what they are not. As shafts they are barbarous, because they were
+designed at a time when the Renaissance architects had introduced and
+forced into acceptance, as _de rigueur_, a kind of columnar high-heeled
+shoe,--a thing which they called a pedestal, and which is to a true base
+exactly what a Greek actor's cothurnus was to a Greek gentleman's
+sandal. But the Greek actor knew better, I believe, than to exhibit or
+to decorate his cork sole; and, with shafts as with heroes, it is rather
+better to put the sandal off than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed,
+occasions on which a pedestal may be necessary; it may be better to
+raise a shaft from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others,
+its companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher
+shaft; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if otherwise
+too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than to use a larger shaft of
+coarser material; but the pedestal is in each case a make-shift, not an
+additional perfection. It may, in the like manner, be sometimes
+convenient for men to walk on stilts, but not to keep their stilts on as
+ornamental parts of dress. The bases of the Nelson Column, the Monument,
+and the column of the Place Vendome, are to the shafts, exactly what
+highly ornamented wooden legs would be to human beings.
+
+Sec. XIX. So far of bases of detached shafts. As we do not yet know in
+what manner shafts are likely to be grouped, we can say nothing of those
+of grouped shafts until we know more of what they are to support.
+
+Lastly; we have throughout our reasoning upon the base supposed the pier
+to be circular. But circumstances may occur to prevent its being
+reduced to this form, and it may remain square or rectangular; its base
+will then be simply the wall base following its contour, and we have no
+spurs at the angles. Thus much may serve respecting pier bases; we have
+next to examine the concentration of the Wall Veil, or the Shaft.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [35] The experiment is not quite fair in this rude fashion; for the
+    small rolls owe their increase of strength much more to their
+    tubular form than their aggregation of material; but if the paper be
+    cut up into small strips, and tied together firmly in three or four
+    compact bundles, it will exhibit increase of strength enough to show
+    the principle. Vide, however, Appendix 16, "Strength of Shafts."
+
+  [36] Appendix 17, "Answer to Mr. Garbett."
+
+  [37] Yet more so than any other figure enclosed by a curved line:
+    for the circle, in its relations to its own centre, is the curve of
+    greatest stability. Compare Sec. XX. of Chap. XX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  THE SHAFT.
+
+
+Sec. I. We have seen in the last Chapter how, in converting the wall
+into the square or cylindrical shaft, we parted at every change of form
+with some quantity of material. In proportion to the quantity thus
+surrendered, is the necessity that what we retain should be good of its
+kind, and well set together, since everything now depends on it.
+
+It is clear also that the best material, and the closest concentration,
+is that of the natural crystalline rocks; and that, by having reduced
+our wall into the shape of shafts, we may be enabled to avail ourselves
+of this better material, and to exchange cemented bricks for
+crystallised blocks of stone. Therefore, the general idea of a perfect
+shaft is that of a single stone hewn into a form more or less elongated
+and cylindrical. Under this form, or at least under the ruder one of a
+long stone set upright, the conception of true shafts appears first to
+have occurred to the human mind; for the reader must note this
+carefully, once for all, it does not in the least follow that the order
+of architectural features which is most reasonable in their arrangement,
+is most probable in their invention. I have theoretically deduced shafts
+from walls, but shafts were never so reasoned out in architectural
+practice. The man who first propped a thatched roof with poles was the
+discoverer of their principle; and he who first hewed a long stone into
+a cylinder, the perfecter of their practice.
+
+Sec. II. It is clearly necessary that shafts of this kind (we will call
+them, for convenience, _block_ shafts) should be composed of stone not
+liable to flaws or fissures; and therefore that we must no longer
+continue our argument as if it were always possible to do what is to be
+done in the best way; for the style of a national architecture may
+evidently depend, in great measure, upon the nature of the rocks of the
+country.
+
+Our own English rocks, which supply excellent building stone from their
+thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most part entirely incapable
+of being worked into shafts of any size, except only the granites and
+whinstones, whose hardness renders them intractable for ordinary
+purposes;--and English architecture therefore supplies no instances of
+the block shaft applied on an extensive scale; while the facility of
+obtaining large masses of marble has in Greece and Italy been partly the
+cause of the adoption of certain noble types of architectural form
+peculiar to those countries, or, when occurring elsewhere, derived from
+them.
+
+We have not, however, in reducing our walls to shafts, calculated on the
+probabilities of our obtaining better materials than those of which the
+walls were built; and we shall therefore first consider the form of
+shaft which will be best when we have the best materials; and then
+consider how far we can imitate, or how far it will be wise to imitate,
+this form with any materials we can obtain.
+
+Sec. III. Now as I gave the reader the ground, and the stones, that he
+might for himself find out how to build his wall, I shall give him the
+block of marble, and the chisel, that he may himself find out how to
+shape his column. Let him suppose the elongated mass, so given him,
+rudely hewn to the thickness which he has calculated will be
+proportioned to the weight it has to carry. The conditions of stability
+will require that some allowance be made in finishing it for any chance
+of slight disturbance or subsidence of the ground below, and that, as
+everything must depend on the uprightness of the shaft, as little chance
+should be left as possible of its being thrown off its balance. It will
+therefore be prudent to leave it slightly thicker at the base than at
+the top. This excess of diameter at the base being determined, the
+reader is to ask himself how most easily and simply to smooth the
+column from one extremity to the other. To cut it into a true
+straight-sided cone would be a matter of much trouble and nicety, and
+would incur the continual risk of chipping into it too deep. Why not
+leave some room for a chance stroke, work it slightly, _very_ slightly
+convex, and smooth the curve by the eye between the two extremities? you
+will save much trouble and time, and the shaft will be all the stronger.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XIII.]
+
+This is accordingly the natural form of a detached block shaft. It is
+the best. No other will ever be so agreeable to the mind or eye. I do
+not mean that it is not capable of more refined execution, or of the
+application of some of the laws of aesthetic beauty, but that it is the
+best recipient of execution and subject of law; better in either case
+than if you had taken more pains, and cut it straight.
+
+Sec. IV. You will observe, however, that the convexity is to be very
+slight, and that the shaft is not to _bulge_ in the centre, but to taper
+from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character of the curve you
+will discern better by exaggerating, in a diagram, the conditions of its
+sculpture.
+
+Let _a_, _a_, _b_, _b_, at A, Fig. XIII., be the rough block of the
+shaft, laid on the ground; and as thick as you can by any chance require
+it to be; you will leave it of this full thickness at its base at A, but
+at the other end you will mark off upon it the diameter _c_, _d_, which
+you intend it to have at the summit; you will then take your mallet and
+chisel, and working from _c_ and _d_ you will roughly knock off the
+corners, shaded in the figure, so as to reduce the shaft to the figure
+described by the inside lines in A and the outside lines in B; you then
+proceed to smooth it, you chisel away the shaded parts in B, and leave
+your finished shaft of the form of the _inside_ lines _e_, _g_, _f_,
+_h_.
+
+The result of this operation will be of course that the shaft tapers
+faster towards the top than it does near the ground. Observe this
+carefully; it is a point of great future importance.
+
+Sec. V. So far of the shape of detached or block shafts. We can carry the
+type no farther on merely structural considerations: let us pass to the
+shaft of inferior materials.
+
+Unfortunately, in practice, this step must be soon made. It is alike
+difficult to obtain, transport, and raise, block shafts more than ten or
+twelve feet long, except in remarkable positions, and as pieces of
+singular magnificence. Large pillars are therefore always composed of
+more than one block of stone. Such pillars are either jointed like
+basalt columns, and composed of solid pieces of stone set one above
+another; or they are filled up _towers_, built of small stones cemented
+into a mass, with more or less of regularity: Keep this distinction
+carefully in mind, it is of great importance; for the jointed column,
+every stone composing which, however thin, is (so to speak) a complete
+_slice_ of the shaft, is just as strong as the block pillar of one
+stone, so long as no forces are brought into action upon it which would
+have a tendency to cause horizontal dislocation. But the pillar which is
+built as a filled-up tower is of course liable to fissure in any
+direction, if its cement give way.
+
+But, in either case, it is evident that all constructive reason of the
+curved contour is at once destroyed. Far from being an easy or natural
+procedure, the fitting of each portion of the curve to its fellow, in
+the separate stones, would require painful care and considerable masonic
+skill; while, in the case of the filled-up tower, the curve outwards
+would be even unsafe; for its greatest strength (and that the more in
+proportion to its careless building) lies in its bark, or shell of
+outside stone; and this, if curved outwards, would at once burst
+outwards, if heavily loaded above.
+
+If, therefore, the curved outline be ever retained in such shafts, it
+must be in obedience to aesthetic laws only.
+
+Sec. VI. But farther. Not only the curvature, but even the tapering by
+straight lines, would be somewhat difficult of execution in the pieced
+column. Where, indeed, the entire shaft is composed of four or five
+blocks set one upon another, the diameters may be easily determined at
+the successive joints, and the stones chiselled to the same slope. But
+this becomes sufficiently troublesome when the joints are numerous, so
+that the pillar is like a pile of cheeses; or when it is to be built of
+small and irregular stones. We should be naturally led, in the one case,
+to cut all the cheeses to the same diameter; in the other to build by
+the plumb-line; and in both to give up the tapering altogether.
+
+Sec. VII. Farther. Since the chance, in the one case, of horizontal
+dislocation, in the other, of irregular fissure, is much increased by
+the composition of the shaft out of joints or small stones, a larger
+bulk of shaft is required to carry the given weight; and, _caeteris
+paribus_, jointed and cemented shafts must be thicker in proportion to
+the weight they carry than those which are of one block.
+
+We have here evidently natural causes of a very marked division in
+schools of architecture: one group composed of buildings whose shafts
+are either of a single stone or of few joints; the shafts, therefore,
+being gracefully tapered, and reduced by successive experiments to the
+narrowest possible diameter proportioned to the weight they carry: and
+the other group embracing those buildings whose shafts are of many
+joints or of small stones; shafts which are therefore not tapered, and
+rather thick and ponderous in proportion to the weight they carry; the
+latter school being evidently somewhat imperfect and inelegant as
+compared with the former.
+
+It may perhaps appear, also, that this arrangement of the materials in
+cylindrical shafts at all would hardly have suggested itself to a people
+who possessed no large blocks out of which to hew them; and that the
+shaft built of many pieces is probably derived from, and imitative of
+the shaft hewn from few or from one.
+
+Sec. VIII. If, therefore, you take a good geological map of Europe, and
+lay your finger upon the spots where volcanic influences supply either
+travertin or marble in accessible and available masses, you will
+probably mark the points where the types of the first school have been
+originated and developed. If, in the next place, you will mark the
+districts where broken and rugged basalt or whinstone, or slaty
+sandstone, supply materials on easier terms indeed, but fragmentary and
+unmanageable, you will probably distinguish some of the birthplaces of
+the derivative and less graceful school. You will, in the first case,
+lay your finger on Paestum, Agrigentum, and Athens; in the second, on
+Durham and Lindisfarne.
+
+The shafts of the great primal school are, indeed, in their first form,
+as massy as those of the other, and the tendency of both is to continual
+diminution of their diameters: but in the first school it is a true
+diminution in the thickness of the independent pier; in the last, it is
+an apparent diminution, obtained by giving it the appearance of a group
+of minor piers. The distinction, however, with which we are concerned is
+not that of slenderness, but of vertical or curved contour; and we may
+note generally that while throughout the whole range of Northern work,
+the perpendicular shaft appears in continually clearer development,
+throughout every group which has inherited the spirit of the Greek, the
+shaft retains its curved or tapered form; and the occurrence of the
+vertical detached shaft may at all times, in European architecture, be
+regarded as one of the most important collateral evidences of Northern
+influence.
+
+Sec. IX. It is necessary to limit this observation to European
+architecture, because the Egyptian shaft is often untapered, like the
+Northern. It appears that the Central Southern, or Greek shaft, was
+tapered or curved on aesthetic rather than constructive principles; and
+the Egyptian which precedes, and the Northern which follows it, are both
+vertical, the one because the best form had not been discovered, the
+other because it could not be attained. Both are in a certain degree
+barbaric; and both possess in combination and in their ornaments a power
+altogether different from that of the Greek shaft, and at least as
+impressive if not as admirable.
+
+Sec. X. We have hitherto spoken of shafts as if their number were fixed,
+and only their diameter variable according to the weight to be borne.
+But this supposition is evidently gratuitous; for the same weight may be
+carried either by many and slender, or by few and massy shafts. If the
+reader will look back to Fig. IX., he will find the number of shafts
+into which the wall was reduced to be dependent altogether upon the
+length of the spaces _a_, _b_, _a_, _b_, &c., a length which was
+arbitrarily fixed. We are at liberty to make these spaces of what length
+we choose, and, in so doing, to increase the number and diminish the
+diameter of the shafts, or _vice versa_.
+
+Sec. XI. Supposing the materials are in each case to be of the same kind,
+the choice is in great part at the architect's discretion, only there is
+a limit on the one hand to the multiplication of the slender shaft, in
+the inconvenience of the narrowed interval, and on the other, to the
+enlargement of the massy shaft, in the loss of breadth to the
+building.[38] That will be commonly the best proportion which is a
+natural mean between the two limits; leaning to the side of grace or of
+grandeur according to the expressional intention of the work. I say,
+_commonly_ the best, because, in some cases, this expressional invention
+may prevail over all other considerations, and a column of unnecessary
+bulk or fantastic slightness be adopted in order to strike the spectator
+with awe or with surprise.[39] The architect is, however, rarely in
+practice compelled to use one kind of material only; and his choice
+lies frequently between the employment of a larger number of solid and
+perfect small shafts, or a less number of pieced and cemented large
+ones. It is often possible to obtain from quarries near at hand, blocks
+which might be cut into shafts eight or twelve feet long and four or
+five feet round, when larger shafts can only be obtained in distant
+localities; and the question then is between the perfection of smaller
+features and the imperfection of larger. We shall find numberless
+instances in Italy in which the first choice has been boldly, and I
+think most wisely made; and magnificent buildings have been composed of
+systems of small but perfect shafts, multiplied and superimposed. So
+long as the idea of the symmetry of a perfect shaft remained in the
+builder's mind, his choice could hardly be directed otherwise, and the
+adoption of the built and tower-like shaft appears to have been the
+result of a loss of this sense of symmetry consequent on the employment
+of intractable materials.
+
+Sec. XII. But farther: we have up to this point spoken of shafts as always
+set in ranges, and at equal intervals from each other. But there is no
+necessity for this; and material differences may be made in their
+diameters if two or more be grouped so as to do together the work of one
+large one, and that within, or nearly within, the space which the larger
+one would have occupied.
+
+Sec. XIII. Let A, B, C, Fig. XIV., be three surfaces, of which B and C
+contain equal areas, and each of them double that of A: then supposing
+them all loaded to the same height, B or C would receive twice as much
+weight as A; therefore, to carry B or C loaded, we should need a shaft
+of twice the strength needed to carry A. Let S be the shaft required to
+carry A, and S_2 the shaft required to carry B or C; then S_3 may be
+divided into two shafts, or S_2 into four shafts, as at S_3, all
+equal in area or solid contents;[40] and the mass A might be carried
+safely by two of them, and the masses B and C, each by four of them.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XIV.]
+
+Now if we put the single shafts each under the centre of the mass they
+have to bear, as represented by the shaded circles at _a_, _a2_, _a3_,
+the masses A and C are both of them very ill supported, and even B
+insufficiently; but apply the four and the two shafts as at _b_, _b2_,
+_b3_, and they are supported satisfactorily. Let the weight on each of
+the masses be doubled, and the shafts doubled in area, then we shall
+have such arrangements as those at _c_, _c2_, _c3_; and if again the
+shafts and weight be doubled, we shall have _d_, _d2_, _d3_.
+
+Sec. XIV. Now it will at once be observed that the arrangement of the
+shafts in the series of B and C is always exactly the same in their
+relations to each other; only the group of B is set evenly, and the
+group of C is set obliquely,--the one carrying a square, the other a
+cross.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XV.]
+
+You have in these two series the primal representations of shaft
+arrangement in the Southern and Northern schools; while the group _b_,
+of which _b2_ is the double, set evenly, and _c2_ the double, set
+obliquely, is common to both. The reader will be surprised to find how
+all the complex and varied forms of shaft arrangement will range
+themselves into one or other of these groups; and still more surprised
+to find the oblique or cross set system on the one hand, and the square
+set system on the other, severally distinctive of Southern and Northern
+work. The dome of St. Mark's, and the crossing of the nave and transepts
+of Beauvais, are both carried by square piers; but the piers of St.
+Mark's are set square to the walls of the church, and those of Beauvais
+obliquely to them: and this difference is even a more essential one than
+that between the smooth surface of the one and the reedy complication of
+the other. The two squares here in the margin (Fig. XV.) are exactly of
+the same size, but their expression is altogether different, and in that
+difference lies one of the most subtle distinctions between the Gothic
+and Greek spirit,--from the shaft, which bears the building, to the
+smallest decoration. The Greek square is by preference set evenly, the
+Gothic square obliquely; and that so constantly, that wherever we find
+the level or even square occurring as a prevailing form, either in plan
+or decoration, in early northern work, there we may at least suspect the
+presence of a southern or Greek influence; and, on the other hand,
+wherever the oblique square is prominent in the south, we may
+confidently look for farther evidence of the influence of the Gothic
+architects. The rule must not of course be pressed far when, in either
+school, there has been determined search for every possible variety of
+decorative figures; and accidental circumstances may reverse the usual
+system in special cases; but the evidence drawn from this character is
+collaterally of the highest value, and the tracing it out is a pursuit
+of singular interest. Thus, the Pisan Romanesque might in an instant be
+pronounced to have been formed under some measure of Lombardic
+influence, from the oblique squares set under its arches; and in it we
+have the spirit of northern Gothic affecting details of the
+southern;--obliquity of square, in magnificently shafted Romanesque. At
+Monza, on the other hand, the levelled square is the characteristic
+figure of the entire decoration of the facade of the Duomo, eminently
+giving it southern character; but the details are derived almost
+entirely from the northern Gothic. Here then we have southern spirit and
+northern detail. Of the cruciform outline of the load of the shaft, a
+still more positive test of northern work, we shall have more to say in
+the 28th Chapter; we must at present note certain farther changes in the
+form of the grouped shaft, which open the way to every branch of its
+endless combinations, southern or northern.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XVI.]
+
+Sec. XV. 1. If the group at _d3_, Fig. XIV., be taken from under its
+loading, and have its centre filled up, it will become a quatrefoil; and
+it will represent, in their form of most frequent occurrence, a family
+of shafts, whose plans are foiled figures, trefoils, quatrefoils,
+cinquefoils, &c.; of which a trefoiled example, from the Frari at
+Venice, is the third in Plate II., and a quatrefoil from Salisbury the
+eighth. It is rare, however, to find in Gothic architecture shafts of
+this family composed of a large number of foils, because multifoiled
+shafts are seldom true grouped shafts, but are rather canaliculated
+conditions of massy piers. The representatives of this family may be
+considered as the quatrefoil on the Gothic side of the Alps; and the
+Egyptian multifoiled shaft on the south, approximating to the general
+type, _b_, Fig. XVI.
+
+Sec. XVI. Exactly opposed to this great family is that of shafts which
+have concave curves instead of convex on each of their sides; but these
+are not, properly speaking, grouped shafts at all, and their proper place
+is among decorated piers; only they must be named here in order to mark
+their exact opposition to the foiled system. In their simplest form,
+represented by _c_, Fig. XVI., they have no representatives in good
+architecture, being evidently weak and meagre; but approximations to
+them exist in late Gothic, as in the vile cathedral of Orleans, and in
+modern cast-iron shafts. In their fully developed form they are the
+Greek Doric, _a_, Fig. XVI., and occur in caprices of the Romanesque and
+Italian Gothic: _d_, Fig. XVI., is from the Duomo of Monza.
+
+Sec. XVII. 2. Between _c3_ and _d3_ of Fig. XIV. there may be evidently
+another condition, represented at 6, Plate II., and formed by the
+insertion of a central shaft within the four external ones. This central
+shaft we may suppose to expand in proportion to the weight it has to
+carry. If the external shafts expand in the same proportion, the entire
+form remains unchanged; but if they do not expand, they may (1) be
+pushed out by the expanding shaft, or (2) be gradually swallowed up in
+its expansion, as at 4, Plate II. If they are pushed out, they are
+removed farther from each other by every increase of the central shaft;
+and others may then be introduced in the vacant spaces; giving, on the
+plan, a central orb with an ever increasing host of satellites, 10,
+Plate II.; the satellites themselves often varying in size, and perhaps
+quitting contact with the central shaft. Suppose them in any of their
+conditions fixed, while the inner shaft expands, and they will be
+gradually buried in it, forming more complicated conditions of 4, Plate
+II. The combinations are thus altogether infinite, even supposing the
+central shaft to be circular only; but their infinity is multiplied by
+many other infinities when the central shaft itself becomes square or
+crosslet on the section, or itself multifoiled (8, Plate II.) with
+satellite shafts eddying about its recesses and angles, in every
+possible relation of attraction. Among these endless conditions of
+change, the choice of the architect is free, this only being generally
+noted: that, as the whole value of such piers depends, first, upon their
+being wisely fitted to the weight above them, and, secondly, upon their
+all working together: and one not failing the rest, perhaps to the ruin
+of all, he must never multiply shafts without visible cause in the
+disposition of members superimposed:[41] and in his multiplied group he
+should, if possible, avoid a marked separation between the large central
+shaft and its satellites; for if this exist, the satellites will either
+appear useless altogether, or else, which is worse, they will look as if
+they were meant to keep the central shaft together by wiring or caging
+it in; like iron rods set round a supple cylinder,--a fatal fault in the
+piers of Westminster Abbey, and, in a less degree, in the noble nave of
+the cathedral of Bourges.
+
+Sec. XVIII. While, however, we have been thus subdividing or assembling
+our shafts, how far has it been possible to retain their curved or tapered
+outline? So long as they remain distinct and equal, however close to
+each other, the independent curvature may evidently be retained. But
+when once they come in contact, it is equally evident that a column,
+formed of shafts touching at the base and separate at the top, would
+appear as if in the very act of splitting asunder. Hence, in all the
+closely arranged groups, and especially those with a central shaft, the
+tapering is sacrificed; and with less cause for regret, because it was a
+provision against subsidence or distortion, which cannot now take place
+with the separate members of the group. Evidently, the work, if safe at
+all, must be executed with far greater accuracy and stability when its
+supports are so delicately arranged, than would be implied by such
+precaution. In grouping shafts, therefore, a true perpendicular line is,
+in nearly all cases, given to the pier; and the reader will anticipate
+that the two schools, which we have already found to be distinguished,
+the one by its perpendicular and pieced shafts, and the other by its
+curved and block shafts, will be found divided also in their employment
+of grouped shafts;--it is likely that the idea of grouping, however
+suggested, will be fully entertained and acted upon by the one, but
+hesitatingly by the other; and that we shall find, on the one hand,
+buildings displaying sometimes massy piers of small stones, sometimes
+clustered piers of rich complexity, and on the other, more or less
+regular succession of block shafts, each treated as entirely independent
+of those around it.
+
+Sec. XIX. Farther, the grouping of shafts once admitted, it is probable
+that the complexity and richness of such arrangements would recommend
+them to the eye, and induce their frequent, even their unnecessary
+introduction; so that weight which might have been borne by a single
+pillar, would be in preference supported by four or five. And if the
+stone of the country, whose fragmentary character first occasioned the
+building and piecing of the large pier, were yet in beds consistent
+enough to supply shafts of very small diameter, the strength and
+simplicity of such a construction might justify it, as well as its
+grace. The fact, however, is that the charm which the multiplication of
+line possesses for the eye has always been one of the chief ends of the
+work in the grouped schools; and that, so far from employing the grouped
+piers in order to the introduction of very slender block shafts, the
+most common form in which such piers occur is that of a solid jointed
+shaft, each joint being separately cut into the contour of the group
+required.
+
+Sec. XX. We have hitherto supposed that all grouped or clustered shafts
+have been the result or the expression of an actual gathering and
+binding together of detached shafts. This is not, however, always so:
+for some clustered shafts are little more than solid piers channelled on
+the surface, and their form appears to be merely the development of some
+longitudinal furrowing or striation on the original single shaft. That
+clustering or striation, whichever we choose to call it, is in this case
+a decorative feature, and to be considered under the head of decoration.
+
+Sec. XXI. It must be evident to the reader at a glance, that the real
+serviceableness of any of these grouped arrangements must depend upon
+the relative shortness of the shafts, and that, when the whole pier is
+so lofty that its minor members become mere reeds or rods of stone,
+those minor members can no longer be charged with any considerable
+weight. And the fact is, that in the most complicated Gothic
+arrangements, when the pier is tall and its satellites stand clear of
+it, no real work is given them to do, and they might all be removed
+without endangering the building. They are merely the _expression_ of a
+great consistent system, and are in architecture what is often found in
+animal anatomy,--a bone, or process of a bone, useless, under the
+ordained circumstances of its life, to the particular animal in which it
+is found, and slightly developed, but yet distinctly existent, and
+representing, for the sake of absolute consistency, the same bone in its
+appointed, and generally useful, place, either in skeletons of all
+animals, or in the genus to which the animal itself belongs.
+
+Sec. XXII. Farther: as it is not easy to obtain pieces of stone long
+enough for these supplementary shafts (especially as it is always unsafe
+to lay a stratified stone with its beds upright) they have been frequently
+composed of two or more short shafts set upon each other, and to conceal
+the unsightly junction, a flat stone has been interposed, carved into
+certain mouldings, which have the appearance of a ring on the shaft. Now
+observe: the whole pier was the gathering of the whole wall, the base
+gathers into base, the veil into the shaft, and the string courses of
+the veil gather into these rings; and when this is clearly expressed,
+and the rings do indeed correspond with the string courses of the wall
+veil, they are perfectly admissible and even beautiful; but otherwise,
+and occurring, as they do in the shafts of Westminster, in the middle of
+continuous lines, they are but sorry make-shifts, and of late since gas
+has been invented, have become especially offensive from their unlucky
+resemblance to the joints of gas-pipes, or common water-pipes. There are
+two leaden ones, for instance, on the left hand as one enters the abbey
+at Poet's Corner, with their solderings and funnels looking exactly like
+rings and capitals, and most disrespectfully mimicking the shafts of
+the abbey, inside.
+
+Thus far we have traced the probable conditions of shaft structure in
+pure theory; I shall now lay before the reader a brief statement of the
+facts of the thing in time past and present.
+
+Sec. XXIII. In the earliest and grandest shaft architecture which we know,
+that of Egypt, we have no grouped arrangements, properly so called, but
+either single and smooth shafts, or richly reeded and furrowed shafts,
+which represent the extreme conditions of a complicated group bound
+together to sustain a single mass; and are indeed, without doubt,
+nothing else than imitations of bundles of reeds, or of clusters of
+lotus:[42] but in these shafts there is merely the idea of a group, not
+the actual function or structure of a group; they are just as much solid
+and simple shafts as those which are smooth, and merely by the method of
+their decoration present to the eye the image of a richly complex
+arrangement.
+
+Sec. XXIV. After these we have the Greek shaft, less in scale, and losing
+all suggestion or purpose of suggestion of complexity, its so-called
+flutings being, visibly as actually, an external decoration.
+
+Sec. XXV. The idea of the shaft remains absolutely single in the Roman
+and Byzantine mind; but true grouping begins in Christian architecture by
+the placing of two or more separate shafts side by side, each having its
+own work to do; then three or four, still with separate work; then, by
+such steps as those above theoretically pursued, the number of the
+members increases, while they coagulate into a single mass; and we have
+finally a shaft apparently composed of thirty, forty, fifty, or more
+distinct members; a shaft which, in the reality of its service, is as
+much a single shaft as the old Egyptian one; but which differs from the
+Egyptian in that all its members, how many soever, have each individual
+work to do, and a separate rib of arch or roof to carry: and thus the
+great Christian truth of distinct services of the individual soul is
+typified in the Christian shaft; and the old Egyptian servitude of the
+multitudes, the servitude inseparable from the children of Ham, is
+typified also in that ancient shaft of the Egyptians, which in its
+gathered strength of the river reeds, seems, as the sands of the desert
+drift over its ruin, to be intended to remind us for ever of the end of
+the association of the wicked. "Can the rush grow up without mire, or
+the flag grow without water?--So are the paths of all that forget God;
+and the hypocrite's hope shall perish."
+
+Sec. XXVI. Let the reader then keep this distinction of the three systems
+clearly in his mind: Egyptian system, an apparent cluster supporting a
+simple capital and single weight; Greek and Roman system, single shaft,
+single weight; Gothic system, divided shafts, divided weight: at first
+actually and simply divided, at last apparently and infinitely divided;
+so that the fully formed Gothic shaft is a return to the Egyptian, but
+the weight is divided in the one and undivided in the other.
+
+Sec. XXVII. The transition from the actual to the apparent cluster, in
+the Gothic, is a question of the most curious interest; I have thrown
+together the shaft sections in Plate II. to illustrate it, and exemplify
+what has been generally stated above.[43]
+
+[Illustration: Plate II.
+               PLANS OF PIERS.]
+
+1. The earliest, the most frequent, perhaps the most beautiful of all
+the groups, is also the simplest; the two shafts arranged as at _b_ or
+_c_, (Fig. XIV.) above, bearing an oblong mass, and substituted for the
+still earlier structure _a_, Fig. XIV. In Plate XVII. (Chap. XXVII.) are
+three examples of the transition: the one on the left, at the top, is
+the earliest single-shafted arrangement, constant in the rough
+Romanesque windows; a huge hammer-shaped capital being employed to
+sustain the thickness of the wall. It was rapidly superseded by the
+double shaft, as on the right of it; a very early example from the
+cloisters of the Duomo, Verona. Beneath, is a most elaborate and perfect
+one from St. Zeno of Verona, where the group is twice complicated, two
+shafts being used, both with quatrefoil sections. The plain double
+shaft, however, is by far the most frequent, both in the Northern and
+Southern Gothic, but for the most part early; it is very frequent in
+cloisters, and in the singular one of St. Michael's Mount, Normandy, a
+small pseudo-arcade runs along between the pairs of shafts, a miniature
+aisle. The group is employed on a magnificent scale, but ill
+proportioned, for the main piers of the apse of the cathedral of
+Coutances, its purpose being to conceal one shaft behind the other, and
+make it appear to the spectator from the nave as if the apse were
+sustained by single shafts, of inordinate slenderness. The attempt is
+ill-judged, and the result unsatisfactory.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XVII.]
+
+Sec. XXVIII. 2. When these pairs of shafts come near each other, as
+frequently at the turnings of angles (Fig. XVII.), the quadruple group
+results, _b_ 2, Fig. XIV., of which the Lombardic sculptors were
+excessively fond, usually tying the shafts together in their centre, in
+a lover's knot. They thus occur in Plate V., from the Broletto of Como;
+at the angle of St. Michele of Lucca, Plate XXI.; and in the balustrade
+of St. Mark's. This is a group, however, which I have never seen used on
+a large scale.[44]
+
+Sec. XXIX. 3. Such groups, consolidated by a small square in their centre,
+form the shafts of St. Zeno, just spoken of, and figured in Plate XVII.,
+which are among the most interesting pieces of work I know in Italy. I
+give their entire arrangement in Fig. XVIII.: both shafts have the same
+section, but one receives a half turn as it ascends, giving it an
+exquisite spiral contour: the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is
+given at 2, Plate II.; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of
+all that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square. It
+was asserted that the oblique belonged to the north, the even to the
+south: we have here the northern Lombardic nation naturalised in Italy,
+and, behold, the oblique and even quatrefoil linked together; not
+confused, but actually linked by a bar of stone, as seen in Plate XVII.,
+under the capitals.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XVIII.]
+
+4. Next to these, observe the two groups of five shafts each, 5 and 6,
+Plate II., one oblique, the other even. Both are from upper stories; the
+oblique one from the triforium of Salisbury; the even one from the upper
+range of shafts in the facade of St. Mark's at Venice.[45]
+
+Sec. XXX. Around these central types are grouped, in Plate II., four
+simple examples of the satellitic cluster, all of the Northern Gothic:
+4, from the Cathedral of Amiens; 7, from that of Lyons (nave pier);
+8, the same from Salisbury; 10, from the porch of Notre Dame, Dijon,
+having satellites of three magnitudes: 9 is one of the piers between the
+doors of the same church, with shafts of four magnitudes, and is an
+instance of the confusion of mind of the Northern architects between
+piers proper and jamb mouldings (noticed farther in the next chapter,
+Sec. XXXI.): for this fig. 9, which is an angle at the meeting of two
+jambs, is treated like a rich independent shaft, and the figure below,
+12, which is half of a true shaft, is treated like a meeting of jambs.
+
+All these four examples belonging to the oblique or Northern system, the
+curious trefoil plan, 3, lies _between_ the two, as the double
+quatrefoil next it _unites_ the two. The trefoil is from the Frari,
+Venice, and has a richly worked capital in the Byzantine manner,--an
+imitation, I think, of the Byzantine work by the Gothic builders: 1 is
+to be compared with it, being one of the earliest conditions of the
+cross shaft, from the atrium of St. Ambrogio at Milan. 13 is the nave
+pier of St. Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully
+developed: and 11 another nave pier from Vienne, on the Rhone, of far
+more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is set to the
+nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the grandest development
+I have ever seen of the cross shaft, with satellite shafts in the nooks
+of it: it is half of one of the great western piers of the cathedral of
+Bourges, measuring eight feet each side, thirty-two round.[46] Then the
+one below (15) is half of a nave pier of Rouen Cathedral, showing the
+mode in which such conditions as that of Dijon (9) and that of Bourges
+(12) were fused together into forms of inextricable complexity
+(inextricable I mean in the irregularity of proportion and projection,
+for all of them are easily resolvable into simple systems in connexion
+with the roof ribs). This pier of Rouen is a type of the last condition
+of the good Gothic; from this point the small shafts begin to lose
+shape, and run into narrow fillets and ridges, projecting at the same
+time farther and farther in weak tongue-like sections, as described in
+the "Seven Lamps." I have only here given one example of this family, an
+unimportant but sufficiently characteristic one (16) from St. Gervais of
+Falaise. One side of the nave of that church is Norman, the other
+Flamboyant, and the two piers 14 and 16 stand opposite each other. It
+would be useless to endeavor to trace farther the fantasticism of the
+later Gothic shafts; they become mere aggregations of mouldings very
+sharply and finely cut, their bases at the same time running together in
+strange complexity and their capitals diminishing and disappearing. Some
+of their conditions, which, in their rich striation, resemble crystals
+of beryl, are very massy and grand; others, meagre, harsh, or effeminate
+in themselves, are redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration; and
+I have long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of this
+French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible power. But
+this inquiry is foreign altogether to our present purpose, and we shall
+therefore turn back from the Flamboyant to the Norman side of the
+Falaise aisle, resolute for the future that all shafts of which we may
+have the ordering, shall be permitted, as with wisdom we may also permit
+men or cities, to gather themselves into companies, or constellate
+themselves into clusters, but not to fuse themselves into mere masses of
+nebulous aggregation.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [38] In saying this, it is assumed that the interval is one which is
+    to be traversed by men; and that a certain relation of the shafts
+    and intervals to the size of the human figure is therefore
+    necessary. When shafts are used in the upper stories of buildings,
+    or on a scale which ignores all relation to the human figure, no
+    such relative limits exist either to slenderness or solidity.
+
+  [39] Vide the interesting discussion of this point in Mr.
+    Fergusson's account of the Temple of Karnak, "Principles of Beauty
+    in Art," p. 219.
+
+  [40] I have assumed that the strength of similar shafts of equal
+    height is as the squares of their diameters; which, though not
+    actually a correct expression, is sufficiently so for all our
+    present purposes.
+
+  [41] How far this condition limits the system of shaft grouping we
+    shall see presently. The reader must remember, that we at present
+    reason respecting shafts in the abstract only.
+
+  [42] The capitals being formed by the flowers, or by a
+    representation of the bulging out of the reeds at the top, under the
+    weight of the architrave.
+
+  [43] I have not been at the pains to draw the complicated piers in
+    this plate with absolute exactitude to the scale of each: they are
+    accurate enough for their purpose: those of them respecting which we
+    shall have farther question will be given on a much larger scale.
+
+  [44] The largest I remember support a monument in St. Zeno of
+    Verona; they are of red marble, some ten or twelve feet high.
+
+  [45] The effect of this last is given in Plate VI. of the folio
+    series.
+
+  [46] The entire development of this cross system in connexion with
+    the vaulting ribs, has been most clearly explained by Professor
+    Willis (Architecture of Mid. Ages, Chap. IV.); and I strongly
+    recommend every reader who is inclined to take pains in the matter,
+    to read that chapter. I have been contented, in my own text, to
+    pursue the abstract idea of shaft form.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THE CAPITAL.
+
+
+Sec. I. The reader will remember that in Chap. VII. Sec. V. it was said
+that the cornice of the wall, being cut to pieces and gathered together,
+formed the capital of the column. We have now to follow it in its
+transformation.
+
+We must, of course, take our simplest form or root of cornices (_a_, in
+Fig. V., above). We will take X and Y there, and we must necessarily
+gather them together as we did Xb and Yb in Chap. VII. Look back to the
+tenth paragraph of Chap. VII., read or glance it over again, substitute
+X and Y for Xb and Yb, read capital for base, and, as we said that the
+capital was the hand of the pillar, while the base was its foot, read
+also fingers for toes; and as you look to the plate, Fig. XII., turn it
+upside down. Then _h_, in Fig. XII., becomes now your best general form
+of block capital, as before of block base.
+
+Sec. II. You will thus have a perfect idea of the analogies between base
+and capital; our farther inquiry is into their differences. You cannot
+but have noticed that when Fig. XII. is turned upside down, the square
+stone (Y) looks too heavy for the supporting stone (X); and that in the
+profile of cornice (_a_ of Fig. V.) the proportions are altogether
+different. You will feel the fitness of this in an instant when you
+consider that the principal function of the sloping part in Fig. XII. is
+as a prop to the pillar to keep it from _slipping aside_; but the
+function of the sloping stone in the cornice and capital is to _carry
+weight above_. The thrust of the slope in the one case should therefore
+be lateral, in the other upwards.
+
+Sec. III. We will, therefore, take the two figures, _e_ and _h_ of Fig.
+XII., and make this change in them as we reverse them, using now the
+exact profile of the cornice _a_,--the father of cornices; and we shall
+thus have _a_ and _b_, Fig. XIX.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XIX.]
+
+Both of these are sufficiently ugly, the reader thinks; so do I; but we
+will mend them before we have done with them: that at _a_ is assuredly
+the ugliest,--like a tile on a flower-pot. It is, nevertheless, the
+father of capitals; being the simplest condition of the gathered father
+of cornices. But it is to be observed that the diameter of the shaft
+here is arbitrarily assumed to be small, in order more clearly to show
+the general relations of the sloping stone to the shaft and upper stone;
+and this smallness of the shaft diameter is inconsistent with the
+serviceableness and beauty of the arrangement at _a_, if it were to be
+realised (as we shall see presently); but it is not inconsistent with
+its central character, as the representative of every species of
+possible capital; nor is its tile and flower-pot look to be regretted,
+as it may remind the reader of the reported origin of the Corinthian
+capital. The stones of the cornice, hitherto called X and Y, receive,
+now that they form the capital, each a separate name; the sloping stone
+is called the Bell of the capital, and that laid above it, the Abacus.
+Abacus means a board or tile: I wish there were an English word for it,
+but I fear there is no substitution possible, the term having been long
+fixed, and the reader will find it convenient to familiarise himself
+with the Latin one.
+
+Sec. IV. The form of base, _e_ of Fig. XII., which corresponds to this
+first form of capital, _a_, was said to be objectionable only because it
+_looked_ insecure; and the spurs were added as a kind of pledge of
+stability to the eye. But evidently the projecting corners of the abacus
+at _a_, Fig. XIX., are _actually_ insecure; they may break off, if great
+weight be laid upon them. This is the chief reason of the ugliness of
+the form; and the spurs in _b_ are now no mere pledges of apparent
+stability, but have very serious practical use in supporting the angle
+of the abacus. If, even with the added spur, the support seems
+insufficient, we may fill up the crannies between the spurs and the
+bell, and we have the form _c_.
+
+Thus _a_, though the germ and type of capitals, is itself (except under
+some peculiar conditions) both ugly and insecure; _b_ is the first type
+of capitals which carry light weight; _c_, of capitals which carry
+excessive weight.
+
+Sec. V. I fear, however, the reader may think he is going slightly too
+fast, and may not like having the capital forced upon him out of the
+cornice; but would prefer inventing a capital for the shaft itself,
+without reference to the cornice at all. We will do so then; though we
+shall come to the same result.
+
+The shaft, it will be remembered, has to sustain the same weight as the
+long piece of wall which was concentrated into the shaft; it is enabled
+to do this both by its better form and better knit materials; and it can
+carry a greater weight than the space at the top of it is adapted to
+receive. The first point, therefore, is to expand this space as far as
+possible, and that in a form more convenient than the circle for the
+adjustment of the stones above. In general the square is a more
+convenient form than any other; but the hexagon or octagon is sometimes
+better fitted for masses of work which divide in six or eight
+directions. Then our first impulse would be to put a square or hexagonal
+stone on the top of the shaft, projecting as far beyond it as might be
+safely ventured; as at _a_, Fig. XX. This is the abacus. Our next idea
+would be to put a conical shaped stone beneath this abacus, to support
+its outer edge, as at _b_. This is the bell.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XX.]
+
+Sec. VI. Now the entire treatment of the capital depends simply on the
+manner in which this bell-stone is prepared for fitting the shaft below
+and the abacus above. Placed as at _a_, in Fig. XIX., it gives us the
+simplest of possible forms; with the spurs added, as at _b_, it gives
+the germ of the richest and most elaborate forms: but there are two
+modes of treatment more dexterous than the one, and less elaborate than
+the other, which are of the highest possible importance,--modes in which
+the bell is brought to its proper form by truncation.
+
+Sec. VII. Let _d_ and _f_, Fig. XIX., be two bell-stones; _d_ is part of
+a cone (a sugar-loaf upside down, with its point cut off); _f_ part of a
+four-sided pyramid. Then, assuming the abacus to be square, _d_ will
+already fit the shaft, but has to be chiselled to fit the abacus; _f_
+will already fit the abacus, but has to be chiselled to fit the shaft.
+
+From the broad end of _d_ chop or chisel off, in four vertical planes,
+as much as will leave its head an exact square. The vertical cuttings
+will form curves on the sides of the cone (curves of a curious kind,
+which the reader need not be troubled to examine), and we shall have the
+form at _e_, which is the root of the greater number of Norman capitals.
+
+From _f_ cut off the angles, beginning at the corners of the square and
+widening the truncation downwards, so as to give the form at _g_, where
+the base of the bell is an octagon, and its top remains a square. A
+very slight rounding away of the angles of the octagon at the base of
+_g_ will enable it to fit the circular shaft closely enough for all
+practical purposes, and this form, at _g_, is the root of nearly all
+Lombardic capitals.
+
+If, instead of a square, the head of the bell were hexagonal or
+octagonal, the operation of cutting would be the same on each angle; but
+there would be produced, of course, six or eight curves on the sides of
+_e_, and twelve or sixteen sides to the base of _g_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXI.]
+
+Sec. VIII. The truncations in _e_ and _g_ may of course be executed on
+concave or convex forms of _d_ and _f_; but _e_ is usually worked on a
+straight-sided bell, and the truncation of _g_ often becomes concave
+while the bell remains straight; for this simple reason,--that the sharp
+points at the angles of _g_, being somewhat difficult to cut, and easily
+broken off, are usually avoided by beginning the truncation a little way
+down the side of the bell, and then recovering the lost ground by a
+deeper cut inwards, as here, Fig. XXI. This is the actual form of the
+capitals of the balustrades of St. Mark's: it is the root of all the
+Byzantine Arab capitals, and of all the most beautiful capitals in the
+world, whose function is to express lightness.
+
+Sec. IX. We have hitherto proceeded entirely on the assumption that the
+form of cornice which was gathered together to produce the capital was
+the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V. But this, it will be remembered,
+was said in Sec. VI. of Chap. VI. to be especially characteristic of
+southern work, and that in northern and wet climates it took the form of
+a dripstone.
+
+Accordingly, in the northern climates, the dripstone gathered together
+forms a peculiar northern capital, commonly called the Early
+English,[47] owing to its especial use in that style.
+
+There would have been no absurdity in this if shafts were always to be
+exposed to the weather; but in Gothic constructions the most important
+shafts are in the inside of the building. The dripstone sections of
+their capitals are therefore unnecessary and ridiculous.
+
+Sec. X. They are, however, much worse than unnecessary.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXII.]
+
+The edge of the dripstone, being undercut, has no bearing power, and the
+capital fails, therefore, in its own principal function; and besides
+this, the undercut contour admits of no distinctly visible decoration;
+it is, therefore, left utterly barren, and the capital looks as if it
+had been turned in a lathe. The Early English capital has, therefore,
+the three greatest faults that any design can have: (1) it fails in its
+own proper purpose, that of support; (2) it is adapted to a purpose to
+which it can never be put, that of keeping off rain; (3) it cannot be
+decorated.
+
+The Early English capital is, therefore, a barbarism of triple
+grossness, and degrades the style in which it is found, otherwise very
+noble, to one of second-rate order.
+
+Sec. XI. Dismissing, therefore, the Early English capital, as deserving no
+place in our system, let us reassemble in one view the forms which have
+been legitimately developed, and which are to become hereafter subjects
+of decoration. To the forms _a_, _b_, and _c_, Fig. XIX., we must add
+the two simplest truncated forms _e_ and _g_, Fig. XIX., putting their
+abaci on them (as we considered their contours in the bells only), and
+we shall have the five forms now given in parallel perspective in Fig.
+XXII., which are the roots of all good capitals existing, or capable of
+existence, and whose variations, infinite and a thousand times infinite,
+are all produced by introduction of various curvatures into their
+contours, and the endless methods of decoration superinduced on such
+curvatures.
+
+Sec. XII. There is, however, a kind of variation, also infinite, which
+takes place in these radical forms, before they receive either curvature
+or decoration. This is the variety of proportion borne by the different
+lines of the capital to each other, and to the shafts. This is a
+structural question, at present to be considered as far as is possible.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXIII.]
+
+Sec. XIII. All the five capitals (which are indeed five orders with
+legitimate distinction; very different, however, from the five orders as
+commonly understood) may be represented by the same profile, a section
+through the sides of _a_, _b_, _d_, and _e_, or through the angles of
+_c_, Fig. XXII. This profile we will put on the top of a shaft, as at A,
+Fig. XXIII., which shaft we will suppose of equal diameter above and
+below for the sake of greater simplicity: in this simplest condition,
+however, relations of proportion exist between five quantities, any one
+or any two, or any three, or any four of which may change, irrespective
+of the others. These five quantities are:
+
+  1. The height of the shaft, _a b_;
+  2. Its diameter, _b c_;
+  3. The length of slope of bell, _b d_;
+  4. The inclination of this slope, or angle _c b d_;
+  5. The depth of abacus, _d e_.
+
+For every change in any one of these quantities we have a new proportion
+of capital: five infinities, supposing change only in one quantity at a
+time: infinity of infinities in the sum of possible changes.
+
+It is, therefore, only possible to note the general laws of change;
+every scale of pillar, and every weight laid upon it admitting, within
+certain limits, a variety out of which the architect has his choice; but
+yet fixing limits which the proportion becomes ugly when it approaches,
+and dangerous when it exceeds. But the inquiry into this subject is too
+difficult for the general reader, and I shall content myself with
+proving four laws, easily understood and generally applicable; for proof
+of which if the said reader care not, he may miss the next four
+paragraphs without harm.
+
+Sec. XIV. 1. _The more slender the shaft, the greater, proportionally, may
+be the projection of the abacus._ For, looking back to Fig. XXIII., let
+the height _a b_ be fixed, the length _d b_, the angle _d b c_, and the
+depth _d e_. Let the single quantity _b c_ be variable, let B be a
+capital and shaft which are found to be perfectly safe in proportion to
+the weight they bear, and let the weight be equally distributed over the
+whole of the abacus. Then this weight may be represented by any number
+of equal divisions, suppose four, as _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, of brickwork
+above, of which each division is one fourth of the whole weight; and let
+this weight be placed in the most trying way on the abacus, that is to
+say, let the masses _l_ and _r_ be detached from _m_ and _n_, and bear
+with their full weight on the outside of the capital. We assume, in B,
+that the width of abacus _e f_ is twice as great as that of the shaft,
+_b c_, and on these conditions we assume the capital to be safe.
+
+But _b c_ is allowed to be variable. Let it become _b2 c2_ at C, which
+is a length representing about the diameter of a shaft containing half
+the substance of the shaft B, and, therefore, able to sustain not more
+than half the weight sustained by B. But the slope _b d_ and depth _d
+e_ remaining unchanged, we have the capital of C, which we are to load
+with only half the weight of _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, i.e., with _l_ and _r_
+alone. Therefore the weight of _l_ and _r_, now represented by the
+masses _l2_, _r2_, is distributed over the whole of the capital. But the
+weight _r_ was adequately supported by the projecting piece of the first
+capital _h f c_: much more is it now adequately supported by _i h_, _f2
+c2_. Therefore, if the capital of B was safe, that of C is more than
+safe. Now in B the length _e f_ was only twice _b c_; but in C, _e2 f2_
+will be found more than twice that of _b2_ _c2_. Therefore, the more
+slender the shaft, the greater may be the proportional excess of the
+abacus over its diameter.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXIV.]
+
+Sec. XV. 2. _The smaller the scale of the building, the greater may be
+the excess of the abacus over the diameter of the shaft._ This principle
+requires, I think, no very lengthy proof: the reader can understand at
+once that the cohesion and strength of stone which can sustain a small
+projecting mass, will not sustain a vast one overhanging in the same
+proportion. A bank even of loose earth, six feet high, will sometimes
+overhang its base a foot or two, as you may see any day in the gravelly
+banks of the lanes of Hampstead: but make the bank of gravel, equally
+loose, six hundred feet high, and see if you can get it to overhang a
+hundred or two! much more if there be weight above it increased in the
+same proportion. Hence, let any capital be given, whose projection is
+just safe, and no more, on its existing scale; increase its proportions
+every way equally, though ever so little, and it is unsafe; diminish
+them equally, and it becomes safe in the exact degree of the diminution.
+
+Let, then, the quantity _e d_, and angle _d b c_, at A of Fig. XXIII.,
+be invariable, and let the length _d b_ vary: then we shall have such a
+series of forms as may be represented by _a_, _b_, _c_, Fig. XXIV., of
+which _a_ is a proportion for a colossal building, _b_ for a moderately
+sized building, while _c_ could only be admitted on a very small scale
+indeed.
+
+Sec. XVI. 3. _The greater the excess of abacus, the steeper must be the
+slope of the bell, the shaft diameter being constant._
+
+This will evidently follow from the considerations in the last
+paragraph; supposing only that, instead of the scale of shaft and
+capital varying together, the scale of the capital varies alone. For it
+will then still be true, that, if the projection of the capital be just
+safe on a given scale, as its excess over the shaft diameter increases,
+the projection will be unsafe, if the slope of the bell remain constant.
+But it may be rendered safe by making this slope steeper, and so
+increasing its supporting power.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXV.]
+
+Thus let the capital _a_, Fig. XXV., be just safe. Then the capital _b_,
+in which the slope is the same but the excess greater, is unsafe. But
+the capital _c_, in which, though the excess equals that of _b_, the
+steepness of the supporting slope is increased, will be as safe as _b_,
+and probably as strong as _a_.[48]
+
+Sec. XVII. 4. _The steeper the slope of the bell, the thinner may be the
+abacus._
+
+The use of the abacus is eminently to equalise the pressure over the
+surface of the bell, so that the weight may not by any accident be
+directed exclusively upon its edges. In proportion to the strength of
+these edges, this function of the abacus is superseded, and these edges
+are strong in proportion to the steepness of the slope. Thus in Fig.
+XXVI., the bell at _a_ would carry weight safely enough without any
+abacus, but that at _c_ would not: it would probably have its edges
+broken off. The abacus superimposed might be on _a_ very thin, little
+more than formal, as at _b_; but on _c_ must be thick, as at _d_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXVI.]
+
+Sec. XVIII. These four rules are all that are necessary for general
+criticism; and observe that these are only semi-imperative,--rules of
+permission, not of compulsion. Thus Law 1 asserts that the slender shaft
+_may_ have greater excess of capital than the thick shaft; but it need
+not, unless the architect chooses; his thick shafts _must_ have small
+excess, but his slender ones need not have large. So Law 2 says, that as
+the building is smaller, the excess _may_ be greater; but it need not,
+for the excess which is safe in the large is still safer in the small.
+So Law 3 says that capitals of great excess must have steep slopes; but
+it does not say that capitals of small excess may not have steep slopes
+also, if we choose. And lastly, Law 4 asserts the necessity of the thick
+abacus for the shallow bell; but the steep bell may have a thick abacus
+also.
+
+Sec. XIX. It will be found, however, that in practice some confession of
+these laws will always be useful, and especially of the two first. The
+eye always requires, on a slender shaft, a more spreading capital than
+it does on a massy one, and a bolder mass of capital on a small scale
+than on a large. And, in the application of the first rule, it is to be
+noted that a shaft becomes slender either by diminution of diameter or
+increase of height; that either mode of change presupposes the weight
+above it diminished, and requires an expansion of abacus. I know no mode
+of spoiling a noble building more frequent in actual practice than the
+imposition of flat and slightly expanded capitals on tall shafts.
+
+Sec. XX. The reader must observe, also, that, in the demonstration of
+the four laws, I always assumed the weight above to be given. By the
+alteration of this weight, therefore, the architect has it in his power
+to relieve, and therefore alter, the forms of his capitals. By its
+various distribution on their centres or edges, the slope of their bells
+and thickness of abaci will be affected also; so that he has countless
+expedients at his command for the various treatment of his design. He
+can divide his weights among more shafts; he can throw them in different
+places and different directions on the abaci; he can alter slope of
+bells or diameter of shafts; he can use spurred or plain bells, thin or
+thick abaci; and all these changes admitting of infinity in their
+degrees, and infinity a thousand times told in their relations: and all
+this without reference to decoration, merely with the five forms of
+block capital!
+
+Sec. XXI. In the harmony of these arrangements, in their fitness, unity,
+and accuracy, lies the true proportion of every building,--proportion
+utterly endless in its infinities of change, with unchanged beauty. And
+yet this connexion of the frame of their building into one harmony has,
+I believe, never been so much as dreamed of by architects. It has been
+instinctively done in some degree by many, empirically in some degree by
+many more; thoughtfully and thoroughly, I believe, by none.
+
+Sec. XXII. We have hitherto considered the abacus as necessarily a
+separate stone from the bell: evidently, however, the strength of the
+capital will be undiminished if both are cut out of one block. This is
+actually the case in many capitals, especially those on a small scale;
+and in others the detached upper stone is a mere representative of the
+abacus, and is much thinner than the form of the capital requires,
+while the true abacus is united with the bell, and concealed by its
+decoration, or made part of it.
+
+Sec. XXIII. Farther. We have hitherto considered bell and abacus as both
+derived from the concentration of the cornice. But it must at once occur
+to the reader, that the projection of the under stone and the thickness
+of the upper, which are quite enough for the work of the continuous
+cornice, may not be enough always, or rather are seldom likely to be so,
+for the harder work of the capital. Both may have to be deepened and
+expanded: but as this would cause a want of harmony in the parts, when
+they occur on the same level, it is better in such case to let the
+_entire_ cornice form the abacus of the capital, and put a deep capital
+bell beneath it.
+
+Sec. XXIV. The reader will understand both arrangements instantly by two
+examples. Fig. XXVII. represents two windows, more than usually
+beautiful examples of a very frequent Venetian form. Here the deep
+cornice or string course which runs along the wall of the house is quite
+strong enough for the work of the capitals of the slender shafts: its
+own upper stone is therefore also theirs; its own lower stone, by its
+revolution or concentration, forms their bells: but to mark the
+increased importance of its function in so doing, it receives
+decoration, as the bell of the capital, which it did not receive as the
+under stone of the cornice.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXVII.]
+
+In Fig. XXVIII., a little bit of the church of Santa Fosca at Torcello,
+the cornice or string course, which goes round every part of the church,
+is not strong enough to form the capitals of the shafts. It therefore
+forms their abaci only; and in order to mark the diminished importance
+of its function, it ceases to receive, as the abacus of the capital, the
+decoration which it received as the string course of the wall.
+
+This last arrangement is of great frequency in Venice, occurring most
+characteristically in St. Mark's: and in the Gothic of St. John and Paul
+we find the two arrangements beautifully united, though in great
+simplicity; the string courses of the walls form the capitals of the
+shafts of the traceries; and the abaci of the vaulting shafts of the
+apse.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXVIII.]
+
+Sec. XXV. We have hitherto spoken of capitals of circular shafts only:
+those of square piers are more frequently formed by the cornice only;
+otherwise they are like those of circular piers, without the difficulty
+of reconciling the base of the bell with its head.
+
+Sec. XXVI. When two or more shafts are grouped together, their capitals
+are usually treated as separate, until they come into actual contact. If
+there be any awkwardness in the junction, it is concealed by the
+decoration, and one abacus serves, in most cases, for all. The double
+group, Fig. XXVII., is the simplest possible type of the arrangement. In
+the richer Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster
+together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the capitals of
+the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with small nominal
+abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry the serviceable abacus
+of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rouen. There is, however, evident
+sacrifice of sound principle in this system, the smaller abaci being of
+no use. They are the exact contrary of the rude early abacus at Milan,
+given in Plate XVII. There one poor abacus stretched itself out to do
+all the work: here there are idle abaci getting up into corners and
+doing none.
+
+Sec. XXVII. Finally, we have considered the capital hitherto entirely as
+an expansion of the bearing power of the shaft, supposing the shaft
+composed of a single stone. But, evidently, the capital has a function,
+if possible, yet more important, when the shaft is composed of small
+masonry. It enables all that masonry to act together, and to receive the
+pressure from above collectively and with a single strength. And thus,
+considered merely as a large stone set on the top of the shaft, it is a
+feature of the highest architectural importance, irrespective of its
+expansion, which indeed is, in some very noble capitals, exceedingly
+small. And thus every large stone set at any important point to
+reassemble the force of smaller masonry and prepare it for the
+sustaining of weight, is a capital or "head" stone (the true meaning of
+the word) whether it project or not. Thus at 6, in Plate IV., the stones
+which support the thrust of the brickwork are capitals, which have no
+projection at all; and the large stones in the window above are capitals
+projecting in one direction only.
+
+Sec. XXVIII. The reader is now master of all he need know respecting
+construction of capitals; and from what has been laid before him, must
+assuredly feel that there can never be any new system of architectural
+forms invented; but that all vertical support must be, to the end of
+time, best obtained by shafts and capitals. It has been so obtained by
+nearly every nation of builders, with more or less refinement in the
+management of the details; and the later Gothic builders of the North
+stand almost alone in their effort to dispense with the natural
+development of the shaft, and banish the capital from their
+compositions.
+
+They were gradually led into this error through a series of steps which
+it is not here our business to trace. But they may be generalised in a
+few words.
+
+Sec. XXIX. All classical architecture, and the Romanesque which is
+legitimately descended from it, is composed of bold independent shafts,
+plain or fluted, with bold detached capitals, forming arcades or
+colonnades where they are needed; and of walls whose apertures are
+surrounded by courses of parallel lines called mouldings, which are
+continuous round the apertures, and have neither shafts nor capitals.
+The shaft system and moulding system are entirely separate.
+
+The Gothic architects confounded the two. They clustered the shafts till
+they looked like a group of mouldings. They shod and capitaled the
+mouldings till they looked like a group of shafts. So that a pier became
+merely the side of a door or window rolled up, and the side of the
+window a pier unrolled (vide last Chapter, Sec. XXX.), both being composed
+of a series of small shafts, each with base and capital. The architect
+seemed to have whole mats of shafts at his disposal, like the rush mats
+which one puts under cream cheese. If he wanted a great pier he rolled
+up the mat; if he wanted the side of a door he spread out the mat: and
+now the reader has to add to the other distinctions between the Egyptian
+and the Gothic shaft, already noted in Sec. XXVI. of Chap. VIII., this
+one more--the most important of all--that while the Egyptian rush cluster
+has only one massive capital altogether, the Gothic rush mat has a
+separate tiny capital to every several rush.
+
+Sec. XXX. The mats were gradually made of finer rushes, until it became
+troublesome to give each rush its capital. In fact, when the groups of
+shafts became excessively complicated, the expansion of their small
+abaci was of no use: it was dispensed with altogether, and the mouldings
+of pier and jamb ran up continuously into the arches.
+
+This condition, though in many respects faulty and false, is yet the
+eminently characteristic state of Gothic: it is the definite formation
+of it as a distinct style, owing no farther aid to classical models; and
+its lightness and complexity render it, when well treated, and enriched
+with Flamboyant decoration, a very glorious means of picturesque effect.
+It is, in fact, this form of Gothic which commends itself most easily to
+the general mind, and which has suggested the innumerable foolish
+theories about the derivation of Gothic from tree trunks and avenues,
+which have from time to time been brought forward by persons ignorant of
+the history of architecture.
+
+Sec. XXXI. When the sense of picturesqueness, as well as that of justness
+and dignity, had been lost, the spring of the continuous mouldings was
+replaced by what Professor Willis calls the Discontinuous impost; which,
+being a barbarism of the basest and most painful kind, and being to
+architecture what the setting of a saw is to music, I shall not trouble
+the reader to examine. For it is not in my plan to note for him all the
+various conditions of error, but only to guide him to the appreciation
+of the right; and I only note even the true Continuous or Flamboyant
+Gothic because this is redeemed by its beautiful decoration, afterwards
+to be considered. For, as far as structure is concerned, the moment the
+capital vanishes from the shaft, that moment we are in error: all good
+Gothic has true capitals to the shafts of its jambs and traceries, and
+all Gothic is debased the instant the shaft vanishes. It matters not how
+slender, or how small, or how low, the shaft may be: wherever there is
+indication of concentrated vertical support, then the capital is a
+necessary termination. I know how much Gothic, otherwise beautiful, this
+sweeping principle condemns; but it condemns not altogether. We may
+still take delight in its lovely proportions, its rich decoration, or
+its elastic and reedy moulding; but be assured, wherever shafts, or any
+approximations to the forms of shafts, are employed, for whatever
+office, or on whatever scale, be it in jambs or piers, or balustrades,
+or traceries, without capitals, there is a defiance of the natural laws
+of construction; and that, wherever such examples are found in ancient
+buildings, they are either the experiments of barbarism, or the
+commencements of decline.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [47] Appendix 19, "Early English Capitals."
+
+  [48] In this case the weight borne is supposed to increase as the
+    abacus widens; the illustration would have been clearer if I had
+    assumed the breadth of abacus to be constant, and that of the shaft
+    to vary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  THE ARCH LINE.
+
+
+Sec. I. We have seen in the last section how our means of vertical support
+may, for the sake of economy both of space and material, be gathered
+into piers or shafts, and directed to the sustaining of particular
+points. The next question is how to connect these points or tops of
+shafts with each other, so as to be able to lay on them a continuous
+roof. This the reader, as before, is to favor me by finding out for
+himself, under these following conditions.
+
+Let _s_, _s_, Fig. XXIX. opposite, be two shafts, with their capitals
+ready prepared for their work; and _a_, _b_, _b_, and _c_, _c_, _c_, be
+six stones of different sizes, one very long and large, and two smaller,
+and three smaller still, of which the reader is to choose which he likes
+best, in order to connect the tops of the shafts.
+
+I suppose he will first try if he can lift the great stone _a_, and if he
+can, he will put it very simply on the tops of the two pillars, as at A.
+
+Very well indeed: he has done already what a number of Greek architects
+have been thought very clever for having done. But suppose he _cannot_
+lift the great stone _a_, or suppose I will not give it to him, but only
+the two smaller stones at _b_, _b_; he will doubtless try to put them
+up, tilted against each other, as at _d_. Very awkward this; worse than
+card-house building. But if he cuts off the corners of the stones, so as
+to make each of them of the form _e_, they will stand up very securely,
+as at B.
+
+But suppose he cannot lift even these less stones, but can raise those
+at _c_, _c_, _c_. Then, cutting each of them into the form at _e_, he
+will doubtless set them up as at _f_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXIX.]
+
+Sec. II. This last arrangement looks a little dangerous. Is there not
+a chance of the stone in the middle pushing the others out, or tilting
+them up and aside, and slipping down itself between them? There is such
+a chance: and if by somewhat altering the form of the stones, we can
+diminish this chance, all the better. I must say "we" now, for perhaps I
+may have to help the reader a little.
+
+The danger is, observe, that the midmost stone at _f_ pushes out the
+side ones: then if we can give the side ones such a shape as that, left
+to themselves, they would fall heavily forward, they will resist this
+push _out_ by their weight, exactly in proportion to their own
+particular inclination or desire to tumble _in_. Take one of them
+separately, standing up as at _g_; it is just possible it may stand up
+as it is, like the Tower of Pisa: but we want it to fall forward.
+Suppose we cut away the parts that are shaded at _h_ and leave it as at
+_i_, it is very certain it cannot stand alone now, but will fall forward
+to our entire satisfaction.
+
+Farther: the midmost stone at _f_ is likely to be troublesome chiefly by
+its weight, pushing down between the others; the more we lighten it the
+better: so we will cut it into exactly the same shape as the side ones,
+chiselling away the shaded parts, as at _h_. We shall then have all the
+three stones _k_, _l_, _m_, of the same shape; and now putting them
+together, we have, at C, what the reader, I doubt not, will perceive at
+once to be a much more satisfactory arrangement than that at _f_.
+
+Sec. III. We have now got three arrangements; in one using only one
+piece of stone, in the second two, and in the third three. The first
+arrangement has no particular name, except the "horizontal:" but the
+single stone (or beam, it may be,) is called a lintel; the second
+arrangement is called a "Gable;" the third an "Arch."
+
+We might have used pieces of wood instead of stone in all these
+arrangements, with no difference in plan, so long as the beams were kept
+loose, like the stones; but as beams can be securely nailed together at
+the ends, we need not trouble ourselves so much about their shape or
+balance, and therefore the plan at _f_ is a peculiarly wooden
+construction (the reader will doubtless recognise in it the profile of
+many a farm-house roof): and again, because beams are tough, and light,
+and long, as compared with stones, they are admirably adapted for the
+constructions at A and B, the plain lintel and gable, while that at C
+is, for the most part, left to brick and stone.
+
+Sec. IV. But farther. The constructions, A, B, and C, though very
+conveniently to be first considered as composed of one, two, and three
+pieces, are by no means necessarily so. When we have once cut the stones
+of the arch into a shape like that of _k_, _l_, and _m_, they will hold
+together, whatever their number, place, or size, as at _n_; and the
+great value of the arch is, that it permits small stones to be used with
+safety instead of large ones, which are not always to be had. Stones cut
+into the shape of _k_, _l_, and _m_, whether they be short or long (I
+have drawn them all sizes at _n_ on purpose), are called Voussoirs; this
+is a hard, ugly French name; but the reader will perhaps be kind enough
+to recollect it; it will save us both some trouble: and to make amends
+for this infliction, I will relieve him of the term _keystone_. One
+voussoir is as much a keystone as another; only people usually call the
+stone which is last put in the keystone; and that one happens generally
+to be at the top or middle of the arch.
+
+Sec. V. Not only the arch, but even the lintel, may be built of many
+stones or bricks. The reader may see lintels built in this way over
+most of the windows of our brick London houses, and so also the
+gable: there are, therefore, two distinct questions respecting each
+arrangement;--First, what is the line or direction of it, which gives it
+its strength? and, secondly, what is the manner of masonry of it, which
+gives it its consistence? The first of these I shall consider in this
+Chapter under the head of the Arch Line, using the term arch as including
+all manner of construction (though we shall have no trouble except about
+curves); and in the next Chapter I shall consider the second, under the
+head, Arch Masonry.
+
+Sec. VI. Now the arch line is the ghost or skeleton of the arch; or rather
+it is the spinal marrow of the arch, and the voussoirs are the vertebrae,
+which keep it safe and sound, and clothe it. This arch line the
+architect has first to conceive and shape in his mind, as opposed to, or
+having to bear, certain forces which will try to distort it this way and
+that; and against which he is first to direct and bend the line itself
+into as strong resistance as he may, and then, with his voussoirs and
+what else he can, to guard it, and help it, and keep it to its duty and
+in its shape. So the arch line is the moral character of the arch, and
+the adverse forces are its temptations; and the voussoirs, and what else
+we may help it with, are its armor and its motives to good conduct.
+
+Sec. VII. This moral character of the arch is called by architects its
+"Line of Resistance." There is a great deal of nicety in calculating it
+with precision, just as there is sometimes in finding out very precisely
+what is a man's true line of moral conduct; but this, in arch morality
+and in man morality, is a very simple and easily to be understood
+principle,--that if either arch or man expose themselves to their
+special temptations or adverse forces, _outside_ of the voussoirs or
+proper and appointed armor, both will fall. An arch whose line of
+resistance is in the middle of its voussoirs is perfectly safe: in
+proportion as the said line runs near the edge of its voussoirs, the
+arch is in danger, as the man is who nears temptation; and the moment
+the line of resistance emerges out of the voussoirs the arch falls.
+
+Sec. VIII. There are, therefore, properly speaking, two arch lines. One
+is the visible direction or curve of the arch, which may generally be
+considered as the under edge of its voussoirs, and which has often no
+more to do with the real stability of the arch, than a man's apparent
+conduct has with his heart. The other line, which is the line of
+resistance, or line of good behavior, may or may not be consistent with
+the outward and apparent curves of the arch; but if not, then the
+security of the arch depends simply upon this, whether the voussoirs
+which assume or pretend to the one line are wide enough to include the
+other.
+
+Sec. IX. Now when the reader is told that the line of resistance varies
+with every change either in place or quantity of the weight above the
+arch, he will see at once that we have no chance of arranging arches by
+their moral characters: we can only take the apparent arch line, or
+visible direction, as a ground of arrangement. We shall consider the
+possible or probable forms or contours of arches in the present Chapter,
+and in the succeeding one the forms of voussoir and other help which
+may best fortify these visible lines against every temptation to lose
+their consistency.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXX.]
+
+Sec. X. Look back to Fig. XXIX. Evidently the abstract or ghost line of
+the arrangement at A is a plain horizontal line, as here at _a_, Fig. XXX.
+The abstract line of the arrangement at B, Fig. XXIX., is composed of
+two straight lines, set against each other, as here at _b_. The abstract
+line of C, Fig. XXIX., is a curve of some kind, not at present
+determined, suppose _c_, Fig. XXX. Then, as _b_ is two of the straight
+lines at _a_, set up against each other, we may conceive an arrangement,
+_d_, made up of two of the curved lines at _c_, set against each other.
+This is called a pointed arch, which is a contradiction in terms: it
+ought to be called a curved gable; but it must keep the name it has got.
+
+Now _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, Fig. XXX., are the ghosts of the lintel, the
+gable, the arch, and the pointed arch. With the poor lintel ghost we
+need trouble ourselves no farther; there are no changes in him: but
+there is much variety in the other three, and the method of their
+variety will be best discerned by studying _b_ and _d_, as subordinate
+to and connected with the simple arch at _c_.
+
+Sec. XI. Many architects, especially the worst, have been very curious
+in designing out of the way arches,--elliptical arches, and four-centred
+arches, so called, and other singularities. The good architects have
+generally been content, and we for the present will be so, with God's
+arch, the arch of the rainbow and of the apparent heaven, and which the
+sun shapes for us as it sets and rises. Let us watch the sun for a
+moment as it climbs: when it is a quarter up, it will give us the arch
+_a_, Fig. XXXI.; when it is half up, _b_, and when three quarters up,
+_c_. There will be an infinite number of arches between these, but we
+will take these as sufficient representatives of all. Then _a_ is the
+low arch, _b_ the central or pure arch, _c_ the high arch, and the rays
+of the sun would have drawn for us their voussoirs.
+
+Sec. XII. We will take these several arches successively, and fixing the
+top of each accurately, draw two right lines thence to its base, _d_,
+_e_, _f_, Fig. XXXI. Then these lines give us the relative gables of
+each of the arches; _d_ is the Italian or southern gable, _e_ the
+central gable, _f_ the Gothic gable.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXI.]
+
+Sec. XIII. We will again take the three arches with their gables in
+succession, and on each of the sides of the gable, between it and the
+arch, we will describe another arch, as at _g_, _h_, _i_. Then the
+curves so described give the pointed arches belonging to each of the
+round arches; _g_, the flat pointed arch, _h_, the central pointed arch,
+and _i_, the lancet pointed arch.
+
+Sec. XIV. If the radius with which these intermediate curves are drawn be
+the base of _f_, the last is the equilateral pointed arch, one of great
+importance in Gothic work. But between the gable and circle, in all the
+three figures, there are an infinite number of pointed arches,
+describable with different radii; and the three round arches, be it
+remembered, are themselves representatives of an infinite number,
+passing from the flattest conceivable curve, through the semicircle and
+horseshoe, up to the full circle.
+
+The central and the last group are the most important. The central
+round, or semicircle, is the Roman, the Byzantine, and Norman arch; and
+its relative pointed includes one wide branch of Gothic. The horseshoe
+round is the Arabic and Moorish arch, and its relative pointed includes
+the whole range of Arabic and lancet, or Early English and French
+Gothics. I mean of course by the relative pointed, the entire group of
+which the equilateral arch is the representative. Between it and the
+outer horseshoe, as this latter rises higher, the reader will find, on
+experiment, the great families of what may be called the horseshoe
+pointed,--curves of the highest importance, but which are all included,
+with English lancet, under the term, relative pointed of the horseshoe
+arch.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXII.]
+
+Sec. XV. The groups above described are all formed of circular arcs,
+and include all truly useful and beautiful arches for ordinary work. I
+believe that singular and complicated curves are made use of in modern
+engineering, but with these the general reader can have no concern: the
+Ponte della Trinita at Florence is the most graceful instance I know of
+such structure; the arch made use of being very subtle, and
+approximating to the low ellipse; for which, in common work, a barbarous
+pointed arch, called four-centred, and composed of bits of circles, is
+substituted by the English builders. The high ellipse, I believe, exists
+in eastern architecture. I have never myself met with it on a large
+scale; but it occurs in the niches of the later portions of the Ducal
+palace at Venice, together with a singular hyperbolic arch, _a_ in Fig.
+XXXIII., to be described hereafter: with such caprices we are not here
+concerned.
+
+Sec. XVI. We are, however, concerned to notice the absurdity of another
+form of arch, which, with the four-centred, belongs to the English
+perpendicular Gothic.
+
+Taking the gable of any of the groups in Fig. XXXI. (suppose the
+equilateral), here at _b_, in Fig. XXXIII., the dotted line representing
+the relative pointed arch, we may evidently conceive an arch formed by
+reversed curves on the inside of the gable, as here shown by the inner
+curved lines. I imagine the reader by this time knows enough of the
+nature of arches to understand that, whatever strength or stability was
+gained by the curve on the _outside_ of the gable, exactly so much is
+lost by curves on the _inside_. The natural tendency of such an arch to
+dissolution by its own mere weight renders it a feature of detestable
+ugliness, wherever it occurs on a large scale. It is eminently
+characteristic of Tudor work, and it is the profile of the Chinese roof
+(I say on a large scale, because this as well as all other capricious
+arches, may be made secure by their masonry when small, but not
+otherwise). Some allowable modifications of it will be noticed in the
+chapter on Roofs.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXIII.]
+
+Sec. XVII. There is only one more form of arch which we have to notice.
+When the last described arch is used, not as the principal arrangement,
+but as a mere heading to a common pointed arch, we have the form _c_,
+Fig. XXXIII. Now this is better than the entirely reversed arch for two
+reasons; first, less of the line is weakened by reversing; secondly, the
+double curve has a very high aesthetic value, not existing in the mere
+segments of circles. For these reasons arches of this kind are not only
+admissible, but even of great desirableness, when their scale and
+masonry render them secure, but above a certain scale they are
+altogether barbarous; and, with the reversed Tudor arch, wantonly
+employed, are the characteristics of the worst and meanest schools of
+architecture, past or present.
+
+This double curve is called the Ogee; it is the profile of many German
+leaden roofs, of many Turkish domes (there more excusable, because
+associated and in sympathy with exquisitely managed arches of the same
+line in the walls below), of Tudor turrets, as in Henry the Seventh's
+Chapel, and it is at the bottom or top of sundry other blunders all over
+the world.
+
+Sec. XVIII. The varieties of the ogee curve are infinite, as the reversed
+portion of it may be engrafted on every other form of arch, horseshoe,
+round, or pointed. Whatever is generally worthy of note in these
+varieties, and in other arches of caprice, we shall best discover by
+examining their masonry; for it is by their good masonry only that they
+are rendered either stable or beautiful. To this question, then, let us
+address ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  THE ARCH MASONRY.
+
+
+Sec. I. On the subject of the stability of arches, volumes have been
+written and volumes more are required. The reader will not, therefore,
+expect from me any very complete explanation of its conditions within
+the limits of a single chapter. But that which is necessary for him to
+know is very simple and very easy; and yet, I believe, some part of it
+is very little known, or noticed.
+
+We must first have a clear idea of what is meant by an arch. It is a
+curved _shell_ of firm materials, on whose back a burden is to be laid
+of _loose_ materials. So far as the materials above it are _not loose_,
+but themselves hold together, the opening below is not an arch, but an
+_excavation_. Note this difference very carefully. If the King of
+Sardinia tunnels through the Mont Cenis, as he proposes, he will not
+require to build a brick arch under his tunnel to carry the weight of
+the Mont Cenis: that would need scientific masonry indeed. The Mont
+Cenis will carry itself, by its own cohesion, and a succession of
+invisible granite arches, rather larger than the tunnel. But when Mr.
+Brunel tunnelled the Thames bottom, he needed to build a brick arch to
+carry the six or seven feet of mud and the weight of water above. That
+is a type of all arches proper.
+
+Sec. II. Now arches, in practice, partake of the nature of the two. So
+far as their masonry above is Mont-Cenisian, that is to say, colossal in
+comparison of them, and granitic, so that the arch is a mere hole in the
+rock substance of it, the form of the arch is of no consequence
+whatever: it may be rounded, or lozenged, or ogee'd, or anything else;
+and in the noblest architecture there is always _some_ character of this
+kind given to the masonry. It is independent enough not to care about
+the holes cut in it, and does not subside into them like sand. But the
+theory of arches does not presume on any such condition of things; it
+allows itself only the shell of the arch proper; the vertebrae, carrying
+their marrow of resistance; and, above this shell, it assumes the wall
+to be in a state of flux, bearing down on the arch, like water or sand,
+with its whole weight. And farther, the problem which is to be solved by
+the arch builder is not merely to carry this weight, but to carry it
+with the least thickness of shell. It is easy to carry it by continually
+thickening your voussoirs: if you have six feet depth of sand or gravel
+to carry, and you choose to employ granite voussoirs six feet thick, no
+question but your arch is safe enough. But it is perhaps somewhat too
+costly: the thing to be done is to carry the sand or gravel with brick
+voussoirs, six inches thick, or, at any rate, with the least thickness
+of voussoir which will be safe; and to do this requires peculiar
+arrangement of the lines of the arch. There are many arrangements,
+useful all in their way, but we have only to do, in the best
+architecture, with the simplest and most easily understood. We have
+first to note those which regard the actual shell of the arch, and then
+we shall give a few examples of the superseding of such expedients by
+Mont-Cenisian masonry.
+
+Sec. III. What we have to say will apply to all arches, but the central
+pointed arch is the best for general illustration. Let _a_, Plate III.,
+be the shell of a pointed arch with loose loading above; and suppose you
+find that shell not quite thick enough; and that the weight bears too
+heavily on the top of the arch, and is likely to break it in: you
+proceed to thicken your shell, but need you thicken it all equally? Not
+so; you would only waste your good voussoirs. If you have any common
+sense you will thicken it at the top, where a Mylodon's skull is
+thickened for the same purpose (and some human skulls, I fancy), as at
+_b_. The pebbles and gravel above will now shoot off it right and left,
+as the bullets do off a cuirassier's breastplate, and will have no
+chance of beating it in.
+
+If still it be not strong enough, a farther addition may be made, as at
+_c_, now thickening the voussoirs a little at the base also. But as this
+may perhaps throw the arch inconveniently high, or occasion a waste of
+voussoirs at the top, we may employ another expedient.
+
+Sec. IV. I imagine the reader's common sense, if not his previous
+knowledge, will enable him to understand that if the arch at _a_, Plate
+III., burst _in_ at the top, it must burst _out_ at the sides. Set up
+two pieces of pasteboard, edge to edge, and press them down with your
+hand, and you will see them bend out at the sides. Therefore, if you can
+keep the arch from starting out at the points _p_, _p_, it _cannot_
+curve in at the top, put what weight on it you will, unless by sheer
+crushing of the stones to fragments.
+
+Sec. V. Now you may keep the arch from starting out at _p_ by loading it
+at _p_, putting more weight upon it and against it at that point; and this,
+in practice, is the way it is usually done. But we assume at present
+that the weight above is sand or water, quite unmanageable, not to be
+directed to the points we choose; and in practice, it may sometimes
+happen that we cannot put weight upon the arch at _p_. We may perhaps
+want an opening above it, or it may be at the side of the building, and
+many other circumstances may occur to hinder us.
+
+Sec. VI. But if we are not sure that we can put weight above it, we are
+perfectly sure that we can hang weight under it. You may always thicken
+your shell inside, and put the weight upon it as at _x x_, in _d_, Plate
+III. Not much chance of its bursting out at _p_, now, is there?
+
+Sec. VII. Whenever, therefore, an arch has to bear vertical pressure, it
+will bear it better when its shell is shaped as at _b_ or _d_, than as
+at _a_: _b_ and _d_ are, therefore, the types of arches built to resist
+vertical pressure, all over the world, and from the beginning of
+architecture to its end. None others can be compared with them: all are
+imperfect except these.
+
+[Illustration: Plate III.
+               ARCH MASONRY.]
+
+The added projections at _x x_, in _d_, are called CUSPS, and they are
+the very soul and life of the best northern Gothic; yet never thoroughly
+understood nor found in perfection, except in Italy, the northern
+builders working often, even in the best times, with the vulgar form at
+_a_.
+
+The form at _b_ is rarely found in the north: its perfection is in the
+Lombardic Gothic; and branches of it, good and bad according to their
+use, occur in Saracenic work.
+
+Sec. VIII. The true and perfect cusp is single only. But it was probably
+invented (by the Arabs?) not as a constructive, but a decorative
+feature, in pure fantasy; and in early northern work it is only the
+application to the arch of the foliation, so called, of penetrated
+spaces in stone surfaces, already enough explained in the "Seven Lamps,"
+Chap. III., p. 85 _et seq._ It is degraded in dignity, and loses its
+usefulness, exactly in proportion to its multiplication on the arch. In
+later architecture, especially English Tudor, it is sunk into dotage,
+and becomes a simple excrescence, a bit of stone pinched up out of the
+arch, as a cook pinches the paste at the edge of a pie.
+
+Sec. IX. The depth and place of the cusp, that is to say, its exact
+application to the shoulder of the curve of the arch, varies with the
+direction of the weight to be sustained. I have spent more than a month,
+and that in hard work too, in merely trying to get the forms of cusps
+into perfect order: whereby the reader may guess that I have not space
+to go into the subject now; but I shall hereafter give a few of the
+leading and most perfect examples, with their measures and masonry.
+
+Sec. X. The reader now understands all that he need about the shell of
+the arch, considered as an united piece of stone.
+
+He has next to consider the shape of the voussoirs. This, as much as is
+required, he will be able best to comprehend by a few examples; by which
+I shall be able also to illustrate, or rather which will force me to
+illustrate, some of the methods of Mont-Cenisian masonry, which were to
+be the second part of our subject.
+
+Sec. XI. 1 and 2, Plate IV., are two cornices; 1 from St. Antonio, Padua;
+2, from the Cathedral of Sens. I want them for cornices; but I have put
+them in this plate because, though their arches are filled up behind,
+and are in fact mere blocks of stone with arches cut into their faces,
+they illustrate the constant masonry of small arches, both in Italian
+and Northern Romanesque, but especially Italian, each arch being cut out
+of its own proper block of stone: this is Mont-Cenisian enough, on a
+small scale.
+
+3 is a window from Carnarvon Castle, and very primitive and interesting
+in manner,--one of its arches being of one stone, the other of two. And
+here we have an instance of a form of arch which would be barbarous
+enough on a large scale, and of many pieces; but quaint and agreeable
+thus massively built.
+
+4 is from a little belfry in a Swiss village above Vevay; one fancies
+the window of an absurd form, seen in the distance, but one is pleased
+with it on seeing its masonry. It could hardly be stronger.
+
+Sec. XII. These then are arches cut of one block. The next step is to form
+them of two pieces, set together at the head of the arch. 6, from the
+Eremitani, Padua, is very quaint and primitive in manner: it is a
+curious church altogether, and has some strange traceries cut out of
+single blocks. One is given in the "Seven Lamps," Plate VII., in the
+left-hand corner at the bottom.
+
+7, from the Frari, Venice, very firm and fine, and admirably decorated,
+as we shall see hereafter. 5, the simple two-pieced construction,
+wrought with the most exquisite proportion and precision of workmanship,
+as is everything else in the glorious church to which it belongs, San
+Fermo of Verona. The addition of the top piece, which completes the
+circle, does not affect the plan of the beautiful arches, with their
+simple and perfect cusps; but it is highly curious, and serves to show
+how the idea of the cusp rose out of mere foliation. The whole of the
+architecture of this church may be characterised as exhibiting the
+maxima of simplicity in construction, and perfection in workmanship,--a
+rare unison: for, in general, simple designs are rudely worked, and as
+the builder perfects his execution, he complicates his plan. Nearly
+all the arches of San Fermo are two-pieced.
+
+[Illustration: Plate IV.
+               ARCH MASONRY.]
+
+Sec. XIII. We have seen the construction with one and two pieces: _a_ and
+_b_, Fig. 8, Plate IV., are the general types of the construction with
+three pieces, uncusped and cusped; _c_ and _d_ with five pieces,
+uncusped and cusped. Of these the three-pieced construction is of
+enormous importance, and must detain us some time. The five-pieced is
+the three-pieced with a joint added on each side, and is also of great
+importance. The four-pieced, which is the two-pieced with added joints,
+rarely occurs, and need not detain us.
+
+Sec. XIV. It will be remembered that in first working out the principle
+of the arch, we composed the arch of three pieces. Three is the smallest
+number which can exhibit the real _principle_ of arch masonry, and it
+may be considered as representative of all arches built on that
+principle; the one and two-pieced arches being microscopic
+Mont-Cenisian, mere caves in blocks of stone, or gaps between two rocks
+leaning together.
+
+But the three-pieced arch is properly representative of all; and the
+larger and more complicated constructions are merely produced by keeping
+the central piece for what is called a keystone, and putting additional
+joints at the sides. Now so long as an arch is pure circular or pointed,
+it does not matter how many joints or voussoirs you have, nor where the
+joints are; nay, you may joint your keystone itself, and make it
+two-pieced. But if the arch be of any bizarre form, especially ogee, the
+joints must be in particular places, and the masonry simple, or it will
+not be thoroughly good and secure; and the fine schools of the ogee arch
+have only arisen in countries where it was the custom to build arches of
+few pieces.
+
+Sec. XV. The typical pure pointed arch of Venice is a five-pieced arch,
+with its stones in three orders of magnitude, the longest being the
+lowest, as at _b2_, Plate III. If the arch be very large, a fourth order
+of magnitude is added, as at _a2_. The portals of the palaces of Venice
+have one or other of these masonries, almost without exception. Now, as
+one piece is added to make a larger door, one piece is taken away to
+make a smaller one, or a window, and the masonry type of the Venetian
+Gothic window is consequently three-pieced, _c2_.
+
+Sec. XVI. The reader knows already where a cusp is useful. It is wanted,
+he will remember, to give weight to those side stones, and draw them
+inwards against the thrust of the top stone. Take one of the side stones
+of _c2_ out for a moment, as at _d_. Now the _proper_ place of the cusp
+upon it varies with the weight which it bears or requires; but in
+practice this nicety is rarely observed; the place of the cusp is almost
+always determined by aesthetic considerations, and it is evident that the
+variations in its place may be infinite. Consider the cusp as a wave
+passing up the side stone from its bottom to its top; then you will have
+the succession of forms from _e_ to _g_ (Plate III.), with infinite
+degrees of transition from each to each; but of which you may take _e_,
+_f_, and _g_, as representing three great families of cusped arches. Use
+_e_ for your side stones, and you have an arch as that at _h_ below,
+which may be called a down-cusped arch. Use _f_ for the side stone, and
+you have _i_, which may be called a mid-cusped arch. Use _g_, and you
+have _k_, an up-cusped arch.
+
+Sec. XVII. The reader will observe that I call the arch mid-cusped, not
+when the cusped point is in the middle of the curve of the arch, but
+when it is in the middle of the _side piece_, and also that where the
+side pieces join the keystone there will be a change, perhaps somewhat
+abrupt, in the curvature.
+
+I have preferred to call the arch mid-cusped with respect to its side
+piece than with respect to its own curve, because the most beautiful
+Gothic arches in the world, those of the Lombard Gothic, have, in all
+the instances I have examined, a form more or less approximating to this
+mid-cusped one at _i_ (Plate III.), but having the curvature of the cusp
+carried up into the keystone, as we shall see presently: where, however,
+the arch is built of many voussoirs, a mid-cusped arch will mean one
+which has the point of the cusp midway between its own base and apex.
+
+The Gothic arch of Venice is almost invariably up-cusped, as at _k_.
+The reader may note that, in both down-cusped and up-cusped arches, the
+piece of stone, added to form the cusp, is of the shape of a scymitar,
+held down in the one case and up in the other.
+
+Sec. XVIII. Now, in the arches _h_, _i_, _k_, a slight modification has
+been made in the form of the central piece, in order that it may
+continue the curve of the cusp. This modification is not to be given to
+it in practice without considerable nicety of workmanship; and some
+curious results took place in Venice from this difficulty.
+
+At _l_ (Plate III.) is the shape of the Venetian side stone, with its
+cusp detached from the arch. Nothing can possibly be better or more
+graceful, or have the weight better disposed in order to cause it to nod
+forwards against the keystone, as above explained, Ch. X. Sec. II., where
+I developed the whole system of the arch from three pieces, in order that
+the reader might now clearly see the use of the weight of the cusp.
+
+Now a Venetian Gothic palace has usually at least three stories; with
+perhaps ten or twelve windows in each story, and this on two or three of
+its sides, requiring altogether some hundred to a hundred and fifty side
+pieces.
+
+I have no doubt, from observation of the way the windows are set
+together, that the side pieces were carved in pairs, like hooks, of
+which the keystones were to be the eyes; that these side pieces were
+ordered by the architect in the gross, and were used by him sometimes
+for wider, sometimes for narrower windows; bevelling the two ends as
+required, fitting in keystones as he best could, and now and then
+varying the arrangement by turning the side pieces _upside down_.
+
+There were various conveniences in this way of working, one of the
+principal being that the side pieces with their cusps were always cut to
+their complete form, and that no part of the cusp was carried out into
+the keystone, which followed the curve of the outer arch itself. The
+ornaments of the cusp might thus be worked without any troublesome
+reference to the rest of the arch.
+
+Sec. XIX. Now let us take a pair of side pieces, made to order, like that
+at _l_, and see what we can make of them. We will try to fit them first
+with a keystone which continues the curve of the outer arch, as at _m_.
+This the reader assuredly thinks an ugly arch. There are a great many of
+them in Venice, the ugliest things there, and the Venetian builders
+quickly began to feel them so. What could they do to better them? The
+arch at _m_ has a central piece of the form _r_. Substitute for it a
+piece of the form _s_, and we have the arch at _n_.
+
+Sec. XX. This arch at _n_ is not so strong as that at _m_; but, built of
+good marble, and with its pieces of proper thickness, it is quite strong
+enough for all practical purposes on a small scale. I have examined at
+least two thousand windows of this kind and of the other Venetian ogees,
+of which that at _y_ (in which the plain side-piece _d_ is used instead
+of the cusped one) is the simplest; and I never found _one_, even in the
+most ruinous palaces (in which they had had to sustain the distorted
+weight of falling walls) in which the central piece was fissured; and
+this is the only danger to which the window is exposed; in other
+respects it is as strong an arch as can be built.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the change from the _r_ keystone to the
+_s_ keystone was instantaneous. It was a change wrought out by many
+curious experiments, which we shall have to trace hereafter, and to
+throw the resultant varieties of form into their proper groups.
+
+Sec. XXI. One step more: I take a mid-cusped side piece in its block form
+at _t_, with the bricks which load the back of it. Now, as these bricks
+support it behind, and since, as far as the use of the cusp is
+concerned, it matters not whether its weight be in marble or bricks,
+there is nothing to hinder us from cutting out some of the marble, as at
+_u_, and filling up the space with bricks. (_Why_ we should take a fancy
+to do this, I do not pretend to guess at present; all I have to assert
+is, that, if the fancy should strike us, there would be no harm in it).
+Substituting this side piece for the other in the window _n_, we have
+that at _w_, which may, perhaps, be of some service to us afterwards;
+here we have nothing more to do with it than to note that, thus built,
+and properly backed by brickwork, it is just as strong and safe a
+form as that at _n_; but that this, as well as every variety of ogee
+arch, depends entirely for its safety, fitness, and beauty, on the
+masonry which we have just analysed; and that, built on a large scale,
+and with many voussoirs, all such arches would be unsafe and absurd in
+general architecture. Yet they may be used occasionally for the sake of
+the exquisite beauty of which their rich and fantastic varieties admit,
+and sometimes for the sake of another merit, exactly the opposite of the
+constructional ones we are at present examining, that they seem to stand
+by enchantment.
+
+[Illustration: Plate V.
+               Arch Masonry.
+               BRULETTO OF COMO.]
+
+Sec. XXII. In the above reasonings, the inclination of the joints of the
+voussoirs to the curves of the arch has not been considered. It is a
+question of much nicety, and which I have not been able as yet fully to
+investigate: but the natural idea of the arrangement of these lines
+(which in round arches are of course perpendicular to the curve) would
+be that every voussoir should have the lengths of its outer and inner
+arched surface in the same proportion to each other. Either this actual
+law, or a close approximation to it, is assuredly enforced in the best
+Gothic buildings.
+
+Sec. XXIII. I may sum up all that it is necessary for the reader to keep
+in mind of the general laws connected with this subject, by giving him an
+example of each of the two forms of the perfect Gothic arch, uncusped
+and cusped, treated with the most simple and magnificent masonry, and
+partly, in both cases, Mont-Cenisian.
+
+The first, Plate V., is a window from the Broletto of Como. It shows, in
+its filling, first, the single-pieced arch, carried on groups of four
+shafts, and a single slab of marble filling the space above, and pierced
+with a quatrefoil (Mont-Cenisian, this), while the mouldings above are
+each constructed with a separate system of voussoirs, all of them
+shaped, I think, on the principle above stated, Sec. XXII., in alternate
+serpentine and marble; the outer arch being a noble example of the pure
+uncusped Gothic construction, _b_ of Plate III.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXIV.]
+
+Sec. XXIV. Fig. XXXIV. is the masonry of the side arch of, as far as I
+know or am able to judge, the most perfect Gothic sepulchral monument in
+the world, the foursquare canopy of the (nameless?)[49] tomb standing
+over the small cemetery gate of the Church of St. Anastasia at Verona. I
+shall have frequent occasion to recur to this monument, and, I believe,
+shall be able sufficiently to justify the terms in which I speak of it:
+meanwhile, I desire only that the reader should observe the severity
+and simplicity of the arch lines, the exquisitely delicate suggestion of
+the ogee curve in the apex, and chiefly the use of the cusp in giving
+_inward_ weight to the great pieces of stone on the flanks of the arch,
+and preventing their thrust outwards from being severely thrown on the
+lowermost stones. The effect of this arrangement is, that the whole
+massy canopy is sustained safely by four slender pillars (as will be
+seen hereafter in the careful plate I hope to give of it), these pillars
+being rather steadied than materially assisted against the thrust, by
+iron bars, about an inch thick, connecting them at the heads of the
+abaci; a feature of peculiar importance in this monument, inasmuch as we
+know it to be part of the original construction, by a beautiful little
+Gothic wreathed pattern, like one of the hems of garments of Fra
+Angelico, running along the iron bar itself. So carefully, and so far,
+is the system of decoration carried out in this pure and lovely
+monument, my most beloved throughout all the length and breadth of
+Italy;--chief, as I think, among all the sepulchral marbles of a land of
+mourning.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [49] At least I cannot find any account of it in Maffei's "Verona,"
+    nor anywhere else, to be depended upon. It is, I doubt not, a work
+    of the beginning of the thirteenth century. Vide Appendix 19, "Tombs
+    at St. Anastasia."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  THE ARCH LOAD.
+
+
+Sec. I. In the preceding enquiry we have always supposed either that the
+load upon the arch was perfectly loose, as of gravel or sand, or that it
+was Mont-Cenisian, and formed one mass with the arch voussoirs, of more
+or less compactness.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXV.]
+
+In practice, the state is usually something between the two. Over
+bridges and tunnels it sometimes approaches to the condition of mere
+dust or yielding earth; but in architecture it is mostly firm masonry,
+not altogether acting with the voussoirs, yet by no means bearing on
+them with perfectly dead weight, but locking itself together above them,
+and capable of being thrown into forms which relieve them, in some
+degree, from its pressure.
+
+Sec. II. It is evident that if we are to place a continuous roof above the
+line of arches, we must fill up the intervals between them on the tops
+of the columns. We have at present nothing granted us but the bare
+masonry, as here at _a_, Fig. XXXV., and we must fill up the intervals
+between the semicircle so as to obtain a level line of support. We may
+first do this simply as at _b_, with plain mass of wall; so laying the
+roof on the top, which is the method of the pure Byzantine and Italian
+Romanesque. But if we find too much stress is thus laid on the arches,
+we may introduce small second shafts on the top of the great shaft, _a_,
+Fig. XXXVI., which may assist in carrying the roof, conveying great part
+of its weight at once to the heads of the main shafts, and relieving
+from its pressure the centres of the arches.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXVI.]
+
+Sec. III. The new shaft thus introduced may either remain lifted on the
+head of the great shaft, or may be carried to the ground in front of it,
+or through it, _b_, Fig. XXXVI.; in which latter case the main shaft
+divides into two or more minor shafts, and forms a group with the shaft
+brought down from above.
+
+Sec. IV. When this shaft, brought from roof to ground, is subordinate to
+the main pier, and either is carried down the face of it, or forms no
+large part of the group, the principle is Romanesque or Gothic, _b_,
+Fig. XXXVI. When it becomes a bold central shaft, and the main pier
+splits into two minor shafts on its sides, the principle is Classical or
+Palladian, _c_, Fig. XXXVI. Which latter arrangement becomes absurd or
+unsatisfactory in proportion to the sufficiency of the main shaft to
+carry the roof without the help of the minor shafts or arch, which in
+many instances of Palladian work look as if they might be removed
+without danger to the building.
+
+Sec. V. The form _a_ is a more pure Northern Gothic type than even _b_,
+which is the connecting link between it and the classical type. It is
+found chiefly in English and other northern Gothic, and in early
+Lombardic, and is, I doubt not, derived as above explained, Chap. I. Sec.
+XXVII. _b_ is a general French Gothic and French Romanesque form, as in
+great purity at Valence.
+
+The small shafts of the form _a_ and _b_, as being northern, are
+generally connected with steep vaulted roofs, and receive for that
+reason the name of vaulting shafts.
+
+Sec. VI. Of these forms _b_, Fig. XXXV., is the purest and most sublime,
+expressing the power of the arch most distinctly. All the others have
+some appearance of dovetailing and morticing of timber rather than
+stonework; nor have I ever yet seen a single instance, quite
+satisfactory, of the management of the capital of the main shaft, when
+it had either to sustain the base of the vaulting shaft, as in _a_, or
+to suffer it to pass through it, as in _b_, Fig. XXXVI. Nor is the
+bracket which frequently carries the vaulting shaft in English work a
+fitting support for a portion of the fabric which is at all events
+presumed to carry a considerable part of the weight of the roof.
+
+Sec. VII. The triangular spaces on the flanks of the arch are called
+Spandrils, and if the masonry of these should be found, in any of its
+forms, too heavy for the arch, their weight may be diminished, while
+their strength remains the same, by piercing them with circular holes or
+lights. This is rarely necessary in ordinary architecture, though
+sometimes of great use in bridges and iron roofs (a succession of such
+circles may be seen, for instance, in the spandrils at the Euston Square
+station); but, from its constructional value, it becomes the best form
+in which to arrange spandril decorations, as we shall see hereafter.
+
+Sec. VIII. The height of the load above the arch is determined by the
+needs of the building and possible length of the shaft; but with this we
+have at present nothing to do, for we have performed the task which was
+set us. We have ascertained, as it was required that we should in Sec. VI.
+of Chap. III. (A), the construction of walls; (B), that of piers; (C),
+that of piers with lintels or arches prepared for roofing. We have next,
+therefore, to examine (D) the structure of the roof.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  THE ROOF.
+
+
+Sec. I. Hitherto our enquiry has been unembarrassed by any considerations
+relating exclusively either to the exterior or interior of buildings.
+But it can remain so no longer. As far as the architect is concerned,
+one side of a wall is generally the same as another; but in the roof
+there are usually two distinct divisions of the structure; one, a shell,
+vault, or flat ceiling, internally visible, the other, an upper
+structure, built of timber, to protect the lower; or of some different
+form, to support it. Sometimes, indeed, the internally visible structure
+is the real roof, and sometimes there are more than two divisions, as in
+St. Paul's, where we have a central shell with a mask below and above.
+Still it will be convenient to remember the distinction between the part
+of the roof which is usually visible from within, and whose only
+business is to stand strongly, and not fall in, which I shall call the
+Roof Proper; and, secondly, the upper roof, which, being often partly
+supported by the lower, is not so much concerned with its own stability
+as with the weather, and is appointed to throw off snow, and get rid of
+rain, as fast as possible, which I shall call the Roof Mask.
+
+Sec. II. It is, however, needless for me to engage the reader in the
+discussion of the various methods of construction of Roofs Proper, for
+this simple reason, that no person without long experience can tell
+whether a roof be wisely constructed or not; nor tell at all, even with
+help of any amount of experience, without examination of the several
+parts and bearings of it, very different from any observation possible
+to the general critic: and more than this, the enquiry would be useless
+to us in our Venetian studies, where the roofs are either not
+contemporary with the buildings, or flat, or else vaults of the simplest
+possible constructions, which have been admirably explained by Willis in
+his "Architecture of the Middle Ages," Chap. VII., to which I may refer
+the reader for all that it would be well for him to know respecting the
+connexion of the different parts of the vault with the shafts. He would
+also do well to read the passages on Tudor vaulting, pp. 185-193, in Mr.
+Garbett's rudimentary Treatise on Design, before alluded to.[50] I shall
+content myself therefore with noting one or two points on which neither
+writer has had occasion to touch, respecting the Roof Mask.
+
+Sec. III. It was said in Sec. V. of Chapter III. that we should not have
+occasion, in speaking of roof construction, to add materially to the
+forms then suggested. The forms which we have to add are only those
+resulting from the other curves of the arch developed in the last
+chapter; that is to say, the various eastern domes and cupolas arising
+out of the revolution of the horseshoe and ogee curves, together with
+the well-known Chinese concave roof. All these forms are of course
+purely decorative, the bulging outline, or concave surface, being of no
+more use, or rather of less, in throwing off snow or rain, than the
+ordinary spire and gable; and it is rather curious, therefore, that all
+of them, on a small scale, should have obtained so extensive use in
+Germany and Switzerland, their native climate being that of the east,
+where their purpose seems rather to concentrate light upon their orbed
+surfaces. I much doubt their applicability, on a large scale, to
+architecture of any admirable dignity; their chief charm is, to the
+European eye, that of strangeness; and it seems to me possible that in
+the east the bulging form may be also delightful, from the idea of its
+enclosing a volume of cool air. I enjoy them in St. Mark's, chiefly
+because they increase the fantastic and unreal character of St. Mark's
+Place; and because they appear to sympathise with an expression,
+common, I think, to all the buildings of that group, of a natural
+buoyancy, as if they floated in the air or on the surface of the sea.
+But, assuredly, they are not features to be recommended for
+imitation.[51]
+
+Sec. IV. One form, closely connected with the Chinese concave, is,
+however, often constructively right,--the gable with an inward angle,
+occurring with exquisitely picturesque effect throughout the domestic
+architecture of the north, especially Germany and Switzerland; the lower
+slope being either an attached external penthouse roof, for protection
+of the wall, as in Fig. XXXVII., or else a kind of buttress set on the
+angle of the tower; and in either case the roof itself being a simple
+gable, continuous beneath it.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXVII.]
+
+Sec. V. The true gable, as it is the simplest and most natural, so I
+esteem it the grandest of roofs; whether rising in ridgy darkness, like
+a grey slope of slaty mountains, over the precipitous walls of the
+northern cathedrals, or stretched in burning breadth above the white and
+square-set groups of the southern architecture. But this difference
+between its slope in the northern and southern structure is a matter of
+far greater importance than is commonly supposed, and it is this to
+which I would especially direct the reader's attention.
+
+Sec. VI. One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off snow in the
+north, has been a thousand times alluded to: another I do not remember
+having seen noticed, namely, that rooms in a roof are comfortably
+habitable in the north, which are painful _sotto piombi_ in Italy; and
+that there is in wet climates a natural tendency in all men to live as
+high as possible, out of the damp and mist. These two causes, together
+with accessible quantities of good timber, have induced in the north a
+general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or squared above a
+tower, becomes a spire or turret; and this feature, worked out with
+elaborate decoration, is the key-note of the whole system of aspiration,
+so called, which the German critics have so ingeniously and falsely
+ascribed to a devotional sentiment pervading the Northern Gothic: I
+entirely and boldly deny the whole theory; our cathedrals were for the
+most part built by worldly people, who loved the world, and would have
+gladly staid in it for ever; whose best hope was the escaping hell,
+which they thought to do by building cathedrals, but who had very vague
+conceptions of Heaven in general, and very feeble desires respecting
+their entrance therein; and the form of the spired cathedral has no more
+intentional reference to Heaven, as distinguished from the flattened
+slope of the Greek pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman house has,
+as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one. We may now, with
+ingenious pleasure, trace such symbolic characters in the form; we may
+now use it with such definite meaning; but we only prevent ourselves
+from all right understanding of history, by attributing much influence
+to these poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The
+human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such silken cords;
+and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose tiles in the roof,
+have, unhappily, much more to do with the fashions of a man's house
+building than his ideas of celestial happiness or angelic virtue.
+Associations of affection have far higher power, and forms which can be
+no otherwise accounted for may often be explained by reference to the
+natural features of the country, or to anything which habit must have
+rendered familiar, and therefore delightful; but the direct
+symbolisation of a sentiment is a weak motive with all men, and far
+more so in the practical minds of the north than among the early
+Christians, who were assuredly quite as heavenly-minded, when they built
+basilicas, or cut conchas out of the catacombs, as were ever the Norman
+barons or monks.
+
+Sec. VII. There is, however, in the north an animal activity which
+materially aided the system of building begun in mere utility,--an
+animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as the languor of the
+south in reclining or level work. Imagine the difference between the
+action of a man urging himself to his work in a snow storm, and the
+inaction of one laid at his length on a sunny bank among cicadas and
+fallen olives, and you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies
+which were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remembering
+always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the other death.
+
+Sec. VIII. And to the force of this vital instinct we have farther to
+add the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of the groups and
+wildernesses of the tree which is to the German mind what the olive or
+palm is to the southern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once been
+habituated to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the
+multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the
+repetition of similar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of
+flat or massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of the
+poplar, more especially in the valleys of France; but think of the
+spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling with which the
+Northman would be inspired by the frostwork wreathed upon its glittering
+point, and the Italian by the dark green depth of sunshine on the broad
+table of the stone-pine[52] (and consider by the way whether the spruce
+fir be a more heavenly-minded tree than those dark canopies of the
+Mediterranean isles).
+
+Sec. IX. Circumstance and sentiment, therefore, aiding each other, the
+steep roof becomes generally adopted, and delighted in, throughout the
+north; and then, with the gradual exaggeration with which every pleasant
+idea is pursued by the human mind, it is raised into all manner of
+peaks, and points, and ridges; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on
+its flanks, and the walls increased in height, in proportion, until we
+get indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more principle of
+religious aspiration in it than a child's tower of cards. What is more,
+the desire to build high is complicated with the peculiar love of the
+grotesque[53] which is characteristic of the north, together with
+especial delight in multiplication of small forms, as well as in
+exaggerated points of shade and energy, and a certain degree of
+consequent insensibility to perfect grace and quiet truthfulness; so
+that a northern architect could not feel the beauty of the Elgin
+marbles, and there will always be (in those who have devoted themselves
+to this particular school) a certain incapacity to taste the finer
+characters of Greek art, or to understand Titian, Tintoret, or Raphael:
+whereas among the Italian Gothic workmen, this capacity was never lost,
+and Nino Pisano and Orcagna could have understood the Theseus in an
+instant, and would have received from it new life. There can be no
+question that theirs was the greatest school, and carried out by the
+greatest men; and that while those who began with this school could
+perfectly well feel Rouen Cathedral, those who study the Northern Gothic
+remain in a narrowed field--one of small pinnacles, and dots, and
+crockets, and twitched faces--and cannot comprehend the meaning of a
+broad surface or a grand line. Nevertheless the northern school is an
+admirable and delightful thing, but a lower thing than the southern. The
+Gothic of the Ducal Palace of Venice is in harmony with all that is
+grand in all the world: that of the north is in harmony with the
+grotesque northern spirit only.
+
+Sec. X. We are, however, beginning to lose sight of our roof structure in
+its spirit, and must return to our text. As the height of the walls
+increased, in sympathy with the rise of the roof, while their thickness
+remained the same, it became more and more necessary to support them by
+buttresses; but--and this is another point that the reader must
+specially note--it is not the steep roof mask which requires the
+buttress, but the vaulting beneath it; the roof mask being a mere wooden
+frame tied together by cross timbers, and in small buildings often put
+together on the ground, raised afterwards, and set on the walls like a
+hat, bearing vertically upon them; and farther, I believe in most cases
+the northern vaulting requires its great array of external buttress, not
+so much from any peculiar boldness in its own forms, as from the greater
+comparative thinness and height of the walls, and more determined
+throwing of the whole weight of the roof on particular points. Now the
+connexion of the interior frame-work (or true roof) with the buttress,
+at such points, is not visible to the spectators from without; but the
+relation of the roof mask to the top of the wall which it protects, or
+from which it springs, is perfectly visible; and it is a point of so
+great importance in the effect of the building, that it will be well to
+make it a subject of distinct consideration in the following Chapter.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [50] Appendix 17
+
+  [51] I do not speak of the true dome, because I have not studied its
+    construction enough to know at what largeness of scale it begins to
+    be rather a _tour de force_ than a convenient or natural form of
+    roof, and because the ordinary spectator's choice among its various
+    outlines must always be dependent on aesthetic considerations only,
+    and can in no wise be grounded on any conception of its infinitely
+    complicated structural principles.
+
+  [52] I shall not be thought to have overrated the effect of forest
+    scenery on the _northern_ mind; but I was glad to hear a Spanish
+    gentleman, the other day, describing, together with his own, the
+    regret which the peasants in his neighborhood had testified for the
+    loss of a noble stone-pine, one of the grandest in Spain, which its
+    proprietor had suffered to be cut down for small gain. He said that
+    the mere spot where it had grown was still popularly known as "El
+    Pino."
+
+  [53] Appendix 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  THE ROOF CORNICE.
+
+
+Sec. I. It will be remembered that in the Sixth Chapter we paused (Sec.
+X.) at the point where the addition of brackets to the ordinary wall
+cornice would have converted it into a structure proper for sustaining a
+roof. Now the wall cornice was treated throughout our enquiry (compare
+Chapter VII. Sec. V.) as the capital of the wall, and as forming, by its
+concentration, the capital of the shaft. But we must not reason _back_
+from the capital to the cornice, and suppose that an extension of the
+principles of the capital to the whole length of the wall, will serve
+for the roof cornice; for all our conclusions respecting the capital
+were based on the supposition of its being adapted to carry considerable
+weight condensed on its abacus: but the roof cornice is, in most cases,
+required rather to project boldly than to carry weight; and arrangements
+are therefore to be adopted for it which will secure the projection of
+large surfaces without being calculated to resist extraordinary
+pressure. This object is obtained by the use of brackets at intervals,
+which are the peculiar distinction of the roof cornice.
+
+Sec. II. Roof cornices are generally to be divided into two great
+families: the first and simplest, those which are composed merely by the
+projection of the edge of the roof mask over the wall, sustained by such
+brackets or spurs as may be necessary; the second, those which provide a
+walk round the edge of the roof, and which require, therefore, some
+stronger support, as well as a considerable mass of building above or
+beside the roof mask, and a parapet. These two families we shall
+consider in succession.
+
+Sec. III. 1. The Eaved Cornice. We may give it this name, as represented
+in the simplest form by cottage eaves. It is used, however, in bold
+projection, both in north, and south, and east; its use being, in the
+north, to throw the rain well away from the wall of the building; in the
+south to give it shade; and it is ordinarily constructed of the ends of
+the timbers of the roof mask (with their tiles or shingles continued to
+the edge of the cornice), and sustained by spurs of timber. This is its
+most picturesque and natural form; not inconsistent with great splendor
+of architecture in the mediaeval Italian domestic buildings, superb in
+its mass of cast shadow, and giving rich effect to the streets of Swiss
+towns, even when they have no other claim to interest. A farther value
+is given to it by its waterspouts, for in order to avoid loading it with
+weight of water in the gutter at the edge, where it would be a strain on
+the fastenings of the pipe, it has spouts of discharge at intervals of
+three or four feet,--rows of magnificent leaden or iron dragons' heads,
+full of delightful character, except to any person passing along the
+middle of the street in a heavy shower. I have had my share of their
+kindness in my time, but owe them no grudge; on the contrary, much
+gratitude for the delight of their fantastic outline on the calm blue
+sky, when they had no work to do but to open their iron mouths and pant
+in the sunshine.
+
+Sec. IV. When, however, light is more valuable than shadow, or when
+the architecture of the wall is too fair to be concealed, it becomes
+necessary to draw the cornice into narrower limits; a change of
+considerable importance, in that it permits the gutter, instead of being
+of lead and hung to the edge of the cornice, to be of stone, and
+supported by brackets in the wall, these brackets becoming proper
+recipients of after decoration (and sometimes associated with the stone
+channels of discharge, called gargoyles, which belong, however, more
+properly to the other family of cornices). The most perfect and
+beautiful example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the
+rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by small
+brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower edge decorated
+with the English dogtooth moulding, whose sharp zigzag mingles richly
+with the curved edges of the tiling. I know no cornice more beautiful in
+its extreme simplicity and serviceableness.
+
+Sec. V. The cornice of the Greek Doric is a condition of the same kind,
+in which, however, there are no brackets, but useless appendages hung to
+the bottom of the gutter (giving, however, some impression of support as
+seen from a distance), and decorated with stone symbolisms of raindrops.
+The brackets are not allowed, because they would interfere with the
+sculpture, which in this architecture is put beneath the cornice; and
+the overhanging form of the gutter is nothing more than a vast dripstone
+moulding, to keep the rain from such sculpture: its decoration of guttae,
+seen in silver points against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a
+kind of continual refreshment and remembrance of rain in it; but the
+whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only endurable when the
+eye is quickly drawn away from it to sculpture.
+
+Sec. VI. In later cornices, invented for the Greek orders, and farther
+developed by the Romans, the bracket appears in true importance, though
+of barbarous and effeminate outline: and gorgeous decorations are
+applied to it, and to the various horizontal mouldings which it carries,
+some of them of great beauty, and of the highest value to the mediaeval
+architects who imitated them. But a singularly gross mistake was made in
+the distribution of decoration on these rich cornices (I do not know
+when first, nor does it matter to me or to the reader), namely, the
+charging with ornament the under surface of the cornice between the
+brackets, that is to say, the exact piece of the whole edifice, from top
+to bottom, where ornament is least visible. I need hardly say much
+respecting the wisdom of this procedure, excusable only if the whole
+building were covered with ornament; but it is curious to see the way in
+which modern architects have copied it, even when they had little enough
+ornament to spare. For instance, I suppose few persons look at the
+Athenaeum Club-house without feeling vexed at the meagreness and
+meanness of the windows of the ground floor: if, however, they look up
+under the cornice, and have good eyes, they will perceive that the
+architect has reserved his decorations to put between the brackets; and
+by going up to the first floor, and out on the gallery, they may succeed
+in obtaining some glimpses of the designs of the said decorations.
+
+Sec. VII. Such as they are, or were, these cornices were soon considered
+essential parts of the "order" to which they belonged; and the same
+wisdom which endeavored to fix the proportions of the orders, appointed
+also that no order should go without its cornice. The reader has
+probably heard of the architectural division of superstructure into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice; parts which have been appointed by
+great architects to all their work, in the same spirit in which great
+rhetoricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium, and
+narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to consider that it
+may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof, and get rid of rain,
+without such an arrangement, as it is to tell a plain fact without an
+exordium or peroration; but he must very absolutely consider that the
+architectural peroration or cornice is strictly and sternly limited to
+the end of the wall's speech,--that is, to the edge of the roof; and
+that it has nothing whatever to do with shafts nor the orders of them.
+And he will then be able fully to enjoy the farther ordinance of the
+late Roman and Renaissance architects, who, attaching it to the shaft as
+if it were part of its shadow, and having to employ their shafts often
+in places where they came not near the roof, forthwith cut the
+roof-cornice to pieces and attached a bit of it to every column;
+thenceforward to be carried by the unhappy shaft wherever it went, in
+addition to any other work on which it might happen to be employed. I do
+not recollect among any living beings, except Renaissance architects,
+any instance of a parallel or comparable stupidity: but one can imagine
+a savage getting hold of a piece of one of our iron wire ropes, with its
+rings upon it at intervals to bind it together, and pulling the wires
+asunder to apply them to separate purposes; but imagining there was
+magic in the ring that bound them, and so cutting that to pieces also,
+and fastening a little bit of it to every wire.
+
+Sec. VIII. Thus much may serve us to know respecting the first family of
+wall cornices. The second is immeasurably more important, and includes
+the cornices of all the best buildings in the world. It has derived its
+best form from mediaeval military architecture, which imperatively
+required two things; first, a parapet which should permit sight and
+offence, and afford defence at the same time; and secondly, a projection
+bold enough to enable the defenders to rake the bottom of the wall with
+falling bodies; projection which, if the wall happened to slope inwards,
+required not to be small. The thoroughly magnificent forms of cornice
+thus developed by necessity in military buildings, were adopted, with
+more or less of boldness or distinctness, in domestic architecture,
+according to the temper of the times and the circumstances of the
+individual--decisively in the baron's house, imperfectly in the
+burgher's: gradually they found their way into ecclesiastical
+architecture, under wise modifications in the early cathedrals, with
+infinite absurdity in the imitations of them; diminishing in size as
+their original purpose sank into a decorative one, until we find
+battlements, two-and-a-quarter inches square, decorating the gates of
+the Philanthropic Society.
+
+Sec. IX. There are, therefore, two distinct features in all cornices of
+this kind; first, the bracket, now become of enormous importance and of
+most serious practical service; the second, the parapet: and these two
+features we shall consider in succession, and in so doing, shall learn
+all that is needful for us to know, not only respecting cornices, but
+respecting brackets in general, and balconies.
+
+Sec. X. 1. The Bracket. In the simplest form of military cornice, the
+brackets are composed of two or more long stones, supporting each other
+in gradually increasing projection, with roughly rounded ends, Fig.
+XXXVIII., and the parapet is simply a low wall carried on the ends of
+these, leaving, of course, behind, or within it, a hole between each
+bracket for the convenient dejection of hot sand and lead. This form is
+best seen, I think, in the old Scotch castles; it is very grand, but has
+a giddy look, and one is afraid of the whole thing toppling off the
+wall. The next step was to deepen the brackets, so as to get them
+propped against a great depth of the main rampart, and to have the inner
+ends of the stones held by a greater weight of that main wall above;
+while small arches were thrown from bracket to bracket to carry the
+parapet wall more securely. This is the most perfect form of cornice,
+completely satisfying the eye of its security, giving full protection to
+the wall, and applicable to all architecture, the interstices between
+the brackets being filled up, when one does not want to throw boiling
+lead on any body below, and the projection being always delightful, as
+giving greater command and view of the building, from its angles, to
+those walking on the rampart. And as, in military buildings, there were
+usually towers at the angles (round which the battlements swept) in
+order to flank the walls, so often in the translation into civil or
+ecclesiastical architecture, a small turret remained at the angle, or a
+more bold projection of balcony, to give larger prospect to those upon
+the rampart. This cornice, perfect in all its parts, as arranged for
+ecclesiastical architecture, and exquisitely decorated, is the one
+employed in the duomo of Florence and campanile of Giotto, of which I
+have already spoken as, I suppose, the most perfect architecture in the
+world.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXVIII.]
+
+Sec. XI. In less important positions and on smaller edifices, this cornice
+diminishes in size, while it retains its arrangement, and at last we
+find nothing but the spirit and form of it left; the real practical
+purpose having ceased, and arch, brackets and all, being cut out of a
+single stone. Thus we find it used in early buildings throughout the
+whole of the north and south of Europe, in forms sufficiently
+represented by the two examples in Plate IV.: 1, from St. Antonio,
+Padua; 2, from Sens in France.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XXXIX.]
+
+Sec. XII. I wish, however, at present to fix the reader's attention on the
+form of the bracket itself; a most important feature in modern as well
+as ancient architecture. The first idea of a bracket is that of a long
+stone or piece of timber projecting from the wall, as _a_, Fig. XXXIX.,
+of which the strength depends on the toughness of the stone or wood, and
+the stability on the weight of wall above it (unless it be the end of a
+main beam). But let it be supposed that the structure at _a_, being of
+the required projection, is found too weak: then we may strengthen it in
+one of three ways; (1) by putting a second or third stone beneath it, as
+at _b_; (2) by giving it a spur, as at _c_; (3) by giving it a shaft and
+another bracket below, _d_; the great use of this arrangement being that
+the lowermost bracket has the help of the weight of the shaft-length of
+wall above its insertion, which is, of course, greater than the weight
+of the small shaft: and then the lower bracket may be farther helped by
+the structure at _b_ or _c_.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XL.]
+
+Sec. XIII. Of these structures, _a_ and _c_ are evidently adapted
+especially for wooden buildings; _b_ and _d_ for stone ones; the last,
+of course, susceptible of the richest decoration, and superbly employed
+in the cornice of the cathedral of Monza: but all are beautiful in their
+way, and are the means of, I think, nearly half the picturesqueness and
+power of mediaeval building; the forms _b_ and _c_ being, of course, the
+most frequent; _a_, when it occurs, being usually rounded off, as at
+_a_, Fig. XL.; _b_, also, as in Fig. XXXVIII., or else itself composed
+of a single stone cut into the form of the group _b_ here, Fig. XL., or
+plain, as at _c_, which is also the proper form of the brick bracket,
+when stone is not to be had. The reader will at once perceive that the
+form _d_ is a barbarism (unless when the scale is small and the weight
+to be carried exceedingly light): it is of course, therefore, a
+favorite form with the Renaissance architects; and its introduction is
+one of the first corruptions of the Venetian architecture.
+
+Sec. XIV. There is one point necessary to be noticed, though bearing on
+decoration more than construction, before we leave the subject of the
+bracket. The whole power of the construction depends upon the stones
+being well _let into_ the wall; and the first function of the decoration
+should be to give the idea of this insertion, if possible; at all
+events, not to contradict this idea. If the reader will glance at any of
+the brackets used in the ordinary architecture of London, he will find
+them of some such character as Fig. XLI.; not a bad form in itself, but
+exquisitely absurd in its curling lines, which give the idea of some
+writhing suspended tendril, instead of a stiff support, and by their
+careful avoidance of the wall make the bracket look pinned on, and in
+constant danger of sliding down. This is, also, a Classical and
+Renaissance decoration.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLI.]
+
+Sec. XV. 2. The Parapet. Its forms are fixed in military architecture
+by the necessities of the art of war at the time of building, and are
+always beautiful wherever they have been really thus fixed; delightful
+in the variety of their setting, and in the quaint darkness of their
+shot-holes, and fantastic changes of elevation and outline. Nothing is
+more remarkable than the swiftly discerned difference between the
+masculine irregularity of such true battlements, and the formal
+pitifulness of those which are set on modern buildings to give them a
+military air,--as on the jail at Edinburgh.
+
+Sec. XVI. Respecting the Parapet for mere safeguard upon buildings not
+military, there are just two fixed laws. It should be pierced, otherwise
+it is not recognised from below for a parapet at all, and it should not
+be in the form of a battlement, especially in church architecture.
+
+The most comfortable heading of a true parapet is a plain level on which
+the arm can be rested, and along which it can glide. Any jags or
+elevations are disagreeable; the latter, as interrupting the view and
+disturbing the eye, if they are higher than the arm, the former, as
+opening some aspect of danger if they are much lower; and the
+inconvenience, therefore, of the battlemented form, as well as the worse
+than absurdity, the bad feeling, of the appliance of a military feature
+to a church, ought long ago to have determined its rejection. Still (for
+the question of its picturesque value is here so closely connected with
+that of its practical use, that it is vain to endeavor to discuss it
+separately) there is a certain agreeableness in the way in which the
+jagged outline dovetails the shadow of the slated or leaded roof into
+the top of the wall, which may make the use of the battlement excusable
+where there is a difficulty in managing some unvaried line, and where
+the expense of a pierced parapet cannot be encountered: but remember
+always, that the value of the battlement consists in its letting shadow
+into the light of the wall, or _vice versa_, when it comes against light
+sky, letting the light of the sky into the shade of the wall; but that
+the actual outline of the parapet itself, if the eye be arrested upon
+this, instead of upon the alternation of shadow, is as _ugly_ a
+succession of line as can by any possibility be invented. Therefore, the
+battlemented parapet may only be used where this alternation of shade is
+certain to be shown, under nearly all conditions of effect; and where
+the lines to be dealt with are on a scale which may admit battlements of
+bold and manly size. The idea that a battlement is an ornament anywhere,
+and that a miserable and diminutive imitation of castellated outline
+will always serve to fill up blanks and Gothicise unmanageable spaces,
+is one of the great idiocies of the present day. A battlement is in its
+origin a piece of wall large enough to cover a man's body, and however
+it may be decorated, or pierced, or finessed away into traceries, as
+long as so much of its outline is retained as to suggest its origin, so
+long its size must remain undiminished. To crown a turret six feet high
+with chopped battlements three inches wide, is children's Gothic: it is
+one of the paltry falsehoods for which there is no excuse, and part of
+the system of using models of architecture to decorate architecture,
+which we shall hereafter note as one of the chief and most destructive
+follies of the Renaissance;[54] and in the present day the practice may
+be classed as one which distinguishes the architects of whom there is no
+hope, who have neither eye nor head for their work, and who must pass
+their lives in vain struggles against the refractory lines of their own
+buildings.
+
+Sec. XVII. As the only excuse for the battlemented parapet is its
+alternation of shadow, so the only fault of the natural or level parapet
+is its monotony of line. This is, however, in practice, almost always
+broken by the pinnacles of the buttresses, and if not, may be varied by
+the tracery of its penetrations. The forms of these evidently admit
+every kind of change; for a stone parapet, however pierced, is sure to
+be strong enough for its purpose of protection, and, as regards the
+strength of the building in general, the lighter it is the better. More
+fantastic forms may, therefore, be admitted in a parapet than in any
+other architectural feature, and for most services, the Flamboyant
+parapets seem to me preferable to all others; especially when the leaden
+roofs set off by points of darkness the lace-like intricacy of
+penetration. These, however, as well as the forms usually given to
+Renaissance balustrades (of which, by the bye, the best piece of
+criticism I know is the sketch in "David Copperfield" of the personal
+appearance of the man who stole Jip), and the other and finer forms
+invented by Paul Veronese in his architectural backgrounds, together
+with the pure columnar balustrade of Venice, must be considered as
+altogether decorative features.
+
+Sec. XVIII. So also are, of course, the jagged or crown-like finishings
+of walls employed where no real parapet of protection is desired;
+originating in the defences of outworks and single walls: these are used
+much in the east on walls surrounding unroofed courts. The richest
+examples of such decoration are Arabian; and from Cairo they seem to
+have been brought to Venice. It is probable that few of my readers,
+however familiar the general form of the Ducal Palace may have been
+rendered to them by innumerable drawings, have any distinct idea of its
+roof, owing to the staying of the eye on its superb parapet, of which we
+shall give account hereafter. In most of the Venetian cases the parapets
+which surround roofing are very sufficient for protection, except that
+the stones of which they are composed appear loose and infirm: but their
+purpose is entirely decorative; every wall, whether detached or roofed,
+being indiscriminately fringed with Arabic forms of parapet, more or
+less Gothicised, according to the lateness of their date.
+
+I think there is no other point of importance requiring illustration
+respecting the roof itself, or its cornice: but this Venetian form of
+ornamental parapet connects itself curiously, at the angles of nearly
+all the buildings on which it occurs, with the pinnacled system of the
+north, founded on the structure of the buttress. This, it will be
+remembered, is to be the subject of the fifth division of our inquiry.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [54] Not of Renaissance alone: the practice of modelling buildings
+    on a minute scale for niches and tabernacle-work has always been
+    more or less admitted, and I suppose _authority_ for diminutive
+    battlements might be gathered from the Gothic of almost every
+    period, as well as for many other faults and mistakes: no Gothic
+    school having ever been thoroughly systematised or perfected, even
+    in its best times. But that a mistaken decoration sometimes occurs
+    among a crowd of noble ones, is no more an excuse for the
+    habitual--far less, the exclusive--use of such a decoration, than
+    the accidental or seeming misconstructions of a Greek chorus are an
+    excuse for a school boy's ungrammatical exercise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+  THE BUTTRESS.
+
+
+Sec. I. We have hitherto supposed ourselves concerned with the support
+of vertical pressure only; and the arch and roof have been considered as
+forms of abstract strength, without reference to the means by which
+their lateral pressure was to be resisted. Few readers will need now to
+be reminded, that every arch or gable not tied at its base by beams or
+bars, exercises a lateral pressure upon the walls which sustain
+it,--pressure which may, indeed, be met and sustained by increasing the
+thickness of the wall or vertical piers, and which is in reality thus
+met in most Italian buildings, but may, with less expenditure of
+material, and with (perhaps) more graceful effect, be met by some
+particular application of the provisions against lateral pressure called
+Buttresses. These, therefore, we are next to examine.
+
+Sec. II. Buttresses are of many kinds, according to the character and
+direction of the lateral forces they are intended to resist. But their
+first broad division is into buttresses which meet and break the force
+before it arrives at the wall, and buttresses which stand on the lee
+side of the wall, and prop it against the force.
+
+The lateral forces which walls have to sustain are of three distinct
+kinds: dead weight, as of masonry or still water; moving weight, as of
+wind or running water; and sudden concussion, as of earthquakes,
+explosions, &c.
+
+Clearly, dead weight can only be resisted by the buttress acting as a
+prop; for a buttress on the side of, or towards the weight, would only
+add to its effect. This, then, forms the first great class of buttressed
+architecture; lateral thrusts, of roofing or arches, being met by props
+of masonry outside--the thrust from within, the prop without; or the
+crushing force of water on a ship's side met by its cross timbers--the
+thrust here from without the wall, the prop within.
+
+Moving weight may, of course, be resisted by the prop on the lee side of
+the wall, but is often more effectually met, on the side which is
+attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms, cunning buttresses, which do
+not attempt to sustain the weight, but _parry_ it, and throw it off in
+directions clear of the wall.
+
+Thirdly: concussions and vibratory motion, though in reality only
+supported by the prop buttress, must be provided for by buttresses on
+both sides of the wall, as their direction cannot be foreseen, and is
+continually changing.
+
+We shall briefly glance at these three systems of buttressing; but the
+two latter being of small importance to our present purpose, may as well
+be dismissed first.
+
+Sec. III. 1. Buttresses for guard against moving weight and set towards
+the weight they resist.
+
+The most familiar instance of this kind of buttress we have in the sharp
+piers of a bridge, in the centre of a powerful stream, which divide the
+current on their edges, and throw it to each side under the arches. A
+ship's bow is a buttress of the same kind, and so also the ridge of a
+breastplate, both adding to the strength of it in resisting a cross
+blow, and giving a better chance of a bullet glancing aside. In
+Switzerland, projecting buttresses of this kind are often built round
+churches, heading up hill, to divide and throw off the avalanches. The
+various forms given to piers and harbor quays, and to the bases of
+light-houses, in order to meet the force of the waves, are all
+conditions of this kind of buttress. But in works of ornamental
+architecture such buttresses are of rare occurrence; and I merely name
+them in order to mark their place in our architectural system, since in
+the investigation of our present subject we shall not meet with a single
+example of them, unless sometimes the angle of the foundation of a
+palace set against the sweep of the tide, or the wooden piers of some
+canal bridge quivering in its current.
+
+Sec. IV. 2. Buttresses for guard against vibratory motion.
+
+The whole formation of this kind of buttress resolves itself into mere
+expansion of the base of the wall, so as to make it stand steadier, as a
+man stands with his feet apart when he is likely to lose his balance.
+This approach to a pyramidal form is also of great use as a guard
+against the action of artillery; that if a stone or tier of stones be
+battered out of the lower portions of the wall, the whole upper part may
+not topple over or crumble down at once. Various forms of this buttress,
+sometimes applied to particular points of the wall, sometimes forming a
+great sloping rampart along its base, are frequent in buildings of
+countries exposed to earthquake. They give a peculiarly heavy outline to
+much of the architecture of the kingdom of Naples, and they are of the
+form in which strength and solidity are first naturally sought, in the
+slope of the Egyptian wall. The base of Guy's Tower at Warwick is a
+singularly bold example of their military use; and so, in general,
+bastion and rampart profiles, where, however, the object of stability
+against a shock is complicated with that of sustaining weight of earth
+in the rampart behind.
+
+Sec. V. 3. Prop buttresses against dead weight.
+
+This is the group with which we have principally to do; and a buttress
+of this kind acts in two ways, partly by its weight and partly by its
+strength. It acts by its weight when its mass is so great that the
+weight it sustains cannot stir it, but is lost upon it, buried in it,
+and annihilated: neither the shape of such a buttress nor the cohesion
+of its materials are of much consequence; a heap of stones or sandbags,
+laid up against the wall, will answer as well as a built and cemented
+mass.
+
+But a buttress acting by its strength is not of mass sufficient to
+resist the weight by mere inertia; but it conveys the weight through its
+body to something else which is so capable; as, for instance, a man
+leaning against a door with his hands, and propping himself against the
+ground, conveys the force which would open or close the door against him
+through his body to the ground. A buttress acting in this way must be of
+perfectly coherent materials, and so strong that though the weight to
+be borne could easily move it, it cannot break it: this kind of buttress
+may be called a conducting buttress. Practically, however, the two modes
+of action are always in some sort united. Again, the weight to be borne
+may either act generally on the whole wall surface, or with excessive
+energy on particular points: when it acts on the whole wall surface, the
+whole wall is generally supported; and the arrangement becomes a
+continuous rampart, as a dyke, or bank of reservoir.
+
+Sec. VI. It is, however, very seldom that lateral force in architecture is
+equally distributed. In most cases the weight of the roof, or the force
+of any lateral thrust, are more or less confined to certain points and
+directions. In an early state of architectural science this definiteness
+of direction is not yet clear, and it is met by uncertain application of
+mass or strength in the buttress, sometimes by mere thickening of the
+wall into square piers, which are partly piers, partly buttresses, as in
+Norman keeps and towers. But as science advances, the weight to be borne
+is designedly and decisively thrown upon certain points; the direction
+and degree of the forces which are then received are exactly calculated,
+and met by conducting buttresses of the smallest possible dimensions;
+themselves, in their turn, supported by vertical buttresses acting by
+weight, and these perhaps, in their turn, by another set of conducting
+buttresses: so that, in the best examples of such arrangements, the
+weight to be borne may be considered as the shock of an electric fluid,
+which, by a hundred different rods and channels, is divided and carried
+away into the ground.
+
+Sec. VII. In order to give greater weight to the vertical buttress piers
+which sustain the conducting buttresses, they are loaded with pinnacles,
+which, however, are, I believe, in all the buildings in which they
+become very prominent, merely decorative: they are of some use, indeed,
+by their weight; but if this were all for which they were put there, a
+few cubic feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose,
+without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader likes to ask any
+Gothic architect with whom he may happen to be acquainted, to
+substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles, he will see by the
+expression of his face how far he considers the pinnacles decorative
+members. In the work which seems to me the great type of simple and
+masculine buttress structure, the apse of Beauvais, the pinnacles are
+altogether insignificant, and are evidently added just as exclusively to
+entertain the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the slight
+shafts which are set on its angles; while in other very noble Gothic
+buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches for statues, without
+any reference to construction at all: and sometimes even, as in the tomb
+of Can Signoria at Verona, on small piers detached from the main
+building.
+
+Sec. VIII. I believe, therefore, that the development of the pinnacle is
+merely a part of the general erectness and picturesqueness of northern
+work above alluded to: and that, if there had been no other place for
+the pinnacles, the Gothic builders would have put them on the tops of
+their arches (they often _did_ on the tops of gables and pediments),
+rather than not have had them; but the natural position of the pinnacle
+is, of course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability
+of the building; that is to say, on its main wall piers and the vertical
+piers at the buttresses. And thus the edifice is surrounded at last by a
+complete company of detached piers and pinnacles, each sustaining an
+inclined prop against the central wall, and looking something like a
+band of giants holding it up with the butts of their lances. This
+arrangement would imply the loss of an enormous space of ground, but the
+intervals of the buttresses are usually walled in below, and form minor
+chapels.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLII.]
+
+Sec. IX. The science of this arrangement has made it the subject of
+much enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic architects, almost as
+unreasonable, in some respects, as the declamation of the Renaissance
+architects respecting Greek structure. The fact is, that the whole
+northern buttress system is based on the grand requirement of tall
+windows and vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to
+gain this quantity of light, the piers between the windows are
+diminished in thickness until they are far too weak to bear the roof,
+and then sustained by external buttresses. In the Italian method the
+light is rather dreaded than desired, and the wall is made wide enough
+between the windows to bear the roof, and so left. In fact, the simplest
+expression of the difference in the systems is, that a northern apse is
+a southern one with its inter-fenestrial piers set edgeways. Thus, _a_,
+Fig. XLII., is the general idea of the southern apse; take it to pieces,
+and set all its piers edgeways, as at _b_, and you have the northern
+one. You gain much light for the interior, but you cut the exterior to
+pieces, and instead of a bold rounded or polygonal surface, ready for
+any kind of decoration, you have a series of dark and damp cells, which
+no device that I have yet seen has succeeded in decorating in a
+perfectly satisfactory manner. If the system be farther carried, and a
+second or third order of buttresses be added, the real fact is that we
+have a building standing on two or three rows of concentric piers, with
+the _roof off_ the whole of it except the central circle, and only ribs
+left, to carry the weight of the bit of remaining roof in the middle;
+and after the eye has been accustomed to the bold and simple rounding of
+the Italian apse, the skeleton character of the disposition is painfully
+felt. After spending some months in Venice, I thought Bourges Cathedral
+looked exactly like a half-built ship on its shores. It is useless,
+however, to dispute respecting the merits of the two systems: both are
+noble in their place; the Northern decidedly the most scientific, or at
+least involving the greatest display of science, the Italian the
+calmest and purest, this having in it the sublimity of a calm heaven or
+a windless noon, the other that of a mountain flank tormented by the
+north wind, and withering into grisly furrows of alternate chasm and
+crag.
+
+Sec. X. If I have succeeded in making the reader understand the veritable
+action of the buttress, he will have no difficulty in determining its
+fittest form. He has to deal with two distinct kinds; one, a narrow
+vertical pier, acting principally by its weight, and crowned by a
+pinnacle; the other, commonly called a Flying buttress, a cross bar set
+from such a pier (when detached from the building) against the main
+wall. This latter, then, is to be considered as a mere prop or shore,
+and its use by the Gothic architects might be illustrated by the
+supposition that we were to build all our houses with walls too thin to
+stand without wooden props outside, and then to substitute stone props
+for wooden ones. I have some doubts of the real dignity of such a
+proceeding, but at all events the merit of the form of the flying
+buttress depends on its faithfully and visibly performing this somewhat
+humble office; it is, therefore, in its purity, a mere sloping bar of
+stone, with an arch beneath it to carry its weight, that is to say, to
+prevent the action of gravity from in any wise deflecting it, or causing
+it to break downwards under the lateral thrust; it is thus formed quite
+simple in Notre Dame of Paris, and in the Cathedral of Beauvais, while
+at Cologne the sloping bars are pierced with quatrefoils, and at Amiens
+with traceried arches. Both seem to me effeminate and false in
+principle; not, of course, that there is any occasion to make the flying
+buttress heavy, if a light one will answer the purpose; but it seems as
+if some security were sacrificed to ornament. At Amiens the arrangement
+is now seen to great disadvantage, for the early traceries have been
+replaced by base flamboyant ones, utterly weak and despicable. Of the
+degradations of the original form which took place in after times, I
+have spoken at p. 35 of the "Seven Lamps."
+
+Sec. XI. The form of the common buttress must be familiar to the eye of
+every reader, sloping if low, and thrown into successive steps if they
+are to be carried to any considerable height. There is much dignity in
+them when they are of essential service; but even in their best
+examples, their awkward angles are among the least manageable features
+of the Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was
+destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a diminished
+scale; until the buttress became actually confused with the shaft, and
+we find strangely crystallised masses of diminutive buttress applied,
+for merely vertical support, in the northern tabernacle work; while in
+some recent copies of it the principle has been so far distorted that
+the tiny buttressings look as if they carried the superstructure on the
+points of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford. Indeed,
+in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently consider buttresses as
+convenient breaks of blank surface, and general apologies for deadness
+of wall. They stand in the place of ideas, and I think are supposed also
+to have something of the odor of sanctity about them; otherwise, one
+hardly sees why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the
+kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one's hat off,
+should have a bunch of them at every corner; and worse than this, they
+are even thought ornamental when they can be of no possible use; and
+these stupid penthouse outlines are forced upon the eye in every species
+of decoration: in St. Margaret's Chapel, West Street, there are actually
+a couple of buttresses at the end of every pew.
+
+Sec. XII. It is almost impossible, in consequence of these unwise
+repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some degree of
+prejudice; and I look upon it as one of the most justifiable causes of
+the unfortunate aversion with which many of our best architects regard
+the whole Gothic school. It may, however, always be regarded with
+respect when its form is simple and its service clear; but no treason to
+Gothic can be greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to
+enhance the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  FORM OF APERTURE.
+
+
+Sec. I. We have now, in order, examined the means of raising walls and
+sustaining roofs, and we have finally to consider the structure of the
+necessary apertures in the wall veil, the door and window; respecting
+which there are three main points to be considered.
+
+1. The form of the aperture, _i.e._, its outline, its size, and the
+forms of its sides.
+
+2. The filling of the aperture, _i.e._, valves and glass, and their
+holdings.
+
+3. The protection of the aperture, and its appliances, _i.e._, canopies,
+porches, and balconies. We shall examine these in succession.
+
+Sec. II. 1. The form of the aperture: and first of doors. We will, for
+the present, leave out of the question doors and gates in unroofed walls,
+the forms of these being very arbitrary, and confine ourselves to the
+consideration of doors of entrance into roofed buildings. Such doors
+will, for the most part, be at, or near, the base of the building;
+except when raised for purposes of defence, as in the old Scotch border
+towers, and our own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit
+access in deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for
+convenience or magnificence. But in most cases, whether high or low, a
+door may be assumed to be considerably lower than the apartments or
+buildings into which it gives admission, and therefore to have some
+height of wall above it, whose weight must be carried by the heading of
+the door. It is clear, therefore, that the best heading must be an
+arch, because the strongest, and that a square-headed door must be
+wrong, unless under Mont-Cenisian masonry; or else, unless the top of
+the door be the roof of the building, as in low cottages. And a
+square-headed door is just so much more wrong and ugly than a connexion
+of main shafts by lintels, as the weight of wall above the door is
+likely to be greater than that above the main shafts. Thus, while I
+admit the Greek general forms of temple to be admirable in their kind, I
+think the Greek door always offensive and unmanageable.
+
+Sec. III. We have it also determined by necessity, that the apertures
+shall be at least above a man's height, with perpendicular sides (for
+sloping sides are evidently unnecessary, and even inconvenient,
+therefore absurd) and level threshold; and this aperture we at present
+suppose simply cut through the wall without any bevelling of the jambs.
+Such a door, wide enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and
+with such fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be
+fit enough for any building into which entrance is required neither
+often, nor by many persons at a time. But when entrance and egress are
+constant, or required by crowds, certain further modifications must take
+place.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLIII.]
+
+Sec. IV. When entrance and egress are constant, it may be supposed that
+the valves will be absent or unfastened,--that people will be passing more
+quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfrequent, and that the
+square angles of the wall will be inconvenient to such quick passers
+through. It is evident, therefore, that what would be done in time, for
+themselves, by the passing multitude, should be done for them at once by
+the architect; and that these angles, which would be worn away by
+friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called, splayed,
+and the most contracted part of the aperture made as short as possible,
+so that the plan of the entrance should become as at _a_, Fig. XLIII.
+
+Sec. V. Farther. As persons on the outside may often approach the door or
+depart from it, _beside_ the building, so as to turn aside as they enter
+or leave the door, and therefore touch its jamb, but, on the inside,
+will in almost every case approach the door, or depart from it in the
+direct line of the entrance (people generally walking _forward_ when
+they enter a hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do
+so when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may be
+very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside, so that
+the plan of the aperture should become as at _b_, Fig. XLIII. Farther,
+as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently carry an unbevelled arch, the
+door arch must be bevelled also, and the aperture, seen from the
+outside, will have somewhat the aspect of a small cavern diminishing
+towards the interior.
+
+Sec. VI. If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is required for
+multitudes at the same time, the size of the aperture either must be
+increased, or other apertures must be introduced. It may, in some
+buildings, be optional with the architect whether he shall give many
+small doors, or few large ones; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres,
+and other places where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are
+by far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the purposes of
+the building, as when it is to be entered by processions, or where the
+crowd most usually enter in one direction, require the large single
+entrance; and (for here again the aesthetic and structural laws cannot be
+separated) the expression and harmony of the building require, in nearly
+every case, an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which
+is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multitude
+should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps do, through holes; and
+nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English
+cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress,
+but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides,
+the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to
+desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man
+of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship
+in going up to worship, which is suggested by the vast single entrance;
+partly because it is at the entrance that the most serious words of the
+building are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the
+worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken to all at
+once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak repetitions over
+minor doors.
+
+In practice the matter has been, I suppose, regulated almost altogether
+by convenience, the western doors being single in small churches, while
+in the larger the entrances become three or five, the central door
+remaining always principal, in consequence of the fine sense of
+composition which the mediaeval builders never lost. These arrangements
+have formed the noblest buildings in the world. Yet it is worth
+observing[55] how perfect in its simplicity the single entrance may
+become, when it is treated as in the Duomo and St. Zeno of Verona, and
+other such early Lombard churches, having noble porches, and rich
+sculptures grouped around the entrance.
+
+Sec. VII. However, whether the entrances be single, triple, or manifold,
+it is a constant law that one shall be principal, and all shall be of size
+in some degree proportioned to that of the building. And this size is,
+of course, chiefly to be expressed in width, that being the only useful
+dimension in a door (except for pageantry, chairing of bishops and
+waving of banners, and other such vanities, not, I hope, after this
+century, much to be regarded in the building of Christian temples); but
+though the width is the only necessary dimension, it is well to increase
+the height also in some proportion to it, in order that there may be
+less weight of wall above, resting on the increased span of the arch.
+This is, however, so much the necessary result of the broad curve of the
+arch itself, that there is no structural necessity of elevating the
+jamb; and I believe that beautiful entrances might be made of every span
+of arch, retaining the jamb at a little more than a man's height, until
+the sweep of the curves became so vast that the small vertical line
+became a part of them, and one entered into the temple as under a great
+rainbow.
+
+Sec. VIII. On the other hand, the jamb _may_ be elevated indefinitely, so
+that the increasing entrance retains _at least_ the proportion of width
+it had originally; say 4 ft. by 7 ft. 5 in. But a less proportion of
+width than this has always a meagre, inhospitable, and ungainly look
+except in military architecture, where the narrowness of the entrance is
+necessary, and its height adds to its grandeur, as between the entrance
+towers of our British castles. This law however, observe, applies only
+to true doors, not to the arches of porches, which may be of any
+proportion, as of any number, being in fact intercolumniations, not
+doors; as in the noble example of the west front of Peterborough, which,
+in spite of the destructive absurdity of its central arch being the
+narrowest, would still, if the paltry porter's lodge, or gatehouse, or
+turnpike, or whatever it is, were knocked out of the middle of it, be
+the noblest west front in England.
+
+Sec. IX. Further, and finally. In proportion to the height and size of the
+building, and therefore to the size of its doors, will be the thickness
+of its walls, especially at the foundation, that is to say, beside the
+doors; and also in proportion to the numbers of a crowd will be the
+unruliness and pressure of it. Hence, partly in necessity and partly in
+prudence, the splaying or chamfering of the jamb of the larger door will
+be deepened, and, if possible, made at a larger angle for the large door
+than for the small one; so that the large door will always be
+encompassed by a visible breadth of jamb proportioned to its own
+magnitude. The decorative value of this feature we shall see hereafter.
+
+Sec. X. The second kind of apertures we have to examine are those of
+windows.
+
+Window apertures are mainly of two kinds; those for outlook, and those
+for inlet of light, many being for both purposes, and either purpose, or
+both, combined in military architecture with those of offence and
+defence. But all window apertures, as compared with door apertures, have
+almost infinite licence of form and size: they may be of any shape, from
+the slit or cross slit to the circle;[56] of any size, from the loophole
+of the castle to the pillars of light of the cathedral apse. Yet,
+according to their place and purpose, one or two laws of fitness hold
+respecting them, which let us examine in the two classes of windows
+successively, but without reference to military architecture, which
+here, as before, we may dismiss as a subject of separate science, only
+noticing that windows, like all other features, are always delightful,
+if not beautiful, when their position and shape have indeed been thus
+necessarily determined, and that many of their most picturesque forms
+have resulted from the requirements of war. We should also find in
+military architecture the typical forms of the two classes of outlet and
+inlet windows in their utmost development; the greatest sweep of sight
+and range of shot on the one hand, and the fullest entry of light and
+air on the other, being constantly required at the smallest possible
+apertures. Our business, however, is to reason out the laws for
+ourselves, not to take the examples as we find them.
+
+Sec. XI. 1. Outlook apertures. For these no general outline is
+determinable by the necessities or inconveniences of outlooking, except
+only that the bottom or sill of the windows, at whatever height, should
+be horizontal, for the convenience of leaning on it, or standing on it
+if the window be to the ground. The form of the upper part of the window
+is quite immaterial, for all windows allow a greater range of sight
+when they are _approached_ than that of the eye itself: it is the
+approachability of the window, that is to say, the annihilation of the
+thickness of the wall, which is the real point to be attended to. If,
+therefore, the aperture be inaccessible, or so small that the thickness
+of the wall cannot be entered, the wall is to be bevelled[57] on the
+outside, so as to increase the range of sight as far as possible; if the
+aperture can be entered, then bevelled from the point to which entrance is
+possible. The bevelling will, if possible, be in every direction, that is
+to say, upwards at the top, outwards at the sides, and downwards at the
+bottom, but essentially _downwards_; the earth and the doings upon it
+being the chief object in outlook windows, except of observatories; and
+where the object is a distinct and special view downwards, it will be of
+advantage to shelter the eye as far as possible from the rays of light
+coming from above, and the head of the window may be left horizontal, or
+even the whole aperture sloped outwards, as the slit in a letter-box
+is inwards.
+
+The best windows for outlook are, of course, oriels and bow windows, but
+these are not to be considered under the head of apertures merely; they
+are either balconies roofed and glazed, and to be considered under the
+head of external appliances, or they are each a story of an external
+semi-tower, having true aperture windows on each side of it.
+
+Sec. XII. 2. Inlet windows. These windows may, of course, be of any shape
+and size whatever, according to the other necessities of the building, and
+the quantity and direction of light desired, their purpose being now to
+throw it in streams on particular lines or spots; now to diffuse it
+everywhere; sometimes to introduce it in broad masses, tempered in
+strength, as in the cathedral colored window; sometimes in starry
+showers of scattered brilliancy, like the apertures in the roof of an
+Arabian bath; perhaps the most beautiful of all forms being the rose,
+which has in it the unity of both characters, and sympathy with that of
+the source of light itself. It is noticeable, however, that while both
+the circle and pointed oval are beautiful window forms, it would be very
+painful to cut either of them in half and connect them by vertical
+lines, as in Fig. XLIV. The reason is, I believe, that so treated, the
+upper arch is not considered as connected with the lower, and forming an
+entire figure, but as the ordinary arch roof of the aperture, and the
+lower arch as an arch _floor_, equally unnecessary and unnatural. Also,
+the elliptical oval is generally an unsatisfactory form, because it
+gives the idea of useless trouble in building it, though it occurs
+quaintly and pleasantly in the former windows of France: I believe it is
+also objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look, like
+that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated forms,
+are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because this is the
+weakest position they can structurally have; that is to say, less light
+is admitted, with greater loss of strength to the building, than by any
+other form. If admissible anywhere, it is for the sake of variety at the
+top of the building, as the flat parallelogram sometimes not
+ungracefully in Italian Renaissance.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLIV.]
+
+Sec. XIII. The question of bevelling becomes a little more complicated in
+the inlet than the outlook window, because the mass or quantity of light
+admitted is often of more consequence than its direction, and often
+_vice versa_; and the outlook window is supposed to be approachable,
+which is far from being always the case with windows for light, so that
+the bevelling which in the outlook window is chiefly to open range of
+sight, is in the inlet a means not only of admitting the light in
+greater quantity, but of directing it to the spot on which it is to
+fall. But, in general, the bevelling of the one window will reverse that
+of the other; for, first, no natural light will strike on the inlet
+window from beneath, unless reflected light, which is (I believe)
+injurious to the health and the sight; and thus, while in the outlook
+window the outside bevel downwards is essential, in the inlet it would
+be useless: and the sill is to be flat, if the window be on a level with
+the spot it is to light; and sloped downwards within, if above it.
+Again, as the brightest rays of light are the steepest, the outside
+bevel upwards is as essential in the roof of the inlet as it was of
+small importance in that of the outlook window.
+
+Sec. XIV. On the horizontal section the aperture will expand internally,
+a somewhat larger number of rays being thus reflected from the jambs; and
+the aperture being thus the smallest possible outside, this is the
+favorite military form of inlet window, always found in magnificent
+development in the thick walls of mediaeval castles and convents. Its
+effect is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon-like in its fullest
+development, owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the
+outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it to a mere
+point of light. A modified condition of it, with some combination of the
+outlook form, is probably the best for domestic buildings in general
+(which, however, in modern architecture, are unhappily so thin walled,
+that the outline of the jambs becomes a matter almost of indifference),
+it being generally noticeable that the depth of recess which I have
+observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also a
+certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended rather to
+admit light to persons quietly occupied in their homes, than to
+stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [55] And worth questioning, also, whether the triple porch has not
+    been associated with Romanist views of mediatorship; the Redeemer
+    being represented as presiding over the central door only, and the
+    lateral entrances being under the protection of saints, while the
+    Madonna almost always has one or both of the transepts. But it would
+    be wrong to press this, for, in nine cases out of ten, the architect
+    has been merely influenced in his placing of the statues by an
+    artist's desire of variety in their forms and dress; and very
+    naturally prefers putting a canonisation over one door, a martyrdom
+    over another, and an assumption over a third, to repeating a
+    crucifixion or a judgment above all. The architect's doctrine is
+    only, therefore, to be noted with indisputable reprobation when the
+    Madonna gets possession of the main door.
+
+  [56] The arch heading is indeed the best where there is much
+    incumbent weight, but a window frequently has very little weight
+    above it, especially when placed high, and the arched form loses
+    light in a low room: therefore the square-headed window is
+    admissible where the square-headed door is not.
+
+  [57] I do not like the sound of the word "splayed;" I always shall
+    use "bevelled" instead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  FILLING OF APERTURE.
+
+
+Sec. I. Thus far we have been concerned with the outline only of the
+aperture: we were next, it will be remembered, to consider the necessary
+modes of filling it with valves in the case of the door, or with glass
+or tracery in that of the window.
+
+1. Fillings of doors. We concluded, in the previous Chapter, that doors
+in buildings of any importance or size should have headings in the form
+of an arch. This is, however, the most inconvenient form we could
+choose, as respects the fitting of the valves of the doorway; for the
+arch-shaped head of the valves not only requires considerable nicety in
+fitting to the arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,--a
+double disadvantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in
+opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the eye, that a
+door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable object. It
+becomes, therefore, a matter of true necessity so to arrange the doorway
+as to admit of its being fitted with rectangular valves.
+
+Sec. II. Now, in determining the form of the aperture, we supposed the
+jamb of the door to be of the utmost height required for entrance. The
+extra height of the arch is unnecessary as an opening, the arch being
+required for its strength only, not for its elevation. There is,
+therefore, no reason why it should not be barred across by a horizontal
+lintel, into which the valves may be fitted, and the triangular or
+semicircular arched space above the lintel may then be permanently
+closed, as we choose, either with bars, or glass, or stone.
+
+This is the form of all good doors, without exception, over the whole
+world and in all ages, and no other can ever be invented.
+
+Sec. III. In the simplest doors the cross lintel is of wood only, and
+glass or bars occupy the space above, a very frequent form in Venice.
+In more elaborate doors the cross lintel is of stone, and the filling
+sometimes of brick, sometimes of stone, very often a grand single stone
+being used to close the entire space: the space thus filled is called the
+Tympanum. In large doors the cross lintel is too long to bear the great
+incumbent weight of this stone filling without support; it is, therefore,
+carried by a pier in the centre; and two valves are used, fitted to the
+rectangular spaces on each side of the pier. In the most elaborate
+examples of this condition, each of these secondary doorways has an arch
+heading, a cross lintel, and a triangular filling or tympanum of its
+own, all subordinated to the main arch above.
+
+Sec. IV. 2. Fillings of windows.
+
+When windows are large, and to be filled with glass, the sheet of glass,
+however constructed, whether of large panes or small fragments, requires
+the support of bars of some kind, either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood
+is inapplicable on a large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit
+for door-valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight would
+be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars, which, if they
+decayed, might let the whole window be blown in before their decay was
+observed, and in which weight would be an advantage, as offering more
+resistance to the wind.
+
+Iron is, however, fit for window-bars, and there seems no constructive
+reason why we should not have iron traceries, as well as iron pillars,
+iron churches, and iron steeples. But I have, in the "Seven Lamps,"
+given reasons for not considering such structures as architecture at
+all.
+
+The window-bars must, therefore, be of stone, and of stone only.
+
+Sec. V. The purpose of the window being always to let in as much light,
+and command as much view, as possible, these bars of stone are to be made
+as slender and as few as they can be, consistently with their due
+strength.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLV.]
+
+Let it be required to support the breadth of glass, _a_, _b_, Fig. XLV.
+The tendency of the glass sustaining any force, as of wind from without,
+is to bend into an arch inwards, in the dotted line, and break in the
+centre. It is to be supported, therefore, by the bar put in its centre,
+_c_.
+
+But this central bar, _c_, may not be enough, and the spaces _a c_, _c
+b_, may still need support. The next step will be to put two bars
+instead of one, and divide the window into three spaces as at _d_.
+
+But this may still not be enough, and the window may need three bars.
+Now the greatest stress is always on the centre of the window. If the
+three bars are equal in strength, as at _e_, the central bar is either
+too slight for its work, or the lateral bars too thick for theirs.
+Therefore, we must slightly increase the thickness of the central bar,
+and diminish that of the lateral ones, so as to obtain the arrangement
+at _f h_. If the window enlarge farther, each of the spaces _f g_, _g
+h_, is treated as the original space _a b_, and we have the groups of
+bars _k_ and _l_.
+
+So that, whatever the shape of the window, whatever the direction and
+number of the bars, there are to be central or main bars; second bars
+subordinated to them; third bars subordinated to the second, and so on
+to the number required. This is called the subordination of tracery, a
+system delightful to the eye and mind, owing to its anatomical framing
+and unity, and to its expression of the laws of good government in all
+fragile and unstable things. All tracery, therefore, which is not
+subordinated, is barbarous, in so far as this part of its structure is
+concerned.
+
+Sec. VI. The next question will be the direction of the bars. The reader
+will understand at once, without any laborious proof, that a given area
+of glass, supported by its edges, is stronger in its resistance to
+violence when it is arranged in a long strip or band than in a square;
+and that, therefore, glass is generally to be arranged, especially in
+windows on a large scale, in oblong areas: and if the bars so dividing
+it be placed horizontally, they will have less power of supporting
+themselves, and will need to be thicker in consequence, than if placed
+vertically. As far, therefore, as the form of the window permits, they
+are to be vertical.
+
+Sec. VII. But even when so placed, they cannot be trusted to support
+themselves beyond a certain height, but will need cross bars to steady
+them. Cross bars of stone are, therefore, to be introduced at necessary
+intervals, not to divide the glass, but to support the upright stone
+bars. The glass is always to be divided longitudinally as far as
+possible, and the upright bars which divide it supported at proper
+intervals. However high the window, it is almost impossible that it
+should require more than two cross bars.
+
+Sec. VIII. It may sometimes happen that when tall windows are placed very
+close to each other for the sake of more light, the masonry between them
+may stand in need, or at least be the better of, some additional
+support. The cross bars of the windows may then be thickened, in order
+to bond the intermediate piers more strongly together, and if this
+thickness appear ungainly, it may be modified by decoration.
+
+Sec. IX. We have thus arrived at the idea of a vertical frame work of
+subordinated bars, supported by cross bars at the necessary intervals,
+and the only remaining question is the method of insertion into the
+aperture. Whatever its form, if we merely let the ends of the bars into
+the voussoirs of its heading, the least settlement of the masonry would
+distort the arch, or push up some of its voussoirs, or break the window
+bars, or push them aside. Evidently our object should be to connect the
+window bars among themselves, so framing them together that they may
+give the utmost possible degree of support to the whole window head in
+case of any settlement. But we know how to do this already: our window
+bars are nothing but small shafts. Capital them; throw small arches
+across between the smaller bars, large arches over them between the
+larger bars, one comprehensive arch over the whole, or else a horizontal
+lintel, if the window have a flat head; and we have a complete system of
+mutual support, independent of the aperture head, and yet assisting to
+sustain it, if need be. But we want the spandrils of this arch system to
+be themselves as light, and to let as much light through them, as
+possible: and we know already how to pierce them (Chap. XII. Sec. VII.).
+We pierce them with circles; and we have, if the circles are small and the
+stonework strong, the traceries of Giotto and the Pisan school; if the
+circles are as large as possible and the bars slender, those which I
+have already figured and described as the only perfect traceries of the
+Northern Gothic.[58] The varieties of their design arise partly from the
+different size of window and consequent number of bars; partly from the
+different heights of their pointed arches, as well as the various
+positions of the window head in relation to the roof, rendering one or
+another arrangement better for dividing the light, and partly from
+aesthetic and expressional requirements, which, within certain limits,
+may be allowed a very important influence: for the strength of the bars
+is ordinarily so much greater than is absolutely necessary, that some
+portion of it may be gracefully sacrificed to the attainment of variety
+in the plans of tracery--a variety which, even within its severest
+limits, is perfectly endless; more especially in the pointed arch, the
+proportion of the tracery being in the round arch necessarily more
+fixed.
+
+Sec. X. The circular window furnishes an exception to the common law, that
+the bars shall be vertical through the greater part of their length: for
+if they were so, they could neither have secure perpendicular footing,
+nor secure heading, their thrust being perpendicular to the curve of the
+voussoirs only in the centre of the window; therefore, a small circle,
+like the axle of a wheel, is put into the centre of the window, large
+enough to give footing to the necessary number of radiating bars; and
+the bars are arranged as spokes, being all of course properly capitaled
+and arch-headed. This is the best form of tracery for circular windows,
+naturally enough called wheel windows when so filled.
+
+Sec. XI. Now, I wish the reader especially to observe that we have arrived
+at these forms of perfect Gothic tracery without the smallest reference
+to any practice of any school, or to any law of authority whatever. They
+are forms having essentially nothing whatever to do either with Goths or
+Greeks. They are eternal forms, based on laws of gravity and cohesion;
+and no better, nor any others so good, will ever be invented, so long as
+the present laws of gravity and cohesion subsist.
+
+Sec. XII. It does not at all follow that this group of forms owes its
+origin to any such course of reasoning as that which has now led us to
+it. On the contrary, there is not the smallest doubt that tracery began,
+partly, in the grouping of windows together (subsequently enclosed
+within a large arch[59]), and partly in the fantastic penetrations of a
+single slab of stones under the arch, as the circle in Plate V. above.
+The perfect form seems to have been accidentally struck in passing from
+experiment on the one side, to affectation on the other; and it was so
+far from ever becoming systematised, that I am aware of no type of
+tracery for which a _less_ decided preference is shown in the buildings
+in which it exists. The early pierced traceries are multitudinous and
+perfect in their kind,--the late Flamboyant, luxuriant in detail, and
+lavish in quantity,--but the perfect forms exist in comparatively few
+churches, generally in portions of the church only, and are always
+connected, and that closely, either with the massy forms out of which
+they have emerged, or with the enervated types into which they are
+instantly to degenerate.
+
+Sec. XIII. Nor indeed are we to look upon them as in all points superior
+to the more ancient examples. We have above conducted our reasoning
+entirely on the supposition that a single aperture is given, which it is
+the object to fill with glass, diminishing the power of the light as
+little as possible. But there are many cases, as in triforium and
+cloister lights, in which glazing is not required; in which, therefore,
+the bars, if there be any, must have some more important function than
+that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is to give
+steadiness and _tone_, as it were, to the arches and walls above and
+beside them; or to give the idea of protection to those who pass along
+the triforium, and of seclusion to those who walk in the cloister. Much
+thicker shafts, and more massy arches, may be properly employed in work
+of this kind; and many groups of such tracery will be found resolvable
+into true colonnades, with the arches in pairs, or in triple or
+quadruple groups, and with small rosettes pierced above them for light.
+All this is just as _right_ in its place, as the glass tracery is in its
+own function, and often much more grand. But the same indulgence is not
+to be shown to the affectations which succeeded the developed forms. Of
+these there are three principal conditions: the Flamboyant of France,
+the Stump tracery of Germany, and the Perpendicular of England.
+
+Sec. XIV. Of these the first arose, by the most delicate and natural
+transitions, out of the perfect school. It was an endeavor to introduce
+more grace into its lines, and more change into its combinations; and
+the aesthetic results are so beautiful, that for some time after the
+right road had been left, the aberration was more to be admired than
+regretted. The final conditions became fantastic and effeminate, but, in
+the country where they had been invented, never lost their peculiar
+grace until they were replaced by the Renaissance. The copies of the
+school in England and Italy have all its faults and none of its
+beauties; in France, whatever it lost in method or in majesty, it gained
+in fantasy: literally Flamboyant, it breathed away its strength into
+the air; but there is not more difference between the commonest doggrel
+that ever broke prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of
+Coleridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between
+the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the flaming undulations
+of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that confuse themselves with
+the clouds of every morning sky that brightens above the valley of the
+Seine.
+
+Sec. XV. The second group of traceries, the intersectional or German
+group, may be considered as including the entire range of the absurd forms
+which were invented in order to display dexterity in stone-cutting and
+ingenuity in construction. They express the peculiar character of the
+German mind, which cuts the frame of every truth joint from joint, in
+order to prove the edge of its instruments; and, in all cases, prefers a
+new or a strange thought to a good one, and a subtle thought to a useful
+one. The point and value of the German tracery consists principally in
+turning the features of good traceries upside down, and cutting them in
+two where they are properly continuous. To destroy at once foundation
+and membership, and suspend everything in the air, keeping out of sight,
+as far as possible, the evidences of a beginning and the probabilities
+of an end, are the main objects of German architecture, as of modern
+German divinity.
+
+Sec. XVI. This school has, however, at least the merit of ingenuity. Not
+so the English Perpendicular, though a very curious school also in _its_
+way. In the course of the reasoning which led us to the determination of
+the perfect Gothic tracery, we were induced successively to reject
+certain methods of arrangement as weak, dangerous, or disagreeable.
+Collect all these together, and practise them at once, and you have the
+English Perpendicular.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLVI.]
+
+As thus. You find, in the first place (Sec. V.), that your tracery bars
+are to be subordinated, less to greater; so you take a group of, suppose,
+eight, which you make all exactly equal, giving you nine equal spaces in
+the window, as at A, Fig. XLVI. You found, in the second place (Sec.
+VII.), that there was no occasion for more than two cross bars; so you
+take at least four or five (also represented at A, Fig. XLVI.), also
+carefully equalised, and set at equal spaces. You found, in the third
+place (Sec. VIII.), that these bars were to be strengthened, in order to
+support the main piers; you will therefore cut the ends off the uppermost,
+and the fourth into three pieces (as also at A). In the fourth place, you
+found (Sec. IX.) that you were never to run a vertical bar into the arch
+head; so you run them all into it (as at B, Fig. XLVI.); and this last
+arrangement will be useful in two ways, for it will not only expose both
+the bars and the archivolt to an apparent probability of every species
+of dislocation at any moment, but it will provide you with two pleasing
+interstices at the flanks, in the shape of carving-knives, _a_, _b_,
+which, by throwing across the curves _c_, _d_, you may easily multiply
+into four; and these, as you can put nothing into their sharp tops, will
+afford you a more than usually rational excuse for a little bit of
+Germanism, in filling them with arches upside down, _e_, _f_. You will
+now have left at your disposal two and forty similar interstices, which,
+for the sake of variety, you will proceed to fill with two and forty
+similar arches: and, as you were told that the moment a bar received an
+arch heading, it was to be treated as a shaft and capitalled, you will
+take care to give your bars no capitals nor bases, but to run bars,
+foliations and all, well into each other after the fashion of cast-iron,
+as at C. You have still two triangular spaces occurring in an important
+part of your window, _g g_, which, as they are very conspicuous, and you
+cannot make them uglier than they are, you will do wisely to let
+alone;--and you will now have the west window of the cathedral of
+Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular. Nor do I
+think that you can, on the whole, better the arrangement, unless,
+perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars, as is done in the
+cathedral at Gloucester; these buttresses having the double advantage of
+darkening the window when seen from within, and suggesting, when it is
+seen from without, the idea of its being divided by two stout party
+walls, with a heavy thrust against the glass.
+
+Sec. XVII. Thus far we have considered the plan of the tracery only:
+we have lastly to note the conditions under which the glass is to be
+attached to the bars; and the sections of the bars themselves.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLVII.]
+
+These bars we have seen, in the perfect form, are to become shafts; but,
+supposing the object to be the admission of as much light as possible,
+it is clear that the thickness of the bar ought to be chiefly in the
+depth of the window, and that by increasing the depth of the bar we may
+diminish its breadth: clearly, therefore, we should employ the double
+group of shafts, _b_, of Fig. XIV., setting it edgeways in the window:
+but as the glass would then come between the two shafts, we must add a
+member into which it is to be fitted, as at _a_, Fig. XLVII., and
+uniting these three members together in the simplest way, with a curved
+instead of a sharp recess behind the shafts, we have the section _b_,
+the perfect, but simplest type of the main tracery bars in good Gothic.
+In triforium and cloister tracery, which has no glass to hold, the
+central member is omitted, and we have either the pure double shaft,
+always the most graceful, or a single and more massy shaft, which is the
+simpler and more usual form.
+
+Sec. XVIII. Finally: there is an intermediate arrangement between the
+glazed and the open tracery, that of the domestic traceries of Venice.
+Peculiar conditions, hereafter to be described, require the shafts of
+these traceries to become the main vertical supports of the floors and
+walls. Their thickness is therefore enormous; and yet free egress is
+required between them (into balconies) which is obtained by doors in
+their lattice glazing. To prevent the inconvenience and ugliness of
+driving the hinges and fastenings of them into the shafts, and having
+the play of the doors in the intervals, the entire glazing is thrown
+behind the pillars, and attached to their abaci and bases with iron. It
+is thus securely sustained by their massy bulk, and leaves their
+symmetry and shade undisturbed.
+
+Sec. XIX. The depth at which the glass should be placed, in windows
+without traceries, will generally be fixed by the forms of their
+bevelling, the glass occupying the narrowest interval; but when its
+position is not thus fixed, as in many London houses, it is to be
+remembered that the deeper the glass is set (the wall being of given
+thickness), the more light will enter, and the clearer the prospect
+will be to a person sitting quietly in the centre of the room; on the
+contrary, the farther out the glass is set, the more convenient the
+window will be for a person rising and looking out of it. The one,
+therefore, is an arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only
+about what is going on upon the earth: the other for those who are
+willing to remain at rest, so that they have free admission of the light
+of Heaven. This might be noted as a curious expressional reason for the
+necessity (of which no man of ordinary feeling would doubt for a moment)
+of a deep recess in the window, on the outside, to all good or
+architectural effect: still, as there is no reason why people should be
+made idle by having it in their power to look out of window, and as the
+slight increase of light or clearness of view in the centre of a room is
+more than balanced by the loss of space, and the greater chill of the
+nearer glass and outside air, we can, I fear, allege no other structural
+reason for the picturesque external recess, than the expediency of a
+certain degree of protection, for the glass, from the brightest glare of
+sunshine, and heaviest rush of rain.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [58] "Seven Lamps," p. 53.
+
+  [59] On the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Lyons, there
+    is an early French window, presenting one of the usual groups of
+    foliated arches and circles, left, as it were, loose, without any
+    enclosing curve. The effect is very painful. This remarkable window
+    is associated with others of the common form.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  PROTECTION OF APERTURE.
+
+
+Sec. I. We have hitherto considered the aperture as merely pierced in the
+thickness of the walls; and when its masonry is simple and the fillings
+of the aperture are unimportant, it may well remain so. But when the
+fillings are delicate and of value, as in the case of colored glass,
+finely wrought tracery, or sculpture, such as we shall often find
+occupying the tympanum of doorways, some protection becomes necessary
+against the run of the rain down the walls, and back by the bevel of the
+aperture to the joints or surface of the fillings.
+
+Sec. II. The first and simplest mode of obtaining this is by channelling
+the jambs and arch head; and this is the chief practical service of
+aperture mouldings, which are otherwise entirely decorative. But as this
+very decorative character renders them unfit to be made channels for
+rain water, it is well to add some external roofing to the aperture,
+which may protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which
+necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its most usual
+form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or round the head of the
+aperture. But this is, in reality, only a contracted form of a true
+_roof_, projecting from the wall over the aperture; and all protections
+of apertures whatsoever are to be conceived as portions of small roofs,
+attached to the wall behind; and supported by it, so long as their scale
+admits of their being so with safety, and afterwards in such manner as
+may be most expedient. The proper forms of these, and modes of their
+support, are to be the subject of our final enquiry.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLVIII.]
+
+Sec. III. Respecting their proper form we need not stay long in doubt. A
+deep gable is evidently the best for throwing off rain; even a low gable
+being better than a high arch. Flat roofs, therefore, may only be used
+when the nature of the building renders the gable unsightly; as when
+there is not room for it between the stories; or when the object is
+rather shade than protection from rain, as often in verandahs and
+balconies. But for general service the gable is the proper and natural
+form, and may be taken as representative of the rest. Then this gable
+may either project unsupported from the wall, _a_, Fig. XLVIII., or be
+carried by brackets or spurs, _b_, or by walls or shafts, _c_, which
+shafts or walls may themselves be, in windows, carried on a sill; and
+this, in its turn, supported by brackets or spurs. We shall glance at
+the applications of each of these forms in order.
+
+Sec. IV. There is not much variety in the case of the first, _a_, Fig.
+XLVIII. In the Cumberland and border cottages the door is generally
+protected by two pieces of slate arranged in a gable, giving the purest
+possible type of the first form. In elaborate architecture such a
+projection hardly ever occurs, and in large architecture cannot with
+safety occur, without brackets; but by cutting away the greater part of
+the projection, we shall arrive at the idea of a plain gabled cornice,
+of which a perfect example will be found in Plate VII. of the folio
+series. With this first complete form we may associate the rude, single,
+projecting, penthouse roof; imperfect, because either it must be level
+and the water lodge lazily upon it, or throw off the drip upon the
+persons entering.
+
+Sec. V. 2. _b_, Fig. XLVIII. This is a most beautiful and natural type,
+and is found in all good architecture, from the highest to the most
+humble: it is a frequent form of cottage door, more especially when
+carried on spurs, being of peculiarly easy construction in wood: as
+applied to large architecture, it can evidently be built, in its boldest
+and simplest form, either of wood only, or on a scale which will admit of
+its sides being each a single slab of stone. If so large as to require
+jointed masonry, the gabled sides will evidently require support, and an
+arch must be thrown across under them, as in Fig. XLIX., from Fiesole.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. XLIX.]
+
+If we cut the projection gradually down, we arrive at the common Gothic
+gable dripstone carried on small brackets, carved into bosses, heads, or
+some other ornamental form; the sub-arch in such case being useless, is
+removed or coincides with the arch head of the aperture.
+
+Sec. VI. 3. _c_, Fig. XLVIII. Substituting walls or pillars for the
+brackets, we may carry the projection as far out as we choose, and form
+the perfect porch, either of the cottage or village church, or of the
+cathedral. As we enlarge the structure, however, certain modifications
+of form become necessary, owing to the increased boldness of the
+required supporting arch. For, as the lower end of the gabled roof and
+of the arch cannot coincide, we have necessarily above the shafts one of
+the two forms _a_ or _b_, in Fig. L., of which the latter is clearly the
+best, requiring less masonry and shorter roofing; and when the arch
+becomes so large as to cause a heavy lateral thrust, it may become
+necessary to provide for its farther safety by pinnacles, _c_.
+
+This last is the perfect type of aperture protection. None other can
+ever be invented so good. It is that once employed by Giotto in the
+cathedral of Florence, and torn down by the proveditore, Benedetto
+Uguccione, to erect a Renaissance front instead; and another such has
+been destroyed, not long since, in Venice, the porch of the church of
+St. Apollinare, also to put up some Renaissance upholstery: for
+Renaissance, as if it were not nuisance enough in the mere fact of its
+own existence, appears invariably as a beast of prey, and founds itself
+on the ruin of all that is best and noblest. Many such porches, however,
+happily still exist in Italy, and are among its principal glories.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. L.]
+
+Sec. VII. When porches of this kind, carried by walls, are placed close
+together, as in cases where there are many and large entrances to a
+cathedral front, they would, in their general form, leave deep and
+uncomfortable intervals, in which damp would lodge and grass grow; and
+there would be a painful feeling in approaching the door in the midst of
+a crowd, as if some of them might miss the real doors, and be driven
+into the intervals, and embayed there. Clearly it will be a natural and
+right expedient, in such cases, to open the walls of the porch wider, so
+that they may correspond in slope, or nearly so, with the bevel of the
+doorway, and either meet each other in the intervals, or have the said
+intervals closed up with an intermediate wall, so that nobody may get
+embayed in them. The porches will thus be united, and form one range of
+great open gulphs or caverns, ready to receive all comers, and direct
+the current of the crowd into the narrower entrances. As the lateral
+thrust of the arches is now met by each other, the pinnacles, if there
+were any, must be removed, and waterspouts placed between each arch to
+discharge the double drainage of the gables. This is the form of all the
+noble northern porches, without exception, best represented by that of
+Rheims.
+
+Sec. VIII. Contracted conditions of the pinnacle porch are beautifully
+used in the doors of the cathedral of Florence; and the entire
+arrangement, in its most perfect form, as adapted to window protection and
+decoration, is applied by Giotto with inconceivable exquisiteness in the
+windows of the campanile; those of the cathedral itself being all of the
+same type. Various singular and delightful conditions of it are applied
+in Italian domestic architecture (in the Broletto of Monza very
+quaintly), being associated with balconies for speaking to the people,
+and passing into pulpits. In the north we glaze the sides of such
+projections, and they become bow-windows, the shape of roofing being
+then nearly immaterial and very fantastic, often a conical cap. All
+these conditions of window protection, being for real service, are
+endlessly delightful (and I believe the beauty of the balcony, protected
+by an open canopy supported by light shafts, never yet to have been
+properly worked out). But the Renaissance architects destroyed all of
+them, and introduced the magnificent and witty Roman invention of a
+model of a Greek pediment, with its cornices of monstrous thickness,
+bracketed up above the window. The horizontal cornice of the pediment is
+thus useless, and of course, therefore, retained; the protection to the
+head of the window being constructed on the principle of a hat with its
+crown sewn up. But the deep and dark triangular cavity thus obtained
+affords farther opportunity for putting ornament out of sight, of which
+the Renaissance architects are not slow to avail themselves.
+
+A more rational condition is the complete pediment with a couple of
+shafts, or pilasters, carried on a bracketed sill; and the windows of
+this kind, which have been well designed, are perhaps the best things
+which the Renaissance schools have produced: those of Whitehall are, in
+their way, exceedingly beautiful; and those of the Palazzo Ricardi at
+Florence, in their simplicity and sublimity, are scarcely unworthy of
+their reputed designer, Michael Angelo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  SUPERIMPOSITION.
+
+
+Sec. I. The reader has now some knowledge of every feature of all possible
+architecture. Whatever the nature of the building which may be submitted
+to his criticism, if it be an edifice at all, if it be anything else
+than a mere heap of stones like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large
+stone hewn into shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily
+resolvable into some of the parts which we have been hitherto
+considering: its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small
+shafts and roofs; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or
+walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported by various
+kinds of buttresses. Respecting each of these several features I am
+certain that the reader feels himself prepared, by understanding their
+plain function, to form something like a reasonable and definite
+judgment, whether they be good or bad; and this right judgment of parts
+will, in most cases, lead him to just reverence or condemnation of the
+whole.
+
+Sec. II. The various modes in which these parts are capable of
+combination, and the merits of buildings of different form and expression,
+are evidently not reducible into lists, nor to be estimated by general
+laws. The nobility of each building depends on its special fitness for its
+own purposes; and these purposes vary with every climate, every soil, and
+every national custom: nay, there were never, probably, two edifices
+erected in which some accidental difference of condition did not require
+some difference of plan or of structure; so that, respecting plan and
+distribution of parts, I do not hope to collect any universal law of
+right; but there are a few points necessary to be noticed respecting the
+means by which height is attained in buildings of various plans, and
+the expediency and methods of superimposition of one story or tier of
+architecture above another.
+
+Sec. III. For, in the preceding inquiry, I have always supposed either
+that a single shaft would reach to the top of the building, or that the
+farther height required might be added in plain wall above the heads of
+the arches; whereas it may often be rather expedient to complete the
+entire lower series of arches, or finish the lower wall, with a bold
+string course or cornice, and build another series of shafts, or another
+wall, on the top of it.
+
+Sec. IV. This superimposition is seen in its simplest form in the interior
+shafts of a Greek temple; and it has been largely used in nearly all
+countries where buildings have been meant for real service. Outcry has
+often been raised against it, but the thing is so sternly necessary that
+it has always forced itself into acceptance; and it would, therefore, be
+merely losing time to refute the arguments of those who have attempted
+its disparagement. Thus far, however, they have reason on their side,
+that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without sacrificing
+either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it is not well to
+divide it into stories until it has reached proportions too large to be
+justly measured by the eye. It ought then to be divided in order to mark
+its bulk; and decorative divisions are often possible, which rather
+increase than destroy the expression of general unity.
+
+Sec. V. Superimposition, wisely practised, is of two kinds, directly
+contrary to each other, of weight on lightness, and of lightness on
+weight; while the superimposition of weight on weight, or lightness on
+lightness, is nearly always wrong.
+
+1. Weight on lightness: I do not say weight on _weakness_. The
+superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call weight on
+lightness: the superimposition of the branches on a tree trunk I call
+lightness on weight: in both cases the support is fully adequate to the
+work, the form of support being regulated by the differences of
+requirement. Nothing in architecture is half so painful as the apparent
+want of sufficient support when the weight above is visibly passive:
+for all buildings are not passive; some seem to rise by their own
+strength, or float by their own buoyancy; a dome requires no visibility
+of support, one fancies it supported by the air. But passive
+architecture without help for its passiveness is unendurable. In a
+lately built house, No. 86, in Oxford Street, three huge stone pillars
+in the second story are carried apparently by the edges of three sheets
+of plate glass in the first. I hardly know anything to match the
+painfulness of this and some other of our shop structures, in which the
+iron-work is concealed; nor, even when it is apparent, can the eye ever
+feel satisfied of their security, when built, as at present, with fifty
+or sixty feet of wall above a rod of iron not the width of this page.
+
+Sec. VI. The proper forms of this superimposition of weight on lightness
+have arisen, for the most part, from the necessity or desirableness, in
+many situations, of elevating the inhabited portions of buildings
+considerably above the ground level, especially those exposed to damp or
+inundation, and the consequent abandonment of the ground story as
+unserviceable, or else the surrender of it to public purposes. Thus, in
+many market and town houses, the ground story is left open as a general
+place of sheltered resort, and the enclosed apartments raised on
+pillars. In almost all warm countries the luxury, almost the necessity,
+of arcades to protect the passengers from the sun, and the desirableness
+of large space in the rooms above, lead to the same construction.
+Throughout the Venetian islet group, the houses seem to have been thus,
+in the first instance, universally built, all the older palaces
+appearing to have had the rez de chaussee perfectly open, the upper
+parts of the palace being sustained on magnificent arches, and the
+smaller houses sustained in the same manner on wooden piers, still
+retained in many of the cortiles, and exhibited characteristically
+throughout the main street of Murano. As ground became more valuable and
+house-room more scarce, these ground-floors were enclosed with wall
+veils between the original shafts, and so remain; but the type of the
+structure of the entire city is given in the Ducal Palace.
+
+Sec. VII. To this kind of superimposition we owe the most picturesque
+street effects throughout the world, and the most graceful, as well as
+the most grotesque, buildings, from the many-shafted fantasy of the
+Alhambra (a building as beautiful in disposition as it is base in
+ornamentation) to the four-legged stolidity of the Swiss Chalet:[60] nor
+these only, but great part of the effect of our cathedrals, in which,
+necessarily, the close triforium and clerestory walls are superimposed
+on the nave piers; perhaps with most majesty where with greatest
+simplicity, as in the old basilican types, and the noble cathedral of
+Pisa.
+
+Sec. VIII. In order to the delightfulness and security of all such
+arrangements, this law must be observed:--that in proportion to the
+height of wall above them, the shafts are to be short. You may take your
+given height of wall, and turn any quantity of that wall into shaft that
+you like; but you must not turn it all into tall shafts, and then put
+more wall above. Thus, having a house five stories high, you may turn
+the lower story into shafts, and leave the four stories in wall; or the
+two lower stories into shafts, and leave three in wall; but, whatever
+you add to the shaft, you must take from the wall. Then also, of course,
+the shorter the shaft the thicker will be its _proportionate_, if not
+its actual, diameter. In the Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts
+are always the thickest.[61]
+
+Sec. IX. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on weight, is, in
+its most necessary use, of stories of houses one upon another, where, of
+course, wall veil is required in the lower ones, and has to support wall
+veil above, aided by as much of shaft structure as is attainable within
+the given limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman and
+Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful management of this
+kind of superimposition; sometimes of complete courses of external
+arches and shafts one above the other; sometimes of apertures with
+intermediate cornices at the levels of the floors, and large shafts from
+top to bottom of the building; always observing that the upper stories
+shall be at once lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire
+value of such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression of
+the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained by the
+varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of superimposition
+and separation by floors is frankly told.
+
+Sec. X. In churches and other buildings in which there is no separation
+by floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition is often used, in
+order to enable the builder to avail himself of short and slender
+shafts. It has been noted that these are often easily attainable, and of
+precious materials, when shafts large enough and strong enough to do the
+work at once, could not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and
+of coarse stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his
+work in successive stories; either frankly completing the arch work and
+cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it, which is the
+honester and nobler way, or else tying the stories together by
+supplementary shafts from floor to roof,--the general practice of the
+Northern Gothic, and one which, unless most gracefully managed, gives
+the look of a scaffolding, with cross-poles tied to its uprights, to the
+whole clerestory wall. The best method is that which avoids all chance
+of the upright shafts being supposed continuous, by increasing their
+number and changing their places in the upper stories, so that the whole
+work branches from the ground like a tree. This is the superimposition
+of the Byzantine and the Pisan Romanesque; the most beautiful examples
+of it being, I think, the Southern portico of St. Mark's, the church of
+S. Giovanni at Pistoja, and the apse of the cathedral of Pisa. In
+Renaissance work the two principles are equally distinct, though the
+shafts are (I think) always one above the other. The reader may see one
+of the best examples of the separately superimposed story in Whitehall
+(and another far inferior in St. Paul's), and by turning himself round
+at Whitehall may compare with it the system of connecting shafts in the
+Treasury; though this is a singularly bad example, the window cornices
+of the first floor being like shelves in a cupboard, and cutting the
+mass of the building in two, in spite of the pillars.
+
+Sec. XI. But this superimposition of lightness on weight is still more
+distinctly the system of many buildings of the kind which I have above
+called Architecture of Position, that is to say, architecture of which
+the greater part is intended merely to keep something in a peculiar
+position; as in light-houses, and many towers and belfries. The subject
+of spire and tower architecture, however, is so interesting and
+extensive, that I have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it,
+and, at all events, cannot enter upon it here: but this much is enough
+for the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many
+towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central towers of
+cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the real structure of
+the best and strongest, are the elevation of gradually diminishing
+weight on massy or even solid foundation. Nevertheless, since the tower
+is in its origin a building for strength of defence, and faithfulness of
+watch, rather than splendor of aspect, its true expression is of just so
+much diminution of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully
+balanced strength, not a jot more. There must be no light-headedness in
+your noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful crest, with the vizor
+down, and the dark vigilance seen through the clefts of it; not the
+filigree crown or embroidered cap. No towers are so grand as the
+square-browed ones, with massy cornices and rent battlements: next to
+these come the fantastic towers, with their various forms of steep roof;
+the best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of
+all in my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns, though
+these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes, and capable
+of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight pinnacled things we
+call towers in England (as in York Minster), are mere confectioner's
+Gothic, and not worth classing.
+
+Sec. XII. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of chief
+necessity,--that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily stand, in
+their own strength; not by help of buttresses nor artful balancings on
+this side and on that. Your noble tower must need no help, must be
+sustained by no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of
+decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings,
+or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own walls the strength to
+do this; it is to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other
+bulwarks; to rise and look forth, "the tower of Lebanon that looketh
+toward Damascus," like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its
+nurse's arms. A tower may, indeed, have a kind of buttress, a
+projection, or subordinate tower at each of its angles; but these are to
+its main body like the satellites to a shaft, joined with its strength,
+and associated in its uprightness, part of the tower itself: exactly in
+the proportion in which they lose their massive unity with its body and
+assume the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower
+loses its dignity.
+
+Sec. XIII. These two characters, then, are common to all noble towers,
+however otherwise different in purpose or feature,--the first, that they
+rise from massy foundation to lighter summits, frowning with battlements
+perhaps, but yet evidently more pierced and thinner in wall than
+beneath, and, in most ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open
+work: the second, that whatever the form of the tower, it shall not
+appear to stand by help of buttresses. It follows from the first
+condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary aesthetic
+requirements, that we shall have continual variation in the arrangements
+of the stories, and the larger number of apertures towards the top,--a
+condition exquisitely carried out in the old Lombardic towers, in which,
+however small they may be, the number of apertures is always regularly
+increased towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest
+stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six; often, also,
+one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing, not at
+present to our purpose. We may sufficiently exemplify the general laws
+of tower building by placing side by side, drawn to the same scale, a
+mediaeval tower, in which most of them are simply and unaffectedly
+observed, and one of our own modern towers, in which every one of them
+is violated, in small space, convenient for comparison. (Plate VI.)
+
+[Illustration: Plate VI.
+               TYPES OF TOWERS.
+               BRITISH VENETIAN.]
+
+Sec. XIV. The old tower is that of St. Mark's at Venice, not a very
+perfect example, for its top is Renaissance, but as good Renaissance as
+there is in Venice; and it is fit for our present purpose, because it owes
+none of its effect to ornament. It is built as simply as it well can be to
+answer its purpose: no buttresses; no external features whatever, except
+some huts at the base, and the loggia, afterwards built, which, on
+purpose, I have not drawn; one bold square mass of brickwork; double
+walls, with an ascending inclined plane between them, with apertures as
+small as possible, and these only in necessary places, giving just the
+light required for ascending the stair or slope, not a ray more; and the
+weight of the whole relieved only by the double pilasters on the sides,
+sustaining small arches at the top of the mass, each decorated with the
+scallop or cockle shell, presently to be noticed as frequent in
+Renaissance ornament, and here, for once, thoroughly well applied. Then,
+when the necessary height is reached, the belfry is left open, as in the
+ordinary Romanesque campanile, only the shafts more slender, but severe
+and simple, and the whole crowned by as much spire as the tower would
+carry, to render it more serviceable as a landmark. The arrangement is
+repeated in numberless campaniles throughout Italy.
+
+Sec. XV. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built college at
+Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many others (just as I have
+not taken the St. Mark's tower as better than many others); but it
+happens to compress our British system of tower building into small
+space. The Venetian tower rises 350 feet,[62] and has no buttresses,
+though built of brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built
+of stone, but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge
+buttresses on each angle. The St. Mark's tower has a high sloping roof,
+but carries it simply, requiring no pinnacles at its angles; the British
+tower has no visible roof, but has four pinnacles for mere ornament. The
+Venetian tower has its lightest part at the top, and is massy at the
+base; the British tower has its lightest part at the base, and shuts up
+its windows into a mere arrowslit at the top. What the tower was built
+for at all must therefore, it seems to me, remain a mystery to every
+beholder; for surely no studious inhabitant of its upper chambers will
+be conceived to be pursuing his employments by the light of the single
+chink on each side; and, had it been intended for a belfry, the sound of
+its bells would have been as effectually prevented from getting out as
+the light from getting in.
+
+Sec. XVI. In connexion with the subject of towers and of superimposition,
+one other feature, not conveniently to be omitted from our
+house-building, requires a moment's notice,--the staircase.
+
+In modern houses it can hardly be considered an architectural feature,
+and is nearly always an ugly one, from its being apparently without
+support. And here I may not unfitly note the important distinction,
+which perhaps ought to have been dwelt upon in some places before now,
+between the _marvellous_ and the _perilous_ in apparent construction.
+There are many edifices which are awful or admirable in their height,
+and lightness, and boldness of form, respecting which, nevertheless, we
+have no fear that they should fall. Many a mighty dome and aerial aisle
+and arch may seem to stand, as I said, by miracle, but by steadfast
+miracle notwithstanding; there is no fear that the miracle should cease.
+We have a sense of inherent power in them, or, at all events, of
+concealed and mysterious provision for their safety. But in leaning
+towers, as of Pisa or Bologna, and in much minor architecture, passive
+architecture, of modern times, we feel that there is but a chance
+between the building and destruction; that there is no miraculous life
+in it, which animates it into security, but an obstinate, perhaps vain,
+resistance to immediate danger. The appearance of this is often as
+strong in small things as in large; in the sounding-boards of pulpits,
+for instance, when sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one
+is in dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed if a
+single nail should give way; and again, the modern geometrical
+unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage, also, in the
+arrangement of this latter, when room is of value; and excessive
+ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the passage walls, or
+windows. In mediaeval architecture, where there was need of room, the
+staircase was spiral, and enclosed generally in an exterior tower, which
+added infinitely to the picturesque effect of the building; nor was the
+stair itself steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed
+straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the richest
+towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this arrangement. In
+Italy the staircase is often in the open air, surrounding the interior
+court of the house, and giving access to its various galleries or
+loggias: in this case it is almost always supported by bold shafts and
+arches, and forms a most interesting additional feature of the cortile,
+but presents no peculiarity of construction requiring our present
+examination.
+
+We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the subject of
+construction; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with the simplicity or
+apparent barrenness of their present results. He will find, when he
+begins to apply them, that they are of more value than they now seem;
+but I have studiously avoided letting myself be drawn into any intricate
+question, because I wished to ask from the reader only so much attention
+as it seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling to
+pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater practical interest.
+Evidently it would have been altogether beside the purpose of this essay
+to have entered deeply into the abstract science, or closely into the
+mechanical detail, of construction: both have been illustrated by
+writers far more capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the
+reader's discretion; all that has been here endeavored was the leading
+him to appeal to something like definite principle, and refer to the
+easily intelligible laws of convenience and necessity, whenever he found
+his judgment likely to be overborne by authority on the one hand, or
+dazzled by novelty on the other. If he has time to do more, and to
+follow out in all their brilliancy the mechanical inventions of the
+great engineers and architects of the day, I, in some sort, envy him,
+but must part company with him: for my way lies not along the viaduct,
+but down the quiet valley which its arches cross, nor through the
+tunnel, but up the hill-side which its cavern darkens, to see what gifts
+Nature will give us, and with what imagery she will fill our thoughts,
+that the stones we have ranged in rude order may now be touched with
+life; nor lose for ever, in their hewn nakedness, the voices they had of
+old, when the valley streamlet eddied round them in palpitating light,
+and the winds of the hill-side shook over them the shadows of the fern.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [60] I have spent much of my life among the Alps; but I never pass,
+    without some feeling of new surprise, the Chalet, standing on its
+    four pegs (each topped with a flat stone), balanced in the fury of
+    Alpine winds. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the chief use
+    of the arrangement is not so much to raise the building above the
+    snow, as to get a draught of wind beneath it, which may prevent the
+    drift from rising against its sides.
+
+  [61] Appendix 20, "Shafts of the Ducal Palace."
+
+  [62] I have taken Professor Willis's estimate; there being discrepancy
+    among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the
+    height myself, the building being one which does not come within the
+    range of our future inquiries; and its exact dimensions, even here,
+    are of no importance as respects the question at issue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT.
+
+
+Sec. I. We enter now on the second division of our subject. We have no
+more to do with heavy stones and hard lines; we are going to be happy:
+to look round in the world and discover (in a serious manner always,
+however, and under a sense of responsibility) what we like best in it,
+and to enjoy the same at our leisure: to gather it, examine it, fasten
+all we can of it into imperishable forms, and put it where we may see it
+for ever.
+
+This is to decorate architecture.
+
+Sec. II. There are, therefore, three steps in the process: first, to find
+out in a grave manner what we like best; secondly, to put as much of
+this as we can (which is little enough) into form; thirdly, to put this
+formed abstraction into a proper place.
+
+And we have now, therefore, to make these three inquiries in succession:
+first, what we like, or what is the right material of ornament; then how
+we are to present it, or its right treatment; then, where we are to put
+it, or its right place. I think I can answer that first inquiry in this
+Chapter, the second inquiry in the next Chapter, and the third I shall
+answer in a more diffusive manner, by taking up in succession the
+several parts of architecture above distinguished, and rapidly noting
+the kind of ornament fittest for each.
+
+Sec. III. I said in chapter II. Sec. XIV., that all noble ornamentation
+was the expression of man's delight in God's work. This implied that
+there was an _ig_noble ornamentation, which was the expression of man's
+delight in his _own_. There is such a school, chiefly degraded classic
+and Renaissance, in which the ornament is composed of imitations of
+tilings made by man. I think, before inquiring what we like best of
+God's work, we had better get rid of all this imitation of man's, and be
+quite sure we do not like _that_.
+
+Sec. IV. We shall rapidly glance, then, at the material of decoration
+hence derived. And now I cannot, as I before have done respecting
+construction, _convince_ the reader of one thing being wrong, and
+another right. I have confessed as much again and again; I am now only
+to make appeal to him, and cross-question him, whether he really does
+like things or not. If he likes the ornament on the base of the column
+of the Place Vendome, composed of Wellington boots and laced frock
+coats, I cannot help it; I can only say I differ from him, and don't
+like it. And if, therefore, I speak dictatorially, and say this is base,
+or degraded, or ugly, I mean, only that I believe men of the longest
+experience in the matter would either think it so, or would be prevented
+from thinking it so only by some morbid condition of their minds; and I
+believe that the reader, if he examine himself candidly, will usually
+agree in my statements.
+
+Sec. V. The subjects of ornament found in man's work may properly fall
+into four heads: 1. Instruments of art, agriculture, and war; armor, and
+dress; 2. Drapery; 3. Shipping; 4. Architecture itself.
+
+1. Instruments, armor, and dress.
+
+The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating arms in
+temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of employing them as
+the subjects of sculptural ornament: thenceforward, this abuse has been
+chiefly characteristic of classical architecture, whether true or
+Renaissance. Armor is a noble thing in its proper service and
+subordination to the body; so is an animal's hide on its back; but a
+heap of cast skins, or of shed armor, is alike unworthy of all regard or
+imitation. We owe much true sublimity, and more of delightful
+picturesqueness, to the introduction of armor both in painting and
+sculpture: in poetry it is better still,--Homer's undressed Achilles is
+less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles, though Phidias would
+rather have had him naked; in all mediaeval painting, arms, like all
+other parts of costume, are treated with exquisite care and delight; in
+the designs of Leonardo, Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes
+becomes almost too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention
+bestowed upon it; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash what the
+Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordinating
+heroism to the light of the steel, while the great designers wearied
+themselves in its elaborate fancy.
+
+But all this labor was given to the living, not the dead armor; to the
+shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of the beach; and even
+so, it was introduced more sparingly by the good sculptors than the good
+painters; for the former felt, and with justice, that the painter had
+the power of conquering the over prominence of costume by the expression
+and color of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and
+glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the flash of
+the mail; but they could hardly, by any boldness or energy of the marble
+features, conquer the forwardness and conspicuousness of the sharp
+armorial forms. Their armed figures were therefore almost always
+subordinate, their principal figures draped or naked, and their choice
+of subject was much influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the
+Renaissance sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla for the mere crest
+and plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their narrowed
+minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume without the person,
+but to the pettiest details of the costume itself. They could not
+describe Achilles, but they could describe his shield; a shield like
+those of dedicated spoil, without a handle, never to be waved in the
+face of war. And then we have helmets and lances, banners and swords,
+sometimes with men to hold them, sometimes without; but always chiselled
+with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery,--show helmets
+of the stage, no Vulcan work on them, no heavy hammer strokes, no Etna
+fire in the metal of them, nothing but pasteboard crests and high
+feathers. And these, cast together in disorderly heaps, or grinning
+vacantly over keystones, form one of the leading decorations of
+Renaissance architecture, and that one of the best; for helmets and
+lances, however loosely laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and
+books of music, which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian
+sources of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon
+became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap of cast
+clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of human figures,
+the indolence of architects came to the aid of their affectation, until
+by the moderns we find the practice carried out to its most interesting
+results, and, as above noted, a large pair of boots occupying the
+principal place in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Colonne Vendome.
+
+Sec. VI. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example of the
+abuse at its height, occurs in the Hotel des Invalides, where the dormer
+windows are suits of armor down to the bottom of the corselet, crowned
+by the helmet, and with the window in the middle of the breast.
+
+Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent occurrence,
+except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where they are not employed as
+ornaments, but represented for the sake of accurate knowledge, or as
+symbols. Wherever they have purpose of this kind, they are of course
+perfectly right; but they are then part of the building's conversation,
+not conducive to its beauty. The French have managed, with great
+dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation of
+their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base.
+
+Sec. VII. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of introducing
+drapery, as such, for ornament, in the "Seven Lamps." I may here note a
+curious instance of the abuse in the church of the Jesuiti at Venice
+(Renaissance). On first entering you suppose that the church, being in a
+poor quarter of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy
+green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer's pattern: on
+looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble, with the green
+pattern inlaid. Another remarkable instance is in a piece of not
+altogether unworthy architecture at Paris (Rue Rivoli), where the
+columns are supposed to be decorated with images of handkerchiefs tied
+in a stout knot round the middle of them. This shrewd invention bids
+fair to become a new order. Multitudes of massy curtains and various
+upholstery, more or less in imitation of that of the drawing-room, are
+carved and gilt, in wood or stone, about the altars and other theatrical
+portions of Romanist churches; but from these coarse and senseless
+vulgarities we may well turn, in all haste, to note, with respect as
+well as regret, one of the errors of the great school of Niccolo
+Pisano,--an error so full of feeling as to be sometimes all but
+redeemed, and altogether forgiven,--the sculpture, namely, of curtains
+around the recumbent statues upon tombs, curtains which angels are
+represented as withdrawing, to gaze upon the faces of those who are at
+rest. For some time the idea was simply and slightly expressed, and
+though there was always a painfulness in finding the shafts of stone,
+which were felt to be the real supporters of the canopy, represented as
+of yielding drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the
+tenderness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the scholars
+of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were unable to invent;
+and the quiet curtained canopy became a huge marble tent, with a pole in
+the centre of it. Thus vulgarised, the idea itself soon disappeared, to
+make room for urns, torches, and weepers, and the other modern
+paraphernalia of the churchyard.
+
+Sec. VIII. 3. Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to form a
+separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in Roman decoration,
+and to the continual occurrence of naval subjects in modern monumental
+bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a
+"_kind_ of beauty" in a ship: I say, without any manner of doubt, that a
+ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the
+noblest; nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so lovely as those
+of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of the timbers of a small
+boat, not a race boat, a mere floating chisel, but a broad, strong, sea
+boat, able to breast a wave and break it: and yet, with all this beauty,
+ships cannot be made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular
+delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty; nor does scenery of
+shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying it:
+witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and must be sometimes,
+introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, but just
+enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the lightest lines on the
+background; never with any attempt at realisation, never with any
+equality to the force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the
+subject be picturesque. I shall explain this exception presently, in
+speaking of imitative architecture.
+
+Sec. IX. There is one piece of a ship's fittings, however, which may
+be thought to have obtained acceptance as a constant element of
+architectural ornament,--the cable: it is not, however, the cable
+itself, but its abstract form, a group of twisted lines (which a cable
+only exhibits in common with many natural objects), which is indeed
+beautiful as an ornament. Make the resemblance complete, give to the
+stone the threads and character of the cable, and you may, perhaps,
+regard the sculpture with curiosity, but never more with admiration.
+Consider the effect of the base of the statue of King William IV. at the
+end of London Bridge.
+
+Sec. X. 4. Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or dress, or
+instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is almost exclusively
+confined to bad architecture--Roman or Renaissance. But the false use of
+architecture itself, as an ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even
+in the mediaeval work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some
+of its noblest examples.
+
+It is, therefore, of great importance to note exactly at what point this
+abuse begins, and in what it consists.
+
+Sec. XI. In all bas-relief, architecture may be introduced as an
+explanation of the scene in which the figures act; but with more or less
+prominence in the _inverse ratio of the importance of the figures_.
+
+The metaphysical reason of this is, that where the figures are of great
+value and beauty, the mind is supposed to be engaged wholly with them;
+and it is an impertinence to disturb its contemplation of them by any
+minor features whatever. As the figures become of less value, and are
+regarded with less intensity, accessory subjects may be introduced, such
+as the thoughts may have leisure for.
+
+Thus, if the figures be as large as life, and complete statues, it is
+gross vulgarity to carve a temple above them, or distribute them over
+sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyramids: I need hardly
+instance Canova's works,[63] and the Dutch pulpit groups, with
+fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of church naves.
+
+If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the scene may
+be explained by lightly traced outlines: this is admirably done in the
+Ninevite marbles.
+
+If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less than
+life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and produce
+picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts entirely to themselves,
+the scenery in which they act may become prominent. The most exquisite
+examples of this treatment are the gates of Ghiberti. What would that
+Madonna of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which she
+shrinks back? But all mediaeval work is full of delightful examples of
+the same kind of treatment: the gates of hell and of paradise are
+important pieces, both of explanation and effect, in all early
+representations of the last judgment, or of the descent into Hades. The
+keys of St. Peter, and the crushing flat of the devil under his own
+door, when it is beaten in, would hardly be understood without the
+respective gate-ways above. The best of all the later capitals of the
+Ducal Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the
+richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by a small
+emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs us, is "Numa
+Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e chiese."
+
+Sec. XII. Shipping may be introduced, or rich fancy of vestments, crowns,
+and ornaments, exactly on the same conditions as architecture; and if
+the reader will look back to my definition of the picturesque in the
+"Seven Lamps," he will see why I said, above, that they might only be
+prominent when the purpose of the subject was partly picturesque; that
+is to say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment
+from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not from the
+heart of the thing itself.
+
+And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the death of Nelson
+in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily enjoy the sculpture of a
+storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the
+church of St. Eustorgio at Milan, where the grouping of the figures is
+most fancifully complicated by the undercut cordage of the vessel.
+
+Sec. XIII. In all these instances, however, observe that the permission
+to represent the human work as an ornament, is conditional on its being
+necessary to the representation of a scene, or explanation of an action.
+On no terms whatever could any such subject be independently admissible.
+
+Observe, therefore, the use of manufacture as ornament is--
+
+  1. With heroic figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
+  2. With picturesque figure sculpture, admissible in the degree of its
+       picturesqueness.
+  3. Without figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
+
+So also in painting: Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel, would not
+have willingly painted a dress of figured damask or of watered satin;
+his was heroic painting, not admitting accessories.
+
+Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyck, would be very sorry to
+part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry, observe,
+exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should not _we_ also
+be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest, in that picture of the
+National Gallery?
+
+But I think Vandyck would not have liked, on the other hand, the vest
+without the bishop. I much doubt if Titian or Veronese would have
+enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and making studies of dresses upon
+the counter.
+
+Sec. XIV. So, therefore, finally, neither architecture nor any other human
+work is admissible as an ornament, except in subordination to figure
+subject. And this law is grossly and painfully violated by those curious
+examples of Gothic, both early and late, in the north, (but late, I
+think, exclusively, in Italy,) in which the minor features of the
+architecture were composed of _small models_ of the larger: examples
+which led the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life,
+strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic,--abuses which no
+Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine, nor Italian of the
+earlier ages would have endured for an instant, and which strike me with
+renewed surprise whenever I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century
+Northern Gothic, associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite
+feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges, Amiens,
+Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as
+conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive
+windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed
+with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are
+crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap
+for the saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the
+taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it becomes
+rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of Pavia; and at Venice we
+find the Renaissance churches decorated with models of fortifications
+like those in the Repository at Woolwich, or inlaid with mock arcades in
+pseudo-perspective, copied from gardeners' paintings at the ends of
+conservatories.
+
+Sec. XV. I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all ornament
+is base which takes for its subject human work, that it is utterly
+base,--painful to every rightly-toned mind, without perhaps immediate
+sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we _do_ think
+of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for admiration, is a
+miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our own wretched doings,
+when we might have been looking at God's doings. And all noble ornament
+is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man's delight in
+God's work.
+
+Sec. XVI. For observe, the function of ornament is to make you happy.
+Now in what are you rightly happy? Not in thinking of what you have done
+yourself; not in your own pride, not your own birth; not in your own
+being, or your own will, but in looking at God; watching what He does,
+what He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to His will.
+
+You are to be made happy by ornaments; therefore they must be the
+expression of all this. Not copies of your own handiwork; not boastings
+of your own grandeur; not heraldries; not king's arms, nor any
+creature's arms, but God's arm, seen in His work. Not manifestation of
+your delight in your own laws, or your own liberties, or your own
+inventions; but in divine laws, constant, daily, common laws;--not
+Composite laws, nor Doric laws, nor laws of the five orders, but of the
+Ten Commandments.
+
+Sec. XVII. Then the proper material of ornament will be whatever God has
+created; and its proper treatment, that which seems in accordance with
+or symbolical of His laws. And, for material, we shall therefore have,
+first, the abstract lines which are most frequent in nature; and then,
+from lower to higher, the whole range of systematised inorganic and
+organic forms. We shall rapidly glance in order at their kinds; and,
+however absurd the elemental division of inorganic matter by the
+ancients may seem to the modern chemist, it is one so grand and simple
+for arrangements of external appearances, that I shall here follow it;
+noticing first, after abstract lines, the imitable forms of the four
+elements, of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, and then those of animal
+organisms. It may be convenient to the reader to have the order stated
+in a clear succession at first, thus:--
+
+   1. Abstract lines.
+   2. Forms of Earth (Crystals).
+   3. Forms of Water (Waves).
+   4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays).
+   5. Forms of Air (Clouds).
+   6. (Organic forms.) Shells.
+   7. Fish.
+   8. Reptiles and insects.
+   9. Vegetation (A.) Stems and Trunks.
+  10. Vegetation (B.) Foliage.
+  11. Birds.
+  12. Mammalian animals and Man.
+
+It may be objected that clouds are a form of moisture, not of air. They
+are, however, a perfect expression of aerial states and currents, and
+may sufficiently well stand for the element they move in. And I have put
+vegetation apparently somewhat out of its place, owing to its vast
+importance as a means of decoration, and its constant association with
+birds and men.
+
+Sec. XVIII. 1. Abstract lines. I have not with lines named also shades
+and colors, for this evident reason, that there are no such things as
+abstract shadows, irrespective of the forms which exhibit them, and
+distinguished in their own nature from each other; and that the
+arrangement of shadows, in greater or less quantity, or in certain
+harmonical successions, is an affair of treatment, not of selection. And
+when we use abstract colors, we are in fact using a part of nature
+herself,--using a quality of her light, correspondent with that of the
+air, to carry sound; and the arrangement of color in harmonious masses
+is again a matter of treatment, not selection. Yet even in this separate
+art of coloring, as referred to architecture, it is very notable that
+the best tints are always those of natural stones. These can hardly be
+wrong; I think I never yet saw an offensive introduction of the natural
+colors of marble and precious stones, unless in small mosaics, and in
+one or two glaring instances of the resolute determination to produce
+something ugly at any cost. On the other hand, I have most assuredly
+never yet seen a painted building, ancient or modern, which seemed to me
+quite right.
+
+Sec. XIX. Our first constituents of ornament will therefore be abstract
+lines, that is to say, the most frequent contours of natural objects,
+transferred to architectural forms when it is not right or possible to
+render such forms distinctly imitative. For instance, the line or curve
+of the edge of a leaf may be accurately given to the edge of a stone,
+without rendering the stone in the least _like_ a leaf, or suggestive of
+a leaf; and this the more fully, because the lines of nature are alike
+in all her works; simpler or richer in combination, but the same in
+character; and when they are taken out of their combinations it is
+impossible to say from which of her works they have been borrowed, their
+universal property being that of ever-varying curvature in the most
+subtle and subdued transitions, with peculiar expressions of motion,
+elasticity, or dependence, which I have already insisted upon at some
+length in the chapters on typical beauty in "Modern Painters." But, that
+the reader may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from
+different sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the opposite
+plate, some ten or eleven lines from natural forms of very different
+substances and scale: the first, _a b_, is in the original, I think, the
+most beautiful simple curve I have ever seen in my life; it is a curve
+about three quarters of a mile long, formed by the surface of a small
+glacier of the second order, on a spur of the Aiguille de Blaitiere
+(Chamouni). I have merely outlined the crags on the right of it, to show
+their sympathy and united action with the curve of the glacier, which is
+of course entirely dependent on their opposition to its descent;
+softened, however, into unity by the snow, which rarely melts on this
+high glacier surface.
+
+The line _d c_ is some mile and a half or two miles long; it is part of
+the flank of the chain of the Dent d'Oche above the lake of Geneva, one
+or two of the lines of the higher and more distant ranges being given in
+combination with it.
+
+[Illustration: Plate VII.
+               ABSTRACT LINES.]
+
+_h_ is a line about four feet long, a branch of spruce fir. I have taken
+this tree because it is commonly supposed to be stiff and ungraceful;
+its outer sprays are, however, more noble in their sweep than almost any
+that I know: but this fragment is seen at great disadvantage, because
+placed upside down, in order that the reader may compare its curvatures
+with _c d_, _e g_, and _i k_, which are all mountain lines; _e g_, about
+five hundred feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; _i k_, the
+entire slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley
+of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; _l m_ is the line of the side
+of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper; _n o_, one of
+the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a paper Nautilus; _p_, a
+spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula; _q r_, the leaf of the
+Alisma Plantago with its interior ribs, real size; _s t_, the side of a
+bay-leaf; _u w_, of a salvia leaf; and it is to be carefully noted that
+these last curves, being never intended by nature to be seen singly, are
+more heavy and less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen
+as independent lines. But all agree in their character of changeful
+curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the rest in
+delicacy and richness of transition.
+
+Sec. XX. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavored to show in
+the "Modern Painters;" but one point, there omitted, may be mentioned
+here,--that almost all these lines are expressive of action of _force_
+of some kind, while the circle is a line of limitation or support. In
+leafage they mark the forces of its growth and expansion, but some among
+the most beautiful of them are described by bodies variously in motion,
+or subjected to force; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of
+water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by their
+satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be considered
+instead of its relation to the planet; by boats, or birds, turning in
+the water or air, by clouds in various action upon the wind, by sails in
+the curvatures they assume under its force, and by thousands of other
+objects moving or bearing force. In the Alisma leaf, _q r_, the lines
+through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different
+expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those
+which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the
+shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its
+point. Circular curves, on the contrary, are always, I think, curves of
+limitation or support; that is to say, curves of perfect rest. The
+cylindrical curve round the stem of a plant binds its fibres together;
+while the _ascent_ of the stem is in lines of various curvature: so the
+curve of the horizon and of the apparent heaven, of the rainbow, etc.:
+and though the reader might imagine that the circular orbit of any
+moving body, or the curve described by a sling, was a curve of motion,
+he should observe that the circular character is given to the curve not
+by the motion, but by the confinement: the circle is the consequence not
+of the energy of the body, but of its being forbidden to leave the
+centre; and whenever the whirling or circular motion can be fully
+impressed on it we obtain instant balance and rest with respect to the
+centre of the circle.
+
+Hence the peculiar fitness of the circular curve as a sign of rest, and
+security of support, in arches; while the other curves, belonging
+especially to action, are to be used in the more active architectural
+features--the hand and foot (the capital and base), and in all minor
+ornaments; more freely in proportion to their independence of structural
+conditions.
+
+Sec. XXI. We need not, however, hope to be able to imitate, in general
+work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of nature's highest
+designing: on the contrary, their extreme refinement renders them unfit
+for coarse service or material. Lines which are lovely in the pearly
+film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and
+those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the
+substance of incumbent marble. Of all the graceful lines assembled on
+Plate VII., we shall do well to be content with two of the simplest. We
+shall take one mountain line (_e g_) and one leaf line (_u w_), or
+rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not want them all. I will
+mark off from _u w_ the little bit _x y_, and from _e g_ the piece _e
+f_; both which appear to me likely to be serviceable: and if hereafter
+we need the help of any abstract lines, we will see what we can do with
+these only.
+
+Sec. XXII. 2. Forms of Earth (Crystals). It may be asked why I do not
+say rocks or mountains? Simply, because the nobility of these depends,
+first, on their scale, and, secondly, on accident. Their scale cannot be
+represented, nor their accident systematised. No sculptor can in the
+least imitate the peculiar character of accidental fracture: he can obey
+or exhibit the laws of nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her
+fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain
+is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which
+are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of
+catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate
+recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labor of Nature, but not
+her disturbance; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained,[64] not
+what she has violently suffered, or strangely permitted. The only uses,
+therefore, of rock form which are wise in the architect, are its actual
+introduction (by leaving untouched such blocks as are meant for rough
+service), and that noble use of the general examples of mountain
+structure of which I have often heretofore spoken. Imitations of rock
+form have, for the most part, been confined to periods of degraded
+feeling and to architectural toys or pieces of dramatic effect,--the
+Calvaries and holy sepulchres of Romanism, or the grottoes and fountains
+of English gardens. They were, however, not unfrequent in mediaeval
+bas-reliefs; very curiously and elaborately treated by Ghiberti on the
+doors of Florence, and in religious sculpture necessarily introduced
+wherever the life of the anchorite was to be expressed. They were rarely
+introduced as of ornamental character, but for particular service and
+expression; we shall see an interesting example in the Ducal Palace at
+Venice.
+
+Sec. XXIII. But against crystalline form, which is the completely
+systematised natural structure of the earth, none of these objections
+hold good, and, accordingly, it is an endless element of decoration,
+where higher conditions of structure cannot be represented. The
+four-sided pyramid, perhaps the most frequent of all natural crystals,
+is called in architecture a dogtooth; its use is quite limitless, and
+always beautiful: the cube and rhomb are almost equally frequent in
+chequers and dentils: and all mouldings of the middle Gothic are little
+more than representations of the canaliculated crystals of the beryl,
+and such other minerals:
+
+Sec. XXIV. Not knowingly. I do not suppose a single hint was ever actually
+taken from mineral form; not even by the Arabs in their stalactite
+pendants and vaults: all that I mean to allege is, that beautiful
+ornament, wherever found, or however invented, is always either an
+intentional or unintentional copy of some constant natural form; and
+that in this particular instance, the pleasure we have in these
+geometrical figures of our own invention, is dependent for all its
+acuteness on the natural tendency impressed on us by our Creator to love
+the forms into which the earth He gave us to tread, and out of which He
+formed our bodies, knit itself as it was separated from the deep.
+
+Sec. XXV. 3. Forms of Water (Waves).
+
+The reasons which prevent rocks from being used for ornament repress
+still more forcibly the portraiture of the sea. Yet the constant
+necessity of introducing some representation of water in order to
+explain the scene of events, or as a sacred symbol, has forced the
+sculptors of all ages to the invention of some type or letter for it, if
+not an actual imitation. We find every degree of conventionalism or of
+naturalism in these types, the earlier being, for the most part,
+thoughtful symbols; the latter, awkward attempts at portraiture.[65] The
+most conventional of all types is the Egyptian zigzag, preserved in the
+astronomical sign of Aquarius; but every nation, with any capacities of
+thought, has given, in some of its work, the same great definition of
+open water, as "an undulatory thing with fish in it." I say _open_
+water, because inland nations have a totally different conception of the
+element. Imagine for an instant the different feelings of an husbandman
+whose hut is built by the Rhine or the Po, and who sees, day by day,
+the same giddy succession of silent power, the same opaque, thick,
+whirling, irresistible labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies,
+coiling themselves into serpentine race by the reedy banks, in omne
+volubilis aevum,--and the image of the sea in the mind of the fisher upon
+the rocks of Ithaca, or by the Straits of Sicily, who sees how, day by
+day, the morning winds come coursing to the shore, every breath of them
+with a green wave rearing before it; clear, crisp, ringing, merry-minded
+waves, that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as
+they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust of
+crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand. Fancy the difference of the
+image of water in those two minds, and then compare the sculpture of the
+coiling eddies of the Tigris and its reedy branches in those slabs of
+Nineveh, with the crested curls of the Greek sea on the coins of
+Camerina or Tarentum. But both agree in the undulatory lines, either of
+the currents or the surface, and in the introduction of fish as
+explanatory of the meaning of those lines (so also the Egyptians in
+their frescoes, with most elaborate realisation of the fish). There is a
+very curious instance on a Greek mirror in the British Museum,
+representing Orion on the Sea; and multitudes of examples with dolphins
+on the Greek vases: the type is preserved without alteration in mediaeval
+painting and sculpture. The sea in that Greek mirror (at least 400
+B.C.), in the mosaics of Torcello and St. Mark's, on the font of St.
+Frediano at Lucca, on the gate of the fortress of St. Michael's Mount in
+Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the Ducal
+Palace at Venice (under Arion on his Dolphin), is represented in a
+manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the frescoes of Avignon, has,
+with his usual strong feeling for naturalism, given the best example I
+remember, in painting, of the unity of the conventional system with
+direct imitation, and that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue
+color the coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the
+breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation and
+decorative effect are subordinate to easily understood symbolical
+language; the undulatory lines are often valuable as an enrichment of
+surface, but are rarely of any studied gracefulness. One of the best
+examples I know of their expressive arrangement is around some figures
+in a spandril at Bourges, representing figures sinking in deep sea (the
+deluge): the waved lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the
+edge of the moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order
+of nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times of
+debasement, water began to be represented with its waves, foam, etc., as
+on the Vendramin tomb at Venice, above cited; but even there, without
+any definite ornamental purpose, the sculptor meant partly to explain a
+story, partly to display dexterity of chiselling, but not to produce
+beautiful forms pleasant to the eye. The imitation is vapid and joyless,
+and it has often been matter of surprise to me that sculptors, so fond
+of exhibiting their skill, should have suffered this imitation to fall
+so short, and remain so cold,--should not have taken more pains to curl
+the waves clearly, to edge them sharply, and to express, by drill-holes
+or other artifices, the character of foam. I think in one of the Antwerp
+churches something of this kind is done in wood, but in general it is
+rare.
+
+Sec. XXVI. 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays). If neither the sea nor
+the rock can be imagined, still less the devouring fire. It has been
+symbolised by radiation both in painting and sculpture, for the most
+part in the latter very unsuccessfully. It was suggested to me, not long
+ago,[66] that zigzag decorations of Norman architects were typical of
+light springing from the half-set orb of the sun; the resemblance to the
+ordinary sun type is indeed remarkable, but I believe accidental. I
+shall give you, in my large plates, two curious instances of radiation
+in brick ornament above arches, but I think these also without any very
+luminous intention. The imitations of fire in the torches of Cupids and
+genii, and burning in tops of urns, which attest and represent the
+mephitic inspirations of the seventeenth century in most London
+churches, and in monuments all over civilised Europe, together with the
+gilded rays of Romanist altars, may be left to such mercy as the reader
+is inclined to show them.
+
+Sec. XXVII. 5. Forms of Air (Clouds). Hardly more manageable than flames,
+and of no ornamental use, their majesty being in scale and color, and
+inimitable in marble. They are lightly traced in much of the cinque
+cento sculpture; very boldly and grandly in the strange Last Judgment in
+the porch of St. Maclou at Rouen, described in the "Seven Lamps." But
+the most elaborate imitations are altogether of recent date, arranged in
+concretions like flattened sacks, forty or fifty feet above the altars
+of continental churches, mixed with the gilded truncheons intended for
+sunbeams above alluded to.
+
+Sec. XXVIII. 6. Shells. I place these lowest in the scale (after inorganic
+forms) as being moulds or coats of organism; not themselves organic. The
+sense of this, and of their being mere emptiness and deserted houses,
+must always prevent them, however beautiful in their lines, from being
+largely used in ornamentation. It is better to take the line and leave
+the shell. One form, indeed, that of the cockle, has been in all ages
+used as the decoration of half domes, which were named conchas from
+their shell form: and I believe the wrinkled lip of the cockle, so used,
+to have been the origin, in some parts of Europe at least, of the
+exuberant foliation of the round arch. The scallop also is a pretty
+radiant form, and mingles well with other symbols when it is needed. The
+crab is always as delightful as a grotesque, for here we suppose the
+beast inside the shell; and he sustains his part in a lively manner
+among the other signs of the zodiac, with the scorpion; or scattered
+upon sculptured shores, as beside the Bronze Boar of Florence. We shall
+find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one of the Piazzetta
+shafts.
+
+Sec. XXIX. 7. Fish. These, as beautiful in their forms as they are
+familiar to our sight, while their interest is increased by their
+symbolic meaning, are of great value as material of ornament. Love of
+the picturesque has generally induced a choice of some supple form with
+scaly body and lashing tail, but the simplest fish form is largely
+employed in mediaeval work. We shall find the plain oval body and sharp
+head of the Thunny constantly at Venice; and the fish used in the
+expression of sea-water, or water generally, are always plain bodied
+creatures in the best mediaeval sculpture. The Greek type of the dolphin,
+however, sometimes but slightly exaggerated from the real outline of the
+Delphinus Delphis,[67] is one of the most picturesque of animal forms;
+and the action of its slow revolving plunge is admirably caught upon the
+surface sea represented in Greek vases.
+
+Sec. XXX. 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and
+lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange
+combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a
+pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite subjects in all
+periods of art; and the unity of both lizard and serpent in the ideal
+dragon, the most picturesque and powerful of all animal forms, and of
+peculiar symbolical interest to the Christian mind, is perhaps the
+principal of all the materials of mediaeval picturesque sculpture. By the
+best sculptors it is always used with this symbolic meaning, by the
+cinque cento sculptors as an ornament merely. The best and most natural
+representations of mere viper or snake are to be found interlaced among
+their confused groups of meaningless objects. The real power and horror
+of the snake-head has, however, been rarely reached. I shall give one
+example from Verona of the twelfth century.
+
+Other less powerful reptile forms are not unfrequent. Small frogs,
+lizards, and snails almost always enliven the foregrounds and leafage of
+good sculpture. The tortoise is less usually employed in groups. Beetles
+are chiefly mystic and colossal. Various insects, like everything else
+in the world, occur in cinque cento work; grasshoppers most frequently.
+We shall see on the Ducal Palace at Venice an interesting use of the
+bee.
+
+Sec. XXXI. 9. Branches and stems of Trees. I arrange these under a
+separate head; because, while the forms of leafage belong to all
+architecture, and ought to be employed in it always, those of the branch
+and stem belong to a peculiar imitative and luxuriant architecture, and
+are only applicable at times. Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived
+little beauty in the stems of trees; they were little else than timber to
+them; and they preferred the rigid and monstrous triglyph, or the fluted
+column, to a broken bough or gnarled trunk. But with Christian knowledge
+came a peculiar regard for the forms of vegetation, from the root
+upwards. The actual representation of the entire trees required in many
+scripture subjects,--as in the most frequent of Old Testament subjects,
+the Fall; and again in the Drunkenness of Noah, the Garden Agony, and
+many others, familiarised the sculptors of bas-relief to the beauty of
+forms before unknown; while the symbolical name given to Christ by the
+Prophets, "the Branch," and the frequent expressions referring to this
+image throughout every scriptural description of conversion, gave an
+especial interest to the Christian mind to this portion of vegetative
+structure. For some time, nevertheless, the sculpture of trees was
+confined to bas-relief; but it at last affected even the treatment of
+the main shafts in Lombard Gothic buildings,--as in the western facade
+of Genoa, where two of the shafts are represented as gnarled trunks: and
+as bas-relief itself became more boldly introduced, so did tree
+sculpture, until we find the writhed and knotted stems of the vine and
+fig used for angle shafts on the Doge's Palace, and entire oaks and
+appletrees forming, roots and all, the principal decorative sculptures
+of the Scala tombs at Verona. It was then discovered to be more easy to
+carve branches than leaves and, much helped by the frequent employment
+in later Gothic of the "Tree of Jesse," for traceries and other
+purposes, the system reached full developement in a perfect thicket of
+twigs, which form the richest portion of the decoration of the porches
+of Beauvais. It had now been carried to its richest extreme: men
+wearied of it and abandoned it, and like all other natural and beautiful
+things, it was ostracised by the mob of Renaissance architects. But it
+is interesting to observe how the human mind, in its acceptance of this
+feature of ornament, proceeded from the ground, and followed, as it
+were, the natural growth of the tree. It began with the rude and solid
+trunk, as at Genoa; then the branches shot out, and became loaded
+leaves; autumn came, the leaves were shed, and the eye was directed to
+the extremities of the delicate branches;--the Renaissance frosts came,
+and all perished.
+
+Sec. XXXII. 10. Foliage, Flowers, and Fruit. It is necessary to consider
+these as separated from the stems; not only, as above noted, because
+their separate use marks another school of architecture, but because
+they are the only organic structures which are capable of being so
+treated, and intended to be so, without strong effort of imagination. To
+pull animals to pieces, and use their paws for feet of furniture, or
+their heads for terminations of rods and shafts, is _usually_ the
+characteristic of feelingless schools; the greatest men like their
+animals whole. The head may, indeed, be so managed as to look emergent
+from the stone, rather than fastened to it; and wherever there is
+throughout the architecture any expression of sternness or severity
+(severity in its literal sense, as in Romans, XI. 22), such divisions of
+the living form may be permitted; still, you cannot cut an animal to
+pieces as you can gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our
+gathering, and for our constant delight: wherever men exist in a
+perfectly civilised and healthy state, they have vegetation around them;
+wherever their state approaches that of innocence or perfectness, it
+approaches that of Paradise,--it is a dressing of garden. And,
+therefore, where nothing else can be used for ornament, vegetation may;
+vegetation in any form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A
+single leaf laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or
+frame-work of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost of
+the leaf,--the hollow "foil" cut out of it,--possesses a charm which
+nothing else can replace; a charm not exciting, nor demanding laborious
+thought or sympathy, but perfectly simple, peaceful, and satisfying.
+
+Sec. XXXIII. The full recognition of leaf forms, as the general source of
+subordinate decoration, is one of the chief characteristics of Christian
+architecture; but the two _roots_ of leaf ornament are the Greek
+acanthus, and the Egyptian lotus.[68] The dry land and the river thus
+each contributed their part; and all the florid capitals of the richest
+Northern Gothic on the one hand, and the arrowy lines of the severe
+Lombardic capitals on the other, are founded on these two gifts of the
+dust of Greece and the waves of the Nile. The leaf which is, I believe,
+called the Persepolitan water-leaf, is to be associated with the lotus
+flower and stem, as the origin of our noblest types of simple capital;
+and it is to be noted that the florid leaves of the dry land are used
+most by the Northern architects, while the water leaves are gathered for
+their ornaments by the parched builders of the Desert.
+
+Sec. XXXIV. Fruit is, for the most part, more valuable in color than
+form; nothing is more beautiful as a subject of sculpture on a tree; but,
+gathered and put in baskets, it is quite possible to have too much of
+it. We shall find it so used very dextrously on the Ducal Palace of
+Venice, there with a meaning which rendered it right necessary; but the
+Renaissance architects address themselves to spectators who care for
+nothing but feasting, and suppose that clusters of pears and pineapples
+are visions of which their imagination can never weary, and above which
+it will never care to rise. I am no advocate for image worship, as I
+believe the reader will elsewhere sufficiently find; but I am very sure
+that the Protestantism of London would have found itself quite as secure
+in a cathedral decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung round
+with bunches of ribston pippins.
+
+Sec. XXXV. 11. Birds. The perfect and simple grace of bird form, in
+general, has rendered it a favorite subject with early sculptors, and
+with those schools which loved form more than action; but the difficulty
+of expressing action, where the muscular markings are concealed, has
+limited the use of it in later art. Half the ornament, at least, in
+Byzantine architecture, and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed of
+birds, either pecking at fruit or flowers, or standing on either side of
+a flower or vase, or alone, as generally the symbolical peacock. But how
+much of our general sense of grace or power of motion, of serenity,
+peacefulness, and spirituality, we owe to these creatures, it is
+impossible to conceive; their wings supplying us with almost the only
+means of representation of spiritual motion which we possess, and with
+an ornamental form of which the eye is never weary, however
+meaninglessly or endlessly repeated; whether in utter isolation, or
+associated with the bodies of the lizard, the horse, the lion, or the
+man. The heads of the birds of prey are always beautiful, and used as
+the richest ornaments in all ages.
+
+Sec. XXXVI. 12. Quadrupeds and Men. Of quadrupeds the horse has received
+an elevation into the primal rank of sculptural subject, owing to his
+association with men. The full value of other quadruped forms has hardly
+been perceived, or worked for, in late sculpture; and the want of
+science is more felt in these subjects than in any other branches of
+early work. The greatest richness of quadruped ornament is found in the
+hunting sculpture of the Lombards; but rudely treated (the most noble
+examples of treatment being the lions of Egypt, the Ninevite bulls, and
+the mediaeval griffins). Quadrupeds of course form the noblest subjects
+of ornament next to the human form; this latter, the chief subject of
+sculpture, being sometimes the end of architecture rather than its
+decoration.
+
+We have thus completed the list of the materials of architectural
+decoration, and the reader may be assured that no effort has ever been
+successful to draw elements of beauty from any other sources than
+these. Such an effort was once resolutely made. It was contrary to the
+religion of the Arab to introduce any animal form into his ornament; but
+although all the radiance of color, all the refinements of proportion,
+and all the intricacies of geometrical design were open to him, he could
+not produce any noble work without an _abstraction_ of the forms of
+leafage, to be used in his capitals, and made the ground plan of his
+chased ornament. But I have above noted that coloring is an entirely
+distinct and independent art; and in the "Seven Lamps" we saw that this
+art had most power when practised in arrangements of simple geometrical
+form: the Arab, therefore, lay under no disadvantage in coloring, and he
+had all the noble elements of constructive and proportional beauty at
+his command: he might not imitate the sea-shell, but he could build the
+dome. The imitation of radiance by the variegated voussoir, the
+expression of the sweep of the desert by the barred red lines upon the
+wall, the starred inshedding of light through his vaulted roof, and all
+the endless fantasy of abstract line,[69] were still in the power of his
+ardent and fantastic spirit. Much he achieved; and yet in the effort of
+his overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he made his
+architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined enchantment, and
+left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a startling dream, whose
+beauty we may indeed feel, and whose instruction we may receive, but
+must smile at its inconsistency, and mourn over its evanescence.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [63] The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly
+    symptoms in the civilisation of the upper classes in the present
+    century.
+
+  [64] Thus above, I adduced for the architect's imitation the
+    appointed stories and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular
+    forms of crag or fissure.
+
+  [65] Appendix 21, "Ancient Representations of Water."
+
+  [66] By the friend to whom I owe Appendix 21.
+
+  [67] One is glad to hear from Cuvier, that though dolphins in general
+    are "les plus carnassiers, et proportion gardee avec leur taille,
+    les plus cruels de l'ordre;" yet that in the Delphinus Delphis,
+    "tout l'organisation de son cerveau annonce _qu'il ne doit pas etre
+    depourvu de la docilite_ qu'ils (les anciens) lui attribuaient."
+
+  [68] Vide Wilkinson, vol. v., woodcut No. 478, fig. 8. The tamarisk
+    appears afterwards to have given the idea of a subdivision of leaf
+    more pure and quaint than that of the acanthus. Of late our
+    botanists have discovered, in the "Victoria regia" (supposing its
+    blossom reversed), another strangely beautiful type of what we may
+    perhaps hereafter find it convenient to call _Lily_ capitals.
+
+  [69] Appendix 22, "Arabian Ornamentation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT.
+
+
+Sec. I. We now know where we are to look for subjects of decoration. The
+next question is, as the reader must remember, how to treat or express
+these subjects.
+
+There are evidently two branches of treatment: the first being the
+expression, or rendering to the eye and mind, of the thing itself; and
+the second, the arrangement of the thing so expressed: both of these
+being quite distinct from the placing of the ornament in proper parts of
+the building. For instance, suppose we take a vine-leaf for our subject.
+The first question is, how to cut the vine-leaf? Shall we cut its ribs
+and notches on the edge, or only its general outline? and so on. Then,
+how to arrange the vine-leaves when we have them; whether symmetrically,
+or at random; or unsymmetrically, yet within certain limits? All these I
+call questions of treatment. Then, whether the vine-leaves so arranged
+are to be set on the capital of a pillar or on its shaft, I call a
+question of place.
+
+Sec. II. So, then, the questions of mere treatment are twofold, how to
+express, and how to arrange. And expression is to the mind or the sight.
+Therefore, the inquiry becomes really threefold:--
+
+  1. How ornament is to be expressed with reference to the mind.
+
+  2. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to the sight.
+
+  3. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to both.
+
+
+Sec. III. (1.) How is ornament to be treated with reference to the mind?
+
+If, to produce a good or beautiful ornament, it were only necessary to
+produce a perfect piece of sculpture, and if a well cut group of flowers
+or animals were indeed an ornament wherever it might be placed, the work
+of the architect would be comparatively easy. Sculpture and architecture
+would become separate arts; and the architect would order so many pieces
+of such subject and size as he needed, without troubling himself with
+any questions but those of disposition and proportion. But this is not
+so. _No perfect piece either of painting or sculpture is an
+architectural ornament at all_, except in that vague sense in which any
+beautiful thing is said to ornament the place it is in. Thus we say that
+pictures ornament a room; but we should not thank an architect who told
+us that his design, to be complete, required a Titian to be put in one
+corner of it, and a Velasquez in the other; and it is just as
+unreasonable to call perfect sculpture, niched in, or encrusted on a
+building, a portion of the ornament of that building, as it would be to
+hang pictures by the way of ornament on the outside of it. It is very
+possible that the sculptured work may be harmoniously associated with
+the building, or the building executed with reference to it; but in this
+latter case the architecture is subordinate to the sculpture, as in the
+Medicean chapel, and I believe also in the Parthenon. And so far from
+the perfection of the work conducing to its ornamental purpose, we may
+say, with entire security, that its perfection, in some degree, unfits
+it for its purpose, and that no absolutely complete sculpture can be
+decoratively right. We have a familiar instance in the flower-work of
+St. Paul's, which is probably, in the abstract, as perfect flower
+sculpture as could be produced at the time; and which is just as
+rational an ornament of the building as so many valuable Van Huysums,
+framed and glazed and hung up over each window.
+
+Sec. IV. The especial condition of true ornament is, that it be beautiful
+in its place, and nowhere else, and that it aid the effect of every
+portion of the building over which it has influence; that it does not,
+by its richness, make other parts bald, or, by its delicacy, make other
+parts coarse. Every one of its qualities has reference to its place and
+use: _and it is fitted for its service by what would be faults and
+deficiencies if it had no especial duty_. Ornament, the servant, is
+often formal, where sculpture, the master, would have been free; the
+servant is often silent where the master would have been eloquent; or
+hurried, where the master would have been serene.
+
+Sec. V. How far this subordination is in different situations to be
+expressed, or how far it may be surrendered, and ornament, the servant,
+be permitted to have independent will; and by what means the
+subordination is best to be expressed when it is required, are by far
+the most difficult questions I have ever tried to work out respecting
+any branch of art; for, in many of the examples to which I look as
+authoritative in their majesty of effect, it is almost impossible to say
+whether the abstraction or imperfection of the sculpture was owing to
+the choice, or the incapacity of the workman; and, if to the latter, how
+far the result of fortunate incapacity can be imitated by prudent
+self-restraint. The reader, I think, will understand this at once by
+considering the effect of the illuminations of an old missal. In their
+bold rejection of all principles of perspective, light and shade, and
+drawing, they are infinitely more ornamental to the page, owing to the
+vivid opposition of their bright colors and quaint lines, than if they
+had been drawn by Da Vinci himself: and so the Arena chapel is far more
+brightly _decorated_ by the archaic frescoes of Giotti, than the Stanze
+of the Vatican are by those of Raffaelle. But how far it is possible to
+recur to such archaicism, or to make up for it by any voluntary
+abandonment of power, I cannot as yet venture in any wise to determine.
+
+Sec. VI. So, on the other hand, in many instances of finished work in
+which I find most to regret or to reprobate, I can hardly distinguish what
+is erroneous in principle from what is vulgar in execution. For instance,
+in most Romanesque churches of Italy, the porches are guarded by
+gigantic animals, lions or griffins, of admirable severity of design;
+yet, in many cases, of so rude workmanship, that it can hardly be
+determined how much of this severity was intentional,--how much
+involuntary: in the cathedral of Genoa two modern lions have, in
+imitation of this ancient custom, been placed on the steps of its west
+front; and the Italian sculptor, thinking himself a marvellous great man
+because he knew what lions were really like, has copied them, in the
+menagerie, with great success, and produced two hairy and well-whiskered
+beasts, as like to real lions as he could possibly cut them. One wishes
+them back in the menagerie for his pains; but it is impossible to say
+how far the offence of their presence is owing to the mere stupidity and
+vulgarity of the sculpture, and how far we might have been delighted
+with a realisation, carried to nearly the same length by Ghiberti or
+Michael Angelo. (I say _nearly_, because neither Ghiberti nor Michael
+Angelo would ever have attempted, or permitted, entire realisation, even
+in independent sculpture.)
+
+Sec. VII. In spite of these embarrassments, however, some few certainties
+may be marked in the treatment of past architecture, and secure
+conclusions deduced for future practice. There is first, for instance,
+the assuredly intended and resolute abstraction of the Ninevite and
+Egyptian sculptors. The men who cut those granite lions in the Egyptian
+room of the British Museum, and who carved the calm faces of those
+Ninevite kings, knew much more, both of lions and kings, than they chose
+to express. Then there is the Greek system, in which the human sculpture
+is perfect, the architecture and animal sculpture is subordinate to it,
+and the architectural ornament severely subordinated to this again, so
+as to be composed of little more than abstract lines: and, finally,
+there is the peculiarly mediaeval system, in which the inferior details
+are carried to as great or greater imitative perfection as the higher
+sculpture; and the subordination is chiefly effected by symmetries of
+arrangement, and quaintnesses of treatment, respecting which it is
+difficult to say how far they resulted from intention, and how far from
+incapacity.
+
+Sec. VIII. Now of these systems, the Ninevite and Egyptian are altogether
+opposed to modern habits of thought and action; they are sculptures
+evidently executed under absolute authorities, physical and mental, such
+as cannot at present exist. The Greek system presupposes the possession
+of a Phidias; it is ridiculous to talk of building in the Greek manner;
+you may build a Greek shell or box, such as the Greek intended to
+contain sculpture, but you have not the sculpture to put in it. Find
+your Phidias first, and your new Phidias will very soon settle all your
+architectural difficulties in very unexpected ways indeed; but until you
+find him, do not think yourselves architects while you go on copying
+those poor subordinations, and secondary and tertiary orders of
+ornament, which the Greek put on the shell of his sculpture. Some of
+them, beads, and dentils, and such like, are as good as they can be for
+their work, and you may use them for subordinate work still; but they
+are nothing to be proud of, especially when you did not invent them: and
+others of them are mistakes and impertinences in the Greek himself, such
+as his so-called honeysuckle ornaments and others, in which there is a
+starched and dull suggestion of vegetable form, and yet no real
+resemblance nor life, for the conditions of them result from his own
+conceit of himself, and ignorance of the physical sciences, and want of
+relish for common nature, and vain fancy that he could improve
+everything he touched, and that he honored it by taking it into his
+service: by freedom from which conceits the true Christian architecture
+is distinguished--not by points to its arches.
+
+Sec. IX. There remains, therefore, only the mediaeval system, in which
+I think, generally, more completion is permitted (though this often
+because more was possible) in the inferior than in the higher portions
+of ornamental subject. Leaves, and birds, and lizards are realised, or
+nearly so; men and quadrupeds formalised. For observe, the smaller and
+inferior subject remains subordinate, however richly finished; but the
+human sculpture can only be subordinate by being imperfect. The
+realisation is, however, in all cases, dangerous except under most
+skilful management, and the abstraction, if true and noble, is almost
+always more delightful.[70]
+
+[Illustration: Plate VIII.
+               DECORATION BY DISKS.
+               PALAZZO DEI BADOARI PARTECIPAZZI.]
+
+Sec. X. What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first the essential
+elements of the thing to be represented, then the rest in the order of
+importance (so that wherever we pause we shall always have obtained more
+than we leave behind), and using any expedient to impress what we want
+upon the mind, without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such
+expedient. Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock: now a
+peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan; it has a high crest, so has
+a cockatoo; it has a long tail, so has a bird of Paradise. But the whole
+spirit and power of peacock is in those eyes of the tail. It is true,
+the argus pheasant, and one or two more birds, have something like them,
+but nothing for a moment comparable to them in brilliancy: express the
+gleaming of the blue eyes through the plumage, and you have nearly all
+you want of peacock, but without this, nothing; and yet those eyes are
+not in relief; a rigidly _true_ sculpture of a peacock's form could have
+no eyes,--nothing but feathers. Here, then, enters the stratagem of
+sculpture; you _must_ cut the eyes in relief, somehow or another; see
+how it is done in the peacock on the opposite page; it is so done by
+nearly all the Byzantine sculptors: this particular peacock is meant to
+be seen at some distance (how far off I know not, for it is an
+interpolation in the building where it occurs, of which more hereafter),
+but at all events at a distance of thirty or forty feet; I have put it
+close to you that you may see plainly the rude rings and rods which
+stand for the eyes and quills, but at the just distance their effect is
+perfect.
+
+Sec. XI. And the simplicity of the means here employed may help us, both
+to some clear understanding of the spirit of Ninevite and Egyptian work,
+and to some perception of the kind of enfantillage or archaicism to
+which it may be possible, even in days of advanced science, legitimately
+to return. The architect has no right, as we said before, to require of
+us a picture of Titian's in order to complete his design; neither has he
+the right to calculate on the co-operation of perfect sculptors, in
+subordinate capacities. Far from this; his business is to dispense with
+such aid altogether, and to devise such a system of ornament as shall be
+capable of execution by uninventive and even unintelligent workmen; for
+supposing that he required noble sculpture for his ornament, how far
+would this at once limit the number and the scale of possible buildings?
+Architecture is the work of nations; but we cannot have nations of great
+sculptors. Every house in every street of every city ought to be good
+architecture, but we cannot have Flaxman or Thorwaldsen at work upon it:
+nor, even if we chose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings,
+could the mass and majesty of them be great, if we required all to be
+executed by great men; greatness is not to be had in the required
+quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he cannot carve it; he can
+only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs at the base of it. And with
+every increase of your fastidiousness in the execution of your ornament,
+you diminish the possible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not
+think you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection
+will increase the supply: educated imbecility and finessed foolishness
+are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses; and there is no
+free-trade measure, which will ever lower the price of brains,--there is
+no California of common sense. Exactly in the degree in which you
+require your decoration to be wrought by thoughtful men, you diminish
+the extent and number of architectural works. Your business as an
+architect, is to calculate only on the co-operation of inferior men, to
+think for them, and to indicate for them such expressions of your
+thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and the feeblest hand
+can execute. This is the definition of the purest architectural
+abstractions. They are the deep and laborious thoughts of the greatest
+men, put into such easy letters that they can be written by the
+simplest. _They are expressions of the mind of manhood by the hands of
+childhood._
+
+Sec. XII. And now suppose one of those old Ninevite or Egyptian builders,
+with a couple of thousand men--mud-bred, onion-eating creatures--under
+him, to be set to work, like so many ants, on his temple sculptures.
+What is he to do with them? He can put them through a granitic exercise
+of current hand; he can teach them all how to curl hair thoroughly into
+croche-coeurs, as you teach a bench of school-boys how to shape
+pothooks; he can teach them all how to draw long eyes and straight
+noses, and how to copy accurately certain well-defined lines. Then he
+fits his own great design to their capacities; he takes out of king, or
+lion, or god, as much as was expressible by croche-coeurs and granitic
+pothooks; he throws this into noble forms of his own imagining, and
+having mapped out their lines so that there can be no possibility of
+error, sets his two thousand men to work upon them, with a will, and so
+many onions a day.
+
+Sec. XIII. I said those times cannot now return. We have, with
+Christianity, recognised the individual value of every soul; and there
+is no intelligence so feeble but that its single ray may in some sort
+contribute to the general light. This is the glory of Gothic
+architecture, that every jot and tittle, every point and niche of it,
+affords room, fuel, and focus for individual fire. But you cease to
+acknowledge this, and you refuse to accept the help of the lesser mind,
+if you require the work to be all executed in a great manner. Your
+business is to think out all of it nobly, to dictate the expression of
+it as far as your dictation can assist the less elevated intelligence:
+then to leave this, aided and taught as far as may be, to its own simple
+act and effort; and to rejoice in its simplicity if not in its power,
+and in its vitality if not in its science.
+
+Sec. XIV. We have, then, three orders of ornament, classed according to
+the degrees of correspondence of the executive and conceptive minds. We
+have the servile ornament, in which the executive is absolutely subjected
+to the inventive,--the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more
+especially Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its
+submissiveness. Then we have the mediaeval system, in which the mind of
+the inferior workman is recognised, and has full room for action, but is
+guided and ennobled by the ruling mind. This is the truly Christian and
+only perfect system. Finally, we have ornaments expressing the endeavor
+to equalise the executive and inventive,--endeavor which is Renaissance
+and revolutionary, and destructive of all noble architecture.
+
+Sec. XV. Thus far, then, of the incompleteness or simplicity of execution
+necessary in architectural ornament, as referred to the mind. Next we
+have to consider that which is required when it is referred to the
+sight, and the various modifications of treatment which are rendered
+necessary by the variation of its distance from the eye. I say
+necessary: not merely expedient or economical. It is foolish to carve
+what is to be seen forty feet off with the delicacy which the eye
+demands within two yards; not merely because such delicacy is lost in
+the distance, but because it is a great deal worse than lost:--the
+delicate work has actually worse effect in the distance than rough work.
+This is a fact well known to painters, and, for the most part,
+acknowledged by the critics of painters, namely, that there is a certain
+distance for which a picture is painted; and that the finish, which is
+delightful if that distance be small, is actually injurious if the
+distance be great: and, moreover, that there is a particular method of
+handling which none but consummate artists reach, which has its effects
+at the intended distance, and is altogether hieroglyphical and
+unintelligible at any other. This, I say, is acknowledged in painting,
+but it is not practically acknowledged in architecture; nor until my
+attention was especially directed to it, had I myself any idea of the
+care with which this great question was studied by the mediaeval
+architects. On my first careful examination of the capitals of the upper
+arcade of the Ducal Palace at Venice, I was induced, by their singular
+inferiority of workmanship, to suppose them posterior to those of the
+lower arcade. It was not till I discovered that some of those which I
+thought the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I
+obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation; a system
+which I afterwards found carried out in every building of the great
+times which I had opportunity of examining.
+
+Sec. XVI. There are two distinct modes in which this adaptation is
+effected. In the first, the same designs which are delicately worked
+when near the eye, are rudely cut, and have far fewer details when they
+are removed from it. In this method it is not always easy to distinguish
+economy from skill, or slovenliness from science. But, in the second
+method, a different design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of
+simpler lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of
+course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of purpose;
+but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both kinds when they are
+seen close; in the first, a bald execution of a perfect design; the
+second, a baldness of design with perfect execution. And in these very
+imperfections lies the admirableness of the ornament.
+
+Sec. XVII. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adaptation to the
+distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of observance of natural
+law. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far
+away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture
+of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent
+rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for
+their place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into
+vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look
+at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light
+is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The
+child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and
+heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is
+to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the
+depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it
+set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and
+bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the
+far-off sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away
+about its foundations, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the
+vast aerial shore, is at last met by the Eternal "Here shall thy waves
+be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its
+purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened
+into wasting snow, the storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes
+of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.
+
+Nor in such instances as these alone, though strangely enough, the
+discrepancy between apparent and actual beauty is greater in proportion
+to the unapproachableness of the object, is the law observed. For every
+distance from the eye there is a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different
+system of lines of form; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that
+distance, and for that alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of
+beauty is lost, and another succeeds, to be disorganised and reduced to
+strange and incomprehensible means and appliances in its turn. If you
+desire to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain,
+you must not ascend upon its sides. All is there disorder and accident,
+or seems so; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and thither;
+ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the ground; fallen
+fragments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. Retire
+from it, and, as your eye commands it more and more, as you see the
+ruined mountain world with a wider glance, behold! dim sympathies begin
+to busy themselves in the disjointed mass; line binds itself into
+stealthy fellowship with line; group by group, the helpless fragments
+gather themselves into ordered companies; new captains of hosts and
+masses of battalions become visible, one by one, and far away answers of
+foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos is seen
+risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap
+could now be spared from the mystic whole.
+
+Sec. XVIII. Now it is indeed true that where nature loses one kind of
+beauty, as you approach it, she substitutes another; this is worthy of
+her infinite power: and, as we shall see, art can sometimes follow her
+even in doing this; but all I insist upon at present is, that the
+several effects of nature are each worked with means referred to a
+particular distance, and producing their effect at that distance only.
+Take a singular and marked instance: When the sun rises behind a ridge
+of pines, and those pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two,
+against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches, and all,
+becomes one frostwork of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved
+against the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some distance on either
+side of the sun.[71] Now suppose that a person who had never seen pines
+were, for the first time in his life, to see them under this strange
+aspect, and, reasoning as to the means by which such effect could be
+produced, laboriously to approach the eastern ridge, how would he be
+amazed to find that the fiery spectres had been produced by trees with
+swarthy and grey trunks, and dark green leaves! We, in our simplicity,
+if we had been required to produce such an appearance, should have built
+up trees of chased silver, with trunks of glass, and then been
+grievously amazed to find that, at two miles off, neither silver nor
+glass were any more visible; but nature knew better, and prepared for
+her fairy work with the strong branches and dark leaves, in her own
+mysterious way.
+
+Sec. XIX. Now this is exactly what you have to do with your good ornament.
+It may be that it is capable of being approached, as well as likely to
+be seen far away, and then it ought to have microscopic qualities, as
+the pine leaves have, which will bear approach. But your calculation of
+its purpose is for a glory to be produced at a given distance; it may be
+here, or may be there, but it is a _given_ distance; and the excellence
+of the ornament depends upon its fitting that distance, and being seen
+better there than anywhere else, and having a particular function and
+form which it can only discharge and assume there. You are never to say
+that ornament has great merit because "you cannot see the beauty of it
+here;" but, it has great merit because "you _can_ see its beauty _here
+only_." And to give it this merit is just about as difficult a task as I
+could well set you. I have above noted the two ways in which it is done:
+the one, being merely rough cutting, may be passed over; the other,
+which is scientific alteration of design, falls, itself, into two great
+branches, Simplification and Emphasis.
+
+A word or two is necessary on each of these heads.
+
+Sec. XX. When an ornamental work is intended to be seen near, if its
+composition be indeed fine, the subdued and delicate portions of the
+design lead to, and unite, the energetic parts, and those energetic
+parts form with the rest a whole, in which their own immediate relations
+to each other are not perceived. Remove this design to a distance, and
+the connecting delicacies vanish, the energies alone remain, now either
+disconnected altogether, or assuming with each other new relations,
+which, not having been intended by the designer, will probably be
+painful. There is a like, and a more palpable, effect, in the retirement
+of a band of music in which the instruments are of very unequal powers;
+the fluting and fifeing expire, the drumming remains, and that in a
+painful arrangement, as demanding something which is unheard. In like
+manner, as the designer at arm's length removes or elevates his work,
+fine gradations, and roundings, and incidents, vanish, and a totally
+unexpected arrangement is established between the remainder of the
+markings, certainly confused, and in all probability painful.
+
+Sec. XXI. The art of architectural design is therefore, first, the
+preparation for this beforehand, the rejection of all the delicate
+passages as worse than useless, and the fixing the thought upon the
+arrangement of the features which will remain visible far away. Nor does
+this always imply a diminution of resource; for, while it may be assumed
+as a law that fine modulation of surface in light becomes quickly
+invisible as the object retires, there are a softness and mystery given
+to the harder markings, which enable them to be safely used as media of
+expression. There is an exquisite example of this use, in the head of
+the Adam of the Ducal Palace. It is only at the height of 17 or 18 feet
+above the eye; nevertheless, the sculptor felt it was no use to trouble
+himself about drawing the corners of the mouth, or the lines of the
+lips, delicately, at that distance; his object has been to mark them
+clearly, and to prevent accidental shadows from concealing them, or
+altering their expression. The lips are cut thin and sharp, so that
+their line cannot be mistaken, and a good deep drill-hole struck into
+the angle of the mouth; the eye is anxious and questioning, and one is
+surprised, from below, to perceive a kind of darkness in the iris of it,
+neither like color, nor like a circular furrow. The expedient can only
+be discovered by ascending to the level of the head; it is one which
+would have been quite inadmissible except in distant work, six
+drill-holes cut into the iris, round a central one for the pupil.
+
+Sec. XXII. By just calculation, like this, of the means at our disposal,
+by beautiful arrangement of the prominent features, and by choice of
+different subjects for different places, choosing the broadest forms for
+the farthest distance, it is possible to give the impression, not only
+of perfection, but of an exquisite delicacy, to the most distant
+ornament. And this is the true sign of the right having been done, and
+the utmost possible power attained:--The spectator should be satisfied
+to stay in his place, feeling the decoration, wherever it may be,
+equally rich, full, and lovely: not desiring to climb the steeples in
+order to examine it, but sure that he has it all, where he is. Perhaps
+the capitals of the cathedral of Genoa are the best instances of
+absolute perfection in this kind: seen from below, they appear as rich
+as the frosted silver of the Strada degli Orefici; and the nearer you
+approach them, the less delicate they seem.
+
+Sec. XXIII. This is, however, not the only mode, though the best, in which
+ornament is adapted for distance. The other is emphasis,--the unnatural
+insisting upon explanatory lines, where the subject would otherwise
+become unintelligible. It is to be remembered that, by a deep and narrow
+incision, an architect has the power, at least in sunshine, of drawing a
+black line on stone, just as vigorously as it can be drawn with chalk on
+grey paper; and that he may thus, wherever and in the degree that he
+chooses, substitute _chalk sketching_ for sculpture. They are curiously
+mingled by the Romans. The bas-reliefs of the Arc d'Orange are small,
+and would be confused, though in bold relief, if they depended for
+intelligibility on the relief only; but each figure is outlined by a
+strong _incision_ at its edge into the background, and all the ornaments
+on the armor are simply drawn with incised lines, and not cut out at
+all. A similar use of lines is made by the Gothic nations in all their
+early sculpture, and with delicious effect. Now, to draw a mere
+pattern--as, for instance, the bearings of a shield--with these simple
+incisions, would, I suppose, occupy an able sculptor twenty minutes or
+half an hour; and the pattern is then clearly seen, under all
+circumstances of light and shade; there can be no mistake about it, and
+no missing it. To carve out the bearings in due and finished relief
+would occupy a long summer's day, and the results would be feeble and
+indecipherable in the best lights, and in some lights totally and
+hopelessly invisible, ignored, non-existant. Now the Renaissance
+architects, and our modern ones, despise the simple expedient of the
+rough Roman or barbarian. They do not care to be understood. They care
+only to speak finely, and be thought great orators, if one could only
+hear them. So I leave you to choose between the old men, who took
+minutes to tell things plainly, and the modern men, who take days to
+tell them unintelligibly.
+
+Sec. XXIV. All expedients of this kind, both of simplification and energy,
+for the expression of details at a distance where their actual forms
+would have been invisible, but more especially this linear method, I
+shall call Proutism; for the greatest master of the art in modern times
+has been Samuel Prout. He actually takes up buildings of the later times
+in which the ornament has been too refined for its place, and
+translates it into the energised linear ornament of earlier art: and to
+this power of taking the life and essence of decoration, and putting it
+into a perfectly intelligible form, when its own fulness would have been
+confused, is owing the especial power of his drawings. Nothing can be
+more closely analogous than the method with which an old Lombard uses
+his chisel, and that with which Prout uses the reed-pen; and we shall
+see presently farther correspondence in their feeling about the
+enrichment of luminous surfaces.
+
+Sec. XXV. Now, all that has been hitherto said refers to ornament whose
+distance is fixed, or nearly so; as when it is at any considerable
+height from the ground, supposing the spectator to desire to see it, and
+to get as near it as he can. But the distance of ornament is never fixed
+to the _general_ spectator. The tower of a cathedral is bound to look
+well, ten miles off, or five miles, or half a mile, or within fifty
+yards. The ornaments of its top have fixed distances, compared with
+those of its base; but quite unfixed distances in their relation to the
+great world: and the ornaments of the base have no fixed distance at
+all. They are bound to look well from the other side of the cathedral
+close, and to look equally well, or better, as we enter the cathedral
+door. How are we to manage this?
+
+Sec. XXVI. As nature manages it. I said above, Sec. XVII., that for
+every distance from the eye there was a different system of form in all
+natural objects: this is to be so then in architecture. The lesser
+ornament is to be grafted on the greater, and third or fourth orders of
+ornaments upon this again, as need may be, until we reach the limits of
+possible sight; each order of ornament being adapted for a different
+distance: first, for example, the great masses,--the buttresses and
+stories and black windows and broad cornices of the tower, which give it
+make, and organism, as it rises over the horizon, half a score of miles
+away: then the traceries and shafts and pinnacles, which give it
+richness as we approach: then the niches and statues and knobs and
+flowers, which we can only see when we stand beneath it. At this third
+order of ornament, we may pause, in the upper portions; but on the
+roofs of the niches, and the robes of the statues, and the rolls of the
+mouldings, comes a fourth order of ornament, as delicate as the eye can
+follow, when any of these features may be approached.
+
+Sec. XXVII. All good ornamentation is thus arborescent, as it were,
+one class of it branching out of another and sustained by it; and its
+nobility consists in this, that whatever order or class of it we may be
+contemplating, we shall find it subordinated to a greater, simpler, and
+more powerful; and if we then contemplate the greater order, we shall
+find it again subordinated to a greater still; until the greatest can
+only be quite grasped by retiring to the limits of distance commanding
+it.
+
+And if this subordination be not complete, the ornament is bad: if the
+figurings and chasings and borderings of a dress be not subordinated to
+the folds of it,--if the folds are not subordinate to the action and
+mass of the figure,--if this action and mass not to the divisions of the
+recesses and shafts among which it stands,--if these not to the shadows
+of the great arches and buttresses of the whole building, in each case
+there is error; much more if all be contending with each other and
+striving for attention at the same time.
+
+Sec. XXVIII. It is nevertheless evident, that, however perfect this
+distribution, there cannot be orders adapted to _every_ distance of the
+spectator. Between the ranks of ornament there must always be a bold
+separation; and there must be many intermediate distances, where we are
+too far off to see the lesser rank clearly, and yet too near to grasp
+the next higher rank wholly: and at all these distances the spectator
+will feel himself ill-placed, and will desire to go nearer or farther
+away. This must be the case in all noble work, natural or artificial. It
+is exactly the same with respect to Rouen cathedral or the Mont Blanc.
+We like to see them from the other side of the Seine, or of the lake of
+Geneva; from the Marche aux Fleurs, or the Valley of Chamouni; from the
+parapets of the apse, or the crags of the Montagne de la Cote: but there
+are intermediate distances which dissatisfy us in either case, and from
+which one is in haste either to advance or to retire.
+
+Sec. XXIX. Directly opposed to this ordered, disciplined, well officered
+and variously ranked ornament, this type of divine, and therefore of all
+good human government, is the democratic ornament, in which all is
+equally influential, and has equal office and authority; that is to say,
+none of it any office nor authority, but a life of continual struggle
+for independence and notoriety, or of gambling for chance regards. The
+English perpendicular work is by far the worst of this kind that I know;
+its main idea, or decimal fraction of an idea, being to cover its walls
+with dull, successive, eternity of reticulation, to fill with equal
+foils the equal interstices between the equal bars, and charge the
+interminable blanks with statues and rosettes, invisible at a distance,
+and uninteresting near.
+
+The early Lombardic, Veronese, and Norman work is the exact reverse of
+this; being divided first into large masses, and these masses covered
+with minute chasing and surface work, which fill them with interest, and
+yet do not disturb nor divide their greatness. The lights are kept broad
+and bright, and yet are found on near approach to be charged with
+intricate design. This, again, is a part of the great system of
+treatment which I shall hereafter call "Proutism;" much of what is
+thought mannerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of
+his determined resolution that minor details shall never break up his
+large masses of light.
+
+Sec. XXX. Such are the main principles to be observed in the adaptation of
+ornament to the sight. We have lastly to inquire by what method, and in
+what quantities, the ornament, thus adapted to mental contemplation, and
+prepared for its physical position, may most wisely be arranged. I think
+the method ought first to be considered, and the quantity last; for the
+advisable quantity depends upon the method.
+
+Sec. XXXI. It was said above, that the proper treatment or arrangement of
+ornament was that which expressed the laws and ways of Deity. Now, the
+subordination of visible orders to each other, just noted, is one
+expression of these. But there may also--must also--be a subordination
+and obedience of the parts of each order to some visible law, out of
+itself, but having reference to itself only (not to any upper order):
+some law which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain.
+
+In the tenth chapter of the second volume of "Modern Painters," the
+reader will find that I traced one part of the beauty of God's creation
+to the expression of a _self_-restrained liberty: that is to say, the
+image of that perfection of _divine_ action, which, though free to work
+in arbitrary methods, works always in consistent methods, called by us
+Laws.
+
+Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural objects are to
+become subjects of the art of man, their perfect treatment is an image
+of the perfection of _human_ action: a voluntary submission to divine
+law.
+
+It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose originality of
+thought I have before expressed my obligations, Mr. Newton, that the
+Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures, represented to the Greek
+mind the law of Fate, confining human action within limits not to be
+overpassed. I do not believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this;
+but the instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in
+some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessities of
+good ornament.[72] And this expression is heightened, rather than
+diminished, when some portion of the design slightly breaks the law to
+which the rest is subjected; it is like expressing the use of miracles
+in the divine government; or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing
+of a law, generally imperative, in compliance with some more imperative
+need--the hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringement of a
+general law was sometimes sought by the mediaeval workmen, I shall be
+frequently able to point out to the reader; but I remember just now a
+most curious instance, in an archivolt of a house in the Corte del Remer
+close to the Rialto at Venice. It is composed of a wreath of
+flower-work--a constant Byzantine design--with an animal in each coil;
+the whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or eating,
+scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within its coil, and
+between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not the tip of a tail,
+overpasses this appointed line, through a series of some five-and-twenty
+or thirty animals; until, on a sudden, and by mutual consent, two little
+beasts (not looking, for the rest, more rampant than the others), one on
+each side, lay their small paws across the enclosing fillet at exactly
+the same point of its course, and thus break the continuity of its line.
+Two ears of corn, or leaves, do the same thing in the mouldings round
+the northern door of the Baptistery at Florence.
+
+Sec. XXXII. Observe, however, and this is of the utmost possible
+importance, that the value of this type does not consist in the mere
+shutting of the ornament into a certain space, but in the acknowledgment
+_by_ the ornament of the fitness of the limitation--of its own perfect
+willingness to submit to it; nay, of a predisposition in itself to fall
+into the ordained form, without any direct expression of the command to
+do so; an anticipation of the authority, and an instant and willing
+submission to it, in every fibre and spray: not merely _willing_, but
+_happy_ submission, as being pleased rather than vexed to have so
+beautiful a law suggested to it, and one which to follow is so justly in
+accordance with its own nature. You must not cut out a branch of
+hawthorn as it grows, and rule a triangle round it, and suppose that it
+is then submitted to law. Not a bit of it. It is only put in a cage, and
+will look as if it must get out, for its life, or wither in the
+confinement. But the spirit of triangle must be put into the hawthorn.
+It must suck in isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and
+spray, must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon them,
+for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and to grow all the
+stronger and more gloriously. And though there may be a transgression
+here and there, and an adaptation to some other need, or a reaching
+forth to some other end greater even than the triangle, yet this liberty
+is to be always accepted under a solemn sense of special permission; and
+when the full form is reached and the entire submission expressed, and
+every blossom has a thrilling sense of its responsibility down into its
+tiniest stamen, you may take your terminal line away if you will. No
+need for it any more. The commandment is written on the heart of the
+thing.
+
+Sec. XXXIII. Then, besides this obedience to external law, there is the
+obedience to internal headship, which constitutes the unity of ornament,
+of which I think enough has been said for my present purpose in the
+chapter on Unity in the second vol. of "Modern Painters." But I hardly
+know whether to arrange as an expression of a divine law, or a
+representation of a physical fact, the alternation of shade with light
+which, in equal succession, forms one of the chief elements of
+_continuous_ ornament, and in some peculiar ones, such as dentils and
+billet mouldings, is the source of their only charm. The opposition of
+good and evil, the antagonism of the entire human system (so ably worked
+out by Lord Lindsay), the alternation of labor with rest, the mingling
+of life with death, or the actual physical fact of the division of light
+from darkness, and of the falling and rising of night and day, are all
+typified or represented by these chains of shade and light of which the
+eye never wearies, though their true meaning may never occur to the
+thoughts.
+
+Sec. XXXIV. The next question respecting the arrangement of ornament is
+one closely connected also with its quantity. The system of creation is
+one in which "God's creatures leap not, but express a feast, where all the
+guests sit close, and nothing wants." It is also a feast, where there is
+nothing redundant. So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must
+never be any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a
+single member, or fragment of a member, which could be spared. Whatever
+has nothing to do, whatever could go without being missed, is not
+ornament; it is deformity and encumbrance. Away with it. And, on the
+other hand, care must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we
+permit, in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate
+it, as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and curdled
+upon some points, and left the rest of the building whey. It is very
+difficult to give the rules, or analyse the feelings, which should
+direct us in this matter: for some shafts may be carved and others left
+unfinished, and that with advantage; some windows may be jewelled like
+Aladdin's, and one left plain, and still with advantage; the door or
+doors, or a single turret, or the whole western facade of a church, or
+the apse or transept, may be made special subjects of decoration, and
+the rest left plain, and still sometimes with advantage. But in all such
+cases there is either sign of that feeling which I advocated in the
+First Chapter of the "Seven Lamps," the desire of rather doing some
+portion of the building as we would have it, and leaving the rest plain,
+than doing the whole imperfectly; or else there is choice made of some
+important feature, to which, as more honorable than the rest, the
+decoration is confined. The evil is when, without system, and without
+preference of the nobler members, the ornament alternates between sickly
+luxuriance and sudden blankness. In many of our Scotch and English
+abbeys, especially Melrose, this is painfully felt; but the worst
+instance I have ever seen is the window in the side of the arch under
+the Wellington statue, next St. George's Hospital. In the first place, a
+window has no business there at all; in the second, the bars of the
+window are not the proper place for decoration, especially _wavy_
+decoration, which one instantly fancies of cast iron; in the third, the
+richness of the ornament is a mere patch and eruption upon the wall, and
+one hardly knows whether to be most irritated at the affectation of
+severity in the rest, or at the vain luxuriance of the dissolute
+parallelogram.
+
+Sec. XXXV. Finally, as regards quantity of ornament I have already said,
+again and again, you cannot have too much if it be good; that is, if it
+be thoroughly united and harmonised by the laws hitherto insisted upon.
+But you may easily have too much if you have more than you have sense to
+manage. For with every added order of ornament increases the difficulty
+of discipline. It is exactly the same as in war: you cannot, as an
+abstract law, have too many soldiers, but you may easily have more than
+the country is able to sustain, or than your generalship is competent
+to command. And every regiment which you cannot manage will, on the day
+of battle, be in your way, and encumber the movements it is not in
+disposition to sustain.
+
+Sec. XXXVI. As an architect, therefore, you are modestly to measure
+your capacity of governing ornament. Remember, its essence,--its being
+ornament at all, consists in its being governed. Lose your authority
+over it, let it command you, or lead you, or dictate to you in any wise,
+and it is an offence, an incumbrance, and a dishonor. And it is always
+ready to do this; wild to get the bit in its teeth, and rush forth on
+its own devices. Measure, therefore, your strength; and as long as there
+is no chance of mutiny, add soldier to soldier, battalion to battalion;
+but be assured that all are heartily in the cause, and that there is not
+one of whose position you are ignorant, or whose service you could
+spare.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [70] Vide "Seven Lamps," Chap. IV. Sec. 34.
+
+  [71] Shakspeare and Wordsworth (I think they only) have noticed this,
+    Shakspeare, in Richard II.:--
+
+      "But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
+       He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines."
+
+    And Wordsworth, in one of his minor poems, on leaving Italy:
+
+      "My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pines
+       On the steep's lofty verge--how it blackened the air!
+       But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines
+       With threads that seem part of his own silver hair."
+
+  [72] Some valuable remarks on this subject will be found in a notice
+    of the "Seven Lamps" in the British Quarterly for August, 1849. I
+    think, however, the writer attaches too great importance to one out
+    of many ornamental necessities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  THE ANGLE.
+
+
+Sec. I. We have now examined the treatment and specific kinds of ornament
+at our command. We have lastly to note the fittest places for their
+disposal. Not but that all kinds of ornament are used in all places; but
+there are some parts of the building, which, without ornament, are more
+painful than others, and some which wear ornament more gracefully than
+others; so that, although an able architect will always be finding out
+some new and unexpected modes of decoration, and fitting his ornament
+into wonderful places where it is least expected, there are,
+nevertheless, one or two general laws which may be noted respecting
+every one of the parts of a building, laws not (except a few) imperative
+like those of construction, but yet generally expedient, and good to be
+understood, if it were only that we might enjoy the brilliant methods in
+which they are sometimes broken. I shall note, however, only a few of
+the simplest; to trace them into their ramifications, and class in due
+order the known or possible methods of decoration for each part of a
+building, would alone require a large volume, and be, I think, a
+somewhat useless work; for there is often a high pleasure in the very
+unexpectedness of the ornament, which would be destroyed by too
+elaborate an arrangement of its kinds.
+
+Sec. II. I think that the reader must, by this time, so thoroughly
+understand the connection of the parts of a building, that I may class
+together, in treating of decoration, several parts which I kept separate
+in speaking of construction. Thus I shall put under one head (A) the
+base of the wall and of the shaft; then (B) the wall veil and shaft
+itself; then (C) the cornice and capital; then (D) the jamb and
+archivolt, including the arches both over shafts and apertures, and the
+jambs of apertures, which are closely connected with their archivolts;
+finally (E) the roof, including the real roof, and the minor roofs or
+gables of pinnacles and arches. I think, under these divisions, all may
+be arranged which is necessary to be generally stated; for tracery
+decorations or aperture fillings are but smaller forms of application of
+the arch, and the cusps are merely smaller spandrils, while buttresses
+have, as far as I know, no specific ornament. The best are those which
+have least; and the little they have resolves itself into pinnacles,
+which are common to other portions of the building, or into small
+shafts, arches, and niches, of still more general applicability. We
+shall therefore have only five divisions to examine in succession, from
+foundation to roof.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LI.]
+
+Sec. III. But in the decoration of these several parts, certain minor
+conditions of ornament occur which are of perfectly general application.
+For instance, whether, in archivolts, jambs, or buttresses, or in square
+piers, or at the extremity of the entire building, we necessarily have
+the awkward (moral or architectural) feature, the _corner_. How to turn
+a corner gracefully becomes, therefore, a perfectly general question; to
+be examined without reference to any particular part of the edifice.
+
+Sec. IV. Again, the furrows and ridges by which bars of parallel light and
+shade are obtained, whether these are employed in arches, or jambs, or
+bases, or cornices, must of necessity present one or more of six forms:
+square projection, _a_ (Fig. LI.), or square recess, _b_, sharp
+projection, _c_, or sharp recess, _d_, curved projection, _e_, or curved
+recess, _f_. What odd curves the projection or recess may assume, or how
+these different conditions may be mixed and run into one another, is
+not our present business. We note only the six distinct kinds or types.
+
+Now, when these ridges or furrows are on a small scale they often
+themselves constitute all the ornament required for larger features, and
+are left smooth cut; but on a very large scale they are apt to become
+insipid, and they require a sub-ornament of their own, the consideration
+of which is, of course, in great part, general, and irrespective of the
+place held by the mouldings in the building itself: which consideration
+I think we had better undertake first of all.
+
+Sec. V. But before we come to particular examination of these minor forms,
+let us see how far we can simplify it. Look back to Fig. LI., above.
+There are distinguished in it six forms of moulding. Of these, _c_ is
+nothing but a small corner; but, for convenience sake, it is better to
+call it an edge, and to consider its decoration together with that of
+the member _a_, which is called a fillet; while _e_, which I shall call
+a roll (because I do not choose to assume that it shall be only of the
+semicircular section here given), is also best considered together with
+its relative recess, _f_; and because the shape of a recess is of no
+great consequence, I shall class all the three recesses together, and we
+shall thus have only three subjects for separate consideration:--
+
+  1. The Angle.
+  2. The Edge and Fillet.
+  3. The Roll and Recess.
+
+Sec. VI. There are two other general forms which may probably occur to the
+reader's mind, namely, the ridge (as of a roof), which is a corner laid
+on its back, or sloping,--a supine corner, decorated in a very different
+manner from a stiff upright corner: and the point, which is a
+concentrated corner, and has wonderfully elaborate decorations all to
+its insignificant self, finials, and spikes, and I know not what more.
+But both these conditions are so closely connected with roofs (even the
+cusp finial being a kind of pendant to a small roof), that I think it
+better to class them and their ornament under the head of roof
+decoration, together with the whole tribe of crockets and bosses; so
+that we shall be here concerned only with the three subjects above
+distinguished: and, first, the corner or Angle.
+
+Sec. VII. The mathematician knows there are many kinds of angles; but the
+one we have principally to deal with now, is that which the reader may
+very easily conceive as the corner of a square house, or square
+anything. It is of course the one of most frequent occurrence; and its
+treatment, once understood, may, with slight modification, be referred
+to other corners, sharper or blunter, or with curved sides.
+
+Sec. VIII. Evidently the first and roughest idea which would occur to any
+one who found a corner troublesome, would be to cut it off. This is a
+very summary and tyrannical proceeding, somewhat barbarous, yet
+advisable if nothing else can be done: an amputated corner is said to be
+chamfered. It can, however, evidently be cut off in three ways: 1. with
+a concave cut, _a_; 2. with a straight cut, _b_; 3. with a convex cut,
+_c_, Fig. LII.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LII.]
+
+The first two methods, the most violent and summary, have the apparent
+disadvantage that we get by them,--two corners instead of one; much
+milder corners, however, and with a different light and shade between
+them; so that both methods are often very expedient. You may see the
+straight chamfer (_b_) on most lamp posts, and pillars at railway
+stations, it being the easiest to cut: the concave chamfer requires more
+care, and occurs generally in well-finished but simple architecture--very
+beautifully in the small arches of the Broletto of Como, Plate V.; and
+the straight chamfer in architecture of every kind, very constantly in
+Norman cornices and arches, as in Fig. 2, Plate IV., at Sens.
+
+Sec. IX. The third, or convex chamfer, as it is the gentlest mode of
+treatment, so (as in medicine and morals) it is very generally the best.
+For while the two other methods produce two corners instead of one, this
+gentle chamfer does verily get rid of the corner altogether, and
+substitutes a soft curve in its place.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LIII.]
+
+But it has, in the form above given, this grave disadvantage, that it
+looks as if the corner had been rubbed or worn off, blunted by time and
+weather, and in want of sharpening again. A great deal often depends,
+and in such a case as this, everything depends, on the _Voluntariness_
+of the ornament. The work of time is beautiful on surfaces, but not on
+edges intended to be sharp. Even if we needed them blunt, we should not
+like them blunt on compulsion; so, to show that the bluntness is our own
+ordaining, we will put a slight incised line to mark off the rounding,
+and show that it goes no farther than we choose. We shall thus have the
+section _a_, Fig. LIII.; and this mode of turning an angle is one of the
+very best ever invented. By enlarging and deepening the incision, we get
+in succession the forms _b_, _c_, _d_; and by describing a small equal
+arc on each of the sloping lines of these figures, we get _e_, _f_, _g_,
+_h_.
+
+Sec. X. I do not know whether these mouldings are called by architects
+chamfers or beads; but I think _bead_ a bad word for a continuous
+moulding, and the proper sense of the word chamfer is fixed by Spenser
+as descriptive not merely of truncation, but of trench or furrow:--
+
+  "Tho gin you, fond flies, the cold to scorn,
+   And, crowing in pipes made of green corn,
+   You thinken to be lords of the year;
+   But eft when ye count you freed from fear,
+   Comes the breme winter with chamfred brows,
+   Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows."
+
+So I shall call the above mouldings beaded chamfers, when there is any
+chance of confusion with the plain chamfer, _a_, or _b_, of Fig. LII.:
+and when there is no such chance, I shall use the word chamfer only.
+
+Sec. XI. Of those above given, _b_ is the constant chamfer of Venice, and
+_a_ of Verona: _a_ being the grandest and best, and having a peculiar
+precision and quaintness of effect about it. I found it twice in Venice,
+used on the sharp angle, as at _a_ and _b_, Fig. LIV., _a_ being from
+the angle of a house on the Rio San Zulian, and _b_ from the windows of
+the church of San Stefano.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LIV.]
+
+Sec. XII. There is, however, evidently another variety of the chamfers,
+_f_ and _g_, Fig. LIII., formed by an unbroken curve instead of two
+curves, as _c_, Fig. LIV.; and when this, or the chamfer _d_, Fig. LIII.,
+is large, it is impossible to say whether they have been devised from the
+incised angle, or from small shafts set in a nook, as at _e_, Fig. LIV.,
+or in the hollow of the curved chamfer, as _d_, Fig. LIV. In general,
+however, the shallow chamfers, _a_, _b_, _e_, and _f_, Fig. LIII., are
+peculiar to southern work; and may be assumed to have been derived from
+the incised angle, while the deep chamfers, _c_, _d_, _g_, _h_, are
+characteristic of northern work, and may be partly derived or imitated
+from the angle shaft; while, with the usual extravagance of the northern
+architects, they are cut deeper and deeper until we arrive at the
+condition _f_, Fig. LIV., which is the favorite chamfer at Bourges and
+Bayeux, and in other good French work.
+
+I have placed in the Appendix[73] a figure belonging to this subject,
+but which cannot interest the general reader, showing the number of
+possible chamfers with a roll moulding of given size.
+
+Sec. XIII. If we take the plain chamfer, _b_, of Fig. LII., on a large
+scale, as at _a_, Fig. LV., and bead both its edges, cutting away the
+parts there shaded, we shall have a form much used in richly decorated
+Gothic, both in England and Italy. It might be more simply described as
+the chamfer _a_ of Fig. LII., with an incision on each edge; but the
+part here shaded is often worked into ornamental forms, not being
+entirely cut away.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LV.]
+
+Sec. XIV. Many other mouldings, which at first sight appear very
+elaborate, are nothing more than a chamfer, with a series of small echoes
+of it on each side, dying away with a ripple on the surface of the wall,
+as in _b_, Fig. LV., from Coutances (observe, here the white part is the
+solid stone, the shade is cut away).
+
+Chamfers of this kind are used on a small scale and in delicate work:
+the coarse chamfers are found on all scales: _f_ and _g_, Fig. LIII., in
+Venice, form the great angles of almost every Gothic palace; the roll
+being a foot or a foot and a half round, and treated as a shaft, with a
+capital and fresh base at every story, while the stones of which it is
+composed form alternate quoins in the brickwork beyond the chamfer
+curve. I need hardly say how much nobler this arrangement is than a
+common quoined angle; it gives a finish to the aspect of the whole pile
+attainable in no other way. And thus much may serve concerning angle
+decoration by chamfer.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [73] Appendix 23: "Varieties of Chamfer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  THE EDGE AND FILLET.
+
+
+Sec. I. The decoration of the angle by various forms of chamfer and bead,
+as above described, is the quietest method we can employ; too quiet,
+when great energy is to be given to the moulding, and impossible, when,
+instead of a bold angle, we have to deal with a small projecting edge,
+like _c_ in Fig. LI. In such cases we may employ a decoration, far ruder
+and easier in its simplest conditions than the bead, far more effective
+when not used in too great profusion; and of which the complete
+developments are the source of mouldings at once the most picturesque
+and most serviceable which the Gothic builders invented.
+
+Sec. II. The gunwales of the Venetian heavy barges being liable to
+somewhat rough collision with each other, and with the walls of the
+streets, are generally protected by a piece of timber, which projects in
+the form of the fillet, _a_, Fig. LI.; but which, like all other fillets,
+may, if we so choose, be considered as composed of two angles or edges,
+which the natural and most wholesome love of the Venetian boatmen for
+ornament, otherwise strikingly evidenced by their painted sails and
+glittering flag-vanes, will not suffer to remain wholly undecorated. The
+rough service of these timbers, however, will not admit of rich ornament,
+and the boatbuilder usually contents himself with cutting a series of
+notches in each edge, one series alternating with the other, as
+represented at 1, Plate IX.
+
+Sec. III. In that simple ornament, not as confined to Venetian boats,
+but as representative of a general human instinct to hack at an edge,
+demonstrated by all school-boys and all idle possessors of penknives or
+other cutting instruments on both sides of the Atlantic;--in that rude
+Venetian gunwale, I say, is the germ of all the ornament which has
+touched, with its rich successions of angular shadow, the portals and
+archivolts of nearly every early building of importance, from the North
+Cape to the Straits of Messina. Nor are the modifications of the first
+suggestion intricate. All that is generic in their character may be seen
+on Plate IX. at a glance.
+
+[Illustration: Plate IX.
+               EDGE DECORATION.]
+
+Sec. IV. Taking a piece of stone instead of timber, and enlarging the
+notches, until they meet each other, we have the condition 2, which is a
+moulding from the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark's. Now,
+considering this moulding as composed of two decorated edges, each edge
+will be reduced, by the meeting of the notches, to a series of
+four-sided pyramids (as marked off by the dotted lines), which, the
+notches here being shallow, will be shallow pyramids; but by deepening
+the notches, we get them as at 3, with a profile _a_, more or less
+steep. This moulding I shall always call "the plain dogtooth;" it is
+used in profusion in the Venetian and Veronese Gothic, generally set
+with its front to the spectator, as here at 3; but its effect may be
+much varied by placing it obliquely (4, and profile as at _b_); or with
+one side horizontal (5, and profile _c_). Of these three conditions, 3
+and 5 are exactly the same in reality, only differently placed; but in 4
+the pyramid is obtuse, and the inclination of its base variable, the
+upper side of it being always kept vertical. It is comparatively rare.
+Of the three, the last, 5, is far the most brilliant in effect, giving
+in the distance a zigzag form to the high light on it, and a full sharp
+shadow below. The use of this shadow is sufficiently seen by fig. 7 in
+this plate (the arch on the left, the number beneath it), in which these
+levelled dogteeth, with a small interval between each, are employed to
+set off by their vigor the delicacy of floral ornament above. This arch
+is the side of a niche from the tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, at
+Verona; and the value, as well as the distant expression of its
+dogtooth, may be seen by referring to Prout's beautiful drawing of this
+tomb in his "Sketches in France and Italy." I have before observed
+that this artist never fails of seizing the true and leading expression
+of whatever he touches: he has made this ornament the leading feature of
+the niche, expressing it, as in distance it is only expressible, by a
+zigzag.
+
+Sec. V. The reader may perhaps be surprised at my speaking so highly of
+this drawing, if he take the pains to compare Prout's symbolism of the
+work on the niche with the facts as they stand here in Plate IX. But the
+truth is that Prout has rendered the effect of the monument on the mind
+of the passer-by;--the effect it was intended to have on every man who
+turned the corner of the street beneath it: and in this sense there is
+actually more truth and likeness[74] in Prout's translation than in my
+fac-simile, made diligently by peering into the details from a ladder. I
+do not say that all the symbolism in Prout's Sketch is the best
+possible; but it is the best which any architectural draughtsman has yet
+invented; and in its application to special subjects it always shows
+curious internal evidence that the sketch has been made on the spot, and
+that the artist tried to draw what he saw, not to invent an attractive
+subject. I shall notice other instances of this hereafter.
+
+Sec. VI. The dogtooth, employed in this simple form, is, however, rather
+a foil for other ornament, than itself a satisfactory or generally
+available decoration. It is, however, easy to enrich it as we choose:
+taking up its simple form at 3, and describing the arcs marked by the
+dotted lines upon its sides, and cutting a small triangular cavity
+between them, we shall leave its ridges somewhat rudely representative
+of four leaves, as at 8, which is the section and front view of one of
+the Venetian stone cornices described above, Chap. XIV., Sec. IV., the
+figure 8 being here put in the hollow of the gutter. The dogtooth is put
+on the outer lower truncation, and is actually in position as fig. 5;
+but being always looked up to, is to the spectator as 3, and always
+rich and effective. The dogteeth are perhaps most frequently expanded
+to the width of fig. 9.
+
+Sec. VII. As in nearly all other ornaments previously described, so in
+this,--we have only to deepen the Italian cutting, and we shall get the
+Northern type. If we make the original pyramid somewhat steeper, and
+instead of lightly incising, cut it through, so as to have the leaves
+held only by their points to the base, we shall have the English
+dogtooth; somewhat vulgar in its piquancy, when compared with French
+mouldings of a similar kind.[75] It occurs, I think, on one house in
+Venice, in the Campo St. Polo; but the ordinary moulding, with light
+incisions, is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well as in the
+roof cornices.
+
+Sec. VIII. This being the simplest treatment of the pyramid, fig. 10, from
+the refectory of Wenlock Abbey, is an example of the simplest decoration
+of the recesses or inward angles between the pyramids; that is to say,
+of a simple hacked edge like one of those in fig. 2, the _cuts_ being
+taken up and decorated instead of the _points_. Each is worked into a
+small trefoiled arch, with an incision round it to mark its outline, and
+another slight incision above, expressing the angle of the first
+cutting. I said that the teeth in fig. 7 had in distance the effect of a
+zigzag: in fig. 10 this zigzag effect is seized upon and developed, but
+with the easiest and roughest work; the angular incision being a mere
+limiting line, like that described in Sec. IX. of the last chapter. But
+hence the farther steps to every condition of Norman ornament are self
+evident. I do not say that all of them arose from development of the
+dogtooth in this manner, many being quite independent inventions and
+uses of zigzag lines; still, they may all be referred to this simple
+type as their root and representative, that is to say, the mere hack of
+the Venetian gunwale, with a limiting line following the resultant
+zigzag.
+
+Sec. IX. Fig. 11 is a singular and much more artificial condition, cast
+in brick, from the church of the Frari, and given here only for future
+reference. Fig. 12, resulting from a fillet with the cuts on each of its
+edges interrupted by a bar, is a frequent Venetian moulding, and of
+great value; but the plain or leaved dogteeth have been the favorites,
+and that to such a degree, that even the Renaissance architects took
+them up; and the best bit of Renaissance design in Venice, the side of
+the Ducal Palace next the Bridge of Sighs, owes great part of its
+splendor to its foundation, faced with large flat dogteeth, each about a
+foot wide in the base, with their points truncated, and alternating with
+cavities which are their own negatives or casts.
+
+Sec. X. One other form of the dogtooth is of great importance in northern
+architecture, that produced by oblique cuts slightly curved, as in the
+margin, Fig. LVI. It is susceptible of the most fantastic and endless
+decoration; each of the resulting leaves being, in the early porches of
+Rouen and Lisieux, hollowed out and worked into branching tracery: and
+at Bourges, for distant effect, worked into plain leaves, or bold bony
+processes with knobs at the points, and near the spectator, into
+crouching demons and broad winged owls, and other fancies and
+intricacies, innumerable and inexpressible.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LVI.]
+
+Sec. XI. Thus much is enough to be noted respecting edge decoration.
+We were next to consider the fillet. Professor Willis has noticed an
+ornament, which he has called the Venetian dentil, "as the most
+universal ornament in its own district that ever I met with;" but has
+not noticed the reason for its frequency. It is nevertheless highly
+interesting.
+
+The whole early architecture of Venice is architecture of incrustation:
+this has not been enough noticed in its peculiar relation to that of the
+rest of Italy. There is, indeed, much incrusted architecture throughout
+Italy, in elaborate ecclesiastical work, but there is more which is
+frankly of brick, or thoroughly of stone. But the Venetian habitually
+incrusted his work with nacre; he built his houses, even the meanest, as
+if he had been a shell-fish,--roughly inside, mother-of-pearl on the
+surface: he was content, perforce, to gather the clay of the Brenta
+banks, and bake it into brick for his substance of wall; but he overlaid
+it with the wealth of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You
+might fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying sea
+had beaten upon till it coated it with marble: at first a dark
+city--washed white by the sea foam. And I told you before that it was
+also a city of shafts and arches, and that its dwellings were raised
+upon continuous arcades, among which the sea waves wandered. Hence the
+thoughts of its builders were early and constantly directed to the
+incrustation of arches.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LVII.]
+
+Sec. XII. In Fig. LVII. I have given two of these Byzantine stilted
+arches: the one on the right, _a_, as they now too often appear, in its
+bare brickwork; that on the left, with its alabaster covering, literally
+marble defensive armor, riveted together in pieces, which follow the
+contours of the building. Now, on the wall, these pieces are mere flat
+slabs cut to the arch outline; but under the soffit of the arch the
+marble mail is curved, often cut singularly thin, like bent tiles, and
+fitted together so that the pieces would sustain each other even without
+rivets. It is of course desirable that this thin sub-arch of marble
+should project enough to sustain the facing of the wall; and the reader
+will see, in Fig. LVII., that its edge forms a kind of narrow band round
+the arch (_b_), a band which the least enrichment would render a
+valuable decorative feature. Now this band is, of course, if the
+soffit-pieces project a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a
+mere fillet, like the wooden gunwale in Plate IX.; and the question is,
+how to enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dogtoothed, but
+the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth, and would not
+have used it here, if they had; for the dogtooth cannot be employed
+alone, especially on so principal an angle as this of the main arches,
+without giving to the whole building a peculiar look, which I can not
+otherwise describe than as being to the eye, exactly what untempered
+acid is to the tongue. The mere dogtooth is an _acid_ moulding, and can
+only be used in certain mingling with others, to give them piquancy;
+never alone. What, then, will be the next easiest method of giving
+interest to the fillet?
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LVIII.]
+
+Sec. XIII. Simply to make the incisions square instead of sharp, and to
+leave equal intervals of the square edge between them. Fig. LVIII. is
+one of the curved pieces of arch armor, with its edge thus treated; one
+side only being done at the bottom, to show the simplicity and ease of
+the work. This ornament gives force and interest to the edge of the
+arch, without in the least diminishing its quietness. Nothing was ever,
+nor could be ever invented, fitter for its purpose, or more easily cut.
+From the arch it therefore found its way into every position where the
+edge of a piece of stone projected, and became, from its constancy of
+occurrence in the latest Gothic as well as the earliest Byzantine, most
+truly deserving of the name of the "Venetian Dentil." Its complete
+intention is now, however, only to be seen in the pictures of Gentile
+Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio; for, like most of the rest of the
+mouldings of Venetian buildings, it was always either gilded or
+painted--often both, gold being laid on the faces of the dentils, and
+their recesses colored alternately red and blue.
+
+Sec. XIV. Observe, however, that the reason above given for the
+_universality_ of this ornament was by no means the reason of its
+_invention_. The Venetian dentil is a particular application (consequent
+on the incrusted character of Venetian architecture) of the general idea
+of dentil, which had been originally given by the Greeks, and realised
+both by them and by the Byzantines in many laborious forms, long before
+there was need of them for arch armor; and the lower half of Plate IX.
+will give some idea of the conditions which occur in the Romanesque of
+Venice, distinctly derived from the classical dentil; and of the gradual
+transition to the more convenient and simple type, the running-hand
+dentil, which afterwards became the characteristic of Venetian Gothic.
+No. 13[76] is the common dentiled cornice, which occurs repeatedly in
+St. Mark's; and, as late as the thirteenth century, a reduplication of
+it, forming the abaci of the capitals of the Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15
+is perhaps an earlier type; perhaps only one of more careless
+workmanship, from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca' Foscari: and it is
+interesting to compare it with fig. 14 from the Cathedral of Vienne, in
+South France. Fig. 17, from St. Mark's, and 18, from the apse of Murano,
+are two very early examples in which the future true Venetian dentil is
+already developed in method of execution, though the object is still
+only to imitate the classical one; and a rude imitation of the bead is
+joined with it in fig. 17. No. 16 indicates two examples of experimental
+forms: the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala, at Verona;
+the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the thirteenth century:
+19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly found in cast brick, and
+connecting the dentils with the dogteeth: 20 is a form introduced richly
+in the later Gothic, but of rare occurrence until the latter half of the
+thirteenth century. I shall call it the _gabled_ dentil. It is found in
+the greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several
+slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21, from the
+tomb of Pietro Cornaro, may serve as an example.
+
+Sec. XV. All the forms given in Plate IX. are of not unfrequent
+occurrence: varying much in size and depth, according to the expression of
+the work in which they occur; generally increasing in size in late work
+(the earliest dentils are seldom more than an inch or an inch and a half
+long: the fully developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as
+four or five in length, by one and a half in breadth); but they are all
+somewhat rare, compared to the true or armor dentil, above described. On
+the other hand, there are one or two unique conditions, which will be
+noted in the buildings where they occur.[77] The Ducal Palace furnishes
+three anomalies in the arch, dogtooth, and dentil: it has a hyperbolic
+arch, as noted above, Chap. X., Sec. XV.; it has a double-fanged dogtooth
+in the rings of the spiral shafts on its angles; and, finally, it has a
+dentil with concave sides, of which the section and two of the blocks,
+real size, are given in Plate XIV. The labor of obtaining this difficult
+profile has, however, been thrown away; for the effect of the dentil at
+ten feet distance is exactly the same as that of the usual form: and the
+reader may consider the dogtooth and dentil in that plate as fairly
+representing the common use of them in the Venetian Gothic.
+
+Sec. XVI. I am aware of no other form of fillet decoration requiring
+notice: in the Northern Gothic, the fillet is employed chiefly to give
+severity or flatness to mouldings supposed to be too much rounded, and
+is therefore generally plain. It is itself an ugly moulding, and, when
+thus employed, is merely a foil for others, of which, however, it at
+last usurped the place, and became one of the most painful features in
+the debased Gothic both of Italy and the North.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [74] I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the
+    light among the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this
+    sketch of Prout's, and the character of the wild and broken leaves,
+    half dead, on the stone of the foreground.
+
+  [75] Vide the "Seven Lamps," p. 122.
+
+  [76] The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of
+    each; the part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that
+    which is cut into dentils left.
+
+  [77] As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or
+    Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil,
+    entirely covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the
+    outside of the duomo of Bergamo; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as
+    the handle of a mace often is with nails, with massy dogteeth or
+    nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli palace of Bologna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  THE ROLL AND RECESS.
+
+
+Sec. I. I have classed these two means of architectural effect together,
+because the one is in most cases the negative of the other, and is used
+to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light; recess alternating with
+roll, not only in lateral, but in successive order; not merely side by
+side with each other, but interrupted the one by the other in their own
+lines. A recess itself has properly no decoration; but its depth gives
+value to the decoration which flanks, encloses, or interrupts it, and
+the form which interrupts it best is the roll.
+
+Sec. II. I use the word roll generally for any mouldings which present
+to the eye somewhat the appearance of being cylindrical, and look like
+round rods. When upright, they are in appearance, if not in fact, small
+shafts; and are a kind of bent shaft, even when used in archivolts and
+traceries;--when horizontal, they confuse themselves with cornices, and
+are, in fact, generally to be considered as the best means of drawing an
+architectural line in any direction, the soft curve of their side
+obtaining some shadow at nearly all times of the day, and that more
+tender and grateful to the eye than can be obtained either by an
+incision or by any other form of projection.
+
+Sec. III. Their decorative power is, however, too slight for rich work,
+and they frequently require, like the angle and the fillet, to be rendered
+interesting by subdivision or minor ornament of their own. When the roll
+is small, this is effected, exactly as in the case of the fillet, by
+cutting pieces out of it; giving in the simplest results what is called
+the Norman billet moulding: and when the cuts are given in couples, and
+the pieces rounded into spheres and almonds, we have the ordinary Greek
+bead, both of them too well known to require illustration. The Norman
+billet we shall not meet with in Venice; the bead constantly occurs in
+Byzantine, and of course in Renaissance work. In Plate IX., Fig. 17,
+there is a remarkable example of its early treatment, where the cuts in
+it are left sharp.
+
+Sec. IV. But the roll, if it be of any size, deserves better treatment.
+Its rounded surface is too beautiful to be cut away in notches; and it
+is rather to be covered with flat chasing or inlaid patterns. Thus
+ornamented, it gradually blends itself with the true shaft, both in the
+Romanesque work of the North, and in the Italian connected schools; and
+the patterns used for it are those used for shaft decoration in general.
+
+Sec. V. But, as alternating with the recess, it has a decoration peculiar
+to itself. We have often, in the preceding chapters, noted the fondness
+of the Northern builders for deep shade and hollowness in their
+mouldings; and in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps," the changes
+are described which reduced the massive roll mouldings of the early
+Gothic to a series of recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of
+these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us: it was,
+indeed, endlessly varied; but needlessly, for the value of a recess is
+in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form. But it was not in
+mere wanton indulgence of their love of shade that the Flamboyant
+builders deepened the furrows of their mouldings: they had found a means
+of decorating those furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire
+frame-work of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect
+of this decoration; where the ornament ceases, the frame-work is meagre
+and mean: but the ornament is, in the best examples of the style,
+unceasing.
+
+Sec. VI. It is, in fact, an ornament formed by the ghosts or anatomies of
+the old shafts, left in the furrows which had taken their place. Every
+here and there, a fragment of a roll or shaft is left in the recess or
+furrow: a billet-moulding on a huge scale, but a billet-moulding reduced
+to a skeleton; for the fragments of roll are cut hollow, and worked into
+mere entanglement of stony fibres, with the gloom of the recess shown
+through them. These ghost rolls, forming sometimes pedestals, sometimes
+canopies, sometimes covering the whole recess with an arch of tracery,
+beneath which it runs like a tunnel, are the peculiar decorations of the
+Flamboyant Gothic.
+
+Sec. VII. Now observe, in all kinds of decoration, we must keep carefully
+under separate heads, the consideration of the changes wrought in the
+mere physical form, and in the intellectual purpose of ornament. The
+relations of the canopy to the statue it shelters, are to be considered
+altogether distinctly from those of the canopy to the building which it
+decorates. In its earliest conditions the canopy is partly confused with
+representations of miniature architecture: it is sometimes a small
+temple or gateway, sometimes a honorary addition to the pomp of a saint,
+a covering to his throne, or to his shrine; and this canopy is often
+expressed in bas-relief (as in painting), without much reference to the
+great requirements of the building. At other times it is a real
+protection to the statue, and is enlarged into a complete pinnacle,
+carried on proper shafts, and boldly roofed. But in the late northern
+system the canopies are neither expressive nor protective. They are a
+kind of stone lace-work, required for the ornamentation of the building,
+for which the statues are often little more than an excuse, and of which
+the physical character is, as above described, that of ghosts of
+departed shafts.
+
+Sec. VIII. There is, of course, much rich tabernacle work which will not
+come literally under this head, much which is straggling or flat in its
+plan, connecting itself gradually with the ordinary forms of independent
+shrines and tombs; but the general idea of all tabernacle work is marked
+in the common phrase of a "niche," that is to say a hollow intended for
+a statue, and crowned by a canopy; and this niche decoration only
+reaches its full development when the Flamboyant hollows are cut
+deepest, and when the manner and spirit of sculpture had so much lost
+their purity and intensity that it became desirable to draw the eye away
+from the statue to its covering, so that at last the canopy became the
+more important of the two, and is itself so beautiful that we are often
+contented with architecture from which profanity has struck the statues,
+if only the canopies are left; and consequently, in our modern
+ingenuity, even set up canopies where we have no intention of setting
+statues.
+
+Sec. IX. It is a pity that thus we have no really noble example of the
+effect of the statue in the recesses of architecture: for the Flamboyant
+recess was not so much a preparation for it as a gulf which swallowed it
+up. When statues were most earnestly designed, they were thrust forward
+in all kinds of places, often in front of the pillars, as at Amiens,
+awkwardly enough, but with manly respect to the purpose of the figures.
+The Flamboyant hollows yawned at their sides, the statues fell back into
+them, and nearly disappeared, and a flash of flame in the shape of a
+canopy rose as they expired.
+
+Sec. X. I do not feel myself capable at present of speaking with perfect
+justice of this niche ornament of the north, my late studies in Italy
+having somewhat destroyed my sympathies with it. But I once loved it
+intensely, and will not say anything to depreciate it now, save only
+this, that while I have studied long at Abbeville, without in the least
+finding that it made me care less for Verona, I never remained long in
+Verona without feeling some doubt of the nobility of Abbeville.
+
+Sec. XI. Recess decoration by leaf mouldings is constantly and beautifully
+associated in the north with niche decoration, but requires no special
+notice, the recess in such cases being used merely to give value to the
+leafage by its gloom, and the difference between such conditions and
+those of the south being merely that in the one the leaves are laid
+across a hollow, and in the other over a solid surface; but in neither
+of the schools exclusively so, each in some degree intermingling the
+method of the other.
+
+Sec. XII. Finally the recess decoration by the ball flower is very
+definite and characteristic, found, I believe, chiefly in English work. It
+consists merely in leaving a small boss or sphere, fixed, as it were, at
+intervals in the hollows; such bosses being afterwards carved into
+roses, or other ornamental forms, and sometimes lifted quite up out of
+the hollow, on projecting processes, like vertebrae, so as to make them
+more conspicuous, as throughout the decoration of the cathedral of
+Bourges.
+
+The value of this ornament is chiefly in the _spotted_ character which
+it gives to the lines of mouldings seen from a distance. It is very rich
+and delightful when not used in excess; but it would satiate and weary
+the eye if it were ever used in general architecture. The spire of
+Salisbury, and of St. Mary's at Oxford, are agreeable as isolated
+masses; but if an entire street were built with this spotty decoration
+at every casement, we could not traverse it to the end without disgust.
+It is only another example of the constant aim at piquancy of effect
+which characterised the northern builders; an ingenious but somewhat
+vulgar effort to give interest to their grey masses of coarse stone,
+without overtaking their powers either of invention or execution. We
+will thank them for it without blame or praise, and pass on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  THE BASE.
+
+
+Sec. I. We know now as much as is needful respecting the methods of minor
+and universal decorations, which were distinguished in Chapter XXII., Sec.
+III., from the ornament which has special relation to particular parts.
+This local ornament, which, it will be remembered, we arranged in Sec. II.
+of the same chapter under five heads, we have next, under those heads,
+to consider. And, first, the ornament of the bases, both of walls and
+shafts.
+
+It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that there are
+something in those divisions like the beginning, the several courses,
+and the close of a human life. And as, in all well-conducted lives, the
+hard work, and roughing, and gaining of strength come first, the honor
+or decoration in certain intervals during their course, but most of all
+in their close, so, in general, the base of the wall, which is its
+beginning of labor, will bear least decoration, its body more,
+especially those epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown
+or cornice most of all. Still, in some buildings, all these are
+decorated richly, though the last most; and in others, when the base is
+well protected and yet conspicuous, it may probably receive even more
+decoration than other parts.
+
+Sec. II. Now, the main things to be expressed in a base are its levelness
+and evenness. We cannot do better than construct the several members of
+the base, as developed in Fig. II., p. 55, each of a different colored
+marble, so as to produce marked level bars of color all along the
+foundation. This is exquisitely done in all the Italian elaborate wall
+bases; that of St. Anastasia at Verona is one of the most perfect
+existing, for play of color; that of Giotto's campanile is on the whole
+the most beautifully finished. Then, on the vertical portions, _a_, _b_,
+_c_, we may put what patterns in mosaic we please, so that they be not
+too rich; but if we choose rather to have sculpture (or _must_ have it
+for want of stones to inlay), then observe that all sculpture on bases
+must be in panels, or it will soon be worn away, and that a plain
+panelling is often good without any other ornament. The member _b_,
+which in St. Mark's is subordinate, and _c_, which is expanded into a
+seat, are both of them decorated with simple but exquisitely-finished
+panelling, in red and white or green and white marble; and the member
+_e_ is in bases of this kind very valuable, as an expression of a firm
+beginning of the substance of the wall itself. This member has been of
+no service to us hitherto, and was unnoticed in the chapters on
+construction; but it was expressed in the figure of the wall base, on
+account of its great value when the foundation is of stone and the wall
+of brick (coated or not). In such cases it is always better to add the
+course _e_, above the slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the
+common masonry of the wall.
+
+Sec. III. It is, however, with the member _d_, or Xb, that we are most
+seriously concerned; for this being the essential feature of all bases,
+and the true preparation for the wall or shaft, it is most necessary
+that here, if anywhere, we should have full expression of levelness and
+precision; and farther, that, if possible, the eye should not be
+suffered to rest on the points of junction of the stones, which would
+give an effect of instability. Both these objects are accomplished by
+attracting the eye to two rolls, separated by a deep hollow, in the
+member _d_ itself. The bold projections of their mouldings entirely
+prevent the attention from being drawn to the joints of the masonry, and
+besides form a simple but beautifully connected group of bars of shadow,
+which express, in their perfect parallelism, the absolute levelness of
+the foundation.
+
+Sec. IV. I need hardly give any perspective drawing of an arrangement
+which must be perfectly familiar to the reader, as occurring under nearly
+every column of the too numerous classical buildings all over Europe.
+But I may name the base of the Bank of England as furnishing a very
+simple instance of the group, with a square instead of a rounded hollow,
+both forming the base of the wall, and gathering into that of the shafts
+as they occur; while the bases of the pillars of the facade of the
+British Museum are as good examples as the reader can study on a larger
+scale.
+
+[Illustration: Plate X.
+               PROFILES OF BASES.]
+
+Sec. V. I believe this group of mouldings was first invented by the
+Greeks, and it has never been materially improved, as far as its peculiar
+purpose is concerned;[78] the classical attempts at its variation being
+the ugliest: one, the using a single roll of larger size, as may be seen
+in the Duke of York's column, which therefore looks as if it stood on a
+large sausage (the Monument has the same base, but more concealed by
+pedestal decoration): another, the using two rolls without the
+intermediate cavetto,--a condition hardly less awkward, and which may be
+studied to advantage in the wall and shaftbases of the Athenaeum
+Club-house: and another, the introduction of what are called fillets
+between the rolls, as may be seen in the pillars of Hanover Chapel,
+Regent Street, which look, in consequence, as if they were standing upon
+a pile of pewter collection plates. But the only successful changes have
+been mediaeval; and their nature will be at once understood by a glance
+at the varieties given on the opposite page. It will be well first to
+give the buildings in which they occur, in order.
+
+  1. Santa Fosca, Torcello.          | 14. Ca' Giustiniani, Venice.
+  2. North transept, St. Mark's,     | 15. Byzantine fragment, Venice.
+       Venice.                       | 16. St. Mark's, upper Colonnade.
+  3. Nave, Torcello.                 | 17. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
+  4. Nave, Torcello.                 | 18. Ca' Falier, Venice.
+  5. South transept, St. Mark's.     | 19. St. Zeno, Verona.
+  6. Northern portico, upper shafts, | 20. San Stefano, Venice.
+      St. Mark's.                    | 21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
+  7. Another of the same group.      | 22. Nave, Salisbury.
+  8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan. | 23. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
+  9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.| 24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral.
+ 10. Outside wall base, St. Mark's,  | 25. Notre Dame, Dijon.
+        Venice.                      | 26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral.
+ 11. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice.     | 27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy).
+ 12. Nave, Vienne, France.           | 28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral.
+ 13. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice.     |
+
+Sec. VI. Eighteen out of the twenty eight varieties are Venetian,
+being bases to which I shall have need of future reference; but the
+interspersed examples, 8, 9, 12, and 19, from Milan, Pavia, Vienne
+(France), and Verona, show the exactly correspondent conditions of the
+Romanesque base at the period, throughout the centre of Europe. The last
+five examples show the changes effected by the French Gothic architects:
+the Salisbury base (22) I have only introduced to show its dulness and
+vulgarity beside them; and 23, from Torcello, for a special reason, in
+that place.
+
+Sec. VII. The reader will observe that the two bases, 8 and 9, from the
+two most important Lombardic churches of Italy, St. Ambrogio of Milan and
+St. Michele of Pavia, mark the character of the barbaric base founded on
+pure Roman models, sometimes approximating to such models very closely;
+and the varieties 10, 11, 13, 16 are Byzantine types, also founded on
+Roman models. But in the bases 1 to 7 inclusive, and, still more
+characteristically, in 23 below, there is evidently an original element,
+a tendency to use the fillet and hollow instead of the roll, which is
+eminently Gothic; which in the base 3 reminds one even of Flamboyant
+conditions, and is excessively remarkable as occurring in Italian work
+certainly not later than the tenth century, taking even the date of the
+last rebuilding of the Duomo of Torcello, though I am strongly inclined
+to consider these bases portions of the original church. And I have
+therefore put the base 23 among the Gothic group to which it has so
+strong relationship, though, on the last supposition, five centuries
+older than the earliest of the five terminal examples; and it is still
+more remarkable because it reverses the usual treatment of the lower
+roll, which is in general a tolerably accurate test of the age of a
+base, in the degree of its projection. Thus, in the examples 2, 3, 4, 5,
+9, 10, 12, the lower roll is hardly rounded at all, and diametrically
+opposed to the late Gothic conditions, 24 to 28, in which it advances
+gradually, like a wave preparing to break, and at last is actually seen
+curling over with the long-backed rush of surf upon the shore. Yet the
+Torcello base resembles these Gothic ones both in expansion beneath and
+in depth of cavetto above.
+
+Sec. VIII. There can be no question of the ineffable superiority of these
+Gothic bases, in grace of profile, to any ever invented by the ancients.
+But they have all two great faults: They seem, in the first place, to
+have been designed without sufficient reference to the necessity of
+their being usually seen from above; their grace of profile cannot be
+estimated when so seen, and their excessive expansion gives them an
+appearance of flatness and separation from the shaft, as if they had
+splashed out under its pressure: in the second place their cavetto is so
+deeply cut that it has the appearance of a black fissure between the
+members of the base; and in the Lyons and Bourges shafts, 24 and 26, it
+is impossible to conquer the idea suggested by it, that the two stones
+above and below have been intended to join close, but that some pebbles
+have got in and kept them from fitting; one is always expecting the
+pebbles to be crushed, and the shaft to settle into its place with a
+thunder-clap.
+
+Sec. IX. For these reasons, I said that the profile of the pure classic
+base had hardly been materially improved; but the various conditions of
+it are beautiful or commonplace, in proportion to the variety of
+proportion among their lines and the delicacy of their curvatures; that
+is to say, the expression of characters like those of the abstract lines
+in Plate VII.
+
+The five best profiles in Plate X. are 10, 17, 19, 20, 21; 10 is
+peculiarly beautiful in the opposition between the bold projection of
+its upper roll, and the delicate leafy curvature of its lower; and this
+and 21 may be taken as nearly perfect types, the one of the steep, the
+other of the expansive basic profiles. The characters of all, however,
+are so dependent upon their place and expression, that it is unfair to
+judge them thus separately; and the precision of curvature is a matter
+of so small consequence in general effect, that we need not here pursue
+the subject farther.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LIX.]
+
+Sec. X. We have thus far, however, considered only the lines of moulding
+in the member X b, whether of wall or shaft base. But the reader will
+remember that in our best shaft base, in Fig. XII. (p. 78), certain
+props or spurs were applied to the slope of X b; but now that X b is
+divided into these delicate mouldings, we cannot conveniently apply the
+spur to its irregular profile; we must be content to set it against the
+lower roll. Let the upper edge of this lower roll be the curved line
+here, _a_, _d_, _e_, _b_, Fig. LIX., and _c_ the angle of the square
+plinth projecting beneath it. Then the spur, applied as we saw in Chap.
+VII., will be of some such form as the triangle _c e d_, Fig. LIX.
+
+Sec. XI. Now it has just been stated that it is of small importance
+whether the abstract lines of the profile of a base moulding be fine or
+not, because we rarely stoop down to look at them. But this triangular
+spur is nearly always seen from above, and the eye is drawn to it as one
+of the most important features of the whole base; therefore it is a point
+of immediate necessity to substitute for its harsh right lines (_c d_,
+_c e_) some curve of noble abstract character.
+
+Sec. XII. I mentioned, in speaking of the line of the salvia leaf at p.
+224, that I had marked off the portion of it, _x y_, because I thought
+it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards; and I promised the
+reader that as he had built, so he should decorate his edifice at his
+own free will. If, therefore, he likes the above triangular spur, _c d
+e_, by all means let him keep it; but if he be on the whole dissatisfied
+with it, I may be permitted, perhaps, to advise him to set to work like
+a tapestry bee, to cut off the little bit of line of salvia leaf _x y_,
+and try how he can best substitute it for the awkward lines _c d c e_.
+He may try it any way that he likes; but if he puts the salvia curvature
+inside the present lines, he will find the spur looks weak, and I think
+he will determine at last on placing it as I have done at _c d_, _c e_,
+Fig. LX. (If the reader will be at the pains to transfer the salvia leaf
+line with tracing paper, he will find it accurately used in this
+figure.) Then I merely add an outer circular line to represent the outer
+swell of the roll against which the spur is set, and I put another such
+spur to the opposite corner of the square, and we have the half base,
+Fig. LX., which is a general type of the best Gothic bases in existence,
+being very nearly that of the upper shafts of the Ducal Palace of
+Venice. In those shafts the quadrant _a b_, or the upper edge of the
+lower roll, is 2 feet 1-3/8 inches round, and the base of the spur _d
+e_, is 10 inches; the line _d e_ being therefore to _a b_ as 10 to
+25-3/8. In Fig. LX. it is as 10 to 24, the measurement being easier and
+the type somewhat more generally representative of the best, _i.e._
+broadest, spurs of Italian Gothic.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LX.]
+
+Sec. XIII. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothing magical in
+salvia leaves: the line I take from them happened merely to fall
+conveniently on the page, and might as well have been taken from
+anything else; it is simply its character of gradated curvature which
+fits it for our use. On Plate XI., opposite, I have given plans of the
+spurs and quadrants of twelve Italian and three Northern bases; these
+latter (13), from Bourges, (14) from Lyons, (15) from Rouen, are given
+merely to show the Northern disposition to break up bounding lines, and
+lose breadth in picturesqueness. These Northern bases look the prettiest
+in this plate, because this variation of the outline is nearly all the
+ornament they have, being cut very rudely; but the Italian bases above
+them are merely prepared by their simple outlines for far richer
+decoration at the next step, as we shall see presently. The Northern
+bases are to be noted also for another grand error: the projection of
+the roll beyond the square plinth, of which the corner is seen, in
+various degrees of advancement, in the three examples. 13 is the base
+whose profile is No. 26 in Plate X.; 14 is 24 in the same plate; and 15
+is 28.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XI.
+               PLANS OF BASES.]
+
+Sec. XIV. The Italian bases are the following; all, except 7 and 10, being
+Venetian: 1 and 2, upper colonnade, St. Mark's; 3, Ca' Falier; 4, lower
+colonnade, and 5, transept, St. Mark's; 6, from the Church of St. John
+and Paul; 7, from the tomb near St. Anastasia, Verona, described above
+(p. 142); 8 and 9, Fon daco de' Turchi, Venice; 10, tomb of Can Mastino
+della Scala, Verona; 11, San Stefano, Venice; 12, Ducal Palace, Venice,
+upper colonnade. The Nos. 3, 8, 9, 11 are the bases whose profiles are
+respectively Nos. 18, 11, 13, and 20 in Plate X. The flat surfaces of
+the basic plinths are here shaded; and in the lower corner of the square
+occupied by each quadrant is put, also shaded, the central profile of
+each spur, from its root at the roll of the base to its point; those of
+Nos. 1 and 2 being conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly,
+that I took no note of their profiles; but they would probably be as
+here given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of comparison,
+reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to shafts of
+very different size, 9 being some six or seven inches in diameter,
+and 6, three or four feet, the proportionate size of the roll varies
+accordingly, being largest, as in 9, where the base is smallest, and in
+6 and 12 the leaf profile is given on a larger scale than the plan, or
+its character could not have been exhibited.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XII.
+               DECORATION OF BASES.]
+
+Sec. XV. Now, in all these spurs, the reader will observe that the
+narrowest are for the most part the earliest. No. 2, from the upper
+colonnade of St. Mark's, is the only instance I ever saw of the double
+spur, as transitive between the square and octagon plinth; the truncated
+form, 1, is also rare and very ugly. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are the
+general conditions of the Byzantine spur; 8 is a very rare form of plan
+in Byzantine work, but proved to be so by its rude level profile; while
+7, on the contrary, Byzantine in plan, is eminently Gothic in the
+profile. 9 to 12 are from formed Gothic buildings, equally refined in
+their profile and plan.
+
+Sec. XVI. The character of the profile is indeed much altered by the
+accidental nature of the surface decoration; but the importance of the
+broad difference between the raised and flat profile will be felt on
+glancing at the examples 1 to 6 in Plate XII. The three upper examples
+are the Romanesque types, which occur as parallels with the Byzantine
+types, 1 to 3 of Plate XI. Their plans would be nearly the same; but
+instead of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws,
+as high as they are broad; and the third, from St. Michele of Pavia,
+appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a claw enforced by the
+transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio, Milan; 2 from Vienne, France.
+The 4th type, Plate XII., almost like the extremity of a man's foot, is
+a Byzantine form (perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St.
+Mark's; and the two next show the unity of the two principles, forming
+the perfect Italian Gothic types,--5, from tomb of Can Signorio della
+Scala, Verona; 6, from San Stefano, Venice (the base 11 of Plate XI., in
+perspective). The two other bases, 10 and 12 of Plate XI., are
+conditions of the same kind, showing the varieties of rise and fall in
+exquisite modulation; the 10th, a type more frequent at Verona than
+Venice, in which the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising
+out of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by
+sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work; a kind
+of band, or fillet, appears to hold, and even compress, the _centre_ of
+the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of St. Peter's, Oxford,
+which has also spurs at its angles; and long bands flow over the base of
+the angle shaft of the Ducal Palace of Venice, next the Porta della
+Carta.
+
+Sec. XVII. When the main contours of the base are once determined, its
+decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely given, in Plate
+XII., three examples to which I shall need to refer, hereafter. No. 9 is
+a very early and curious one; the decoration of the base 6 in Plate XI.,
+representing a leaf turned over and flattened down; or, rather, the idea
+of the turned leaf, worked as well as could be imagined on the flat
+contour of the spur. Then 10 is the perfect, but simplest possible
+development of the same idea, from the earliest bases of the upper
+colonnade of the Ducal Palace, that is to say, the bases of the sea
+facade; and 7 and 8 are its lateral profile and transverse section.
+Finally, 11 and 12 are two of the spurs of the later shafts of the same
+colonnade on the Piazzetta side (No. 12 of Plate XI.). No. 11 occurs on
+one of these shafts only, and is singularly beautiful. I suspect it to
+be earlier than the other, which is the characteristic base of the rest
+of the series, and already shows the loose, sensual, ungoverned
+character of fifteenth century ornament in the dissoluteness of its
+rolling.
+
+Sec. XVIII. I merely give these as examples ready to my hand, and
+necessary for future reference; not as in anywise representative of the
+variety of the Italian treatment of the general contour, far less of the
+endless caprices of the North. The most beautiful base I ever saw, on the
+whole, is a Byzantine one in the Baptistery of St. Mark's, in which the
+spur profile approximates to that of No. 10 in Plate XI.; but it is formed
+by a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two wings, as they half
+close, form the upper part of the spur, and the rise of it in the front
+is formed by exactly the action of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake:
+"quei drizzo, volando, suso il petto." But it requires noble management
+to confine such a fancy within such limits. The greater number of the
+best bases are formed of leaves; and the reader may amuse himself as he
+will by endless inventions of them, from types which he may gather among
+the weeds at the nearest roadside. The value of the vegetable form is
+especially here, as above noted, Chap. XX., Sec. XXXII., its capability
+of unity with the mass of the base, and of being suggested by few lines;
+none but the Northern Gothic architects are able to introduce entire
+animal forms in this position with perfect success. There is a beautiful
+instance at the north door of the west front of Rouen; a lizard pausing
+and curling himself round a little in the angle; one expects him the
+next instant to lash round the shaft and vanish: and we may with
+advantage compare this base with those of Renaissance Scuola di San
+Rocca[79] at Venice, in which the architect, imitating the mediaeval
+bases, which he did not understand, has put an elephant, four inches
+higher, in the same position.
+
+Sec. XIX. I have not in this chapter spoken at all of the profiles which
+are given in Northern architecture to the projections of the lower
+members of the base, _b_ and _c_ in Fig. II., nor of the methods in
+which both these, and the rolls of the mouldings in Plate X., are
+decorated, especially in Roman architecture, with superadded chain work
+or chasing of various patterns. Of the first I have not spoken, because
+I shall have no occasion to allude to them in the following essay; nor
+of the second, because I consider them barbarisms. Decorated rolls and
+decorated ogee profiles, such, for instance, as the base of the Arc de
+l'Etoile at Paris, are among the richest and farthest refinements of
+decorative appliances; and they ought always to be reserved for jambs,
+cornices, and archivolts: if you begin with them in the base, you have
+no power of refining your decorations as you ascend, and, which is still
+worse, you put your most delicate work on the jutting portions of the
+foundation,--the very portions which are most exposed to abrasion. The
+best expression of a base is that of stern endurance,--the look of being
+able to bear roughing; or, if the whole building is so delicate that no
+one can be expected to treat even its base with unkindness,[80] then at
+least the expression of quiet, prefatory simplicity. The angle spur may
+receive such decoration as we have seen, because it is one of the most
+important features in the whole building; and the eye is always so
+attracted to it that it cannot be in rich architecture left altogether
+blank; the eye is stayed upon it by its position, but glides, and ought
+to glide, along the basic rolls to take measurement of their length: and
+even with all this added fitness, the ornament of the basic spur is
+best, in the long run, when it is boldest and simplest. The base above
+described, Sec. XVIII., as the most beautiful I ever saw, was not for that
+reason the best I ever saw: beautiful in its place, in a quiet corner of
+a Baptistery sheeted with jasper and alabaster, it would have been
+utterly wrong, nay, even offensive, if used in sterner work, or repeated
+along a whole colonnade. The base No. 10 of Plate XII. is the richest
+with which I was ever perfectly satisfied for general service; and the
+basic spurs of the building which I have named as the best Gothic
+monument in the world (p. 141), have no ornament upon them whatever. The
+adaptation, therefore, of rich cornice and roll mouldings to the level
+and ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be
+one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance architects
+ever committed; and that nothing can afterwards redeem the effeminacy
+and vulgarity of the buildings in which it prominently takes place.
+
+Sec. XX. I have also passed over, without present notice, the fantastic
+bases formed by couchant animals, which sustain many Lombardic shafts.
+The pillars they support have independent bases of the ordinary kind;
+and the animal form beneath is less to be considered as a true base
+(though often exquisitely combined with it, as in the shaft on the
+south-west angle of the cathedral of Genoa) than as a piece of
+sculpture, otherwise necessary to the nobility of the building, and
+deriving its value from its special positive fulfilment of expressional
+purposes, with which we have here no concern. As the embodiment of a
+wild superstition, and the representation of supernatural powers, their
+appeal to the imagination sets at utter defiance all judgment based on
+ordinary canons of law; and the magnificence of their treatment atones,
+in nearly every case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should
+not admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a
+nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid; but by the
+Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life, we need not fear
+being led astray: the visions of a distempered fancy are not indeed
+permitted to replace the truth, or set aside the laws of science: but
+the imagination which is thoroughly under the command of the intelligent
+will,[81] has a dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by
+law; and we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons in
+the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry an excuse
+for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to be called upon, in other
+cases, to admire a systemless architecture, because it may happen to
+have sprung from an irrational religion.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [78] Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and
+    value of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of
+    the single or double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested
+    by the writer of the Essay on the Aesthetics of Gothic Architecture
+    in the British Quarterly for August, 1849:--"The Attic base
+    _recedes_ at the point where, if it suffered from superincumbent
+    weight, it would bulge out."
+
+  [79] I have put in Appendix 24, "Renaissance Bases," my memorandum
+    written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had
+    better delay referring to it, until we have completed our
+    examination of ornaments in shafts and capitals.
+
+  [80] Appendix 25, "Romanist Decoration of Bases."
+
+  [81] In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in
+    Appendix 8), this command of the will over its action is as distinct
+    as it is stern. The fancy is, in the early work of the nation,
+    visibly diseased; but never the will, nor the reason.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT.
+
+
+Sec. I. No subject has been more open ground of dispute among architects
+than the decoration of the wall veil, because no decoration appeared
+naturally to grow out of its construction; nor could any curvatures be
+given to its surface large enough to produce much impression on the eye.
+It has become, therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of
+various effects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned to
+the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may perhaps conclude, from what
+was advanced in the Fifth Chapter, that there is one kind of decoration
+which will, indeed, naturally follow on its construction. For it is
+perfectly natural that the different kinds of stone used in its
+successive courses should be of different colors; and there are many
+associations and analogies which metaphysically justify the introduction
+of horizontal bands of color, or of light and shade. They are, in the
+first place, a kind of expression of the growth or age of the wall, like
+the rings in the wood of a tree; then they are a farther symbol of the
+alternation of light and darkness, which was above noted as the source
+of the charm of many inferior mouldings: again, they are valuable as an
+expression of horizontal space to the imagination, space of which the
+conception is opposed, and gives more effect by its opposition, to the
+enclosing power of the wall itself (this I spoke of as probably the
+great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind): and again
+they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural courses of rocks,
+and beds of the earth itself. And to all these powerful imaginative
+reasons we have to add the merely ocular charm of interlineal opposition
+of color; a charm so great, that all the best colorists, without a
+single exception, depend upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial
+effects, some vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being
+made central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of
+Tintoret's great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised on the
+bars of blue, which cross the white turban of the executioner.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XIII.
+               WALL VEIL DECORATIONS.]
+
+Sec. II. There are, therefore, no ornaments more deeply suggestive in
+their simplicity than these alternate bars of horizontal colors; nor do
+I know any buildings more noble than those of the Pisan Romanesque, in
+which they are habitually employed; and certainly none so graceful, so
+attractive, so enduringly delightful in their nobleness. Yet, of this
+pure and graceful ornamentation, Professor Willis says, "a practice more
+destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived:" and
+modern architects have substituted for it the ingenious ornament of
+which the reader has had one specimen above, Fig. III., p. 61, and with
+which half the large buildings in London are disfigured, or else
+traversed by mere straight lines, as, for instance, the back of the
+Bank. The lines on the Bank may, perhaps, be considered typical of
+accounts; but in general the walls, if left destitute of them, would
+have been as much fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of
+white paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may have
+free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two examples of the old
+and the Renaissance ornament side by side on the opposite page. That on
+the right is Romanesque, from St. Pietro of Pistoja; that on the left,
+modern English, from the Arthur Club-house, St. James's Street.
+
+Sec. III. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark the
+division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled, and right when
+they are marked by color? First, because the color separation is a
+natural one. You build with different kinds of stone, of which,
+probably, one is more costly than another; which latter, as you cannot
+construct your building of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars.
+But the chiselling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and
+labor in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those
+monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building is
+_weaker_ than it was before, by just as much stone as has been cut away
+from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I have repeatedly urged,
+straight lines are ugly things as _lines_, but admirable as limits of
+colored spaces; and the joints of the stones, which are painful in
+proportion to their regularity, if drawn as lines, are perfectly
+agreeable when marked by variations of hue.
+
+Sec. IV. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling, is equally
+true of divisions of bricks by pointing. Nor, of course, is the mere
+horizontal bar the only arrangement in which the colors of brickwork or
+masonry can be gracefully disposed. It is rather one which can only be
+employed with advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold.
+When the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into
+chequered patterns. We shall have several interesting examples to study
+in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal Palace. The town of
+Moulins, in France, is one of the most remarkable on this side the Alps
+for its chequered patterns in bricks. The church of Christchurch,
+Streatham, lately built, though spoiled by many grievous errors (the
+iron work in the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the
+inhabitants of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the
+variety of effects which are possible with no other material than brick.
+
+Sec. V. We have yet to notice another effort of the Renaissance architects
+to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by what is called Rustication.
+There is sometimes an obscure trace of the remains of the imitation of
+something organic in this kind of work. In some of the better French
+eighteenth century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like
+a final degradation of Flamboyant leafage; and some of our modern
+English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of elephants
+for their type; but, for the most part, it resembles nothing so much as
+worm casts; nor these with any precision. If it did, it would not bring
+it within the sphere of our properly imitative ornamentation. I thought
+it unnecessary to warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of
+refuse or corruption; and that, while he might legitimately take the
+worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to study the
+worm cast or coprolite.
+
+Sec. VI. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rustication
+gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones. Not so; at least
+to any one who knows the look of a hard stone. You may, by rustication,
+make your good marble or granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by
+sand-eels, or like half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of
+stalactite, or like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own
+mud; but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do not
+think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth sheets of rock,
+glistening like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer like a brazen
+bell,--that is her preparation for first stories. She does rusticate
+sometimes: crumbly sand-stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red
+mud; dusty lime-stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities;
+spongy lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into ropy
+coils and bubbling hollows;--these she rusticates, indeed, when she
+wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them; but not when she needs
+to lay foundations with them. Then she seeks the polished surface and
+iron heart, not rough looks and incoherent substance.
+
+Sec. VII. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impossible to
+institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere
+inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief.
+The architect has perhaps more license in them, and more power of
+producing good effect with rude design than in any other features of the
+building; the chequer and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude
+bas-reliefs of the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate
+panelling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to be noted
+of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expression of firm and
+massive substance, and of broad surface, and that architecture instantly
+declined when linear design was substituted for massive, and the sense
+of weight of wall was lost in a wilderness of upright or undulating
+rods. Of the richest and most delicate wall veil decoration by inlaid
+work, as practised in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, I
+have given the reader two characteristic examples in Plates XX. and XXI.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXI.]
+
+Sec. VIII. There are, however, three spaces in which the wall veil,
+peculiarly limited in shape, was always felt to be fitted for surface
+decoration of the most elaborate kind; and in these spaces are found the
+most majestic instances of its treatment, even to late periods. One of
+these is the spandril space, or the filling between any two arches,
+commonly of the shape _a_, Fig. LXI.; the half of which, or the flank
+filling of any arch, is called a spandril. In Chapter XVII., on Filling
+of Apertures, the reader will find another of these spaces noted, called
+the tympanum, and commonly of the form _b_, Fig. LXI.: and finally, in
+Chapter XVIII., he will find the third space described, that between an
+arch and its protecting gable, approximating generally to the form _c_,
+Fig. LXI.
+
+Sec. IX. The methods of treating these spaces might alone furnish subject
+for three very interesting essays; but I shall only note the most
+essential points respecting them.
+
+(1.) The Spandril. It was observed in Chapter XII., that this portion of
+the arch load might frequently be lightened with great advantage by
+piercing it with a circle, or with a group of circles; and the roof of
+the Euston Square railroad station was adduced as an example. One of the
+spandril decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the "Seven Lamps,"
+Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these Euston Square
+spandrils, with its circles foliated.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XIV.
+               SPANDRIL DECORATION
+               THE DUCAL PALACE.]
+
+Sometimes the circle is entirely pierced; at other times it is merely
+suggested by a mosaic or light tracery on the wall surface, as in the
+plate opposite, which is one of the spandrils of the Ducal Palace at
+Venice. It was evidently intended that all the spandrils of this
+building should be decorated in this manner, but only two of them seem
+to have been completed.[82]
+
+Sec. X. The other modes of spandril filling may be broadly reduced to four
+heads. 1. Free figure sculpture, as in the Chapter-house of Salisbury,
+and very superbly along the west front of Bourges, the best Gothic
+spandrils I know. 2. Radiated foliage, more or less referred to the
+centre, or to the bottom of the spandril for its origin; single figures
+with expanded wings often answering the same purpose. 3. Trefoils; and
+4, ordinary wall decoration continued into the spandril space, as in
+Plate XIII., above, from St. Pietro at Pistoja, and in Westminster
+Abbey. The Renaissance architects introduced spandril fillings composed
+of colossal human figures reclining on the sides of the arch, in
+precarious lassitude; but these cannot come under the head of wall veil
+decoration.
+
+Sec. XI. (2.) The Tympanum. It was noted that, in Gothic architecture,
+this is for the most part a detached slab of stone, having no
+constructional relation to the rest of the building. The plan of its
+sculpture is therefore quite arbitrary; and, as it is generally in a
+conspicuous position, near the eye, and above the entrance, it is almost
+always charged with a series of rich figure sculptures, solemn in feeling
+and consecutive in subject. It occupies in Christian sacred edifices very
+nearly the position of the pediment in Greek sculpture. This latter is
+itself a kind of tympanum, and charged with sculpture in the same
+manner.
+
+Sec. XII. (3.) The Gable. The same principles apply to it which have been
+noted respecting the spandril, with one more of some importance. The
+chief difficulty in treating a gable lies in the excessive sharpness of
+its upper point. It may, indeed, on its outside apex, receive a finial;
+but the meeting of the inside lines of its terminal mouldings is
+necessarily both harsh and conspicuous, unless artificially concealed.
+The most beautiful victory I have ever seen obtained over this
+difficulty was by placing a sharp shield, its point, as usual,
+downwards, at the apex of the gable, which exactly reversed the
+offensive lines, yet without actually breaking them; the gable being
+completed behind the shield. The same thing is done in the Northern and
+Southern Gothic: in the porches of Abbeville and the tombs of Verona.
+
+Sec. XIII. I believe there is little else to be noted of general laws
+of ornament respecting the wall veil. We have next to consider its
+concentration in the shaft.
+
+Now the principal beauty of a shaft is its perfect proportion to its
+work,--its exact expression of necessary strength. If this has been
+truly attained, it will hardly need, in some cases hardly bear, more
+decoration than is given to it by its own rounding and taper curvatures;
+for, if we cut ornaments in intaglio on its surface, we weaken it; if we
+leave them in relief, we overcharge it, and the sweep of the line from
+its base to its summit, though deduced in Chapter VIII., from
+necessities of construction, is already one of gradated curvature, and
+of high decorative value.
+
+Sec. XIV. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that decorations are
+admissible on colossal and on diminutive shafts, which are wrong upon
+those of middle size. For, when the shaft is enormous, incisions or
+sculpture on its sides (unless colossal also), do not materially
+interfere with the sweep of its curve, nor diminish the efficiency of
+its sustaining mass. And if it be diminutive, its sustaining function is
+comparatively of so small importance, the injurious results of failure
+so much less, and the relative strength and cohesion of its mass so much
+greater, that it may be suffered in the extravagance of ornament or
+outline which would be unendurable in a shaft of middle size, and
+impossible in one of colossal. Thus, the shafts drawn in Plate XIII., of
+the "Seven Lamps," though given as examples of extravagance, are yet
+pleasing in the general effect of the arcade they support; being each
+some six or seven feet high. But they would have been monstrous, as
+well as unsafe, if they had been sixty or seventy.
+
+Sec. XV. Therefore, to determine the general rule for shaft decoration,
+we must ascertain the proportions representative of the mean bulk of
+shafts: they might easily be calculated from a sufficient number of
+examples, but it may perhaps be assumed, for our present general
+purpose, that the mean standard would be of some twenty feet in height,
+by eight or nine in circumference: then this will be the size on which
+decoration is most difficult and dangerous: and shafts become more and
+more fit subjects for decoration, as they rise farther above, or fall
+farther beneath it, until very small and very vast shafts will both be
+found to look blank unless they receive some chasing or imagery; blank,
+whether they support a chair or table on the one side, or sustain a
+village on the ridge of an Egyptian architrave on the other.
+
+Sec. XVI. Of the various ornamentation of colossal shafts, there are no
+examples so noble as the Egyptian; these the reader can study in Mr.
+Roberts' work on Egypt nearly as well, I imagine, as if he were beneath
+their shadow, one of their chief merits, as examples of method, being
+the perfect decision and visibility of their designs at the necessary
+distance: contrast with these the incrustations of bas-relief on the
+Trajan pillar, much interfering with the smooth lines of the shaft, and
+yet themselves untraceable, if not invisible.
+
+Sec. XVII. On shafts of middle size, the only ornament which has ever been
+accepted as right, is the Doric fluting, which, indeed, gave the effect
+of a succession of unequal lines of shade, but lost much of the repose
+of the cylindrical gradation. The Corinthian fluting, which is a mean
+multiplication and deepening of the Doric, with a square instead of a
+sharp ridge between each hollow, destroyed the serenity of the shaft
+altogether, and is always rigid and meagre. Both are, in fact, wrong in
+principle; they are an elaborate weakening[83] of the shaft, exactly
+opposed (as above shown) to the ribbed form, which is the result of a
+group of shafts bound together, and which is especially beautiful when
+special service is given to each member.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXII.]
+
+Sec. XVIII. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decoration may be
+wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that the form of the shaft
+be clearly visible. This I hold to be absolutely essential, and that
+barbarism begins wherever the sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply
+cut, as to break the contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity.
+Thus, in Plate XXI. (Appendix 8), the richly sculptured shaft of the
+lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and become a
+shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the building, though of
+some value as adding to its imaginative and fantastic character. Had all
+the shafts been like it, the facade would have been entirely spoiled;
+the inlaid pattern, on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft
+of the upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with
+its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid shaft
+ornaments of this noble church (another example of them is given in
+Plate XII. of the "Seven Lamps"). The same rule would condemn the
+Caryatid; which I entirely agree with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both
+for this and other reasons) one of the chief errors of the Greek
+schools; and, more decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft
+ornament, almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed,
+which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder joints, as
+in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many other buildings in
+London; or in rusticating portions of the shafts, or wrapping fleeces
+about them, as at the entrance of Burlington House, in Piccadilly; or
+tying drapery round them in knots, as in the new buildings above noticed
+(Chap. 20, Sec. VII.), at Paris. But, within the limits thus defined,
+there is no feature capable of richer decoration than the shaft; the
+most beautiful examples of all I have seen, are the slender pillars,
+encrusted with arabesques, which flank the portals of the Baptistery and
+Duomo at Pisa, and some others of the Pisan and Lucchese churches; but
+the varieties of sculpture and inlaying, with which the small
+Romanesque shafts, whether Italian or Northern, are adorned when they
+occupy important positions, are quite endless, and nearly all admirable.
+Mr. Digby Wyatt has given a beautiful example of inlaid work so
+employed, from the cloisters of the Lateran, in his work on early
+mosaic; an example which unites the surface decoration of the shaft with
+the adoption of the spiral contour. This latter is often all the
+decoration which is needed, and none can be more beautiful; it has been
+spoken against, like many other good and lovely things, because it has
+been too often used in extravagant degrees, like the well-known twisting
+of the pillars in Raffaelle's "Beautiful gate." But that extravagant
+condition was a Renaissance barbarism: the old Romanesque builders kept
+their spirals slight and pure; often, as in the example from St. Zeno,
+in Plate XVII. below, giving only half a turn from the base of the shaft
+to its head, and nearly always observing what I hold to be an imperative
+law, that no twisted shaft shall be single, but composed of at least two
+distinct members, twined with each other. I suppose they followed their
+own right feeling in doing this, and had never studied natural shafts;
+but the type they _might_ have followed was caught by one of the few
+great painters who were not affected by the evil influence of the
+fifteenth century, Benozzo Gozzoli, who, in the frescoes of the Ricardi
+Palace, among stems of trees for the most part as vertical as stone
+shafts, has suddenly introduced one of the shape given in Fig. LXII.
+Many forest trees present, in their accidental contortions, types of
+most complicated spiral shafts, the plan being originally of a grouped
+shaft rising from several roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find
+models for every kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous,
+as he will find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the
+earth itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting; but the
+shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and silver, is
+fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined with
+grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of the rolling heaven, with
+flitting fancies of blue shadow and burning gold.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [82] Vide end of Appendix 20.
+
+  [83] Vide, however, their defence in the Essay above quoted, p. 251.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+  THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL.
+
+
+Sec. I. There are no features to which the attention of architects has
+been more laboriously directed, in all ages, than these crowning members
+of the wall and shaft; and it would be vain to endeavor, within any
+moderate limits, to give the reader any idea of the various kinds of
+admirable decoration which have been invented for them. But, in
+proportion to the effort and straining of the fancy, have been the
+extravagances into which it has occasionally fallen; and while it is
+utterly impossible severally to enumerate the instances either of its
+success or its error, it is very possible to note the limits of the one
+and the causes of the other. This is all that we shall attempt in the
+present chapter, tracing first for ourselves, as in previous instances,
+the natural channels by which invention is here to be directed or
+confined, and afterwards remarking the places where, in real practice,
+it has broken bounds.
+
+Sec. II. The reader remembers, I hope, the main points respecting the
+cornice and capital, established above in the Chapters on Construction.
+Of these I must, however, recapitulate thus much:--
+
+1. That both the cornice and capital are, with reference to the _slope_
+of their profile or bell, to be divided into two great orders; in one of
+which the ornament is convex, and in the other concave. (Ch. VI.,
+Sec. V.)
+
+2. That the capital, with reference to the method of twisting the
+cornice round to construct it, and to unite the circular shaft with the
+square abacus, falls into five general forms, represented in Fig. XXII.,
+p. 119.
+
+3. That the most elaborate capitals were formed by true or simple
+capitals with a common cornice added above their abacus. (Ch. IX., Sec.
+XXIV.)
+
+We have then, in considering decoration, first to observe the treatment
+of the two great orders of the cornice; then their gathering into the
+five of the capital; then the addition of the secondary cornice to the
+capital when formed.
+
+Sec. III. The two great orders or families of cornice were above
+distinguished in Fig. V., p. 69.; and it was mentioned in the same place
+that a third family arose from their combination. We must deal with the
+two great opposed groups first.
+
+They were distinguished in Fig. V. by circular curves drawn on opposite
+sides of the same line. But we now know that in these smaller features
+the circle is usually the least interesting curve that we can use; and
+that it will be well, since the capital and cornice are both active in
+their expression, to use some of the more abstract natural lines. We
+will go back, therefore, to our old friend the salvia leaf; and taking
+the same piece of it we had before, _x y_, Plate VII., we will apply it
+to the cornice line; first within it, giving the concave cornice, then
+without, giving the convex cornice. In all the figures, _a_, _b_, _c_,
+_d_, Plate XV., the dotted line is at the same slope, and represents an
+average profile of the root of cornices (_a_, Fig. V., p. 69); the curve
+of the salvia leaf is applied to it in each case, first with its
+roundest curvature up, then with its roundest curvature down; and we
+have thus the two varieties, _a_ and _b_, of the concave family, and _c_
+and _d_, of the convex family.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XV.
+               CORNICE PROFILES.]
+
+Sec. IV. These four profiles will represent all the simple cornices in
+the world; represent them, I mean, as central types: for in any of the
+profiles an infinite number of slopes may be given to the dotted line of
+the root (which in these four figures is always at the same angle); and
+on each of these innumerable slopes an innumerable variety of curves may
+be fitted, from every leaf in the forest, and every shell on the shore,
+and every movement of the human fingers and fancy; therefore, if the
+reader wishes to obtain something like a numerical representation of the
+number of possible and beautiful cornices which may be based upon these
+four types or roots, and among which the architect has leave to
+choose according to the circumstances of his building and the method of
+its composition, let him set down a figure 1 to begin with, and write
+ciphers after it as fast as he can, without stopping, for an hour.
+
+Sec. V. None of the types are, however, found in perfection of curvature,
+except in the best work. Very often cornices are worked with circular
+segments (with a noble, massive effect, for instance, in St. Michele of
+Lucca), or with rude approximation to finer curvature, especially _a_,
+Plate XV., which occurs often so small as to render it useless to take
+much pains upon its curve. It occurs perfectly pure in the condition
+represented by 1 of the series 1-6, in Plate XV., on many of the
+Byzantine and early Gothic buildings of Venice; in more developed form
+it becomes the profile of the bell of the capital in the later Venetian
+Gothic, and in much of the best Northern Gothic. It also represents the
+Corinthian capital, in which the curvature is taken from the bell to be
+added in some excess to the nodding leaves. It is the most graceful of
+all simple profiles of cornice and capital.
+
+Sec. VI. _b_ is a much rarer and less manageable type: for this evident
+reason, that while _a_ is the natural condition of a line rooted and
+strong beneath, but bent out by superincumbent weight, or nodding over
+in freedom, _b_ is yielding at the base and rigid at the summit. It has,
+however, some exquisite uses, especially in combination, as the reader
+may see by glancing in advance at the inner line of the profile 14 in
+Plate XV.
+
+Sec. VII. _c_ is the leading convex or Doric type, as _a_ is the leading
+concave or Corinthian. Its relation to the best Greek Doric is exactly
+what the relation of _a_ is to the Corinthian; that is to say, the
+curvature must be taken from the straighter limb of the curve and added
+to the bolder bend, giving it a sudden turn inwards (as in the
+Corinthian a nod outwards), as the reader may see in the capital of the
+Parthenon in the British Museum, where the lower limb of the curve is
+_all but_ a right line.[84] But these Doric and Corinthian lines are
+mere varieties of the great families which are represented by the
+central lines _a_ and _c_, including not only the Doric capital, but all
+the small cornices formed by a slight increase of the curve of _c_,
+which are of so frequent occurrence in Greek ornaments.
+
+Sec. VIII. _d_ is the Christian Doric, which I said (Chap. I., Sec. XX.)
+was invented to replace the antique: it is the representative of the great
+Byzantine and Norman families of convex cornice and capital, and, next
+to the profile _a_, the most important of the four, being the best
+profile for the convex capital, as _a_ is for the concave; _a_ being the
+best expression of an elastic line inserted vertically in the shaft, and
+_d_ of an elastic line inserted horizontally and rising to meet vertical
+pressure.
+
+If the reader will glance at the arrangements of boughs of trees, he
+will find them commonly dividing into these two families, _a_ and _d_:
+they rise out of the trunk and nod from it as _a_, or they spring with
+sudden curvature out from it, and rise into sympathy with it, as at _d_;
+but they only accidentally display tendencies to the lines _b_ or _c_.
+Boughs which fall as they spring from the tree also describe the curve
+_d_ in the plurality of instances, but reversed in arrangement; their
+junction with the stem being at the top of it, their sprays bending out
+into rounder curvature.
+
+Sec. IX. These then being the two primal groups, we have next to note the
+combined group, formed by the concave and convex lines joined in various
+proportions of curvature, so as to form together the reversed or ogee
+curve, represented in one of its most beautiful states by the glacier
+line _a_, on Plate VII. I would rather have taken this line than any
+other to have formed my third group of cornices by, but as it is too
+large, and almost too delicate, we will take instead that of the
+Matterhorn side, _e f_, Plate VII. For uniformity's sake I keep the
+slope of the dotted line the same as in the primal forms; and applying
+this Matterhorn curve in its four relative positions to that line, I
+have the types of the four cornices or capitals of the third family,
+_e_, _f_, _g_, _h_, on Plate XV.
+
+These are, however, general types only thus far, that their line is
+composed of one short and one long curve, and that they represent the
+four conditions of treatment of every such line; namely, the longest
+curve concave in _e_ and _f_, and convex in _g_ and _h_; and the point
+of contrary flexure set high in _e_ and _g_, and low in _f_ and _h_. The
+relative depth of the arcs, or nature of their curvature, cannot be
+taken into consideration without a complexity of system which my space
+does not admit.
+
+Of the four types thus constituted, _e_ and _f_ are of great importance;
+the other two are rarely used, having an appearance of weakness in
+consequence of the shortest curve being concave: the profiles _e_ and
+_f_, when used for cornices, have usually a fuller sweep and somewhat
+greater equality between the branches of the curve; but those here given
+are better representatives of the structure applicable to capitals and
+cornices indifferently.
+
+Sec. X. Very often, in the farther treatment of the profiles _e_ or _f_,
+another limb is added to their curve in order to join it to the upper or
+lower members of the cornice or capital. I do not consider this addition
+as forming another family of cornices, because the leading and effective
+part of the curve is in these, as in the others, the single ogee; and
+the added bend is merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below:
+still this group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of
+ornamentation that we must have it sufficiently represented. We shall
+obtain a type of it by merely continuing the line of the Matterhorn
+side, of which before we took only a fragment. The entire line _e_ to
+_g_ on Plate VII., is evidently composed of three curves of unequal
+lengths, which if we call the shortest 1, the intermediate one 2, and
+the longest 3, are there arranged in the order 1, 3, 2, counting
+upwards. But evidently we might also have had the arrangements 1, 2, 3,
+and 2, 1, 3, giving us three distinct lines, altogether independent of
+position, which being applied to one general dotted slope will each give
+four cornices, or twelve altogether. Of these the six most important are
+those which have the shortest curve convex: they are given in light
+relief from _k_ to _p_, Plate XV., and, by turning the page upside down,
+the other six will be seen in dark relief, only the little upright bits
+of shadow at the bottom are not to be considered as parts of them, being
+only admitted in order to give the complete profile of the more
+important cornices in light.
+
+Sec. XI. In these types, as in _e_ and _f_, the only general condition is,
+that their line shall be composed of three curves of different lengths
+and different arrangements (the depth of arcs and radius of curvatures
+being unconsidered). They are arranged in three couples, each couple
+being two positions of the same entire line; so that numbering the
+component curves in order of magnitude and counting upwards, they will
+read--
+
+  _k_ 1, 2, 3,
+  _l_ 3, 2, 1,
+  _m_ 1, 3, 2,
+  _n_ 2, 3, 1,
+  _o_ 2, 1, 3,
+  _p_ 3, 1, 2.
+
+_m_ and _n_, which are the _Matterhorn line_, are the most beautiful and
+important of all the twelve; _k_ and _l_ the next; _o_ and _p_ are used
+only for certain conditions of flower carving on the surface. The
+reverses (dark) of _k_ and _l_ are also of considerable service; the
+other four hardly ever used in good work.
+
+Sec. XII. If we were to add a fourth curve to the component series, we
+should have forty-eight more cornices: but there is no use in pursuing
+the system further, as such arrangements are very rare and easily
+resolved into the simpler types with certain arbitrary additions fitted
+to their special place; and, in most cases, distinctly separate from the
+main curve, as in the inner line of No. 14, which is a form of the type
+_e_, the longest curve, _i.e._, the lowest, having deepest curvature,
+and each limb opposed by a short contrary curve at its extremities, the
+convex limb by a concave, the concave by a convex.
+
+Sec. XIII. Such, then, are the great families of profile lines into
+which all cornices and capitals may be divided; but their best examples
+unite two such profiles in a mode which we cannot understand till we
+consider the further ornament with which the profiles are charged. And
+in doing this we must, for the sake of clearness, consider, first the
+nature of the designs themselves, and next the mode of cutting them.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XVI.
+               CORNICE DECORATION.]
+
+Sec. XIV. In Plate XVI., opposite, I have thrown together a few of the
+most characteristic mediaeval examples of the treatment of the simplest
+cornice profiles: the uppermost, _a_, is the pure root of cornices from
+St. Mark's. The second, _d_, is the Christian Doric cornice, here
+lettered _d_ in order to avoid confusion, its profile being _d_ of Plate
+XV. in bold development, and here seen on the left-hand side, truly
+drawn, though filled up with the ornament to show the mode in which the
+angle is turned. This is also from St. Mark's. The third, _b_, is _b_ of
+Plate XV., the pattern being inlaid in black because its office was in
+the interior of St. Mark's, where it was too dark to see sculptured
+ornament at the required distance. (The other two simple profiles, _a_
+and _c_ of Plate XV., would be decorated in the same manner, but require
+no example here, for the profile _a_ is of so frequent occurrence that
+it will have a page to itself alone in the next volume; and c may be
+seen over nearly every shop in London, being that of the common Greek
+egg cornice.) The fourth, _e_ in Plate XVI., is a transitional cornice,
+passing from Byzantine into Venetian Gothic: _f_ is a fully developed
+Venetian Gothic cornice founded on Byzantine traditions; and _g_ the
+perfect Lombardic-Gothic cornice, founded on the Pisan Romanesque
+traditions, and strongly marked with the noblest Northern element, the
+Lombardic vitality restrained by classical models. I consider it a
+perfect cornice, and of the highest order.
+
+Sec. XV. Now in the design of this series of ornaments there are two main
+points to be noted; the first, that they all, except _b_, are distinctly
+rooted in the lower part of the cornice, and spring to the top. This
+arrangement is constant in all the best cornices and capitals; and it is
+essential to the expression of the supporting power of both. It is
+exactly opposed to the system of _running_ cornices and _banded_[85]
+capitals, in which the ornament flows along them horizontally, or is
+twined round them, as the mouldings are in the early English capital,
+and the foliage in many decorated ones. Such cornices have arisen from a
+mistaken appliance of the running ornaments, which are proper to
+archivolts, jambs, &c., to the features which have definite functions of
+support. A tendril may nobly follow the outline of an arch, but must not
+creep along a cornice, nor swathe or bandage a capital; it is essential
+to the expression of these features that their ornament should have an
+elastic and upward spring; and as the proper profile for the curve is
+that of a tree bough, as we saw above, so the proper arrangement of its
+farther ornament is that which best expresses rooted and ascendant
+strength like that of foliage.
+
+There are certain very interesting exceptions to the rule (we shall see
+a curious one presently); and in the carrying out of the rule itself, we
+may see constant licenses taken by the great designers, and momentary
+violations of it, like those above spoken of, respecting other
+ornamental laws--violations which are for our refreshment, and for
+increase of delight in the general observance; and this is one of the
+peculiar beauties of the cornice _g_, which, rooting itself in strong
+central clusters, suffers some of its leaves to fall languidly aside, as
+the drooping outer leaves of a natural cluster do so often; but at the
+very instant that it does this, in order that it may not lose any of its
+expression of strength, a fruit-stalk is thrown up above the languid
+leaves, absolutely vertical, as much stiffer and stronger than the rest
+of the plant as the falling leaves are weaker. Cover this with your
+finger, and the cornice falls to pieces, like a bouquet which has been
+untied.
+
+Sec. XVI. There are some instances in which, though the real arrangement
+is that of a running stem, throwing off leaves up and down, the positions
+of the leaves give nearly as much elasticity and organisation to the
+cornice, as if they had been rightly rooted; and others, like _b_, where
+the reversed portion of the ornament is lost in the shade, and the
+general expression of strength is got by the lower member. This cornice
+will, nevertheless, be felt at once to be inferior to the rest; and
+though we may often be called upon to admire designs of these kinds,
+which would have been exquisite if not thus misplaced, the reader will
+find that they are both of rare occurrence, and significative of
+declining style; while the greater mass of the banded capitals are heavy
+and valueless, mere aggregations of confused sculpture, swathed round
+the extremity of the shaft, as if she had dipped it into a mass of
+melted ornament, as the glass-blower does his blow-pipe into the metal,
+and brought up a quantity adhering glutinously to its extremity. We have
+many capitals of this kind in England: some of the worst and heaviest in
+the choir of York. The later capitals of the Italian Gothic have the
+same kind of effect, but owing to another cause: for their structure is
+quite pure, and based on the Corinthian type: and it is the branching
+form of the heads of the leaves which destroys the effect of their
+organisation. On the other hand, some of the Italian cornices which are
+actually composed by running tendrils, throwing off leaves into oval
+interstices, are so massive in their treatment, and so marked and firm
+in their vertical and arched lines, that they are nearly as suggestive
+of support as if they had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice
+of this kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (Plate VI. in the "Seven
+Lamps," and XXI. here), and with exquisite propriety; for that cornice
+is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a foundation to that
+which is above it, and therefore unites the strength and elasticity of
+the lines proper to the cornice with the submission and prostration of
+those proper to the foundation.
+
+Sec. XVII. This, then, is the first point needing general notice in the
+designs in Plate XVI. The second is the difference between the freedom
+of the Northern and the sophistication of the classical cornices, in
+connection with what has been advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, _a_,
+_d_, and _b_, are of the same date, but they show a singular difference
+in the workman's temper: that at _b_ is a single copy of a classical
+mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it, which are,
+in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman egg and arrow
+mouldings. But the cornices _a_ and _d_ are copies of nothing of the
+kind: the idea of them has indeed been taken from the Greek honeysuckle
+ornament, but the chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or
+Byzantine, in temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists: this work is
+as energetic as its original; energetic, not in the quantity of work,
+but in the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil, may cover
+large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or accumulate his
+dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it is gathered weariness
+still. The man who cut those two uppermost cornices had no time to
+spare: did as much cornice as he could in half an hour; but would not
+endure the slightest trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an
+edge. His work is absolutely unreproveable; keen, and true, as Nature's
+own; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every line of
+it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in him: we shall see
+something come of that cornice: The fellow who inlaid the other (_b_),
+will stay where he is for ever; and when he has inlaid one leaf up, will
+inlay another down,--and so undulate up and down to all eternity: but
+the man of _a_ and _d_ will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in
+handicrafts, nor stubbornness in stone.
+
+Sec. XVIII. But there is something else noticeable in those two cornices,
+besides the energy of them: as opposed either to _b_, or the Greek
+honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are _natural_ designs. The Greek egg
+and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in its lines, but
+utterly absurd in meaning. Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at
+least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows,
+nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are
+all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness of
+nothing,--pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those
+Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the
+tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far
+as that work will go, it has consistent intention; with the fewest
+possible incisions, and those of the easiest shape, they suggest the
+true image, of clusters of leaves, each leaf with its central depression
+from root to point, and that distinctly visible at almost any distance
+from the eye, and in almost any light.
+
+Sec. XIX. Here, then, are two great new elements visible; energy and
+naturalism:--Life, with submission to the laws of God, and love of his
+works; this is Christianity, dealing with her classical models. Now look
+back to what I said in Chap. 1. Sec. XX. of this dealing of hers, and
+invention of the new Doric line; then to what is above stated (Sec. VIII.)
+respecting that new Doric, and the boughs of trees; and now to the
+evidence in the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see
+how the whole is beginning to come together.
+
+Sec. XX. We said that something would come of these two cornices, _a_ and
+_d_. In _e_ and _f_ we see that something _has_ come of them: _e_ is
+also from St. Mark's, and one of the earliest examples in Venice of the
+transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic cornice. It is already
+singularly developed; flowers have been added between the clusters of
+leaves, and the leaves themselves curled over: and observe the
+well-directed thought of the sculptor in this curling;--the old
+incisions are retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the
+proofs of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand
+for the _under_ surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns over, on
+the top of it you see true _ribs_. Look at the upper and under surface
+of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps we are making.
+
+Sec. XXI. The fifth example (_f_) was cut in 1347; it is from the tomb of
+Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and Paul, and it exhibits
+the character of the central Venetian Gothic fully developed. The lines
+are all now soft and undulatory, though elastic; the sharp incisions
+have become deeply-gathered folds; the hollow of the leaf is expressed
+completely beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised
+into several lobes, and their ribs delicately drawn above. (The flower
+between is only accidentally absent; it occurs in most cornices of the
+time.)
+
+But in both these cornices the reader will notice that while the
+naturalism of the sculpture is steadily on the increase, the classical
+formalism is still retained. The leaves are accurately numbered, and
+sternly set in their places; they are leaves in office, and dare not
+stir nor wave. They have the shapes of leaves, but not the functions,
+"having the form of knowledge, but denying the power thereof." What is
+the meaning of this?
+
+Sec. XXII. Look back to the XXXIIIrd paragraph of the first chapter,
+and you will see the meaning of it. These cornices are the Venetian
+Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element struggling with the
+Formalism of the Papacy,--the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its
+principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means
+Apostolic succession, and I don't know how much more, and is already
+preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, and the
+Renaissance.[86]
+
+Sec. XXIII. Now look to the last cornice (_g_). That is Protestantism,--a
+slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism, in those falling
+leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The forms all broken through,
+and sent heaven knows where, but the root held fast; and the strong sap
+in the branches; and, best of all, good fruit ripening and opening
+straight towards heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the
+leaves lie in the dust.
+
+Now, observe. The cornice _f_ represents Heathenism and Papistry,
+animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature. The good in it, the
+life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are
+Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the
+Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk's
+dress,--Christianity before the Reformation. The cornice _g_ has the
+Lombardic life element in its fulness, with only some color and shape of
+Classicalism mingled with it--the good of classicalism; as much method
+and Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The
+continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root, the
+simplicity of the great profile,--all these are the healthy classical
+elements retained: the rest is reformation, new strength, and recovered
+liberty.
+
+Sec. XXIV. There is one more point about it especially noticeable. The
+leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character, but they are
+of no particular species: and after being something like cabbage-leaves
+in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end.
+Now I don't know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a
+classical character;--it is eminently characteristic of Southern work;
+and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would
+have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in
+one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or
+bad element, I am not sure;--whether it is the last trace of Centaurism
+and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative
+purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has
+been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working
+of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law
+in its members warring against the law of its mind.
+
+Sec. XXV. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both
+of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question
+proposed in Sec. XIII., and observe the modifications of form of profile
+which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to Sec.
+XIII., we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in
+the abstract;--the modes in which they have been derived from each other
+in actual practice require to be followed in their turn. How the Greek
+Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine,
+and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediaeval
+ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the
+first type of the concave cornice _a_ in Plate XV.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXIII.]
+
+Sec. XXVI. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly pure, but
+in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a meagreness in its
+junction with the wall beneath it, where it was set as here at _a_, Fig.
+LXIII., which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a
+bar of shadow. There were two ways of getting this bar: one by a
+projecting roll at the foot of the cornice (_b_, Fig. LXIII.), the other
+by slipping the whole cornice a little forward (_c_. Fig. LXIII.). From
+these two methods arise two groups of cornices and capitals, which we
+shall pursue in succession.
+
+Sec. XXVII. First group. With the roll at the base (_b_, Fig. LXIII.). The
+chain of its succession is represented from 1 to 6, in Plate XV.: 1 and
+2 are the steps already gained, as in Fig. LXIII.; and in them the
+profile of cornice used is _a_ of Plate XV., or a refined condition of
+_b_ of Fig. V., p. 69, above. Now, keeping the same refined profile,
+substitute the condition of it, _f_ of Fig. V. (and there accounted
+for), above the roll here, and you have 3, Plate XV. This superadded
+abacus was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle; but you
+know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your simplest
+chamfer on it (_a_ or _b_, Fig. LIII., page 287, above), but on the
+visible side only, and you have fig. 4, Plate XV. (the top stone being
+made deeper that you may have room to chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is
+the profile of Lombardic and Venetian early capitals and cornices, by
+tens of thousands; and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with
+this only difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the
+top of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through a
+series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a diviner:--but
+how slowly! a stone dial which marches but 45 degrees in three
+centuries, and through the intermediate condition 5 arrives at 6, and so
+stays.
+
+In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same height in
+order to make the comparison more easy; the depth chosen is about
+intermediate between that which is customary in cornices on the one
+hand, which are often a little shorter, and capitals on the other, which
+are often a little deeper.[87] And it is to be noted that the profiles 5
+and 6 establish themselves in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in
+cornices to the latest times.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXIV.]
+
+Sec. XXVIII. Second group (c, Fig. LXIII.). If the lower angle, which
+was quickly felt to be hard, be rounded off, we have the form _a_, Fig.
+LXIV. The front of the curved line is then decorated, as we have seen;
+and the termination of the decorated surface marked by an incision, as
+in an ordinary chamfer, as at _b_ here. This I believe to have been the
+simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee cornices; but they are
+farther complicated by the curves given to the leafage which flows over
+them. In the ordinary Greek cornices, and in _a_ and _d_ of Plate XVI.,
+the decoration is _incised_ from the outside profile, without any
+suggestion of an interior surface of a different contour. But in the
+leaf cornices which follow, the decoration is represented as _overlaid_
+on one of the early profiles, and has another outside contour of its
+own; which is, indeed, the true profile of the cornice, but beneath
+which, more or less, the simpler profile is seen or suggested, which
+terminates all the incisions of the chisel. This under profile will
+often be found to be some condition of the type _a_ or _b_, Fig. LXIV.;
+and the leaf profile to be another ogee with its fullest curve up
+instead of down, lapping over the cornice edge above, so that the entire
+profile might be considered as made up of two ogee curves laid, like
+packed herrings, head to tail. Figures 8 and 9 of Plate XV. exemplify
+this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a heavier contour, doubtless composed in the
+same manner, but of which I had not marked the innermost profile, and
+which I have given here only to complete the series which, from 7 to 12
+inclusive, exemplifies the gradual restriction of the leaf outline, from
+its boldest projection in the cornice to its most modest service in the
+capital. This change, however, is not one which indicates difference of
+age, but merely of office and position: the cornice 7 is from the tomb
+of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1350) in St. Mark's, 8 from a canopy over a
+door of about the same period, 9 from the tomb of the Dogaressa Agnese
+Venier (1411), 10 from that of Pietro Cornaro (1361),[88] and 11 from
+that of Andrea Morosini (1347), all in the church of San Giov. and
+Paola, all these being cornice profiles; and, finally, 12 from a capital
+of the Ducal Palace, of fourteen century work.
+
+Sec. XXIX. Now the reader will doubtless notice that in the three
+examples, 10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from that of 7, 8,
+or 9. This difference is peculiarly significant. I have always desired
+that the reader should theoretically consider the capital as a
+concentration of the cornice; but in practice it often happens that the
+cornice is, on the contrary, an unrolled capital; and one of the richest
+early forms of the Byzantine cornice (not given in Plate XV., because its
+separate character and importance require examination apart) is nothing
+more than an unrolled continuation of the lower range of acanthus leaves
+on the Corinthian capital. From this cornice others appear to have been
+derived, like _e_ in Plate XVI., in which the acanthus outline has
+become confused with that of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the
+centre of the Corinthian capital introduced between them; and thus their
+forms approach more and more to those derived from the cornice itself.
+Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, Plate XV., the profile
+is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice derived from a capital;
+while, if the leaf have the contour of 7 or 8, the profile is either
+actually of a cornice or of a capital derived from a cornice. Where the
+Byzantines use the acanthus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan
+water-leaf; but the connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly
+the same.
+
+Sec. XXX. Thus far, however, we have considered the characters of profile
+which are common to the cornice and capital both. We have now to note
+what farther decorative features or peculiarities belong to the capital
+itself, or result from the theoretical gathering of the one into the
+other.
+
+Look back to Fig. XXII., p. 110. The five types there given, represented
+the five different methods of concentration of the root of cornices, _a_
+of Fig. V. Now, as many profiles of cornices as were developed in Plate
+XV. from this cornice root, there represented by the dotted slope, so
+many may be applied to each of the five types in Fig. XXII.,--applied
+simply in _a_ and _b_, but with farther modifications, necessitated by
+their truncations or spurs, in _c_, _d_, and _e_.
+
+Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such length and
+slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition comes into effect
+described in Chapter IX. Sec. XXIV., and any one of the cornices in Plate
+XV. may become the _abacus_ of a capital formed out of any other, or
+out of itself. The infinity of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well
+be supposed, be exhibited or catalogued in the space at present
+permitted to us: but the reader, once master of the principle, will
+easily be able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples
+that may occur to him, and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise, put
+before him a few of those which he will meet with most frequently in his
+Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points, not hitherto touched
+upon, in the disposition of the abacus.
+
+Sec. XXXI. In Plate XVII. the capital at the top, on the left hand, is the
+rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian Doric cornice, _d_ of
+Plate XV. The shaft is octagonal, and the capital is not cut to fit it,
+but is square at the base; and the curve of its profile projects on two
+of its sides more than on the other two, so as to make the abacus
+oblong, in order to carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of
+the upper lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward stretching
+of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to have done, is very
+remarkable. There is here no second superimposed abacus.
+
+Sec. XXXII. The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the simple
+but perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which the first example
+fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried is exactly the same in size
+and shape; but instead of being trusted to a single shaft, it has two of
+smaller area (compare Chap. VIII., Sec. XIII.), and all the expansion
+necessary is now gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out
+of one stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle,
+and nothing can be simpler or purer; it is composed of 2, in Plate XV.,
+used for the capital itself, with _c_ of Fig. LXIII. used for the
+abacus; the reader could hardly have a neater little bit of syntax for a
+first lesson. If the section be taken through the side of the bell, the
+capital profile is the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V., with the added
+roll. This capital is somewhat remarkable in having its sides perfectly
+straight, some slight curvature being usual on so bold a scale; but it
+is all the better as a first example, the method of reduction being
+of order _d_, in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and with a concave cut, as in
+Fig. XXI., p. 109. These two capitals are from the cloister of the duomo
+of Verona.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XVII.
+               CAPITALS CONCAVE GROUP.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXV.]
+
+Sec. XXXIII. The lowermost figure in Plate XVII. represents an exquisitely
+finished example of the same type, from St. Zeno of Verona. Above, at 2,
+in Plate II., the plan of the shafts was given, but I inadvertently
+reversed their position: in comparing that plan with Plate XVII., Plate
+II. must be held upside down. The capitals, with the band connecting
+them, are all cut out of one block; their profile is an adaptation of 4
+of Plate XV., with a plain headstone superimposed. This method of
+reduction is that of order _d_ in Fig. XXII., but the peculiarity of
+treatment of their truncation is highly interesting. Fig. LXV.
+represents the plans of the capitals at the base, the shaded parts being
+the bells: the open line, the roll with its connecting band. The bell of
+the one, it will be seen, is the exact reverse of that of the other: the
+angle truncations are, in both, curved horizontally as well as
+uprightly; but their curve is convex in the one, and in the other
+concave. Plate XVII. will show the effect of both, with the farther
+incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one with the concave
+truncation, which join with the rest of its singularly bold and keen
+execution in giving the impression of its rather having been cloven
+into its form by the sweeps of a sword, than by the dull travail of a
+chisel. Its workman was proud of it, as well he might be: he has written
+his name upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as
+kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, ADAMINUS DE
+SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT.
+
+Sec. XXXIV. The reader will easily understand that the gracefulness of
+this kind of truncation, as he sees it in Plate XVII., soon suggested the
+idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline, and laying four healing
+leaves, as it were, upon the wounds which the sword had made. These four
+leaves, on the truncations of the capital, correspond to the four leaves
+which we saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the
+base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one of the
+most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic workmen ever invented;
+represented by two perfect types in the capitals of the Piazzetta
+columns of Venice. But this pure group is an isolated one; it remains in
+the first simplicity of its conception far into the thirteenth century,
+while around it rise up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old
+Corinthian, and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant
+growth among the primal four. The varieties of their grouping we shall
+enumerate hereafter: one general characteristic of them all must be
+noted here.
+
+Sec. XXXV. The reader has been told repeatedly[89] that there are two,
+and only two, real orders of capitals, originally represented by the
+Corinthian and the Doric; and distinguished by the concave or convex
+contours of their bells, as shown by the dotted lines at _e_, Fig. V.,
+p. 65. And hitherto, respecting the capital, we have been exclusively
+concerned with the methods in which these two families of simple
+contours have gathered themselves together, and obtained reconciliation
+to the abacus above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph
+introduces us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the
+chiselling of which the characters described above, Sec. XXVIII., which
+are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and divide the
+families of the capital.
+
+Sec. XXXVI. Whatever the nature of the ornament be, it must clearly have
+relief of some kind, and must present projecting surfaces separated by
+incisions. But it is a very material question whether the contour,
+hitherto broadly considered as that of the entire bell, shall be that of
+the _outside_ of the projecting and relieved ornaments, or of the
+_bottoms of the incisions_ which divide them; whether, that is to say,
+we shall first cut out the bell of our capital quite smooth, and then
+cut farther into it, with incisions, which shall leave ornamental forms
+in relief, or whether, in originally cutting the contour of the bell, we
+shall leave projecting bits of stone, which we may afterwards work into
+the relieved ornament.
+
+Sec. XXXVII. Now, look back to Fig. V., p. 65. Clearly, if to ornament the
+already hollowed profile, _b_, we cut deep incisions into it, we shall
+so far weaken it at the top, that it will nearly lose all its supporting
+power. Clearly, also, if to ornament the already bulging profile _c_ we
+were to leave projecting pieces of stone outside of it, we should nearly
+destroy all its relation to the original sloping line X, and produce an
+unseemly and ponderous mass, hardly recognizable as a cornice profile.
+It is evident, on the other hand, that we can afford to cut into this
+profile without fear of destroying its strength, and that we can afford
+to leave projections outside of the other, without fear of destroying
+its lightness. Such is, accordingly, the natural disposition of the
+sculpture, and the two great families of capitals are therefore
+distinguished, not merely by their concave and convex contours, but by
+the ornamentation being left outside the bell of the one, and cut into
+the bell of the other; so that, in either case, the ornamental portions
+will fall _between the dotted lines_ at _e_, Fig. V., and the pointed
+oval, or vesica piscis, which is traced by them, may be called the Limit
+of ornamentation.
+
+Sec. XXXVIII. Several distinctions in the quantity and style of the
+ornament must instantly follow from this great distinction in its
+position. First, in its quantity. For, observe: since in the Doric
+profile, _c_ of Fig. V., the contour itself is to be composed of the
+surface of the ornamentation, this ornamentation must be close and
+united enough to form, or at least suggest, a continuous surface; it
+must, therefore, be rich in quantity and close in aggregation; otherwise
+it will destroy the massy character of the profile it adorns, and
+approximate it to its opposite, the concave. On the other hand, the
+ornament left projecting from the concave, must be sparing enough, and
+dispersed enough, to allow the concave bell to be clearly seen beneath
+it; otherwise it will choke up the concave profile, and approximate it
+to its opposite, the convex.
+
+Sec. XXXIX. And, secondly, in its style. For, clearly, as the sculptor
+of the concave profile must leave masses of rough stone prepared for his
+outer ornament, and cannot finish them at once, but must complete the
+cutting of the smooth bell beneath first, and then return to the
+projecting masses (for if he were to finish these latter first, they
+would assuredly, if delicate or sharp, be broken as he worked on; since,
+I say, he must work in this foreseeing and predetermined method, he is
+sure to reduce the system of his ornaments to some definite symmetrical
+order before he begins); and the habit of conceiving beforehand all that
+he has to do, will probably render him not only more orderly in its
+arrangement, but more skilful and accurate in its execution, than if he
+could finish all as he worked on. On the other hand, the sculptor of the
+convex profile has its smooth surface laid before him, as a piece of
+paper on which he can sketch at his pleasure; the incisions he makes in
+it are like touches of a dark pencil; and he is at liberty to roam over
+the surface in perfect freedom, with light incisions or with deep;
+finishing here, suggesting there, or perhaps in places leaving the
+surface altogether smooth. It is ten to one, therefore, but that, if he
+yield to the temptation, he becomes irregular in design, and rude in
+handling; and we shall assuredly find the two families of capitals
+distinguished, the one by its symmetrical, thoroughly organised, and
+exquisitely executed ornament, the other by its rambling, confused, and
+rudely chiselled ornament: But, on the other hand, while we shall
+often have to admire the disciplined precision of the one, and as often
+to regret the irregular rudeness of the other, we shall not fail to find
+balancing qualities in both. The severity of the disciplinarian capital
+represses the power of the imagination; it gradually degenerates into
+Formalism; and the indolence which cannot escape from its stern demand
+of accurate workmanship, seeks refuge in copyism of established forms,
+and loses itself at last in lifeless mechanism. The license of the
+other, though often abused, permits full exercise to the imagination:
+the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the niceties of chiselling,
+wanders over its orbed field in endless fantasy; and, when generous as
+well as powerful, repays the liberty which has been granted to it with
+interest, by developing through the utmost wildness and fulness of its
+thoughts, an order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of
+the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is vaster.
+
+[Illustration: Plate XVIII.
+               CAPITALS CONVEX GROUP.]
+
+Sec. XL. And now the reader shall judge whether I had not reason to cast
+aside the so-called Five orders of the Renaissance architects, with
+their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that there were only two real
+orders, and that there could never be more.[90] For we now find that
+these two great and real orders are representative of the two great
+influences which must for ever divide the heart of man: the one of
+Lawful Discipline, with its perfection and order, but its danger of
+degeneracy into Formalism; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor
+and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness.
+
+Sec. XLI. I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of the most
+elaborate developments of either order; they will be better given on a
+larger scale: but the examples in Plate XVII. and XVIII. represent the
+two methods of ornament in their earliest appliance. The two lower
+capitals in Plate XVII. are a pure type of the concave school; the two
+in the centre of Plate XVIII., of the convex. At the top of Plate XVIII.
+are two Lombardic capitals; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua,
+that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan. They both
+have the concave angle truncation; but being of date prior to the time
+when the idea of the concave bell was developed, they are otherwise left
+square, and decorated with the surface ornament characteristic of the
+convex school. The relation of the designs to each other is interesting;
+the cross being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly
+relieved in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the
+southern portico of St. Mark's; the shafts having been of different
+lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally intended for their
+present place, they have double abaci, of which the uppermost is the
+cornice running round the whole facade. The zigzagged capital is highly
+curious, and in its place very effective and beautiful, although one of
+the exceptions which it was above noticed that we should sometimes find
+to the law stated in Sec. XV. above.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXVI.]
+
+Sec. XLII. The lower capital, which is also of the true convex school,
+exhibits one of the conditions of the spurred type, _e_ of Fig. XXII.,
+respecting which one or two points must be noticed.
+
+If we were to take up the plan of the simple spur, represented at _e_ in
+Fig. XXII., p. 110, and treat it, with the salvia leaf, as we did the
+spur of the base, we should have for the head of our capital a plan like
+Fig. LXVI., which is actually that of one of the capitals of the Fondaco
+de' Turchi at Venice; with this only difference, that the intermediate
+curves between the spurs would have been circular: the reason they are
+not so, here, is that the decoration, instead of being confined to the
+spur, is now spread over the whole mass, and contours are therefore
+given to the intermediate curves which fit them for this ornament; the
+inside shaded space being the head of the shaft, and the outer, the
+abacus. The reader has in Fig. LXVI. a characteristic type of the plans
+of the spurred capitals, generally preferred by the sculptors of the
+convex school, but treated with infinite variety, the spurs often being
+cut into animal forms, or the incisions between them multiplied, for
+richer effect; and in our own Norman capital the type _c_ of Fig. XXII.
+is variously subdivided by incisions on its slope, approximating in
+general effect to many conditions of the real spurred type, _e_, but
+totally differing from them in principle.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXVII.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXVIII.]
+
+Sec. XLIII. The treatment of the spur in the concave school is far more
+complicated, being borrowed in nearly every case from the original
+Corinthian. Its plan may be generally represented by Fig. LXVII. The
+spur itself is carved into a curling tendril or concave leaf, which
+supports the projecting angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides
+fall back behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other
+ornament in their centres. The mediaeval architects often put another
+square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded portion of Fig.
+LXVII., and some massy conditions of this form, elaborately ornamented,
+are very beautiful; but it is apt to become rigid and effeminate, as
+assuredly it is in the original Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and
+meagre in its upper tendrils and abacus.
+
+Sec. XLIV. The lowest capital in Plate XVIII. is from St. Mark's, and
+singular in having double spurs; it is therefore to be compared with
+the doubly spurred base, also from St Mark's, in Plate XI. In other
+respects it is a good example of the union of breadth of mass with
+subtlety of curvature, which characterises nearly all the spurred
+capitals of the convex school. Its plan is given in Fig. LXVIII.: the
+inner shaded circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the
+bottom of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded
+portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a ship's bow,
+with the Doric profile; the surfaces so obtained are then charged with
+arborescent ornament.
+
+Sec. XLV. I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of the
+treatment of the spur, because I am afraid of confusing the reader's
+mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his conception of the
+differences between the two great orders, which it has been my principal
+object to develope throughout this chapter. If all my readers lived in
+London, I could at once fix this difference in their minds by a simple,
+yet somewhat curious illustration. In many parts of the west end of
+London, as, for instance, at the corners of Belgrave Square, and the
+north side of Grosvenor Square, the Corinthian capitals of newly-built
+houses are put into cages of wire. The wire cage is the exact form of
+the typical capital of the convex school; the Corinthian capital,
+within, is a finished and highly decorated example of the concave. The
+space between the cage and capital is the limit of ornamentation.
+
+Sec. XLVI. Those of my readers, however, to whom this illustration is
+inaccessible, must be content with the two profiles, 13 and 14, on Plate
+XV. If they will glance along the line of sections from 1 to 6, they
+will see that the profile 13 is their final development, with a
+superadded cornice for its abacus. It is taken from a capital in a very
+important ruin of a palace, near the Rialto of Venice, and hereafter to
+be described; the projection, outside of its principal curve, is the
+profile of its _superadded_ leaf ornamentation; it may be taken as one
+of the simplest, yet a perfect type of the concave group.
+
+Sec. XLVII. The profile 14 is that of the capital of the main shaft of
+the northern portico of St. Mark's, the most finished example I ever met
+with of the convex family, to which, in spite of the central inward bend
+of its profile, it is marked as distinctly belonging, by the bold convex
+curve at its root, springing from the shaft in the line of the Christian
+Doric cornice, and exactly reversing the structure of the other profile,
+which rises from the shaft, like a palm leaf from its stem. Farther, in
+the profile 13, the innermost line is that of the bell; but in the
+profile 14, the outermost line is that of the bell, and the inner line
+is the limit of the incisions of the chisel, in undercutting a
+reticulated veil of ornament, surrounding a flower like a lily; most
+ingeniously, and, I hope, justly, conjectured by the Marchese Selvatico
+to have been intended for an imitation of the capitals of the temple of
+Solomon, which Hiram made, with "nets of checker work, and wreaths of
+chain work for the chapiters that were on the top of the pillars ... and
+the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in
+the porch." (1 Kings, vii. 17, 19.)
+
+Sec. XLVIII. On this exquisite capital there is imposed an abacus of
+the profile with which we began our investigation long ago, the profile _a_
+of Fig. V. This abacus is formed by the cornice already given, _a_, of
+Plate XVI.: and therefore we have, in this lovely Venetian capital, the
+summary of the results of our investigation, from its beginning to its
+close: the type of the first cornice; the decoration of it, in its
+emergence from the classical models; the gathering into the capital; the
+superimposition of the secondary cornice, and the refinement of the bell
+of the capital by triple curvature in the two limits of chiselling. I
+cannot express the exquisite refinements of the curves on the small
+scale of Plate XV.; I will give them more accurately in a larger
+engraving; but the scale on which they are here given will not prevent
+the reader from perceiving, and let him note it thoughtfully, that the
+outer curve of the noble capital is the one which was our first example
+of associated curves; that I have had no need, throughout the whole of
+our inquiry, to refer to any other ornamental line than the three which
+I at first chose, the simplest of those which Nature set by chance
+before me; and that this lily, of the delicate Venetian marble, has but
+been wrought, by the highest human art, into the same line which the
+clouds disclose, when they break from the rough rocks of the flank of
+the Matterhorn.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [84] In very early Doric it was an absolute right line; and that
+    capital is therefore derived from the pure cornice root, represented
+    by the dotted line.
+
+  [85] The word banded is used by Professor Willis in a different
+    sense; which I would respect, by applying it in his sense always to
+    the Impost, and in mine to the capital itself. (This note is not for
+    the general reader, who need not trouble himself about the matter.)
+
+  [86] The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the
+    one side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes,
+    as here, I have to declare its lifelessness, at other times (Chap.
+    XXV., Sec. XVII.) its lasciviousness. There is, of course, no
+    contradiction in this: but the reader might well ask how I knew the
+    change from the base 11 to the base 12, in Plate XII., to be one
+    from temperance to luxury; and from the cornice _f_ to the cornice
+    _g_, in Plate XVI., to be one from formalism to vitality. I know it,
+    both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell
+    at length hereafter, and by the context of the works of the time.
+    But the outward signs might in both ornaments be the same,
+    distinguishable only as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of
+    both. The blush of shame cannot always be told from the blush of
+    indignation.
+
+  [87] The reader must always remember that a cornice, in becoming a
+    capital, must, if not originally bold and deep, have depth added to
+    its profile, in order to reach the just proportion of the lower
+    member of the shaft head; and that therefore the small Greek egg
+    cornices are utterly incapable of becoming capitals till they have
+    totally changed their form and depth. The Renaissance architects,
+    who never obtained hold of a right principle but they made it worse
+    than a wrong one by misapplication, caught the idea of turning the
+    cornice into a capital, but did not comprehend the necessity of the
+    accompanying change of depth. Hence we have pilaster heads formed of
+    small egg cornices, and that meanest of all mean heads of shafts,
+    the coarse Roman Doric profile chopped into a small egg and arrow
+    moulding, both which may be seen disfiguring half the buildings in
+    London.
+
+  [88] I have taken these dates roughly from Selvatico; their absolute
+    accuracy to within a year or two, is here of no importance.
+
+  [89] Chap. I. Sec. XIX., Appendix 7: and Chap. VI. Sec. V.
+
+  [90] Chap. I., Sec. XIX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE.
+
+
+[Illustration: Plate XIX.
+               ARCHIVOLT DECORATION.
+               AT VERONA.]
+
+Sec. I. If the windows and doors of some of our best northern Gothic
+buildings were built up, and the ornament of their archivolts concealed,
+there would often remain little but masses of dead wall and unsightly
+buttress; the whole vitality of the building consisting in the graceful
+proportions or rich mouldings of its apertures. It is not so in the
+south, where, frequently, the aperture is a mere dark spot on the
+variegated wall; but there the column, with its horizontal or curved
+architrave, assumes an importance of another kind, equally dependent
+upon the methods of lintel and archivolt decoration. These, though in
+their richness of minor variety they defy all exemplification, may be
+very broadly generalized.
+
+Of the mere lintel, indeed, there is no specific decoration, nor can be;
+it has no organism to direct its ornament, and therefore may receive any
+kind and degree of ornament, according to its position. In a Greek
+temple, it has meagre horizontal lines; in a Romanesque church, it
+becomes a row of upright niches, with an apostle in each; and may become
+anything else at the architect's will. But the arch head has a natural
+organism, which separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly
+definable.
+
+Sec. II. In speaking of the arch-line and arch masonry, we considered
+the arch to be cut straight through the wall; so that, if half built, it
+would have the appearance at _a_, Fig. LXIX. But in the chapter on Form
+of Apertures, we found that the side of the arch, or jamb of the
+aperture, might often require to be bevelled, so as to give the section
+_b_, Fig. LXIX. It is easily conceivable that when two ranges of
+voussoirs were used, one over another, it would be easier to leave
+those beneath, of a smaller diameter, than to bevel them to accurate
+junction with those outside. Whether influenced by this facility, or by
+decorative instinct, the early northern builders often substitute for
+the bevel the third condition, _c_, of Fig. LXIX.; so that, of the three
+forms in that figure, _a_ belongs principally to the south, _c_ to the
+north, and _b_ indifferently to both.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXIX.]
+
+Sec. III. If the arch in the northern building be very deep, its depth
+will probably be attained by a succession of steps, like that in _c_; and
+the richest results of northern archivolt decoration are entirely based on
+the aggregation of the ornament of these several steps; while those of
+the south are only the complete finish and perfection of the ornament of
+one. In this ornament of the single arch, the points for general note
+are very few.
+
+Sec. IV. It was, in the first instance, derived from the classical
+architrave,[91] and the early Romanesque arches are nothing but such an
+architrave, bent round. The horizontal lines of the latter become
+semicircular, but their importance and value remain exactly the same;
+their continuity is preserved across all the voussoirs, and the joints
+and functions of the latter are studiously concealed. As the builders
+get accustomed to the arch, and love it better, they cease to be ashamed
+of its structure: the voussoirs begin to show themselves confidently,
+and fight for precedence with the architrave lines; and there is an
+entanglement of the two structures, in consequence, like the circular
+and radiating lines of a cobweb, until at last the architrave lines get
+worsted, and driven away outside of the voussoirs; being permitted to
+stay at all only on condition of their dressing themselves in mediaeval
+costume, as in the plate opposite.
+
+Sec. V. In other cases, however, before the entire discomfiture of the
+architrave, a treaty of peace is signed between the adverse parties on
+these terms: That the architrave shall entirely dismiss its inner three
+meagre lines, and leave the space of them to the voussoirs, to display
+themselves after their manner; but that, in return for this concession,
+the architrave shall have leave to expand the small cornice which
+usually terminates it (the reader had better look at the original form
+in that of the Erechtheum, in the middle of the Elgin room of the
+British Museum) into bolder prominence, and even to put brackets under
+it, as if it were a roof cornice, and thus mark with a bold shadow the
+terminal line of the voussoirs. This condition is seen in the arch from
+St. Pietro of Pistoja, Plate XIII., above.
+
+Sec. VI. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly determined,
+and victorious, the architrave cornice is compelled to relinquish its
+classical form, and take the profile of a Gothic cornice or dripstone;
+while, in other cases, as in much of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced
+to disappear altogether. But the voussoirs then concede, on the other
+hand, so much of their dignity as to receive a running ornament of
+foliage or animals, like a classical frieze, and continuous round the
+arch. In fact, the contest between the adversaries may be seen running
+through all the early architecture of Italy: success inclining sometimes
+to the one, sometimes to the other, and various kinds of truce or
+reconciliation being effected between them: sometimes merely formal,
+sometimes honest and affectionate, but with no regular succession in
+time. The greatest victory of the voussoir is to annihilate the cornice,
+and receive an ornament of its own outline, and entirely limited by its
+own joints: and yet this may be seen in the very early apse of Murano.
+
+Sec. VII. The most usual condition, however, is that unity of the two
+members above described, Sec. V., and which may be generally represented
+by the archivolt section _a_, Fig. LXX.; and from this descend a family of
+Gothic archivolts of the highest importance. For the cornice, thus
+attached to the arch, suffers exactly the same changes as the level
+cornice, or capital; receives, in due time, its elaborate ogee profile
+and leaf ornaments, like Fig. 8 or 9 of Plate XV.; and, when the shaft
+loses its shape, and is lost in the later Gothic jamb, the archivolt has
+influence enough to introduce this ogee profile in the jamb also,
+through the banded impost: and we immediately find ourselves involved in
+deep successions of ogee mouldings in sides of doors and windows, which
+never would have been thought of, but for the obstinate resistance of
+the classical architrave to the attempts of the voussoir at its
+degradation or banishment.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXX.]
+
+Sec. VIII. This, then, will be the first great head under which we shall
+in future find it convenient to arrange a large number of archivolt
+decorations. It is the distinctively Southern and Byzantine form, and
+typically represented by the section _a_, of Fig. LXX.; and it is
+susceptible of almost every species of surface ornament, respecting
+which only this general law may be asserted: that, while the outside or
+vertical surface may properly be decorated, and yet the soffit or under
+surface left plain, the soffit is never to be decorated, and the outer
+surface left plain. Much beautiful sculpture is, in the best Byzantine
+buildings, half lost by being put under soffits; but the eye is led to
+discover it, and even to demand it, by the rich chasing of the outside
+of the voussoirs. It would have been an hypocrisy to carve them
+externally only. But there is not the smallest excuse for carving the
+soffit, and not the outside; for, in that case, we approach the building
+under the idea of its being perfectly plain; we do not look for the
+soffit decoration, and, of course, do not see it: or, if we do, it is
+merely to regret that it should not be in a better place. In the
+Renaissance architects, it may, perhaps, for once, be considered a
+merit, that they put their bad decoration systematically in the places
+where we should least expect it, and can seldomest see it:--Approaching
+the Scuola di San Rocco, you probably will regret the extreme plainness
+and barrenness of the window traceries; but, if you will go very close
+to the wall beneath the windows, you may, on sunny days, discover a
+quantity of panel decorations which the ingenious architect has
+concealed under the soffits.
+
+The custom of decorating the arch soffit with panelling is a Roman
+application of the Greek roof ornament, which, whatever its intrinsic
+merit (compare Chap. XXIX. Sec. IV.), may rationally be applied to waggon
+vaults, as of St. Peter's, and to arch soffits under which one walks.
+But the Renaissance architects had not wit enough to reflect that people
+usually do not walk through windows.
+
+Sec. IX. So far, then, of the Southern archivolt: In Fig. LXIX., above,
+it will be remembered that _c_ represents the simplest form of the
+Northern. In the farther development of this, which we have next to
+consider, the voussoirs, in consequence of their own negligence or
+over-confidence, sustain a total and irrecoverable defeat. That
+archivolt is in its earliest conditions perfectly pure and
+undecorated,--the simplest and rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when
+it falls on the pier, and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire
+section of masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the
+crosslet shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern
+design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and fixed
+development of this type of archivolt than for any other architectural
+transition with which I am acquainted. But there it is, pure and firmly
+established, as early as the building of St. Michele of Pavia; and we
+have thenceforward only to observe what comes of it.
+
+Sec. X. We find it first, as I said, perfectly barren; cornice and
+architrave altogether ignored, the existence of such things practically
+denied, and a plain, deep-cut recess with a single mighty shadow
+occupying their place. The voussoirs, thinking their great adversary
+utterly defeated, are at no trouble to show themselves; visible enough
+in both the upper and under archivolts, they are content to wait the
+time when, as might have been hoped, they should receive a new
+decoration peculiar to themselves.
+
+Sec. XI. In this state of paralysis, or expectation, their flank is turned
+by an insidious chamfer. The edges of the two great blank archivolts are
+felt to be painfully conspicuous; all the four are at once beaded or
+chamfered, as at _b_, Fig. LXX.; a rich group of deep lines, running
+concentrically with the arch, is the result on the instant, and the fate
+of the voussoirs is sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle,
+and unconditionally; the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover
+the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from grouped
+shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable richness of the
+fully developed Gothic jamb and arch; farther complicated in the end by
+the addition of niches to their recesses, as above described.
+
+Sec. XII. The voussoirs, in despair, go over to the classical camp, in
+hope of receiving some help or tolerance from their former enemies. They
+receive it indeed: but as traitors should, to their own eternal
+dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at the joints, or rusticated, or
+cut into masks and satyrs' heads, and so set forth and pilloried in the
+various detestable forms of which the simplest is given above in Plate
+XIII. (on the left); and others may be seen in nearly every large
+building in London, more especially in the bridges; and, as if in pure
+spite at the treatment they had received from the archivolt, they are
+now not content with vigorously showing their lateral joints, but shape
+themselves into right-angled steps at their heads, cutting to pieces
+their limiting line, which otherwise would have had sympathy with that
+of the arch, and fitting themselves to their new friend, the Renaissance
+Ruled Copy-book wall. It had been better they had died ten times over,
+in their own ancient cause, than thus prolonged their existence.
+
+Sec. XIII. We bid them farewell in their dishonor, to return to our
+victorious chamfer. It had not, we said, obtained so easy a conquest,
+unless by the help of certain forms of the grouped shaft. The chamfer
+was quite enough to decorate the archivolts, if there were no more than
+two; but if, as above noticed in Sec. III., the archivolt was very deep,
+and composed of a succession of such steps, the multitude of chamferings
+were felt to be weak and insipid, and instead of dealing with the
+outside edges of the archivolts, the group was softened by introducing
+solid shafts in their dark inner angles. This, the manliest and best
+condition of the early northern jamb and archivolt, is represented in
+section at fig. 12 of Plate II.; and its simplest aspect in Plate V.,
+from the Broletto of Como,--an interesting example, because there the
+voussoirs being in the midst of their above-described southern contest
+with the architrave, were better prepared for the flank attack upon them
+by the shaft and chamfer, and make a noble resistance, with the help of
+color, in which even the shaft itself gets slightly worsted, and cut
+across in several places, like General Zach's column at Marengo.
+
+Sec. XIV. The shaft, however, rapidly rallies, and brings up its own
+peculiar decorations to its aid; and the intermediate archivolts receive
+running or panelled ornaments, also, until we reach the exquisitely rich
+conditions of our own Norman archivolts, and of the parallel Lombardic
+designs, such as the entrance of the Duomo, and of San Fermo, at Verona.
+This change, however, occupies little time, and takes place principally
+in doorways, owing to the greater thickness of wall, and depth of
+archivolt; so that we find the rich shafted succession of ornament, in
+the doorway and window aperture, associated with the earliest and rudest
+double archivolt, in the nave arches, at St. Michele of Pavia. The nave
+arches, therefore, are most usually treated by the chamfer, and the
+voussoirs are there defeated much sooner than by the shafted
+arrangements, which they resist, as we saw, in the south by color; and
+even in the north, though forced out of their own shape, they take that
+of birds' or monsters' heads, which for some time peck and pinch the
+rolls of the archivolt to their hearts' content; while the Norman zigzag
+ornament allies itself with them, each zigzag often restraining itself
+amicably between the joints of each voussoir in the ruder work, and even
+in the highly finished arches, distinctly presenting a concentric or
+sunlike arrangement of lines; so much so, as to prompt the conjecture,
+above stated, Chap. XX. Sec. XXVI., that all such ornaments were intended
+to be typical of light issuing from the orb of the arch. I doubt the
+intention, but acknowledge the resemblance; which perhaps goes far to
+account for the never-failing delightfulness of this zigzag decoration.
+The diminution of the zigzag, as it gradually shares the defeat of the
+voussoir, and is at last overwhelmed by the complicated, railroad-like
+fluency of the later Gothic mouldings, is to me one of the saddest
+sights in the drama of architecture.
+
+Sec. XV. One farther circumstance is deserving of especial note in Plate
+V., the greater depth of the voussoirs at the top of the arch. This has
+been above alluded to as a feature of good construction, Chap. XI., Sec.
+III.; it is to be noted now as one still more valuable in decoration:
+for when we arrive at the deep succession of concentric archivolts, with
+which northern portals, and many of the associated windows, are headed,
+we immediately find a difficulty in reconciling the outer curve with the
+inner. If, as is sometimes the case, the width of the group of
+archivolts be twice or three times that of the inner aperture, the inner
+arch may be distinctly pointed, and the outer one, if drawn with
+concentric arcs, approximate very nearly to a round arch. This is
+actually the case in the later Gothic of Verona; the outer line of the
+archivolt having a hardly perceptible point, and every inner arch of
+course forming the point more distinctly, till the innermost becomes a
+lancet. By far the nobler method, however, is that of the pure early
+Italian Gothic; to make every outer arch a _magnified fac-simile_ of the
+innermost one, every arc including the same number of degrees, but
+degrees of a larger circle. The result is the condition represented in
+Plate V., often found in far bolder development; exquisitely springy and
+elastic in its expression, and entirely free from the heaviness and
+monotony of the deep northern archivolts.
+
+Sec. XVI. We have not spoken of the intermediate form, _b_, of Fig. LXIX.
+(which its convenience for admission of light has rendered common in
+nearly all architectures), because it has no transitions peculiar to
+itself: in the north it sometimes shares the fate of the outer
+architrave, and is channelled into longitudinal mouldings; sometimes
+remains smooth and massy, as in military architecture, or in the simpler
+forms of domestic and ecclesiastical. In Italy it receives surface
+decoration like the architrave, but has, perhaps, something of peculiar
+expression in being placed between the tracery of the window within, and
+its shafts and tabernacle work without, as in the Duomo of Florence: in
+this position it is always kept smooth in surface, and inlaid (or
+painted) with delicate arabesques; while the tracery and the tabernacle
+work are richly sculptured. The example of its treatment by colored
+voussoirs, given in Plate XIX., may be useful to the reader as a kind of
+central expression of the aperture decoration of the pure Italian
+Gothic;--aperture decoration proper; applying no shaft work to the
+jambs, but leaving the bevelled opening unenriched; using on the outer
+archivolt the voussoirs and concentric architrave in reconcilement (the
+latter having, however, some connection with the Norman zigzag); and
+beneath them, the pure Italian two-pieced and mid-cusped arch, with rich
+cusp decoration. It is a Veronese arch, probably of the thirteenth
+century, and finished with extreme care; the red portions are all in
+brick, delicately cast: and the most remarkable feature of the whole is
+the small piece of brick inlaid on the angle of each stone voussoir,
+with a most just feeling, which every artist will at once understand,
+that the color ought not to be let go all at once.
+
+Sec. XVII. We have traced the various conditions of treatment in the
+archivolt alone; but, except in what has been said of the peculiar
+expression of the voussoirs, we might throughout have spoken in the same
+terms of the jamb. Even a parallel to the expression of the voussoir may
+be found in the Lombardic and Norman divisions of the shafts, by zigzags
+and other transverse ornamentation, which in the end are all swept away
+by the canaliculated mouldings. Then, in the recesses of these and of
+the archivolts alike, the niche and statue decoration develops itself;
+and the vaulted and cavernous apertures are covered with incrustations
+of fretwork, and with every various application of foliage to their
+fantastic mouldings.
+
+Sec. XVIII. I have kept the inquiry into the proper ornament of the
+archivolt wholly free from all confusion with the questions of beauty in
+tracery; for, in fact, all tracery is a mere multiplication and
+entanglement of small archivolts, and its cusp ornament is a minor
+condition of that proper to the spandril. It does not reach its
+completely defined form until the jamb and archivolt have been divided
+into longitudinal mouldings; and then the tracery is formed by the
+innermost group of the shafts or fillets, bent into whatever forms or
+foliations the designer may choose; but this with a delicacy of
+adaptation which I rather choose to illustrate by particular examples,
+of which we shall meet with many in the course of our inquiry, than to
+delay the reader by specifying here. As for the conditions of beauty in
+the disposition of the tracery bars, I see no hope of dealing with the
+subject fairly but by devoting, if I can find time, a separate essay to
+it--which, in itself, need not be long, but would involve, before it
+could be completed, the examination of the whole mass of materials
+lately collected by the indefatigable industry of the English architects
+who have devoted their special attention to this subject, and which are
+of the highest value as illustrating the chronological succession or
+mechanical structure of tracery, but which, in most cases, touch on
+their aesthetic merits incidentally only. Of works of this kind, by far
+the best I have met with is Mr. Edmund Sharpe's, on Decorated Windows,
+which seems to me, as far as a cursory glance can enable me to judge, to
+exhaust the subject as respects English Gothic; and which may be
+recommended to the readers who are interested in the subject, as
+containing a clear and masterly enunciation of the general principles by
+which the design of tracery has been regulated, from its first
+development to its final degradation.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [91] The architrave is properly the horizontal piece of stone laid
+    across the tops of the pillars in Greek buildings, and commonly
+    marked with horizontal lines, obtained by slight projections of its
+    surface, while it is protected above in the richer orders, by a
+    small cornice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+  THE ROOF.
+
+
+Sec. I. The modes of decoration hitherto considered, have been common to
+the exteriors and interiors of all noble buildings; and we have taken no
+notice of the various kinds of ornament which require protection from
+weather, and are necessarily confined to interior work. But in the case
+of the roof, the exterior and interior treatments become, as we saw in
+construction, so also in decoration, separated by broad and bold
+distinctions. One side of a wall is, in most cases, the same as another,
+and if its structure be concealed, it is mostly on the inside; but, in
+the roof, the anatomical structure, out of which decoration should
+naturally spring, is visible, if at all, in the interior only: so that
+the subject of internal ornament becomes both wide and important, and
+that of external, comparatively subordinate.
+
+Sec. II. Now, so long as we were concerned principally with the outside of
+buildings, we might with safety leave expressional character out of the
+question for the time, because it is not to be expected that all persons
+who pass the building, or see it from a distance, shall be in the temper
+which the building is properly intended to induce; so that ornaments
+somewhat at variance with this temper may often be employed externally
+without painful effect. But these ornaments would be inadmissible in the
+interior, for those who enter will for the most part either be in the
+proper temper which the building requires, or desirous of acquiring it.
+(The distinction is not rigidly observed by the mediaeval builders, and
+grotesques, or profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in
+bosses, crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor
+ornament: but we do not find the interior wall covered with hunting and
+battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.) And thus the interior
+expression of the roof or ceiling becomes necessarily so various, and
+the kind and degree of fitting decoration so dependent upon particular
+circumstances, that it is nearly impossible to classify its methods, or
+limit its application.
+
+Sec. III. I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching rather
+the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as regards
+interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs are necessarily
+divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams;--surfaces, flat or carved;
+ribs, traversing these in the directions where main strength is
+required; or beams, filling the hollow of the dark gable with the
+intricate roof-tree, or supporting the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs
+and beams are simply and unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty
+about decoration; the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye
+is satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in plain
+waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when the ceiling is
+flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their services may receive
+ornamentation independent of their structure. I have never myself seen a
+flat ceiling satisfactorily decorated, except by painting: there is much
+good and fanciful panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it
+always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceilings of
+Venice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal Palace, have in their
+vast panellings some of the noblest paintings (on stretched canvas)
+which the world possesses: and this is all very well for the ceiling;
+but one would rather have the painting in a better place, especially
+when the rain soaks through its canvas, as I have seen it doing through
+many a noble Tintoret. On the whole, flat ceilings are as much to be
+avoided as possible; and, when necessary, perhaps a panelled
+ornamentation with rich colored patterns is the most satisfying, and
+loses least of valuable labor. But I leave the question to the reader's
+thought, being myself exceedingly undecided respecting it: except only
+touching one point--that a blank ceiling is not to be redeemed by a
+decorated ventilator.
+
+Sec. IV. I have a more confirmed opinion, however, respecting the
+decoration of curved surfaces. The majesty of a roof is never, I think,
+so great, as when the eye can pass undisturbed over the course of all
+its curvatures, and trace the dying of the shadows along its smooth and
+sweeping vaults. And I would rather, myself, have a plain ridged Gothic
+vault, with all its rough stones visible, to keep the sleet and wind out
+of a cathedral aisle, than all the fanning and pendanting and foliation
+that ever bewildered Tudor weight. But mosaic or fresco may of course be
+used as far as we can afford or obtain them; for these do not break the
+curvature. Perhaps the most solemn roofs in the world are the apse
+conchas of the Romanesque basilicas, with their golden ground and severe
+figures. Exactly opposed to these are the decorations which disturb the
+serenity of the curve without giving it interest, like the vulgar
+panelling of St. Peter's and the Pantheon; both, I think, in the last
+degree detestable.
+
+Sec. V. As roofs internally may be divided into surfaces and ribs,
+externally they may be divided into surfaces, and points, or ridges;
+these latter often receiving very bold and distinctive ornament. The
+outside surface is of small importance in central Europe, being almost
+universally low in slope, and tiled throughout Spain, South France, and
+North Italy: of still less importance where it is flat, as a terrace; as
+often in South Italy and the East, mingled with low domes: but the
+larger Eastern and Arabian domes become elaborate in ornamentation: I
+cannot speak of them with confidence; to the mind of an inhabitant of
+the north, a roof is a guard against wild weather; not a surface which
+is forever to bask in serene heat, and gleam across deserts like a
+rising moon. I can only say, that I have never seen any drawing of a
+richly decorated Eastern dome that made me desire to see the original.
+
+Sec. VI. Our own northern roof decoration is necessarily simple. Colored
+tiles are used in some cases with quaint effect; but I believe the
+dignity of the building is always greater when the roof is kept in an
+undisturbed mass, opposing itself to the variegation and richness of the
+walls. The Italian round tile is itself decoration enough, a deep and
+rich fluting, which all artists delight in; this, however, is fitted
+exclusively for low pitch of roofs. On steep domestic roofs, there is no
+ornament better than may be obtained by merely rounding, or cutting to
+an angle, the lower extremities of the flat tiles or shingles, as in
+Switzerland: thus the whole surface is covered with an appearance of
+scales, a fish-like defence against water, at once perfectly simple,
+natural, and effective at any distance; and the best decoration of
+sloping stone roofs, as of spires, is a mere copy of this scale armor;
+it enriches every one of the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral of
+Coutances, and of many Norman and early Gothic buildings. Roofs covered
+or edged with lead have often patterns designed upon the lead, gilded
+and relieved with some dark color, as on the house of Jaques Coeur at
+Bourges; and I imagine the effect of this must have been singularly
+delicate and beautiful, but only traces of it now remain. The northern
+roofs, however, generally stand in little need of surface decoration,
+the eye being drawn to the fantastic ranges of their dormer windows, and
+to the finials and fringes on their points and ridges.
+
+Sec. VII. Whether dormer windows are legitimately to be classed as
+decorative features, seems to me to admit of doubt. The northern spire
+system is evidently a mere elevation and exaggeration of the domestic
+turret with its look-out windows, and one can hardly part with the
+grotesque lines of the projections, though nobody is to be expected to
+live in the spire: but, at all events, such windows are never to be
+allowed in places visibly inaccessible, or on less than a natural and
+serviceable scale.
+
+Sec. VIII. Under the general head of roof-ridge and point decoration, we
+may include, as above noted, the entire race of fringes, finials, and
+crockets. As there is no use in any of these things, and as they are
+visible additions and parasitical portions of the structure, more
+caution is required in their use than in any other features of ornament,
+and the architect and spectator must both be in felicitous humor before
+they can be well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally
+most admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most power; and I
+think there is almost always a certain spirit of playfulness in them,
+adverse to the grandest architectural effects, or at least to be kept in
+severe subordination to the serener character of the prevalent lines.
+But as they are opposed to the seriousness of majesty on the one hand,
+so they are to the weight of dulness on the other; and I know not any
+features which make the contrast between continental domestic
+architecture, and our own, more humiliatingly felt, or which give so
+sudden a feeling of new life and delight, when we pass from the streets
+of London to those of Abbeville or Rouen, as the quaint points and
+pinnacles of the roof gables and turrets. The commonest and heaviest
+roof may be redeemed by a spike at the end of it, if it is set on with
+any spirit; but the foreign builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar
+feeling in this, and gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of
+its back, and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like
+the dorsal fins and spines of a fish: but our spikes have a dull,
+screwed on, look; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machinery; and
+our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if they were meant to
+catch ashes out of the London smoke-clouds.
+
+Sec. IX. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be considered in
+architecture, what points and flashes of light are in the color of
+painting, or of nature. There are some landscapes whose best character
+is sparkling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of
+brilliancy, or embracing it,--as on the fields of summer sea, or summer
+land:
+
+  "Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold,
+   And on the dews that drench the furze,
+   And on the silvery gossamers,
+   _That twinkle into green and gold_."
+
+And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst of a
+jewellery of light; but, for the most part, it is better to avoid
+breaking up either lines or masses by too many points, and to make the
+few points used exceedingly precious. So the best crockets and finials
+are set, like stars, along the lines, and at the points, which they
+adorn, with considerable intervals between them, and exquisite delicacy
+and fancy of sculpture in their own designs; if very small, they may
+become more frequent, and describe lines by a chain of points; but their
+whole value is lost if they are gathered into bunches or clustered into
+tassels and knots; and an over-indulgence in them always marks lowness
+of school. In Venice, the addition of the finial to the arch-head is the
+first sign of degradation; all her best architecture is entirely without
+either crockets or finials; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be
+classed, with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to
+the diminution or expansion of the crocket. The absolutely perfect use
+of the crocket is found, I think, in the tower of Giotto, and in some
+other buildings of the Pisan school. In the North they generally err on
+one side or other, and are either florid and huge, or mean in outline,
+looking as if they had been pinched out of the stonework, as throughout
+the entire cathedral of Amiens; and are besides connected with the
+generally spotty system which has been spoken of under the head of
+archivolt decoration.
+
+Sec. X. Employed, however, in moderation, they are among the most
+delightful means of delicate expression; and the architect has more
+liberty in their individual treatment than in any other feature of the
+building. Separated entirely from the structural system, they are
+subjected to no shadow of any other laws than those of grace and
+chastity; and the fancy may range without rebuke, for materials of their
+design, through the whole field of the visible or imaginable creation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+  THE VESTIBULE.
+
+
+Sec. I. I have hardly kept my promise. The reader has decorated but little
+for himself as yet; but I have not, at least, attempted to bias his
+judgment. Of the simple forms of decoration which have been set before
+him, he has always been left free to choose; and the stated restrictions
+in the methods of applying them have been only those which followed on
+the necessities of construction previously determined. These having been
+now defined, I do indeed leave my reader free to build; and with what a
+freedom! All the lovely forms of the universe set before him, whence to
+choose, and all the lovely lines that bound their substance or guide
+their motion; and of all these lines,--and there are myriads of myriads
+in every bank of grass and every tuft of forest; and groups of them
+divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every several
+member of bird and beast,--of all these lines, for the principal forms
+of the most important members of architecture, I have used but Three!
+What, therefore, must be the infinity of the treasure in them all! There
+is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of
+cathedrals, but suppose we were satisfied with less exhaustive
+appliance, and built a score of cathedrals, each to illustrate a single
+flower? that would be better than trying to invent new styles, I think.
+There is quite difference of style enough, between a violet and a
+harebell, for all reasonable purposes.
+
+Sec. II. Perhaps, however, even more strange than the struggle of our
+architects to invent new styles, is the way they commonly speak of this
+treasure of natural infinity. Let us take our patience to us for an
+instant, and hear one of them, not among the least intelligent:--
+
+  "It is not true that all natural forms are beautiful. We may hardly
+  be able to detect this in Nature herself; but when the forms are
+  separated from the things, and exhibited alone (by sculpture or
+  carving), we then see that they are not all fitted for ornamental
+  purposes; and indeed that very few, perhaps none, are so fitted
+  without correction. Yes, I say _correction_, for though it is the
+  highest aim of every art to imitate nature, this is not to be done by
+  imitating any natural form, but by _criticising_ and _correcting_
+  it,--criticising it by Nature's rules gathered from all her works,
+  but never completely carried out by her in any one work; correcting
+  it, by rendering it more natural, _i.e._ more conformable to the
+  general tendency of Nature, according to that noble maxim recorded of
+  Raffaelle, 'that the artist's object was to make things not as Nature
+  makes them, but as she WOULD make them;' as she ever tries to make
+  them, but never succeeds, though her aim may be deduced from a
+  comparison of her efforts; just as if a number of archers had aimed
+  unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were then
+  removed, we could by the examination of their arrow marks point out
+  the most probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty of
+  being nearer to it than any of their shots."[92]
+
+Sec. III. I had thought that, by this time, we had done with that stale,
+second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying of Raffaelle's; or that
+at least, in these days of purer Christian light, men might have begun
+to get some insight into the meaning of it: Raffaelle was a painter of
+humanity, and assuredly there is something the matter with humanity, a
+few _dovrebbe's_, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us heard
+of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments, conjecture that
+we are not quite what God, or nature, would have us to be. Raffaelle
+_had_ something to mend in Humanity: I should have liked to have seen
+him mending a daisy!--or a pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard seed,
+or any other of God's slightest works. If he had accomplished that, one
+might have found for him more respectable employment,--to set the stars
+in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously scattered as they are,
+and to be of all manner of shapes and sizes,--except the ideal shape,
+and the proper size); or to give us a corrected view of the ocean; that,
+at least, seems a very irregular and improveable thing; the very
+fishermen do not know, this day, how far it will reach, driven up before
+the west wind:--perhaps Some One else does, but that is not our
+business. Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,--of the great
+irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is not out of time.
+One,--two:--here comes a well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at
+the top, but, on the whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, and up
+as far as this grey pebble; now stand by and watch! Another:--Ah,
+careless wave! why couldn't you have kept your crest on? it is all gone
+away into spray, striking up against the cliffs there--I thought as
+much--missed the mark by a couple of feet! Another:--How now, impatient
+one! couldn't you have waited till your friend's reflux was done with,
+instead of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly manner? You go
+for nothing. A fourth, and a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder
+slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave;
+not so fast; not so fast; where are you coming to?--By our architectural
+word, this is too bad; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you
+in our face besides; and a wave which we had some hope of, behind there,
+broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white table-cloth of
+foam all the way to the shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off
+it! Alas, for these unhappy arrow shots of Nature; she will never hit
+her mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them, into the
+ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. Let us send for a Greek
+architect to do it for her. He comes--the great Greek architect, with
+measure and rule. Will he not also make the weight for the winds? and
+weigh out the waters by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a
+way for the lightning of the thunder? He sets himself orderly to his
+work, and behold! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing into
+which the great Greek architect improves the sea--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Greek: Thalatta, thalatta]: Was it this, then, that they wept to see
+from the sacred mountain--those wearied ones?
+
+Sec. IV. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and were not also
+the leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort, as far as may be
+without mark of sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it be
+pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our
+foreheads, that we might be known one from the other?
+
+Sec. V. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art? Have we only to
+copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We
+have work to do upon it; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so
+feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve,
+but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable,
+in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long
+contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then
+set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating
+it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one does not
+improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower
+visible; and then the human being has to make its power upon his own
+heart visible also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has
+raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And
+sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange
+lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown: ways specially
+directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which he had to choose
+instruments out of the wide armory of God. All this he may do: and in
+this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written,
+as well as the created word, "rightly _dividing_ the word of truth." Out
+of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather and set forth
+things new and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are
+before him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such
+illustration and enforcement as may be in his power, and to crown them
+with the history of what, by them, God has done for his soul. And, in
+doing this, is he improving the Word of God? Just such difference as
+there is between the sense in which a minister may be said to improve a
+text, to the people's comfort, and the sense in which an atheist might
+declare that he could improve the Book, which, if any man shall add
+unto, there shall be added unto him the plagues that are written
+therein; just such difference is there between that which, with respect
+to Nature, man is, in his humbleness, called upon to do, and that which,
+in his insolence, he imagines himself capable of doing.
+
+Sec. VI. Have no fear, therefore, reader, in judging between nature and
+art, so only that you love both. If you can love one only, then let it
+be Nature; you are safe with her: but do not then attempt to judge the
+art, to which you do not care to give thought, or time. But if you love
+both, you may judge between them fearlessly; you may estimate the last,
+by its making you remember the first, and giving you the same kind of
+joy. If, in the square of the city, you can find a delight, finite,
+indeed, but pure and intense, like that which you have in a valley among
+the hills, then its art and architecture are right; but if, after fair
+trial, you can find no delight in them, nor any instruction like that of
+nature, I call on you fearlessly to condemn them.
+
+We are forced, for the sake of accumulating our power and knowledge, to
+live in cities; but such advantage as we have in association with each
+other is in great part counterbalanced by our loss of fellowship with
+nature. We cannot all have our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to
+meditate in at eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as
+far as may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us
+with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness,
+like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate imagery of
+the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures now far
+away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a
+London Street,--if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or
+one ray of true and gentle pleasure,--if there is in your heart a true
+delight in its grim railings and dark casements, and wasteful finery of
+shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses,--it is well: promote the
+building of more like them. But if they never taught you anything, and
+never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they
+have any mysterious goodness nor occult sublimity. Have done with the
+wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy: for,
+as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is
+better than the wood pavement, cut into hexagons; and as surely as you
+know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland are better than the
+choke-damp of the vault, or the gas-light of the ball-room, you may
+know, as I told you that you should, that the good architecture, which
+has life, and truth, and joy in it, is better than the bad architecture,
+which has death, dishonesty, and vexation of heart in it, from the
+beginning to the end of time.
+
+Sec. VII. And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your
+gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of
+Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the East.
+
+It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine festoons
+full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their
+clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the
+Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches
+to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows
+slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that
+neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous
+banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant
+into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged
+into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the
+dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen
+trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did
+at first. Presently you pass one of the much vaunted "villas on the
+Brenta:" a glaring, spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with
+painted architraves like picture-frames, and a court-yard paved with
+pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the feverish
+sunshine, but fenced from the high road, for magnificence sake, with
+goodly posts and chains; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese
+variations, painted red and green; a third composed for the greater
+part of dead-wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it, each with a
+pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad perspective; and a
+fourth, with stucco figures set on the top of its garden-wall: some
+antique, like the kind to be seen at the corner of the New Road, and
+some of clumsy grotesque dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This
+is the architecture to which her studies of the Renaissance have
+conducted modern Italy.
+
+Sec. VIII. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense white the walls
+of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change horses. Another dreary
+stage among the now divided branches of the Brenta, forming irregular
+and half-stagnant canals; with one or two more villas on the other side
+of them, but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have
+recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin, black, and
+rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull water, with what
+were once small gardens beside them, kneaded into mud, and with blighted
+fragments of gnarled hedges and broken stakes for their fencing; and
+here and there a few fragments of marble steps, which have once given
+them graceful access from the water's edge, now settling into the mud in
+broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green weed. At last the
+road turns sharply to the north, and there is an open space, covered
+with bent grass, on the right of it: but do not look that way.
+
+Sec. IX. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of the little
+inn at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade. The table is (always, I
+think) covered with a cloth of nominal white and perennial grey, with
+plates and glasses at due intervals, and small loaves of a peculiar
+white bread, made with oil, and more like knots of flour than bread. The
+view from its balcony is not cheerful: a narrow street, with a solitary
+brick church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some
+coventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco about their
+windows; and, between them and the street, a ditch with some slow
+current in it, and one or two small houses beside it, one with an arbor
+of roses at its door, as in an English tea-garden; the air, however,
+about us having in it nothing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and
+crabs, warmed by the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is
+much vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain
+wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage: we appease their
+rivalry with our best patience, and follow them down the narrow street.
+
+Sec. X. We have but walked some two hundred yards when we come to a low
+wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side
+down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black
+with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,--it is covered with the
+black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be
+real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at
+first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat
+and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any
+water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks only two or
+three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a
+stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as
+if they were dragged by upon a painted scene.
+
+Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the
+side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose
+patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows
+keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In
+front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west,
+the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen
+purple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon,
+feebly defined against the afternoon sky,--the Alps of Bassano. Forward
+still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate
+angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in
+ugly rents towards the water,--the bastions of the fort of Malghera.
+Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable.
+The silver beak cleaves it fast,--it widens: the rank grass of the
+banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an
+expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we
+might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm
+southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing
+but what seems a low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to
+let the tide through it;--this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above
+all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there rises, out of
+the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings,
+which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be
+the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale,
+and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line;
+but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black
+smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the
+belfry of a church.
+
+It is Venice.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [92] Garbett on Design, p. 74.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+  1. FOUNDATION OF VENICE.
+
+I find the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any: the
+following sentence from De Monaci may perhaps interest the reader.
+
+"God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and whose ways are
+past finding out, willing both to save the innocent blood, and that a
+great power, beneficial to the whole world, should arise in a spot
+strange beyond belief, moved the chief men of the cities of the Venetian
+province (which from the border of Pannonia, extended as far as the
+Adda, a river of Lombardy), both in memory of past, and in dread of
+future distress, to establish states upon the nearer islands of the
+inner gulphs of the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they
+might retreat for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de
+Glauconibus, and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalburtus
+Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua, by the
+command of their King and the desire of the citizens, laid the
+foundations of the new commonwealth, under good auspices, on the island
+of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to the mouth of the deep river
+now called the Brenta, in the year of Our Lord, as many writers assure
+us, four hundred and twenty-one, on the 25th day of March."[93]
+
+It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice was
+founded by good Christians: "La qual citade e stada hedificada da veri e
+boni Christiani:" which information I found in the MS. copy of the
+Zancarol Chronicle, in the library of St. Mark's.
+
+Finally the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded by
+Sansovino, will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice: "Fu
+interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce VENETIA voglia dire _VENI
+ETIAM_, cioe, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante volte verrai,
+sempre vedrai nuove cose, enuove bellezze."
+
+
+  2. POWER OF THE DOGES.
+
+The best authorities agree in giving the year 697 as that of the
+election of the first doge, Paul Luke Anafeste. He was elected in a
+general meeting of the commonalty, tribunes, and clergy, at Heraclea,
+"divinis rebus procuratis," as usual, in all serious work, in those
+times. His authority is thus defined by Sabellico, who was not likely to
+have exaggerated it:--"Penes quem decus omne imperii ac majestas esset:
+cui jus concilium cogendi quoties de republica aliquid referri
+oporteret; qui tribunos annuos in singulas insulas legeret, a quibus ad
+Ducem esset provocatio. Caeterum, si quis dignitatem, ecclesiam,
+sacerdotumve cleri populique suffragio esset adeptus, ita demum id ratum
+haberetur si dux ipse auctor factus esset." (Lib. I.) The last clause is
+very important, indicating the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the
+popular and ducal (or patrician) powers, which, throughout her career,
+was one of the most remarkable features in the policy of Venice. The
+appeal from the tribunes to the doge is also important; and the
+expression "decus omne imperii," if of somewhat doubtful force, is at
+least as energetic as could have been expected from an historian under
+the influence of the Council of Ten.
+
+
+  3. SERRAR DEL CONSIGLIO.
+
+The date of the decree which made the right of sitting in the grand
+council hereditary, is variously given; the Venetian historians
+themselves saying as little as they can about it. The thing was
+evidently not accomplished at once, several decrees following in
+successive years: the Council of Ten was established without any doubt
+in 1310, in consequence of the conspiracy of Tiepolo. The Venetian
+verse, quoted by Mutinelli (Annali Urbani di Venezia, p. 153), is worth
+remembering.
+
+  "Del mille tresento e diese
+   A mezzo el mese delle ceriese
+   Bagiamonte passo el ponte
+   E per esso fo fatto el Consegio di diese."
+
+The reader cannot do better than take 1297 as the date of the beginning
+of the change of government, and this will enable him exactly to divide
+the 1100 years from the election of the first doge into 600 of monarchy
+and 500 of aristocracy. The coincidence of the numbers is somewhat
+curious; 697 the date of the establishment of the government, 1297 of
+its change, and 1797 of its fall.
+
+
+  4. S. PIETRO DI CASTELLO.
+
+It is credibly reported to have been founded in the seventh century, and
+(with somewhat less of credibility) in a place where the Trojans,
+conducted by Antenor, had, after the destruction of Troy, built "un
+castello, chiamato prima Troja, poscia Olivolo, interpretato, luogo
+pieno." It seems that St. Peter appeared in person to the Bishop of
+Heraclea, and commanded him to found in his honor, a church in that spot
+of the rising city on the Rialto: "ove avesse veduto una mandra di buoi
+e di pecore pascolare unitamente. Questa fu la prodigiosa origine della
+Chiesa di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso
+Participazio IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della Nuova
+citta." (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di Venezia. Padua,
+1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen and sheep feeding together,
+we need St. Peter, I think, to tell us. The title of Bishop of Castello
+was first taken in 1091: St. Mark's was not made the cathedral church
+till 1807. It may be thought hardly fair to conclude the small
+importance of the old St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the
+wretched modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken of
+as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in the older
+building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sansovino; who only
+says that when it was destroyed by fire (as everything in Venice was, I
+think, about three times in a century), in the reign of Vital Michele,
+it was rebuilt "with good thick walls, maintaining, _for all that_, the
+order of its arrangement taken from the Greek mode of building." This
+does not seem the description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a
+highly ornate cathedral. The present church is among the least
+interesting in Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea
+on a small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a
+wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level of
+lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended
+before its mildewed facade and solitary tower.
+
+
+  5. PAPAL POWER IN VENICE.
+
+I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-eighth book
+of Daru for some account of the restraints to which the Venetian clergy
+were subjected. I have not myself been able to devote any time to the
+examination of the original documents bearing on this matter, but the
+following extract from a letter of a friend, who will not at present
+permit me to give his name, but who is certainly better conversant
+with the records of the Venetian State than any other Englishman, will
+be of great value to the general reader:--
+
+"In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth century,
+churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and declared ineligible
+to civil employment; and in the same year, 1410, the Council of Ten,
+with the Giunta, decreed that whenever in the state's councils matters
+concerning ecclesiastical affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk
+of Venetian beneficed clergymen were to be expelled; and, in the year
+1434, the RELATIONS of churchmen were declared ineligible to the post of
+ambassador at Rome.
+
+"The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their territories to
+bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope by the senate, which
+elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at the end of the sixteenth
+century, to be liable to examination by his Holiness, as an act of
+confirmation of installation; but of course, everything depended on the
+relative power at any given time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few
+days after the accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the
+Signory, cap in hand, to ALLOW him to confer the archbishopric of Zara
+on a dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six years
+later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of Cambrai, that
+furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara on Cipico WITHOUT
+asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite Abbey of Vangadizza, in the
+Polesine, fell vacant through the death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose
+family it had been since some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome
+received the news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow,
+requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he heard from
+the senate. The pope talked of 'poor cardinals' and of his nephew, but
+made no positive reply; and, as Francesco Contarini was withdrawing,
+said to him: 'My Lord ambassador, with this opportunity we will inform
+you that, to our very great regret, we understand that the chiefs of the
+Ten mean to turn sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close
+the church doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain
+hours. This is precisely the sacristan's office; we don't know why their
+lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to interfere in
+this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and
+even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there not the patriarch,
+who is at any rate your own; why not apply to him, who could remedy
+these irregularities? These are matters which cause us very notable
+displeasure; we say so that they may be written and known: it is decided
+by the councils and canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms
+any resolve against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without
+incurring censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon's correspondent]
+may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our
+predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that
+we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and
+let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may
+take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas a Becket, whose festival is
+celebrated this very day, suffered martyrdom for the ecclesiastical
+liberty; it is our duty likewise to support and defend it.' Contarini
+says: 'This remonstrance was delivered with some marks of anger, which
+induced me to tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords
+chiefs of the Ten is in our country supreme; that it does not do its
+business unadvisedly, or condescend to unworthy matters; and that,
+therefore, should those Lords have come to any public declaration of
+their will, it must be attributed to orders anterior, and to immemorial
+custom and authority, recollecting that, on former occasions likewise,
+similar commissions were given to prevent divers incongruities;
+wherefore an upright intention, such as this, ought not to be taken in
+any other sense than its own, especially as the parishes of Venice were
+in her own gift,' &c. &c. The pope persisted in bestowing the abbacy on
+his nephew, but the republic would not give possession, and a compromise
+was effected by its being conferred on the Venetian Matteo Priuli, who
+allowed the cardinal five thousand ducats per annum out of its revenues.
+A few years before this, this very same pope excommunicated the State,
+because she had imprisoned two churchmen for heinous crimes; the strife
+lasted for more than a year, and ended through the mediation of Henry
+IV., at whose suit the prisoners were delivered to the French
+ambassador, who made them over to a papal commissioner.
+
+"In January, 1484, a tournament was in preparation on St. Mark's Square:
+some murmurs had been heard about the distribution of the prizes having
+been pre-arranged, without regard to the 'best man.' One of the chiefs
+of the Ten was walking along Rialto on the 28th January, when a young
+priest, twenty-two years old, a sword-cutlers son, and a Bolognese, and
+one of Perugia, both men-at-arms under Robert Sansoverino, fell upon a
+clothier with drawn weapons. The chief of the Ten desired they might be
+seized, but at the moment the priest escaped; he was, however,
+subsequently retaken, and in that very evening hanged by torch-light
+between the columns with the two soldiers. Innocent VIII. was less
+powerful than Paul IV.; Venice weaker in 1605 than in 1484.
+
+"* * * The exclusion from the Grand Council, whether at the end of the
+fourteenth or commencement of the following century, of the Venetian
+ecclesiastics, (as induced either by the republic's acquisitions on the
+main land then made, and which, through the rich benefices they
+embraced, might have rendered an ambitious churchman as dangerous in the
+Grand Council as a victorious condottiere; or from dread of their
+allegiance being divided between the church and their country, it being
+acknowledged that no man can serve two masters,) did not render them
+hostile to their fatherland, whose interests were, with very few
+exceptions, eagerly fathered by the Venetian prelates at Rome, who, in
+their turn, received all honor at Venice, where state receptions given
+to cardinals of the houses of Correr, Grimani, Cornaro, Pisani,
+Contarini, Zeno, Delfino, and others, vouch for the good understanding
+that existed between the 'Papalists' and their countrymen. The Cardinal
+Grimani was instrumental in detaching Julius II. from the league of
+Cambrai; the Cardinal Cornaro always aided the state to obtain anything
+required of Leo X.; and, both before and after their times, all
+Venetians that had a seat in the Sacred College were patriots rather
+than pluralists: I mean that they cared more for Venice than for their
+benefices, admitting thus the soundness of that policy which denied them
+admission into the Grand Council."
+
+To this interesting statement, I shall add, from the twenty-eighth book
+of Daru, two passages, well deserving consideration by us English in
+present days:
+
+"Pour etre parfaitement assuree contre les envahissements de la
+puissance ecclesiastique, Venise commenca par lui oter tout pretexte
+d'intervenir dans les affaires de l'Etat; elle resta invariablement
+fidele au dogme. Jamais aucune des opinions nouvelles n'y prit la
+moindre faveur; jamais aucun heresiarque ne sortit de Venise. Les
+conciles, les disputes, les guerres de religion, se passerent sans
+qu'elle y prit jamais la moindre part. Inebranlable dans sa foi, elle ne
+fut pas moins invariable dans son systeme de tolerance. Non seulement
+ses sujets de la religion grecque conserverent l'exercise de leur culte,
+leurs eveques et leurs pretres; mais les Protestantes, les Armeniens,
+les Mahomitans, les Juifs, toutes les religions, toutes les sectes qui
+se trouvaient dans Venise, avaient des temples, et la sepulture dans les
+eglises n'etait point refuse aux heretiques. Une police vigilante
+s'appliquait avec le meme soin a eteindre les discordes, et a empecher
+les fanatiques et les novateurs de troubler l'Etat."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Si on considere que c'est dans un temps ou presque toutes les nations
+tremblaient devant la puissance pontificale, que les Venitiens surent
+tenir leur clerge dans la dependance, et braver souvent les censures
+ecclesiastiques et les interdits, sans encourir jamais aucun reproche
+sur la purete de leur foi, on sera force de reconnaitre que cette
+republique avait devance de loin les autres peuples dans cette partie de
+la science du gouvernement. La fameuse maxime, 'Siamo veneziani, poi
+christiani,' n'etait qu'une formule energique qui ne prouvait point
+quils voulussent placer l'interet de la religion apres celui de l'Etat,
+mais qui annoncait leur invariable resolution de ne pas souffrir qu'un
+pouvoir etranger portat atteinte aux droits de la republique.
+
+"Dans toute la duree de son existence, an milieu des revers comme dans
+la prosperite cet inebranlable gouvernement ne fit qu'une seule fois des
+concessions a la cour de Borne, et ce fut pour detacher le Pape Jules
+II. de la ligue de Cambrai.
+
+"Jamais il ne se relacha du soin de tenir le clerge dans une nullite
+absolue relativement aux affaires politiques; on peut en juger par la
+conduite qu'il tint avec l'ordre religieux le plus redoutable et le plus
+accoutume a s'immiscer dans les secrets de l'Etat et dans les interets
+temporels."
+
+The main points, next stated, respecting the Jesuits are, that the
+decree which permitted their establishment in Venice required formal
+renewal every three years; that no Jesuit could stay in Venice more than
+three years; that the slightest disobedience to the authority of the
+government was instantly punished by imprisonment; that no Venetian
+could enter the order without express permission from the government;
+that the notaries were forbidden to sanction any testamentary disposal
+of property to the Jesuits; finally, that the heads of noble families
+were forbidden to permit their children to be educated in the Jesuits'
+colleges, on pain of degradation from their rank.
+
+Now, let it be observed that the enforcement of absolute exclusion of
+the clergy from the councils of the state, dates exactly from the period
+which I have marked for the commencement of the decline of the Venetian
+power. The Romanist is welcome to his advantage in this fact, if
+advantage it be; for I do not bring forward the conduct of the senate of
+Venice, as Daru does, by way of an example of the general science of
+government. The Venetians accomplished therein what we ridiculously call
+a separation of "Church and State" (as if the State were not, in all
+Christendom, necessarily also the Church[94]), but _ought_ to call a
+separation of lay and clerical officers. I do not point out this
+separation as subject of praise, but as the witness borne by the
+Venetians against the principles of the Papacy. If they were to blame,
+in yielding to their fear of the ambitious spirit of Rome so far as to
+deprive their councils of all religious element, what excuse are we to
+offer for the state, which, with Lords Spiritual of her own faith
+already in her senate, permits the polity of Rome to be represented by
+lay members? To have sacrificed religion to mistaken policy, or
+purchased security with ignominy, would have been no new thing in the
+world's history; but to be at once impious and impolitic, and seek for
+danger through dishonor, was reserved for the English parliament of
+1829.
+
+I am glad to have this opportunity of referring to, and farther
+enforcing, the note on this subject which, not without deliberation, I
+appended to the "Seven Lamps;" and of adding to it the following
+passage, written by my father in the year 1839, and published in one of
+the journals of that year:--a passage remarkable as much for its
+intrinsic value, as for having stated, twelve years ago, truths to which
+the mind of England seems but now, and that slowly, awakening.
+
+"We hear it said, that it cannot be merely the Roman religion that
+causes the difficulty [respecting Ireland], for we were once all Roman
+Catholics, and nations abroad of this faith are not as the Irish. It is
+totally overlooked, that when we were so, our government was despotic,
+and fit to cope with this dangerous religion, as most of the Continental
+governments yet are. In what Roman Catholic state, or in what age of
+Roman Catholic England, did we ever hear of such agitation as now exists
+in Ireland by evil men taking advantage of an anomalous state of
+things--Roman Catholic ignorance in the people, Protestant toleration in
+the government? We have yet to feel the tremendous difficulty in which
+Roman Catholic emancipation has involved us. Too late we discover that a
+Roman Catholic is wholly incapable of being safely connected with the
+British constitution, as it now exists, _in any near relation_. The
+present constitution is no longer fit for Catholics. It is a creature
+essentially Protestant, growing with the growth, and strengthening with
+the strength, of Protestantism. So entirely is Protestantism interwoven
+with the whole frame of our constitution and laws, that I take my stand
+on this, against all agitators in existence, that the Roman religion is
+totally incompatible with the British constitution. We have, in trying
+to combine them, got into a maze of difficulties; we are the worse, and
+Ireland none the better. It is idle to talk of municipal reform or
+popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is
+not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a
+Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population
+and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an
+industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot
+convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to wear the mild
+restraints of a Protestant Government. It was, moreover, a strange logic
+that begot the idea of admitting Catholics to administer any part of our
+laws or constitution. It was admitted by all that, by the very act of
+abandoning the Roman religion, we became a free and enlightened people.
+It was only by throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that we
+attained to the freedom of thought which has advanced us in the scale of
+society. We are so much advanced by adopting and adhering to a reformed
+religion, that to prove our liberal and unprejudiced views, we throw
+down the barriers betwixt the two religions, of which the one is the
+acknowledged cause of light and knowledge, the other the cause of
+darkness and ignorance. We are so much altered to the better by leaving
+this people entirely, and giving them neither part nor lot amongst us,
+that it becomes proper to mingle again with them. We have found so much
+good in leaving them, that we deem it the best possible reason for
+returning to be among them. No fear of their Church again shaking us,
+with all our light and knowledge. It is true, the most enlightened
+nations fell under the spell of her enchantments, fell into total
+darkness and superstition; but no fear of us--we are too well informed!
+What miserable reasoning! infatuated presumption! I fear me, when the
+Roman religion rolled her clouds of darkness over the earlier ages, that
+she quenched as much light, and knowledge, and judgment as our modern
+Liberals have ever displayed. I do not expect a statesman to discuss the
+point of Transubstantiation betwixt Protestant and Catholic, nor to
+trace the narrow lines which divide Protestant sectarians from each
+other; but can any statesman that shall have taken even a cursory
+glance at the face of Europe, hesitate a moment on the choice of the
+Protestant religion? If he unfortunately knew nothing of its being the
+true one in regard to our eternal interests, he is at least bound to see
+whether it be not the best for the worldly prosperity of a people. He
+may be but moderately imbued with pious zeal for the salvation of a
+kingdom, but at least he will be expected to weigh the comparative
+merits of religion, as of law or government; and blind, indeed, must he
+be if he does not discern that, in neglecting to cherish the Protestant
+faith, or in too easily yielding to any encroachments on it, he is
+foregoing the use of a state engine more powerful than all the laws
+which the uninspired legislators of the earth have ever promulgated, in
+promoting the happiness, the peace, prosperity, and the order, the
+industry, and the wealth, of a people; in forming every quality valuable
+or desirable in a subject or a citizen; in sustaining the public mind at
+that point of education and information that forms the best security for
+the state, and the best preservative for the freedom of a people,
+whether religious or political."
+
+[Illustration: Plate XX.
+               WALL VEIL DECORATION.
+               CA' TREVISAN.]
+
+
+  6. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS.
+
+There having been three principal styles of architecture in Venice,--the
+Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renaissance, it will be shown,
+in the sequel, that the Renaissance itself is divided into three
+correspondent families: Renaissance engrafted on Byzantine, which is
+earliest and best; Renaissance engrafted on Gothic, which is second, and
+second best; Renaissance on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and
+worst of all. The palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine
+are those noticed by Commynes: they are characterized by an
+ornamentation very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with,
+early Byzantine work; namely, groups of colored marble circles inclosed
+in interlacing bands. I have put on the opposite page one of these
+ornaments, from the Ca' Trevisan, in which a most curious and delicate
+piece of inlaid design is introduced into a band which is almost exactly
+copied from the church of Theotocos at Constantinople, and correspondent
+with others in St. Mark's. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the
+treatment of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower
+compartment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are
+visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch
+plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded wings.
+Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices "of every clean fowl and of
+every clean beast." The color is given with green and white marbles, the
+dove relieved on a ground of greyish green, and all is exquisitely
+finished.
+
+In Plate I., p. 13, the upper figure is from the same palace (Ca'
+Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If we take
+five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter being two-thirds
+of the diameter next above it, and arrange the circles so proportioned,
+in contact with each other, in the manner shown in the plate, we shall
+find that an increase quite imperceptible in the diameter of the circles
+in the angles, will enable us to inscribe the whole in a square. The
+lines so described will then run in the centre of the white bands. I
+cannot be certain that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan
+design, because it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at
+its measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide with
+the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in Plate I. is from the
+front of the Ca' Dario, and probably struck the eye of Commynes in its
+first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, considers both the Ca' Trevisan
+(which once belonged to Bianca Cappello) and the Ca' Dario, as buildings
+of the sixteenth century. I defer the discussion of the question at
+present, but have, I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca'
+Dario to have been built about 1486, and the Ca' Trevisan not much
+later.
+
+
+  7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDERS.
+
+Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general importance is
+that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was taken (Vitruvius says)
+from a woman's hair, curled; but its lateral processes look more like
+rams' horns: be that as it may, it is a mere piece of agreeable
+extravagance, and if, instead of rams' horns, you put ibex horns, or
+cows' horns, or an ass's head at once, you will have ibex orders, or ass
+orders, or any number of other orders, one for every head or horn. You
+may have heard of another order, the Composite, which is Ionic and
+Corinthian mixed, and is one of the worst of ten thousand forms
+referable to the Corinthian as their head: it may be described as a
+spoiled Corinthian. And you may have also heard of another order, called
+Tuscan (which is no order at all, but a spoiled Doric): and of another
+called Roman Doric, which is Doric more spoiled, both which are simply
+among the most stupid variations ever invented upon forms already known.
+I find also in a French pamphlet upon architecture,[95] as applied to
+shops and dwelling houses, a sixth order, the "Ordre Francais," at least
+as good as any of the three last, and to be hailed with acclamation,
+considering whence it comes, there being usually more tendency on the
+other side of the channel to the confusion of "orders" than their
+multiplication: but the reader will find in the end that there are in
+very deed only two orders, of which the Greek, Doric, and Corinthian are
+the first examples, and _they_ not perfect, nor in anywise sufficiently
+representative of the vast families to which they belong; but being the
+first and the best known, they may properly be considered as the types
+of the rest. The essential distinctions of the two great orders he will
+find explained in Secs. XXXV. and XXXVI. of Chap. XXVII., and in the
+passages there referred to; but I should rather desire that these
+passages might be read in the order in which they occur.
+
+
+  8. THE NORTHERN ENERGY.
+
+I have sketched above, in the First Chapter, the great events of
+architectural history in the simplest and fewest words I could; but this
+indraught of the Lombard energies upon the Byzantine rest, like a wild
+north wind descending into a space of rarified atmosphere, and
+encountered by an Arab simoom from the south, may well require from us
+some farther attention; for the differences in all these schools are
+more in the degrees of their impetuosity and refinement (these
+qualities being, in most cases, in inverse ratio, yet much united by the
+Arabs) than in the style of the ornaments they employ. The same leaves,
+the same animals, the same arrangement, are used by Scandinavians,
+ancient Britons, Saxons, Normans, Lombards, Romans, Byzantines, and
+Arabians; all being alike descended through classic Greece from Egypt
+and Assyria, and some from Phoenicia. The belts which encompass the
+Assyrian bulls, in the hall of the British Museum, are the same as the
+belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian tumuli; their method of
+ornamentation is the same as that of the gate of Mycenae, and of the
+Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of Milan, and of the church of Theotocos
+at Constantinople; the essential differences among the great schools are
+their differences of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it
+is absurd to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and
+Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is
+irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard temper, and
+Byzantine temper.
+
+Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools, it appears
+to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distinguished from the
+Byzantine by their energy and love of excitement, but the Lombard stands
+alone in his love of jest: Neither an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in
+his architecture; the Lombard has great difficulty in ever being
+thoroughly serious; thus they represent three conditions of humanity,
+one in perfect rest, the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace
+and dignity; the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a
+restless fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not
+burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of enjoying
+jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lombard in the
+South, showing itself, however, in endless invention, with a refreshing
+firmness and order directing the whole of it. The excitement is greatest
+in the earliest times, most of all shown in St. Michele of Pavia; and I
+am strongly disposed to connect much of its peculiar manifestations with
+the Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially his
+carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times seems to have been exactly
+what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous
+imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of
+northern mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him
+pacing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on
+the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you have the
+Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply of vegetables,
+and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement diminishes; it is still
+strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons and Rouen; it dies away
+gradually in the later Gothic, and is quite extinct in the fifteenth
+century.
+
+I think I shall best illustrate this general idea by simply copying the
+entries in my diary which were written when, after six months' close
+study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came again to the Lombard work of
+Verona and Pavia. There are some other points alluded to in these
+entries not pertaining to the matter immediately in hand; but I have
+left them, as they will be of use hereafter.
+
+"(Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the Duomo here with
+St. Mark's, the first thing that strikes one is the low relief, the
+second, the greater motion and spirit, with infinitely less grace and
+science. With the Byzantine, however rude the cutting, every line is
+lovely, and the animals or men are placed in any attitudes which secure
+ornamental effect, sometimes impossible ones, always severe, restrained,
+or languid. With the Romanesque workmen all the figures show the effort
+(often successful) to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much
+fighting, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally,
+straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces and
+drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is graceful,
+fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,--the mark of a
+school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to them, and never
+likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but with an exquisite sense of
+beauty, and much solemn religious faith.
+
+"If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark's is Byzantine, the law is
+somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged in every trade,
+and in the preparation of viands of all kinds; a crowded kind of London
+Christmas scene, interleaved (literally) by the superb balls of leafage,
+unique in sculpture; but even this is strongly opposed to the wild war
+and chase passion of the Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as
+sharp, precise, and accurate, as that of St. Mark's is careless. The
+Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together; and,
+in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months
+in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect _feeling_
+here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface
+ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more
+chaste, pure, or solemn."
+
+I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of St.
+Zeno;[96] the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt above
+them is to our present purpose:
+
+"It is covered by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting
+subject:--two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a
+fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the
+foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is
+delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the
+arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there.
+Several capital hunts with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in
+them; the leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with
+the edges outwards, sharp, and deep cut: snails and frogs filling up the
+intervals, as if suspended in the air, with some saucy puppies on their
+hind legs, two or three nondescript beasts; and, finally, on the centre
+of one of the arches on the south side, an elephant and castle,--a very
+strange elephant, yet cut as if the carver had seen one."
+
+Observe this elephant and castle; we shall meet with him farther north.
+
+"These sculptures of St. Zeno are, however, quite quiet and tame
+compared with those of St. Michele of Pavia, which are designed also in
+a somewhat gloomier mood; significative, as I think, of indigestion.
+(Note that they are much earlier than St. Zeno; of the seventh century
+at latest. There is more of nightmare, and less of wit in them.) Lord
+Lindsay has described them admirably, but has not said half enough; the
+state of mind represented by the west front is more that of a feverish
+dream, than resultant from any determined architectural purpose, or even
+from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One capital is
+covered with a mass of grinning heads, other heads grow out of two
+bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures are all fighting, or
+devouring, or struggling which shall be uppermost, and yet in an
+ineffectual way, as if they would fight for ever, and come to no
+decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs did I notice, nor a single
+peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely Byzantine), but mermaids with
+_two_ tails (the sculptor having perhaps seen double at the time),
+strange, large fish, apes, stags (bulls?), dogs, wolves, and horses,
+griffins, eagles, long-tailed birds (cocks?), hawks, and dragons,
+without end, or with a dozen of ends, as the case may be; smaller birds,
+with rabbits, and small nondescripts, filling the friezes. The actual
+leaf, which is used in the best Byzantine mouldings at Venice, occurs in
+parts of these Pavian designs. But the Lombard animals are all _alive_,
+and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring: the Byzantine birds
+peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with their
+noses. The cinque cento birds in Venice hold it up daintily, like
+train-bearers; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at it hungrily and
+naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it like tigers, and tear it
+off with writhing lips and glaring eyes. They are exactly like Jip with
+the bit of geranium, worrying imaginary cats in it."
+
+The notice of the leaf in the above extract is important,--it is the
+vine-leaf; used constantly both by Byzantines and Lombards, but by the
+latter with especial frequency, though at this time they were hardly
+able to indicate what they meant. It forms the most remarkable
+generality of the St. Michele decoration; though, had it not luckily
+been carved on the facade, twining round a stake, and with grapes, I
+should never have known what it was meant for, its general form being a
+succession of sharp lobes, with incised furrows to the point of each.
+But it is thrown about in endless change; four or five varieties of it
+might be found on every cluster of capitals: and not content with this,
+the Lombards hint the same form even in their griffin wings. They love
+the vine very heartily.
+
+In St. Michele of Lucca we have perhaps the noblest instance in Italy of
+the Lombard spirit in its later refinement. It is some four centuries
+later than St. Michele of Pavia, and the method of workmanship is
+altogether different. In the Pavian church, nearly all the ornament is
+cut in a coarse sandstone, in bold relief: a darker and harder stone (I
+think, not serpentine, but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of
+ages that I could not be certain) is used for the capitals of the
+western door, which are especially elaborate in their sculpture;--two
+devilish apes, or apish devils, I know not which, with bristly
+moustaches and edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands
+impertinently on their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes
+near them; but all is pure bossy sculpture; there is no inlaying, except
+of some variegated tiles in the shape of saucers set concave (an
+ornament used also very gracefully in St. Jacopo of Bologna): and the
+whole surface of the church is enriched with the massy reliefs, well
+preserved everywhere above the reach of human animals, but utterly
+destroyed to some five or six feet from the ground; worn away into large
+cellular hollows and caverns, some almost deep enough to render the
+walls unsafe, entirely owing to the uses to which the recesses of the
+church are dedicated by the refined and high-minded Italians. But St.
+Michele of Lucca is wrought entirely in white marble and green
+serpentine; there is hardly any relieved sculpture except in the
+capitals of the shafts and cornices, and all the designs of wall
+ornament are inlaid with exquisite precision--white on dark ground; the
+ground being cut out and filled with serpentine, the figures left in
+solid marble. The designs of the Pavian church are encrusted on the
+walls; of the Lucchese, incorporated with them; small portions of real
+sculpture being introduced exactly where the eye, after its rest on the
+flatness of the wall, will take most delight in the piece of substantial
+form. The entire arrangement is perfect beyond all praise, and the
+morbid restlessness of the old designs is now appeased. Geometry seems
+to have acted as a febrifuge, for beautiful geometrical designs are
+introduced amidst the tumult of the hunt; and there is no more seeing
+double, nor ghastly monstrosity of conception; no more ending of
+everything in something else; no more disputing for spare legs among
+bewildered bodies; no more setting on of heads wrong side foremost. The
+fragments have come together: we are out of the Inferno with its weeping
+down the spine; we are in the fair hunting-fields of the Lucchese
+mountains (though they had their tears also),--with horse, and hound,
+and hawk; and merry blast of the trumpet.--Very strange creatures to be
+hunted, in all truth; but still creatures with a single head, and that
+on their shoulders, which is exactly the last place in the Pavian church
+where a head is to be looked for.
+
+My good friend Mr. Cockerell wonders, in one of his lectures, why I give
+so much praise to this "crazy front of Lucca." But it is not crazy; not
+by any means. Altogether sober, in comparison with the early Lombard
+work, or with our Norman. Crazy in one sense it is: utterly neglected,
+to the breaking of its old stout heart; the venomous nights and salt
+frosts of the Maremma winters have their way with it--"Poor Tom's a
+cold!" The weeds that feed on the marsh air, have twisted themselves
+into its crannies; the polished fragments of serpentine are spit and
+rent out of their cells, and lie in green ruins along its ledges; the
+salt sea winds have eaten away the fair shafting of its star window into
+a skeleton of crumbling rays. It cannot stand much longer; may Heaven
+only, in its benignity, preserve it from restoration, and the sands of
+the Serchio give it honorable grave.
+
+In the "Seven Lamps," Plate VI., I gave a faithful drawing of one of its
+upper arches, to which I must refer the reader; for there is a marked
+piece of character in the figure of the horseman on the left of it. And
+in making this reference, I would say a few words about those much
+abused plates of the "Seven Lamps." They are black, they are overbitten,
+they are hastily drawn, they are coarse and disagreeable; how
+disagreeable to many readers I venture not to conceive. But their truth
+is carried to an extent never before attempted in architectural drawing.
+It does not in the least follow that because a drawing is delicate, or
+looks careful, it has been carefully drawn from the thing represented;
+in nine instances out of ten, careful and delicate drawings are made at
+home. It is not so easy as the reader, perhaps, imagines, to finish a
+drawing altogether on the spot, especially of details seventy feet from
+the ground; and any one who will try the position in which I have had to
+do some of my work--standing, namely, on a cornice or window sill,
+holding by one arm round a shaft, and hanging over the street (or canal,
+at Venice), with my sketch-book supported against the wall from which I
+was drawing, by my breast, so as to leave my right hand free--will not
+thenceforward wonder that shadows should be occasionally carelessly
+laid in, or lines drawn with some unsteadiness. But, steady, or infirm,
+the sketches of which those plates in the "Seven Lamps" are fac-similes,
+were made from the architecture itself, and represent that architecture
+with its actual shadows at the time of day at which it was drawn, and
+with every fissure and line of it as they now exist; so that when I am
+speaking of some new point, which perhaps the drawing was not intended
+to illustrate, I can yet turn back to it with perfect certainty that if
+anything be found in it bearing on matters now in hand, I may depend
+upon it just as securely as if I had gone back to look again at the
+building.
+
+It is necessary that my readers should understand this thoroughly, and I
+did not before sufficiently explain it; but I believe I can show them
+the use of this kind of truth, now that we are again concerned with this
+front of Lucca. They will find a drawing of the entire front in Gally
+Knight's "Architecture of Italy." It may serve to give them an idea of
+its general disposition, and it looks very careful and accurate; but
+every bit of the ornament on it is _drawn out of the artist's head_.
+There is not _one line_ of it that exists on the building. The reader
+will therefore, perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more
+value, upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its
+delicate fiction.[97]
+
+[Illustration: Plate XXI.
+               WALL VEIL DECORATION.]
+
+As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church somewhat
+more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favorite church should
+suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had this, as far as might be,
+fac-similied by line engraving (Plate XXI.). It represents the southern
+side of the lower arcade of the west front; and may convey some idea of
+the exquisite finish and grace of the whole; but the old plate, in the
+"Seven Lamps," gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a
+more faithful impression of the present aspect of the work, and
+especially of the seats of the horsemen; the limb straight, and well
+down on the stirrup (the warrior's seat, observe, not the jockey's),
+with a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice
+under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn; it was
+supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, however, the reader has
+lost the thread of my story while I have been recommending my veracity
+to him. I was insisting upon the healthy tone of this Lucca work as
+compared with the old spectral Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian
+church ride without stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here:
+civilisation had done its work; there was reaping of corn in the Val
+d'Arno, though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north,
+though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone, and its
+rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more meat-eating,
+then, I think). I do not know a more interesting group of cathedrals
+than that of Lyons, Vienne, and Valencia: a more interesting indeed,
+generally, than beautiful; but there is a row of niches on the west
+front of Lyons, and a course of panelled decoration about its doors,
+which is, without exception, the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic
+I ever beheld, and with which I know nothing that is even comparable,
+except the work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the "Seven
+Lamps," p. 159; work of about the same date, and exactly the same plan;
+quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished in
+execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote down hastily,
+and in their own course, the subjects of some of the quatrefoils of
+Lyons; of which I here give the reader the sequence:--
+
+   1. Elephant and castle; less graphic than the St. Zeno one.
+
+   2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards, hoofed; the
+        head has a horn behind, with drapery over it, which ends in
+        another head.
+
+   3. A boar hunt; the boar under a tree, very spirited.
+
+   4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own tail,
+        which ends in a head.
+
+   5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way.
+
+   6. St. Peter awakened by the angel in prison; full of spirit, the
+        prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch, the angel eager, St.
+        Peter startled, and full of motion.
+
+   7. St. Peter led out by the angel.
+
+   8. The miraculous draught of fishes; fish and all, in the small
+        space.
+
+   9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nautilus
+        shells, with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends of their
+        horns.
+
+  10. A man with an axe striking at a dog's head, which comes out of
+        a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches into a stem
+        with two large leaves.
+
+  11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian; his body very full of arrows.
+
+  12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker cage.
+
+  13. Noah building the ark on shores.
+
+  14. A vine leaf with a dragon's head and tail, the one biting the
+        other.
+
+  15. A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil.
+
+  16. An eel or muraena growing into a bunch of flowers, which turns
+        into two wings.
+
+  17. A sprig of hazel, with nuts, thrown all around the quatrefoils
+        with a squirrel in centre, apparently attached to the tree only
+        by its enormous tail, richly furrowed into hair, and nobly
+        sweeping.
+
+  18. Four hares fastened together by the ears, galloping in a circle.
+        Mingled with these grotesques are many _sword_ and _buckler_
+        combats, the bucklers being round and conical like a hat; I
+        thought the first I noticed, carried by a man at full gallop on
+        horseback, had been a small umbrella.
+
+This list of subjects may sufficiently illustrate the feverish character
+of the Northern Energy; but influencing the treatment of the whole there
+is also the Northern love of what is called the Grotesque, a feeling
+which I find myself, for the present, quite incapable either of
+analysing or defining, though we all have a distinct idea attached to
+the word: I shall try, however, in the next volume.
+
+
+  9. WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE NORTH.
+
+I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the origin of the vaulting
+shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirmations of it in
+Dahl's work on the wooden churches of Norway. The inside view of the
+church of Borgund shows the timber construction of one shaft run up
+through a crossing architrave, and continued into the clerestory; while
+the church of Urnes is in the exact form of a basilica; but the wall
+above the arches is formed of planks, with a strong upright above each
+capital. The passage quoted from Stephen Eddy's Life of Bishop Wilfrid,
+at p. 86 of Churton's "Early English Church," gives us one of the
+transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches. "At Ripon
+he built a new church of _polished stone_, with columns variously
+ornamented, and porches." Mr. Churton adds: "It was perhaps in bad
+imitation of the marble buildings he had seen in Italy, that he washed
+the walls of this original York Minster, and made them 'whiter than
+snow.'"
+
+
+  10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA.
+
+The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess themselves of the
+body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church by the caliph for
+the _sake of its marbles_: the Arabs and Venetians, though bitter
+enemies, thus building on the same models; these in reverence for the
+destroyed church, and those with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat
+prolix account of the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above
+quoted) the main points are, that "il Califa de' Saraceni, per
+fabbricarsi un Palazzo presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle
+Chiese d' Cristiani si togliessero i piu scelti marmi;" and that the
+Venetians, "videro sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un
+Cristiano per aver infranto un marmo." I heartily wish that the same
+kind of punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin.
+
+
+  11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE.
+
+I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me to be
+suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the second volume of
+"Modern Painters," as compared with the first, induced, I believe, this
+suspicion, very justifiably, in the minds of many of its readers. The
+difference resulted, however, from the simple fact, that the first was
+written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and
+time;--the second, after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in
+inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my
+opinions remaining then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the
+subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther doubt of
+them may be entertained by any who may think them worth questioning, I
+shall here, once for all, express them in the plainest and fewest words
+I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner is not only the greatest (professed)
+landscape painter who ever lived, but that he has in him as much as
+would have furnished all the rest with such power as they had; and that
+if we put Nicolo Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the
+group, he would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others,
+by uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough stated.
+And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year 1845, the best;
+and believe that those persons who only like his early pictures do not,
+in fact, like him at all. They do _not_ like that which is essentially
+_his_. They like that in which he resembles other men; which he had
+learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson; that which is indeed his
+own, they do not care for. Not that there is not much of his own in his
+early works; they are all invaluable in their way; but those persons who
+can find no beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot
+distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier
+pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his pictures
+painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his
+entire power is best represented by such pictures as the Temeraire, the
+Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others, painted exactly at the time when
+the public and the press were together loudest in abuse of him.
+
+  Turner. Tintoret.
+  Massaccio.
+  John Bellini.
+  Albert Durer.
+  Giorgione.
+  Paul Veronese.
+  Titian.
+  Rubens.
+  Correggio.
+  Orcagna.
+  Benozzo Gozzoli.
+  Giotto.
+  Raffaelle.
+  Perugino.
+
+I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above, _professed_
+landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should hardly have put
+Gainsborough. The landscape of the great figure painters is often
+majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret's especially shows exactly
+the same power and feeling as Turner's. If with Turner I were to rank
+the historical painters as landscapists, estimating rather the power
+they show, than the actual value of the landscape they produced, I
+should class those, whose landscapes I have studied, in some such order
+as this at the side of the page:--associating with the landscape of
+Perugino that of Francia and Angelico, and the other severe painters of
+religious subjects. I have put Turner and Tintoret side by side, not
+knowing which is, in landscape, the greater; I had nearly associated in
+the same manner the noble names of John Bellini and Albert Durer; but
+Bellini must be put first, for his profound religious peace yet not
+separated from the other, if but that we might remember his kindness to
+him in Venice; and it is well we should take note of it here, for it
+furnishes us with a most interesting confirmation of what was said in
+the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the religious
+painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in Jackson's "Essay
+on Wood-engraving," from Albert Durer's Diary:
+
+"I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me not to eat or
+drink with their painters, of whom several are my enemies, and copy my
+picture in the church, and others of mine, wherever they can find them,
+and yet they blame them, _and say they are not according to ancient art,
+and therefore not good_. Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me
+highly to several gentlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing:
+he called on me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for
+him, for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all surprised
+that I should be so much thought of by a person of his reputation: he is
+very old, but is still the best painter of them all."
+
+A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance painters,
+side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon to leave them to
+their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen in perfection, envying,
+stealing, and lying, but without wit enough to lie to purpose.
+
+
+  12. ROMANIST MODERN ART.
+
+It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism should be
+deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and picturesqueness
+have given it over the weak sentimentalism of the English people; I call
+it a miserable influence, for of all motives to sympathy with the Church
+of Rome, this I unhesitatingly class as the basest: I can, in some
+measure, respect the other feelings which have been the beginnings of
+apostasy; I can respect the desire for unity which would reclaim the
+Romanist by love, and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the
+proselyte to priestly power; I say I can respect these feelings, though
+I cannot pardon unprincipled submission to them, nor enough wonder at
+the infinite fatuity of the unhappy persons whom they have
+betrayed:--Fatuity, self-inflicted, and stubborn in resistance to God's
+Word and man's reason!--to talk of the authority of the Church, as if
+the Church were anything else than the whole company of Christian men,
+or were ever spoken of in Scripture[98] as other than a company to be
+taught and fed, not to teach and feed.--Fatuity! to talk of a separation
+of Church and State, as if a Christian state, and every officer therein,
+were not necessarily a part of the Church,[99] and as if any state
+officer could do his duty without endeavoring to aid and promote
+religion, or any clerical officer do his duty without seeking for such
+aid and accepting it:--Fatuity! to seek for the unity of a living body
+of truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in wood,
+and thence to expect anything else than plague, and consumption by worms
+undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as fatuity! to ask for any better
+interpreter of God's Word than God, or to expect knowledge of it in any
+other way than the plainly ordered way: if _any_ man will do he shall
+know. But of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the
+Romanist Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by broken
+glass; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine of an
+organ-pipe; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on priests'
+petticoats; jangled into a change of conscience by the chimes of a
+belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark as this, no
+imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible. I had hardly
+believed that it was a thing possible, though vague stories had been
+told me of the effect, on some minds, of mere scarlet and candles, until
+I came on this passage in Pugin's "Remarks on articles in the
+Rambler":--
+
+"Those who have lived in want and privation are the best qualified to
+appreciate the blessings of plenty; thus, those who have been devout and
+sincere members of the separated portion of the English Church; who have
+prayed, and hoped, and loved, through all the poverty of the maimed
+rites which it has retained--to them does the realisation of all their
+longing desires appear truly ravishing. * * * Oh! then, what delight!
+what joy unspeakable! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them,
+in all its pristine life and glory!--the stoups are filled to the brim;
+the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred imagery and
+rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced, sustained by
+sculptured shafts, the relics of the saints repose beneath, the body of
+Our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated stone; the lamps of the
+sanctuary burn bright; the saintly portraitures in the glass windows
+shine all gloriously; and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the
+cope chests are filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax, and
+chrismatory are there, and thurible, and cross."
+
+One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one should have
+thought; but he has been brought forward, and partly received, as an
+example of the effect of ceremonial splendor on the mind of a great
+architect. It is very necessary, therefore, that all those who have felt
+sorrow at this should know at once that he is not a great architect,
+but one of the smallest possible or conceivable architects; and that by
+his own account and setting forth of himself. Hear him:--
+
+"I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so unfortunate as
+myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine things, studying fine
+things, designing fine things, and realising very poor ones. I have
+never had the chance of producing a single fine ecclesiastical building,
+except my own church, where I am both paymaster and architect; but
+everything else, either for want of adequate funds or injudicious
+interference and control, or some other contingency, is more or less a
+failure. * * *
+
+"St. George's was spoilt by the very instructions laid down by the
+committee, that it was to hold 3000 people on the floor at a limited
+price; in consequence, height, proportion, everything, was sacrificed to
+meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by the style being
+restricted to lancet,--a period well suited to a Cistercian abbey in a
+secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the centre of a crowded
+town. * * *
+
+"Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being reduced on the
+original estimate; to effect this, which was a great sum in proportion
+to the entire cost, the area of the church was contracted, the walls
+lowered, tower and spire reduced, the thickness of walls diminished, and
+stone arches omitted." (Remarks, &c., by A. Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850.)
+
+Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a pediment, and
+Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a clay platter; but
+Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral? Let his ineffableness
+be assured of this, once for all, that no difficulty or restraint ever
+happened to a man of real power, but his power was the more manifested
+in the contending with, or conquering it; and that there is no field so
+small, no cranny so contracted, but that a great spirit can house and
+manifest itself therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can
+gather itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there
+was in you, had it been Buonarroti's own, you had room enough for it in
+a single niche: you might have put the whole power of it into two feet
+cube of Caen stone. St. George's was not high enough for want of money?
+But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded,
+laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that
+you sunk the tracery of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in
+parsimony that you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of
+diseased crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the
+belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which nobody can
+ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in mere incapability of better
+things.
+
+I am sorry to have to speak thus of any living architect; and there is
+much in this man, if he were rightly estimated, which one might both
+regard and profit by. He has a most sincere love for his profession, a
+heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes and piscinas; and though he will
+never design so much as a pix or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better
+than most of the experimental architects of the day. Employ him by all
+means, but on small work. Expect no cathedrals from him; but no one, at
+present, can design a better finial. That is an exceedingly beautiful
+one over the western door of St. George's; and there is some spirited
+impishness and switching of tails in the supporting figures at the
+imposts. Only do not allow his good designing of finials to be employed
+as an evidence in matters of divinity, nor thence deduce the
+incompatibility of Protestantism and art. I should have said all that I
+have said above, of artistical apostasy, if Giotto had been now living
+in Florence, and if art were still doing all that it did once for Rome.
+But the grossness of the error becomes incomprehensible as well as
+unpardonable, when we look to what level of degradation the human
+intellect has sunk at this instant in Italy. So far from Romanism now
+producing anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has been
+given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance half so
+grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art wherever the Romanist
+priesthood gets possession of it. It amounts to absolute infatuation.
+The noblest pieces of mediaeval sculpture in North Italy, the two
+griffins at the central (west) door of the cathedral of Verona, were
+daily permitted to be brought into service, when I was there in the
+autumn of 1849, by a washerwoman living in the Piazza, who tied her
+clothes-lines to their beaks: and the shafts of St. Mark's at Venice
+were used by a salesman of common caricatures to fasten his prints upon
+(Compare Appendix 25); and this in the face of the continually passing
+priests: while the quantity of noble art annually destroyed in
+altarpieces by candle-droppings, or perishing by pure brutality of
+neglect, passes all estimate. I do not know, as I have repeatedly
+stated, how far the splendor of architecture, or other art, is
+compatible with the honesty and usefulness of religious service. The
+longer I live, the more I incline to severe judgment in this matter, and
+the less I can trust the sentiments excited by painted glass and colored
+tiles. But if there be indeed value in such things, our plain duty is to
+direct our strength against the superstition which has dishonored them;
+there are thousands who might possibly be benefited by them, to whom
+they are now merely an offence, owing to their association with
+idolatrous ceremonies. I have but this exhortation for all who love
+them,--not to regulate their creeds by their taste in colors, but to
+hold calmly to the right, at whatever present cost to their imaginative
+enjoyment; sure that they will one day find in heavenly truth a brighter
+charm than in earthly imagery, and striving to gather stones for the
+eternal building, whose walls shall be salvation, and whose gates shall
+be praise.
+
+
+  13. MR. FERGUSSON'S SYSTEM.
+
+The reader may at first suppose this division of the attributes of
+buildings into action, voice, and beauty, to be the same division as Mr.
+Fergusson's, now well known, of their merits, into technic, aesthetic and
+phonetic.
+
+But there is no connection between the two systems; mine, indeed, does
+not profess to be a system, it is a mere arrangement of my subject, for
+the sake of order and convenience in its treatment: but, as far as it
+goes, it differs altogether from Mr. Fergusson's in these two following
+respects:--
+
+The action of a building, that is to say its standing or consistence,
+depends on its good construction; and the first part of the foregoing
+volume has been entirely occupied with the consideration of the
+constructive merit of buildings: but construction is not their only
+technical merit. There is as much of technical merit in their
+expression, or in their beauty, as in their construction. There is no
+more mechanical or technical admirableness in the stroke of the painter
+who covers them with fresco, than in the dexterity of the mason who
+cements their stones: there is just as much of what is technical in
+their beauty, therefore, as in their construction; and, on the other
+hand, there is often just as much intellect shown in their construction
+as there is in either their expression or decoration. Now Mr. Fergusson
+means by his "Phonetic" division, whatever expresses intellect: my
+constructive division, therefore, includes part of his phonetic: and my
+expressive and decorative divisions include part of his technical.
+
+Secondly, Mr. Fergusson tries to make the same divisions fit the
+_subjects_ of art, and art itself; and therefore talks of technic,
+aesthetic, and phonetic, _arts_, (or, translating the Greek,) of artful
+arts, sensitive arts, and talkative arts; but I have nothing to do with
+any division of the arts, I have to deal only with the merits of
+_buildings_. As, however, I have been led into reference to Mr.
+Fergusson's system, I would fain say a word or two to effect Mr.
+Fergusson's extrication from it. I hope to find in him a noble ally,
+ready to join with me in war upon affectation, falsehood, and prejudice,
+of every kind: I have derived much instruction from his most interesting
+work, and I hope for much more from its continuation; but he must
+disentangle himself from his system, or he will be strangled by it;
+never was anything so ingeniously and hopelessly wrong throughout; the
+whole of it is founded on a confusion of the instruments of man with his
+capacities.
+
+Mr. Fergusson would have us take--
+
+  "First, man's muscular action or power." (Technics.)
+
+  "Secondly, those developments of sense _by_ which _he does!!_ as much
+    as by his muscles." (Aesthetics.)
+
+  "Lastly, his intellect, or to confine this more correctly to its
+    external action, _his power of speech!!!_" (Phonetics.)
+
+Granting this division of humanity correct, or sufficient, the writer
+then most curiously supposes that he may arrange the arts as if there
+were some belonging to each division of man,--never observing that every
+art must be governed by, and addressed to, one division, and executed by
+another; executed by the muscular, addressed to the sensitive or
+intellectual; and that, to be an art at all, it must have in it work of
+the one, and guidance from the other. If, by any lucky accident, he had
+been led to arrange the arts, either by their objects, and the things to
+which they are addressed, or by their means, and the things by which
+they are executed, he would have discovered his mistake in an instant.
+As thus:--
+
+  These arts are addressed to the,--Muscles!!
+                                    Senses,
+                                    Intellect;
+                   or executed by,--Muscles,
+                                    Senses!!
+                                    Intellect.
+
+Indeed it is true that some of the arts are in a sort addressed to the
+muscles, surgery for instance; but this is not among Mr. Fergusson's
+technic, but his politic, arts! and all the arts may, in a sort, be said
+to be performed by the senses, as the senses guide both muscles and
+intellect in their work: but they guide them as they receive
+information, or are standards of accuracy, but not as in themselves
+capable of action. Mr. Fergusson is, I believe, the first person who has
+told us of senses that act or do, they having been hitherto supposed
+only to sustain or perceive. The weight of error, however, rests just as
+much in the original division of man, as in the endeavor to fit the arts
+to it. The slight omission of the soul makes a considerable difference
+when it begins to influence the final results of the arrangement.
+
+Mr. Fergusson calls morals and religion "Politick arts" (as if religion
+were an art at all! or as if both were not as necessary to individuals
+as to societies); and therefore, forming these into a body of arts by
+themselves, leaves the best of the arts to do without the soul and the
+moral feeling as rest they may. Hence "expression," or "phonetics," is
+of intellect only (as if men never expressed their _feelings!_); and
+then, strangest and worst of all, intellect is entirely resolved into
+talking! There can be no intellect but it must talk, and all talking
+must be intellectual. I believe people do sometimes talk without
+understanding; and I think the world would fare ill if they never
+understood without talking. The intellect is an entirely silent faculty,
+and has nothing to do with parts of speech any more than the moral part
+has. A man may feel and know things without expressing either the
+feeling or knowledge; and the talking is a _muscular_ mode of
+communicating the workings of the intellect or heart--muscular, whether
+it be by tongue or by sign, or by carving or writing, or by expression
+of feature; so that to divide a man into muscular and talking parts, is
+to divide him into body in general, and tongue in particular, the
+endless confusion resulting from which arrangement is only less
+marvellous in itself, than the resolution with which Mr. Fergusson has
+worked through it, and in spite of it, up to some very interesting and
+suggestive truths; although starting with a division of humanity which
+does not in the least raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has
+his muscular, aesthetic, and talking part as much as man, only he talks
+with his tail, and says, "I am angry with you, and should like to bite
+you," more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could,
+were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between the brute
+and man is not so much that the one has fewer means of expression than
+the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to express, and that we do not
+understand its expressions. Animals can talk to one another intelligibly
+enough when they have anything to say, and their captains have words of
+command just as clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in
+watching the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being,
+a melancholy sense of its dumbness; but the fault is still in its
+intelligence, more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to
+systematise its cries or signs, and form them into language.
+
+But there is no end to the fallacies and confusions of Mr. Fergusson's
+arrangement. It is a perfect entanglement of gun-cotton, and explodes
+into vacuity wherever one holds a light to it. I shall leave him to do
+so with the rest of it for himself, and should perhaps have left it to
+his own handling altogether, but for the intemperateness of the spirit
+with which he has spoken on a subject perhaps of all others demanding
+gentleness and caution. No man could more earnestly have desired the
+changes lately introduced into the system of the University of Oxford
+than I did myself: no man can be more deeply sensible than I of grievous
+failures in the practical working even of the present system: but I
+believe that these failures may be almost without exception traced to
+one source, the want of evangelical, and the excess of rubrical religion
+among the tutors; together with such rustinesses and stiffnesses as
+necessarily attend the continual operation of any intellectual machine.
+The fault is, at any rate, far less in the system than in the
+imperfection of its administration; and had it been otherwise, the terms
+in which Mr. Fergusson speaks of it are hardly decorous in one who can
+but be imperfectly acquainted with its working. They are sufficiently
+answered by the structure of the essay in which they occur; for if the
+high powers of mind which its author possesses had been subjected to the
+discipline of the schools, he could not have wasted his time on the
+development of a system which their simplest formulae of logic would have
+shown him to be untenable.
+
+Mr. Fergusson will, however, find it easier to overthrow his system than
+to replace it. Every man of science knows the difficulty of arranging a
+_reasonable_ system of classification, in any subject, by any one group
+of characters; and that the best classifications are, in many of their
+branches, convenient rather than reasonable: so that, to any person who
+is really master of his subject, many different modes of classification
+will occur at different times; one of which he will use rather than
+another, according to the point which he has to investigate. I need only
+instance the three arrangements of minerals, by their external
+characters, and their positive or negative bases, of which the first is
+the most useful, the second the most natural, the third the most simple;
+and all in several ways unsatisfactory.
+
+But when the subject becomes one which no single mind can grasp, and
+which embraces the whole range of human occupation and enquiry, the
+difficulties become as great, and the methods as various, as the uses to
+which the classification might be put; and Mr. Fergusson has entirely
+forgotten to inform us what is the object to which his arrangements are
+addressed. For observe: there is one kind of arrangement which is based
+on the rational connection of the sciences or arts with one another; an
+arrangement which maps them out like the rivers of some great country,
+and marks the points of their junction, and the direction and force of
+their united currents; and this without assigning to any one of them a
+superiority above another, but considering them all as necessary members
+of the noble unity of human science and effort. There is another kind of
+classification which contemplates the order of succession in which they
+might most usefully be presented to a single mind, so that the given
+mind should obtain the most effective and available knowledge of them
+all: and, finally, the most usual classification contemplates the powers
+of mind which they each require for their pursuit, the objects to which
+they are addressed, or with which they are concerned; and assigns to
+each of them a rank superior or inferior, according to the nobility of
+the powers they require, or the grandeur of the subjects they
+contemplate.
+
+Now, not only would it be necessary to adopt a different classification
+with respect to each of these great intentions, but it might be found so
+even to vary the order of the succession of sciences in the case of
+every several mind to which they were addressed; and that their rank
+would also vary with the power and specific character of the mind
+engaged upon them. I once heard a very profound mathematician
+remonstrate against the impropriety of Wordsworth's receiving a pension
+from government, on the ground that he was "only a poet." If the study
+of mathematics had always this narrowing effect upon the sympathies, the
+science itself would need to be deprived of the rank usually assigned to
+it; and there could be no doubt that, in the effect it had on the mind
+of this man, and of such others, it was a very contemptible science
+indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is
+necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every
+order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no
+one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and
+others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general
+meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them:
+thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of all the sciences,
+has been raised to unjust dignity by Johnson.[100] And the subject is
+farther complicated by the question of usefulness; for many of the arts
+and sciences require considerable intellectual power for their pursuit,
+and yet become contemptible by the slightness of what they accomplish:
+metaphysics, for instance, exercising intelligence of a high order, yet
+useless to the mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet,
+as it has become so by the want of the true intelligence which its
+inquiries need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it
+may in future vindicate for itself a higher rank than a man of common
+sense usually concedes to it.
+
+Nevertheless, the mere attempt at arrangement must be useful, even where
+it does nothing more than develop difficulties. Perhaps the greatest
+fault of men of learning is their so often supposing all other branches
+of science dependent upon or inferior to their own best beloved branch;
+and the greatest deficiency of men comparatively unlearned, their want
+of perception of the connection of the branches with each other. He who
+holds the tree only by the extremities, can perceive nothing but the
+separation of its sprays. It must always be desirable to prove to those
+the equality of rank, to these the closeness of sequence, of what they
+had falsely supposed subordinate or separate. And, after such candid
+admission of the co-equal dignity of the truly noble arts and sciences,
+we may be enabled more justly to estimate the inferiority of those which
+indeed seem intended for the occupation of inferior powers and narrower
+capacities. In Appendix 14, following, some suggestions will be found as
+to the principles on which classification might be based; but the
+arrangement of all the arts is certainly not a work which could with
+discretion be attempted in the Appendix to an essay on a branch of one
+of them.
+
+
+  14. DIVISIONS OF HUMANITY.
+
+The reader will probably understand this part of the subject better if
+he will take the trouble briefly to consider the actions of the mind and
+body of man in the sciences and arts, which give these latter the
+relations of rank usually attributed to them.
+
+It was above observed (Appendix 13) that the arts were generally ranked
+according to the nobility of the powers they require, that is to say,
+the quantity of the being of man which they engaged or addressed. Now
+their rank is not a very important matter as regards each other, for
+there are few disputes more futile than that concerning the respective
+dignity of arts, all of which are necessary and honorable. But it is a
+very important matter as regards themselves; very important whether
+they are practised with the devotion and regarded with the respect
+which are necessary or due to their perfection. It does not at all
+matter whether architecture or sculpture be the nobler art; but it
+matters much whether the thought is bestowed upon buildings, or the
+feeling is expressed in statues, which make either deserving of our
+admiration. It is foolish and insolent to imagine that the art which we
+ourselves practise is greater than any other; but it is wise to take
+care that in our own hands it is as noble as we can make it. Let us take
+some notice, therefore, in what degrees the faculties of man may be
+engaged in his several arts: we may consider the entire man as made up
+of body, soul, and intellect (Lord Lindsay, meaning the same thing, says
+inaccurately--sense, intellect, and spirit--forgetting that there is a
+moral sense as well as a bodily sense, and a spiritual body as well as a
+natural body, and so gets into some awkward confusion, though right in
+the main points). Then, taking the word soul as a short expression of
+the moral and responsible part of being, each of these three parts has a
+passive and active power. The body has senses and muscles; the soul,
+feeling and resolution; the intellect, understanding and imagination.
+The scheme may be put into tabular form, thus:--
+
+              Passive or Receptive Part.    Active or Motive Part.
+  Body                  Senses.                  Muscles.
+  Soul                  Feeling.                 Resolution.
+  Intellect             Understanding.           Imagination.
+
+In this scheme I consider memory a part of understanding, and conscience
+I leave out, as being the voice of God in the heart, inseparable from
+the system, yet not an essential part of it. The sense of beauty I
+consider a mixture of the Senses of the body and soul.
+
+Now all these parts of the human system have a reciprocal action on one
+another, so that the true perfection of any of them is not possible
+without some relative perfection of the others, and yet any one of the
+parts of the system may be brought into a morbid development,
+inconsistent with the perfection of the others. Thus, in a healthy
+state, the acuteness of the senses quickens that of the feelings, and
+these latter quicken the understanding, and then all the three quicken
+the imagination, and then all the four strengthen the resolution; while
+yet there is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid
+feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd
+and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the
+understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine,
+the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a
+delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost health
+of the muscular system, as in the quick sight and hearing of an active
+savage: another false delicacy of the senses, in the Sybarite,
+consequent on their over indulgence, until the doubled rose-leaf is
+painful; and this inconsistent with muscular perfection. Again; there is
+a perfection of muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in
+that of the fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles
+are guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil:
+another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acuteness of
+sense, as in the effort of battle, in which a soldier does not perceive
+his wounds. So that it is never so much the question, what is the
+solitary perfection of a given part of the man, as what is its balanced
+perfection in relation to the whole of him: and again, the perfection of
+any single power is not merely to be valued by the mere rank of the
+power itself, but by the harmony which it indicates among the other
+powers. Thus, for instance, in an archer's glance along his arrow, or a
+hunter's raising of his rifle, there is a certain perfection of sense
+and finger which is the result of mere practice, of a simple bodily
+perfection; but there is a farther value in the habit which results from
+the resolution and intellect necessary to the forming of it: in the
+hunter's raising of his rifle there is a quietness implying far more
+than mere practice,--implying courage, and habitual meeting of danger,
+and presence of mind, and many other such noble characters. So also in a
+musician's way of laying finger on his instrument, or a painter's
+handling of his pencil, there are many qualities expressive of the
+special sensibilities of each, operating on the production of the habit,
+besides the sensibility operating at the moment of action. So that there
+are three distinct stages of merit in what is commonly called mere
+bodily dexterity: the first, the dexterity given by practice, called
+command of tools or of weapons; the second stage, the dexterity or
+grace given by character, as the gentleness of hand proceeding from
+modesty or tenderness of spirit, and the steadiness of it resulting from
+habitual patience coupled with decision, and the thousand other
+characters partially discernible, even in a man's writing, much more in
+his general handiwork; and, thirdly, there is the perfection of action
+produced by the operation of _present_ strength, feeling, or
+intelligence on instruments thus _previously_ perfected, as the handling
+of a great painter is rendered more beautiful by his immediate care and
+feeling and love of his subject, or knowledge of it, and as physical
+strength is increased by strength of will and greatness of heart.
+Imagine, for instance, the difference in manner of fighting, and in
+actual muscular strength and endurance, between a common soldier, and a
+man in the circumstances of the Horatii, or of the temper of Leonidas.
+
+Mere physical skill, therefore, the mere perfection and power of the
+body as an instrument, is manifested in three stages:
+
+  First, Bodily power by practice;
+  Secondly, Bodily power by moral habit;
+  Thirdly, Bodily power by immediate energy;
+
+and the arts will be greater or less, caeteris paribus, according to the
+degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith's work at his
+anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting, and riding, admit
+something of the second; while the fine arts admit (merely through the
+channel of the bodily dexterities) an expression almost of the whole
+man.
+
+Nevertheless, though the higher arts _admit_ this higher bodily
+perfection, they do not all _require_ it in equal degrees, but can
+dispense with it more and more in proportion to their dignity. The arts
+whose chief element is bodily dexterity, may be classed together as arts
+of the third order, of which the highest will be those which admit most
+of the power of moral habit and energy, such as riding and the
+management of weapons; and the rest may be thrown together under the
+general title of handicrafts, of which it does not much matter which are
+the most honorable, but rather, which are the most necessary and least
+injurious to health, which it is not our present business to examine.
+Men engaged in the practice of these are called artizans, as opposed to
+artists, who are concerned with the fine arts.
+
+The next step in elevation of art is the addition of the intelligences
+which have no connection with bodily dexterity; as, for instance, in
+hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals and their places of
+abode; in architecture, of mathematics; in painting, of harmonies of
+color; in music, of those of sound; all this pure science being joined
+with readiness of expedient in applying it, and with shrewdness in
+apprehension of difficulties, either present or probable.
+
+It will often happen that intelligence of this kind is possessed without
+bodily dexterity, or the need of it; one man directing and another
+executing, as for the most part in architecture, war, and seamanship.
+And it is to be observed, also, that in proportion to the dignity of the
+art, the bodily dexterities needed even in its subordinate agents become
+less important, and are more and more replaced by intelligence; as in
+the steering of a ship, the bodily dexterity required is less than in
+shooting or fencing, but the intelligence far greater: and so in war,
+the mere swordsmanship and marksmanship of the troops are of small
+importance in comparison with their disposition, and right choice of the
+moment of action. So that arts of this second order must be estimated,
+not by the quantity of bodily dexterity they require, but by the
+quantity and dignity of the knowledge needed in their practice, and by
+the degree of subtlety needed in bringing such knowledge into play. War
+certainly stands first in the general mind, not only as the greatest of
+the arts which I have called of the second order, but as the greatest of
+all arts. It is not, however, easy to distinguish the respect paid to
+the Power, from that rendered to the Art of the soldier; the honor of
+victory being more dependent, in the vulgar mind, on its results, than
+its difficulties. I believe, however, that taking into consideration the
+greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be practised, the
+multitude of circumstances to be known and regarded in it, and the
+subtleties both of apprehension and stratagem constantly demanded by it,
+as well as the multiplicity of disturbing accidents and doubtful
+contingencies against which it must make provision on the instant, it
+must indeed rank as far the first of the arts of the second order; and
+next to this great art of killing, medicine being much like war in its
+stratagems and watchings against its dark and subtle death-enemy.
+
+Then the arts of the first order will be those in which the Imaginative
+part of the intellect and the Sensitive part of the soul are joined: as
+poetry, architecture, and painting; these forming a kind of cross, in
+their part of the scheme of the human being, with those of the second
+order, which wed the Intelligent part of the intellect and Resolute part
+of the soul. But the reader must feel more and more, at every step, the
+impossibility of classing the arts themselves, independently of the men
+by whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may be made
+noble by the quantity of human strength and being which a great man will
+pour into it; and an art, great in itself, be made mean by the meanness
+of the mind occupied in it. I do not intend, when I call painting an art
+of the first, and war an art of the second, order, to class Dutch
+landscape painters with good soldiers; but I mean, that if from such a
+man as Napoleon we were to take away the honor of all that he had done
+in law and civil government, and to give him the reputation of his
+soldiership only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that
+of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But I will
+not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all the arts
+of the first order it would be found that all that a man has, or is, or
+can be, he can fully express in them, and give to any of them, and find
+it not enough.
+
+
+  15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS.
+
+The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader to form of
+architecture, may in some sort also be formed of painting, owing to the
+close connection between execution and expression in the latter; as
+between structure and expression in the former. We ought to be able to
+tell good painting by a side glance as we pass along a gallery; and,
+until we can do so, we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all: not
+that I class this easily visible excellence of painting with the great
+expressional qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have
+again and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall
+always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among some of the
+more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the business of a
+painter is to _paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, Veronese
+and Rubens for instance, who were painters, par excellence, and in whom
+the expressional qualities are subordinate. Now it is well, when we have
+strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as
+the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of
+small account, the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed,
+for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a
+just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was
+wrong of him to paint. He had much better put his morality into sermons,
+and his poetry into verse, than into a language of which he was not
+master. And this mastery of the language is that of which we should be
+cognizant by a glance of the eye; and if that be not found, it is wasted
+time to look farther: the man has mistaken his vocation, and his
+expression of himself will be cramped by his awkward efforts to do what
+he was not fit to do. On the other hand, if the man be a painter indeed,
+and have the gift of colors and lines, what is in him will come from his
+hand freely and faithfully; and the language itself is so difficult and
+so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the man is great, and
+that his works are worth reading. So that I have never yet seen the case
+in which this true artistical excellence, visible by the eye-glance, was
+not the index of some true expressional worth in the work. Neither have
+I ever seen a good expressional work without high artistical merit: and
+that this is ever denied is only owing to the narrow view which men are
+apt to take both of expression and of art; a narrowness consequent on
+their own especial practice and habits of thought. A man long trained to
+love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns in proud and ineffable
+disgust from the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return
+across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten,
+that while Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was
+different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;--wild seas to be
+banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be
+drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful
+breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick walls
+against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands and gross
+stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and
+Christmas feasts, which were to be the reward of it; rough affections,
+and sluggish imagination; fleshy, substantial, ironshod humanities, but
+humanities still; humanities which God had his eye upon, and which won,
+perhaps, here and there, as much favor in his sight as the wasted
+aspects of the whispering monks of Florence (Heaven forbid it should not
+be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and
+reapers still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens'
+masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human
+rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and
+education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He
+had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those
+of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister
+breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in
+missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in
+him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court,
+knight's camp, or peasant's cottage. On the other hand, a man trained
+here in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow
+that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico. But he
+is just as wrong as the other. Fra Angelico is as true a master of the
+art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that necessary for his.
+We have been taught in England to think there can be no virtue but in a
+loaded brush and rapid hand; but if we can shake our common sense free
+of such teaching, we shall understand that there is art also in the
+delicate point and in the hand which trembles as it moves; not because
+it is more liable to err, but because there is more danger in its error,
+and more at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a
+colorist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and beautiful,
+that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-play and
+brilliancy of it: However closely it may be surrounded by other works of
+the same school, glowing with enamel and gold, Angelico's may be told
+from them at a glance, like so many huge pieces of opal lying among
+common marbles. So again with Giotto; the Arena chapel is not only the
+most perfect expressional work, it is the prettiest piece of wall
+decoration and fair color, in North Italy.
+
+Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the technical and
+expressional parts of architecture;--not a true or entire
+correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the building must
+be also best; but so much of correspondence as that good building is
+necessary to good expression, comes before it, and is to be primarily
+looked for: and the more, because the manner of building is capable of
+being determinately estimated and classed; but the expressional
+character not so: we can at once determine the true value of technical
+qualities, we can only approximate to the value of expressional
+qualities: and besides this, the looking for the technical qualities
+first will enable us to cast a large quantity of rubbish aside at once,
+and so to narrow the difficult field of inquiry into expression: we
+shall get rid of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, and Renaissance
+Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one great rubbish
+heap; and shall not need to trouble ourselves about their expression, or
+anything else concerning them. Then taking the buildings which have been
+rightly put together, and which show common sense in their structure, we
+may look for their farther and higher excellences; but on those which
+are absurd in their first steps we need waste no time.
+
+
+  16. STRENGTH OF SHAFTS.
+
+I could have wished, before writing this chapter, to have given more
+study to the difficult subject of the strength of shafts of different
+materials and structure; but I cannot enter into every inquiry which
+general criticism might suggest, and this I believe to be one which
+would have occupied the reader with less profit than many others: all
+that is necessary for him to note is, that the great increase of
+strength gained by a tubular form in iron shafts, of given solid
+contents, is no contradiction to the general principle stated in the
+text, that the strength of materials is most available when they are
+most concentrated. The strength of the tube is owing to certain
+properties of the arch formed by its sides, not to the dispersion of its
+materials: and the principle is altogether inapplicable to stone shafts.
+No one would think of building a pillar of a succession of sandstone
+rings; however strong it might be, it would be still stronger filled up,
+and the substitution of such a pillar for a solid one of the same
+contents would lose too much space; for a stone pillar, even when solid,
+must be quite as thick as is either graceful or convenient, and in
+modern churches is often too thick as it is, hindering sight of the
+preacher, and checking the sound of his voice.
+
+
+  17. ANSWER TO MR. GARBETT.
+
+Some three months ago, and long after the writing of this passage, I met
+accidentally with Mr. Garbett's elementary Treatise on Design. (Weale,
+1850.) If I had cared about the reputation of originality, I should have
+been annoyed--and was so, at first, on finding Mr. Garbett's
+illustrations of the subject exactly the same as mine, even to the
+choice of the elephant's foot for the parallel of the Doric pillar: I
+even thought of omitting, or rewriting, great part of the chapter, but
+determined at last to let it stand. I am striving to speak plain truths
+on many simple and trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of
+what I say has been said before, and am quite willing to give up all
+claim to originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any
+one cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not
+as mine, but as the truth, which may be all the world's, if they look
+for it. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frank Howard promised at some
+discussion respecting the "Seven Lamps," reported in the "Builder," to
+pluck all my borrowed feathers off me; but I did not see the end of the
+discussion, and do not know to this day how many feathers I have left:
+at all events the elephant's foot must belong to Mr. Garbett, though,
+strictly speaking, neither he nor I can be quite justified in using it,
+for an elephant in reality stands on tiptoe; and this is by no means the
+expression of a Doric shaft. As, however, I have been obliged to speak
+of this treatise of Mr. Garbett's, and desire also to recommend it as of
+much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is impossible
+for me to pass altogether without notice, as if unanswerable, several
+passages in which the writer has objected to views stated in the "Seven
+Lamps." I should at any rate have noticed the passage quoted above,
+(Chap. 30th,) which runs counter to the spirit of all I have ever
+written, though without referring to me; but the references to the
+"Seven Lamps" I should not have answered, unless I had desired,
+generally, to recommend the book, and partly also, because they may
+serve as examples of the kind of animadversion which the "Seven Lamps"
+had to sustain from architects, very generally; which examples being
+once answered, there will be little occasion for my referring in future
+to other criticisms of the kind.
+
+The first reference to the "Seven Lamps" is in the second page, where
+Mr. Garbett asks a question, "Why are not convenience and stability
+enough to constitute a fine building?"--which I should have answered
+shortly by asking another, "Why we have been made men, and not bees nor
+termites:" but Mr. Garbett has given a very pretty, though partial,
+answer to it himself, in his 4th to 9th pages,--an answer which I
+heartily beg the reader to consider. But, in page 12, it is made a grave
+charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament
+interchangeably. I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one day,
+will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to head his pages
+thus:--"Beauty not dependent on ornament, _or superfluous_ features."
+What right has he to assume that ornament, rightly so called, ever was,
+or can be, superfluous? I have said before, and repeatedly in other
+places, that the most beautiful things are the most useless; I never
+said superfluous. I said useless in the well-understood and usual sense,
+as meaning, inapplicable to the service of the body. Thus I called
+peacocks and lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome
+(taking Juvenal's word for it), and that dried lilies made bad hay: but
+I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the world could get
+on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer, I suppose the peacock's
+blue eyes to be very useless to him; not dangerous indeed, as to their
+first master, but of small service, yet I do not think there is a
+superfluous eye in all his tail; and for lilies, though the great King
+of Israel was not "arrayed" like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us
+which are their superfluous leaves? Is there no Diogenes among lilies?
+none to be found content to drink dew, but out of silver? The fact is, I
+never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament meant a
+thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off, at
+architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little more
+than many women do of the other kind of ornament--the only true
+kind,--St. Peter's kind,--"Not that outward adorning, but the inner--of
+the heart." I do not mean that architects cannot conceive this better
+ornament, but they do not understand that it is the _only_ ornament;
+that _all_ architectural ornament is this, and nothing but this; that a
+noble building never has any extraneous or superfluous ornament; that
+all its parts are necessary to its loveliness, and that no single atom
+of them could be removed without harm to its life. You do not build a
+temple and then dress it.[101] You create it in its loveliness, and
+leave it, as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well
+adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words ornament and
+beauty interchangeably, in order that architects may understand this: I
+assume that their building is to be a perfect creature capable of
+nothing less than it has, and needing nothing more. It may, indeed,
+receive additional decoration afterwards, exactly as a woman may
+gracefully put a bracelet on her arm, or set a flower in her hair: but
+that additional decoration is _not_ the _architecture_. It is of
+curtains, pictures, statues, things that may be taken away from the
+building, and not hurt it. What has the architect to do with these? He
+has only to do with what is part of the building itself, that is to say,
+its own inherent beauty. And because Mr. Garbett does not understand or
+acknowledge this, he is led on from error to error; for we next find him
+endeavoring to define beauty as distinct from ornament, and saying that
+"Positive beauty may be produced by a studious collation of whatever
+will display design, order, and congruity." (p. 14.) Is that so? There
+is a highly studious collation of whatever will display design, order,
+and congruity, in a skull, is there not?--yet small beauty. The nose is
+a decorative feature,--yet slightly necessary to beauty, it seems to me;
+now, at least, for I once thought I must be wrong in considering a skull
+disagreeable. I gave it fair trial: put one on my bed-room
+chimney-piece, and looked at it by sunrise every morning, and by
+moonlight every night, and by all the best lights I could think of, for
+a month, in vain. I found it as ugly at last as I did at first. So,
+also, the hair is a decoration, and its natural curl is of little use;
+but can Mr. Garbett conceive a bald beauty; or does he prefer a wig,
+because that is a "_studious_ collation" of whatever will produce
+design, order, and congruity? So the flush of the cheek is a
+decoration,--God's painting of the temple of his spirit,--and the
+redness of the lip; and yet poor Viola thought it beauty truly blent;
+and I hold with her.
+
+I have answered enough to this count.
+
+The second point questioned is my assertion, "Ornament cannot be
+overcharged if it is good, and is always overcharged when it is bad." To
+which Mr. Garbett objects in these terms: "I must contend, on the
+contrary, that the very best ornament may be overcharged by being
+misplaced."
+
+A short sentence with two mistakes in it.
+
+First. Mr. Garbett cannot get rid of his unfortunate notion that
+ornament is a thing to be manufactured separately, and fastened on. He
+supposes that an ornament may be called good in itself, in the
+stonemason's yard or in the ironmonger's shop: Once for all, let him put
+this idea out of his head. We may say of a thing, considered separately,
+that it is a pretty thing; but before we can say it is a good ornament,
+we must know what it is to adorn, and how. As, for instance, a ring of
+gold is a pretty thing; it is a good ornament on a woman's finger; not a
+good ornament hung through her under lip. A hollyhock, seven feet high,
+would be a good ornament for a cottage-garden; not a good ornament for a
+lady's head-dress. Might not Mr. Garbett have seen this without my
+showing? and that, therefore, when I said "_good_" ornament, I said
+"well-placed" ornament, in one word, and that, also, when Mr. Garbett
+says "it may be overcharged by being misplaced," he merely says it may
+be overcharged by being _bad_.
+
+Secondly. But, granted that ornament _were_ independent of its position,
+and might be pronounced good in a separate form, as books are good, or
+men are good.--Suppose I had written to a student in Oxford, "You cannot
+have too many books, if they be good books;" and he had answered me,
+"Yes, for if I have many, I have no place to put them in but the
+coal-cellar." Would that in anywise affect the general principle that
+he could not have too many books?
+
+Or suppose he had written, "I must not have too many, they confuse my
+head." I should have written back to him: "Don't buy books to put in the
+coal-hole, nor read them if they confuse your head; you cannot have too
+many, if they be good: but if you are too lazy to take care of them, or
+too dull to profit by them, you are better without them."
+
+Exactly in the same tone, I repeat to Mr. Garbett, "You cannot have too
+much ornament, if it be good: but if you are too indolent to arrange it,
+or too dull to take advantage of it, assuredly you are better without
+it."
+
+The other points bearing on this question have already been stated in
+the close of the 21st chapter.
+
+The third reference I have to answer, is to my repeated assertion, that
+the evidence of manual labor is one of the chief sources of value in
+ornament, ("Seven Lamps," p. 49, "Modern Painters," Sec. 1, Chap. III.,)
+to which objection is made in these terms: "We must here warn the reader
+against a remarkable error of Ruskin. The value of ornaments in
+architecture depends _not in the slightest degree_ on the _manual labor_
+they contain. If it did, the finest ornaments ever executed would be the
+stone chains that hang before certain Indian rock-temples." Is that so?
+Hear a parallel argument. "The value of the Cornish mines depends not in
+the slightest degree on the quantity of copper they contain. If it did,
+the most valuable things ever produced would be copper saucepans." It is
+hardly worth my while to answer this; but, lest any of my readers should
+be confused by the objection, and as I hold the fact to be of great
+importance, I may re-state it for them with some explanation.
+
+Observe, then, the appearance of labor, that is to say, the evidence of
+the past industry of man, is always, in the abstract, intensely
+delightful: man being meant to labor, it is delightful to see that he
+_has_ labored, and to read the record of his active and worthy
+existence.
+
+The evidence of labor becomes painful only when it is a _sign of Evil
+greater, as Evil, than the labor is great, as Good_. As, for instance,
+if a man has labored for an hour at what might have been done by another
+man in a moment, this evidence of his labor is also evidence of his
+weakness; and this weakness is greater in rank of evil, than his
+industry is great in rank of good.
+
+Again, if a man have labored at what was not worth accomplishing, the
+signs of his labor are the signs of his folly, and his folly dishonors
+his industry; we had rather he had been a wise man in rest than a fool
+in labor.
+
+Again, if a man have labored without accomplishing anything, the signs
+of his labor are the signs of his disappointment; and we have more
+sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure in sympathy with his
+work.
+
+Now, therefore, in ornament, whenever labor replaces what was better
+than labor, that is to say, skill and thought; wherever it substitutes
+itself for these, or _negatives these by its existence_, then it is
+positive evil. Copper is an evil when it alloys gold, or poisons food:
+not an evil, as copper; good in the form of pence, seriously
+objectionable when it occupies the room of guineas. Let Danae cast it
+out of her lap, when the gold comes from heaven; but let the poor man
+gather it up carefully from the earth.
+
+Farther, the evidence of labor is not only a good when added to other
+good, but the utter absence of it destroys good in human work. It is
+only good for God to create without toil; that which man can create
+without toil is worthless: machine ornaments are no ornaments at all.
+Consider this carefully, reader: I could illustrate it for you
+endlessly; but you feel it yourself every hour of your existence. And if
+you do not know that you feel it, take up, for a little time, the trade
+which of all manual trades has been most honored: be for once a
+carpenter. Make for yourself a table or a chair, and see if you ever
+thought any table or chair so delightful, and what strange beauty there
+will be in their crooked limbs.
+
+I have not noticed any other animadversions on the "Seven Lamps" in Mr.
+Garbett's volume; but if there be more, I must now leave it to his own
+consideration, whether he may not, as in the above instances, have made
+them incautiously: I may, perhaps, also be permitted to request other
+architects, who may happen to glance at the preceding pages, not
+immediately to condemn what may appear to them false in general
+principle. I must often be found deficient in technical knowledge; I
+may often err in my statements respecting matters of practice or of
+special law. But I do not write thoughtlessly respecting principles; and
+my statements of these will generally be found worth reconnoitring
+before attacking. Architects, no doubt, fancy they have strong grounds
+for supposing me wrong when they seek to invalidate my assertions. Let
+me assure them, at least, that I mean to be their friend, although they
+may not immediately recognise me as such. If I could obtain the public
+ear, and the principles I have advocated were carried into general
+practice, porphyry and serpentine would be given to them instead of
+limestone and brick; instead of tavern and shop-fronts they would have
+to build goodly churches and noble dwelling-houses; and for every
+stunted Grecism and stucco Romanism, into which they are now forced to
+shape their palsied thoughts, and to whose crumbling plagiarisms they
+must trust their doubtful fame, they would be asked to raise whole
+streets of bold, and rich, and living architecture, with the certainty
+in their hearts of doing what was honorable to themselves, and good for
+all men.
+
+Before I altogether leave the question of the influence of labor on
+architectural effect, the reader may expect from me a word or two
+respecting the subject which this year must be interesting to all--the
+applicability, namely, of glass and iron to architecture in general, as
+in some sort exemplified by the Crystal Palace.
+
+It is thought by many that we shall forthwith have great part of our
+architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of beauty will result
+from the studied employment of these materials.
+
+It may be told in a few words how far this is possible; how far
+eternally impossible.
+
+There are two means of delight in all productions of art--color and
+form.
+
+The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art are those of
+works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect. The best and
+noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by the touch of the
+human hand on an opaque surface, upon which it can command any tint
+required, without subjection to alteration by fire or other mechanical
+means. No color is so noble as the color of a good painting on canvas or
+gesso.
+
+This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most part, in
+architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of the natural
+colors of stones, which are far nobler than any abstract hues producible
+by human art.
+
+The delight which we receive from glass painting is one altogether
+inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by over indulgence.
+Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise some palaces like
+Aladdin's with colored glass for jewels, which shall be new in the annals
+of human splendor, and good in their place; but not if they superseded
+nobler edifices.
+
+Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent bodies: but
+form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque bodies, without
+lustre.
+
+This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or refined
+form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless matter. You cannot
+see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfection, even of a cameo or
+bronze. You cannot perfectly see the form of a humming-bird, on account
+of its burnishing; but you can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble
+work in form can ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous
+glass or enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its
+form: therefore you can never have any noble architecture in transparent
+or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however, opaque; and both it and
+opaque enamel may, perhaps, be rendered quite lustreless; and, therefore,
+fit to receive noble form.
+
+Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel made fine in
+paste or grain, and you may have an architecture as noble as cast or
+struck architecture even can be: as noble, therefore, as coins can be, or
+common cast bronzes, and such other multiplicable things;[102]--eternally
+separated from all good and great things by a gulph which not all the
+tubular bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries cast
+into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass one inch of.
+All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a
+piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if
+unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better
+thing, is _art which proceeds from an individual mind, working through
+instruments which assist, but do not supersede, the muscular action of
+the human hand, upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most
+securely retain, the impressions of such human labor_.
+
+And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of the
+quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly expressed
+upon it for ever:--
+
+First, of thought and moral purpose;
+
+Secondly, of technical skill;
+
+Thirdly, of bodily industry.
+
+The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is
+very great. So far it is good.
+
+The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single and very
+admirable thought of Mr. Paxton's, probably not a bit brighter than
+thousands of thoughts which pass through his active and intelligent
+brain every hour,--that it might be possible to build a greenhouse
+larger than ever greenhouse was built before. This thought, and some
+very ordinary algebra, are as much as all that glass can represent of
+human intellect. "But one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this
+intolerable deal of sack." Alas!
+
+  "The earth hath bubbles as the water hath:
+   And this is of them."
+
+
+  18. EARLY ENGLISH CAPITALS.
+
+The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capitals is,
+indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exaggerated force of
+effect, like the "_black_ touches" of second-rate draughtsmen, which I
+have noticed as characteristic of nearly all northern work, associated
+with the love of the grotesque: but the main section of the capital is
+indeed a dripstone rolled round, as above described; and dripstone
+sections are continually found in northern work, where not only they
+cannot increase force of effect, but are entirely invisible except on
+close examination; as, for instance, under the uppermost range of stones
+of the foundation of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base
+of All Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye. I much doubt
+if any of the Fellows be aware of its existence.
+
+Many readers will be surprised and displeased by the disparagement of
+the early English capital. That capital has, indeed, one character of
+considerable value; namely, the boldness with which it stops the
+mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them from the shaft,
+contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their vertical lines.
+Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its place, not
+unpleasing; and we English love it from association, it being always
+found in connection with our purest and loveliest Gothic arches, and
+never in multitudes large enough to satiate the eye with its form. The
+reader who sits in the Temple church every Sunday, and sees no
+architecture during the week but that of Chancery Lane, may most
+justifiably quarrel with me for what I have said of it. But if every
+house in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane were Gothic, and all had early
+English capitals, I would answer for his making peace with me in a
+fortnight.
+
+
+  19. TOMBS NEAR ST. ANASTASIA.
+
+Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to me, and I
+have taken no pains to discover; their value being not in any evidence
+they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic merit as examples of
+composition. Two of them are within the gate, one on the top of it, and
+this latter is on the whole the best, though all are beautiful; uniting
+the intense northern energy in their figure sculpture with the most
+serene classical restraint in their outlines, and unaffected, but
+masculine simplicity of construction.
+
+I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page 154,
+in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but I shall
+always express the same points by the same letters, whenever I have to
+give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the reader need
+never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base or span of the centre
+arch will always be _a b_; its vertex will always be V; the points of
+the cusps will be _c c_; _p p_ will be the bases of perpendiculars let
+fall from V and _c_ on _a b_; and _d_ the base of a perpendicular from
+the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then _a b_ will always be a span
+of the arch, V _p_ its perpendicular height, V _a_ the chord of its side
+arcs, _d c_ the depth of its cusps, _c c_ the horizontal interval
+between the cusps, _a c_ the length of the chord of the lower arc of the
+cusp, V _c_ the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp,
+(whether continuous or not,) and _c p_ the length of a perpendicular
+from the point of the cusp on _a b_.
+
+Of course we do not want all these measures for a single arch, but it
+often happens that some of them are attainable more easily than others;
+some are often unattainable altogether, and it is necessary therefore to
+have expressions for whichever we may be able to determine.
+
+V _p_ or V _a_, _a b_, and _d c_ are always essential; then either _a c_
+and V _c_ or _c c_ and _c p_: when I have my choice, I always take _a
+b_, V _p_, _d c_, _c c_, and _c p_, but _c p_ is not to be generally
+obtained so accurately as the cusp arcs.
+
+The measures of the present arch are:
+
+           Ft.  In.
+  _a b_,    3 ,, 8
+  V _p_,    4 ,, 0
+  V _c_,    2 ,, 4-1/2
+  _a c_,    2 ,, 0-1/4
+  _d c_,    0 ,, 3-1/2
+
+
+                   20. SHAFTS OF DUCAL PALACE.
+
+The shortness of the thicker ones at the angles is induced by the
+greater depth of the enlarged capitals: thus the 36th shaft is 10 ft.
+4-1/3 in. in circumference at its base, and 10 ,, 0-1/2[103] in
+circumference under the fillet of its capital; but it is only 6 ,,
+1-3/4 high, while the minor intermediate shafts, of which the thickest
+is 7 ,, 8 round at the base, and 7 ,, 4 under capital, are yet on the
+average 7 ,, 7 high. The angle shaft towards the sea (the 18th) is
+nearly of the proportions of the 36th, and there are three others, the
+15th, 24th, and 26th, which are thicker than the rest, though not so
+thick as the angle ones. The 24th and 26th have both party walls to
+bear, and I imagine the 15th must in old time have carried another,
+reaching across what is now the Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+
+They measure respectively round at the base,
+
+  The 15th, 8 ,, 2
+      24th, 9 ,, 6-1/2
+      26th, 8 ,, 0-1/2
+
+The other pillars towards the sea, and those to the 27th inclusive of
+the Piazzetta, are all seven feet round at the base, and then there is a
+most curious and delicate crescendo of circumference to the 36th, thus:
+
+  The 28th, 7 ,, 3   The 33rd, 7 ,, 6
+      29th, 7 ,, 4       34th, 7 ,, 8
+      30th, 7 ,, 6       35th, 7 ,, 8
+      31st, 7 ,, 7       36th, 10 ,, 4-1/3
+      32nd, 7 ,, 5
+
+The shafts of the upper arcade, which are above these thicker columns,
+are also thicker than their companions, measuring on the average, 4 ,,
+8-1/2 in circumference, while those of the sea facade, except the 29th,
+average 4 ,, 7-1/2 in circumference. The 29th, which is of course above
+the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in circumference, which little
+piece of evidence will be of no small value to us by-and-by. The 35th
+carries the angle of the palace, and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which
+comes above the 24th and carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran
+Consiglio, is strengthened by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over
+the 26th, is 5 ,, 4-1/2 round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it
+carries the party wall of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room
+containing part of St. Mark's library, coming between the two saloons;
+a room which, in remembrances of the help I have received in all my
+inquiries from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant, I
+shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as "Mr. Lorenzi's."[104]
+
+I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades of the
+Ducal Palace, those which refer to Plate XIV., which represents one of
+its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower arcade was intended to have
+been occupied by an ornament resembling the one given in that plate. The
+mass of the building being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches
+is left within the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the
+slabs of fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the
+design was ever completed, or the marbles have been since removed, but
+there are now only two spandrils retaining their fillings, and vestiges
+of them in a third. The two complete spandrils are on the sea facade,
+above the 3rd and 10th capitals (_vide_ method of numbering, Chap. I.,
+page 30); that is to say, connecting the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the
+9th with the 10th. The latter is the one given in Plate XIV. The white
+portions of it are all white marble, the dental band surrounding the
+circle is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and
+never found in Venice to my recollection, except in work at least
+anterior to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with the
+three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner disc is green
+serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating leaves are grey marble.
+The three triangles are equilateral. The two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each
+side, and the lower 1 ,, 2.
+
+The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10-1/2; its field is slightly
+raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at A, on the left.
+A _a_ is part of the red marble field; _a b_ the section of the dentil
+moulding let into it; _b c_ the entire breadth of the rayed zone,
+represented on the other side of the spandril by the line C _f_; _c d_
+is the white marble band let in, with the dogtooth on the face of it;
+_b c_ is 7-3/4 inches across; _c d_ 3-3/4; and at B are given two joints
+of the dentil (mentioned above, in the chapter on dentils, as unique in
+Venice) of their actual size. At C is given one of the inlaid leaves;
+its measure being (in inches) C _f_ 7-3/4; C _h_ 3/4; _f g_ 3/4; _f e_
+4-3/4, the base of the smaller leaves being of course _f e_ - _f g_ = 4.
+The pattern which occupies the other spandril is similar, except that
+the field _b c_, instead of the intersecting arcs, has only triangles of
+grey marble, arranged like rays, with their bases towards the centre.
+There being twenty round the circle, the reader can of course draw them
+for himself; they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their
+points, and being in contact at their bases: it has lost its central
+boss. The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, through
+which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colors (another
+proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are certainly,
+in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with purple, and the
+grey seem warmed with green.
+
+A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the 21st capital;
+but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted in the other
+spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the slight meagreness in
+the effect of the lower story, which is almost the only fault of the
+building.
+
+This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a marked
+characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages, and is
+carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already
+distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in Appendix 6.
+Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have already an example in Plate
+I. In Plate VII. we have an earlier condition of it, one of the discs
+being there sculptured, the others surrounded by sculptured bands: here
+we have, on the Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because
+likest to the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament
+among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr. Donaldson's
+restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus, this ornament is
+conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly on the Arabian
+buildings of Cairo.
+
+
+  21. ANCIENT REPRESENTATIONS OF WATER.
+
+I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an enquiry into the
+effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and especially the Greek,
+mind, and knowing that my friend, Mr. C. Newton, had devoted much
+thought to the elucidation of the figurative and symbolic language of
+ancient art, I asked him to draw up for me a few notes of the facts
+which he considered most interesting, as illustrative of its methods of
+representing nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the
+representation of water; because this is one of the natural objects
+whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment, for it is
+one of universal interest, and of more closely similar aspect in all
+parts of the world than any other. Waves, currents, and eddies are much
+liker each other, everywhere, than either land or vegetation. Rivers and
+lakes, indeed, differ widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from
+the angry Northern ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot
+of Nubian palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterranean
+is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway moss.
+
+Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with the following
+data. One or two of the types which he describes have been already
+noticed in the main text; but it is well that the reader should again
+contemplate them in the position which they here occupy in a general
+system. I recommend his special attention to Mr. Newton's definitions of
+the terms "figurative" and "symbolic," as applied to art, in the
+beginning of the paper.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian, Assyrian,
+Greek, and Roman races, water is, for the most part, represented
+conventionally rather than naturally.
+
+By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect an imitation
+of nature as the technical means of art will allow: on the other hand,
+representation is said to be conventional, either when a confessedly
+inadequate imitation is accepted in default of a better, or when
+imitation is not attempted at all, and it is agreed that other modes of
+representation, those by figures or by symbols, shall be its substitute
+and equivalent.
+
+In figurative representation there is always _impersonation_; the
+sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is conceived to
+be actuated by a will, and invested with such mental attributes as
+constitute personality.
+
+The sensible _symbol_, whether borrowed from organic or from inorganic
+nature, is not a personification at all, but the conventional sign or
+equivalent of some object or notion, to which it may perhaps bear no
+visible resemblance, but with which the intellect or the imagination has
+in some way associated it.
+
+For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a woman crowned
+with towers; here the artist has selected for the expression of his idea
+a human form animated with a will and motives of action analogous to
+those of humanity generally. Or, again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a
+figurative representation of a river, and, in the conception of the
+artist, this animal form may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind.
+
+This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality is
+embodied is changed.
+
+Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea; a man ploughing
+with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman colony. In neither of
+these instances is there impersonation. The dolphin is not invested,
+like the figure of Neptune, with any of the attributes of the human
+mind; it has animal instincts, but no will; it represents to us its
+native element, only as a part may be taken for a whole.
+
+Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female figure,
+_personify_, but rather _typifies_ the town, standing as the visible
+representation of a real event, its first foundation. To our mental
+perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems no more than
+man; there is no blending of his personal nature with the impersonal
+nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes from the one to the
+other.
+
+Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the symbolic,
+are three distinct kinds of representation, they are constantly combined
+in one composition, as we shall see in the following examples, cited
+from the art of successive races in chronological order.
+
+In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the
+conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two frescoes from
+tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170: the subject of the first of these is
+an oblong pond, ground-plan and elevation being strangely confused in
+the design. In this pond water is represented by parallel zigzag lines,
+in which fish are swimming about. On the surface are birds and lotos
+flowers; the herbage at the edge of the pond is represented by a border
+of symmetrical fan-shaped flowers; the field beyond by rows of trees,
+arranged round the sides of the pond at right angles to each other, and
+in defiance of all laws of perspective.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXXI.]
+
+In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river with
+papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag lines arranged
+vertically and in parallel lines, so as to resemble herring-bone
+masonry, thus. There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, and in
+both each fish is drawn very distinctly, not as it would appear to the
+eye viewed through water. The mode of representing this element in
+Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic writing,
+where the sign of water is a zigzag line; this line is, so to speak, a
+picture of water written in short hand. In the Egyptian Pantheon there
+was but one aquatic deity, the god of the Nile; his type is, therefore,
+the only figurative representation of water in Egyptian art. (Birch,
+"Gallery of British Museum Antiquities," Pl. 13.) In Assyrian sculpture
+we have very curious conventionally imitative representations of water.
+On several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men are seen
+crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses swimming
+(see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is represented by masses
+of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses of hair, and terminating in
+curls or volutes; these wavy lines express the general character of a
+deep and rapid current, like that of the Tigris. Fish are but sparingly
+introduced, the idea of surface being sufficiently expressed by the
+floating figures and boats. In the representation of these there is the
+same want of perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just
+cited.
+
+In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been discovered, the god
+Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish's tail. Of the character
+and attributes of this deity we know but little.
+
+The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag line, occurs
+on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a war galley (see
+Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably struck in Assyria, not
+long after the conquest of it by the Persians.
+
+In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more varied. Two
+conventional imitations, the wave moulding and the Maeander, are well
+known. Both are probably of the most remote antiquity; both have been
+largely employed as an architectural ornament, and subordinately as a
+decoration of vases, costume, furniture and implements. In the wave
+moulding we have a conventional representation of the small crisping
+waves which break upon the shore of the Mediterranean, the sea of the
+Greeks.
+
+Their regular succession, and equality of force and volume, are
+generalised in this moulding, while the minuter varieties which
+distinguish one wave from another are merged in the general type. The
+character of ocean waves is to be "for ever changing, yet the same for
+ever;" it is this eternity of recurrence which the early artist has
+expressed in this hieroglyphic.
+
+With this profile representation of water may be compared the sculptured
+waves out of which the head and arms of Hyperion are rising in the
+pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room, No. (65) 91, Museum Marbles, vi.
+pl. 1). Phidias has represented these waves like a mass of overlapping
+tiles, thus generalising their rippling movement. In the Maeander pattern
+the graceful curves of nature are represented by angles, as in the
+Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representation of
+the labyrinth on the coins of the Cnossus is rectangular; on later coins
+we find the curvilinear form introduced.
+
+In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and the Maeander
+are sometimes used singly for the idea of water, but more frequently
+combined with figurative representation. The number of aquatic deities
+in the Greek Pantheon led to the invention of a great variety of
+beautiful types. Some of these are very well known. Everybody is
+familiar with the general form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the
+Nymphs and River Gods; but the modes in which these types were combined
+with conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful
+study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty of the
+language of art formed out of these elements.
+
+This class of representations may be divided into two principal groups,
+those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh water.
+
+The power of the ocean and the great features of marine scenery are
+embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus and the Nereids, that is to
+say, in human forms moving through the liquid element in chariots, or on
+the back of dolphins, or who combine the human form with that of the
+fish-like Tritons. The sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called
+Hippocamps, being composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a
+horse, the legs terminating in web-feet: this union seems to express
+speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise the
+movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here selected to show
+how these types were combined with symbols and conventional imitation.
+
+In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenormant et De
+Witte, Mon. Ceram., i. pl. 27), of which the subject is, Europa crossing
+the sea on the back of the bull. In this design the sea is represented
+by a variety of expedients. First, the swimming action of the bull
+suggests the idea of the liquid medium through which he moves. Behind
+him stands Nereus, his staff held perpendicularly in his hand; the top
+of his staff comes nearly to the level of the bull's back, and is
+probably meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards the
+surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is
+another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is
+indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini.
+
+On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archeol., iii. pl. 50), we
+have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the fulness of details
+with which it is made out.
+
+This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling,
+that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under
+consideration. The mosaic lines the floor and sides of a bath, and, as
+was commonly the case in the baths of the ancients, serves as a
+figurative representation of the water it contained.
+
+On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and islands on
+which fishermen stand; on the floor are fish, crabs, and shrimps.
+
+These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the sea: the
+same symbols of the submarine world appear on many other ancient
+designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon upheaves the island of Cos
+to overwhelm the Giant Polydotes, the island is represented as an
+immense mass of rock; the parts which have been under water are
+indicated by a dolphin, a shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water
+by a goat and a serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5).
+
+Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the types, for
+instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted without
+being viewed in relation to the whole context of mythography to which
+they belong. If we find, for example, on one coin of Tarentum a shell,
+on another a dolphin, on a third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder
+of the town, riding on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this
+latter group expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on
+the coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of the
+greater design, having been detached from it, as we may detach words
+from sentences.
+
+The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have cited
+above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms of expression.
+We have, for instance, on coins several representations of ancient
+harbors.
+
+Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern Messina
+in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor to a sickle, and
+on the coins of the town we find a curved object, within the area of
+which is a dolphin. On this curve are four square elevations placed at
+equal distances. It has been conjectured that these projections are
+either towers or the large stones to which galleys were moored still to
+be seen in ancient harbors (see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p.
+40). With this archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some
+examples of the Roman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at
+Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, Pl. II., No.
+30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two recumbent
+male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the foot of the rock a
+stream is flowing: this is a representation of the rock of the Acropolis
+of Corinth: the female figure is a statue of Aphrodite, whose temple
+surmounted the rock. The stream is the fountain Pirene. The two
+recumbent figures are impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and
+Cenchreia, between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon. ii.,
+c. 16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two
+harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of a nymph.
+
+On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a semicircular
+form, the whole arc being marked with small equal divisions, to denote
+the archways under which the ancient galleys were drawn, _subductae_; at
+the either horn or extremity of the harbor is a temple; in the centre of
+the mouth, a statue of Neptune. (Millingen, Medailles Ined., Pl. II.,
+No. 19. Compare also Millingen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831,
+pp. 50-61, Pl. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246; and the
+harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in which there is a
+representation of the Roman fleet and a reclining figure of Neptune.)
+
+In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent water
+naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785), of which the
+subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is rendered by wavy lines
+drawn in black on a red ground, and something like the effect of light
+playing on the surface of the water is given. On each side of the ship
+are shapeless masses of rock on which the Sirens stand.
+
+One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of the sea
+is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful body, terminating
+in two barking dogs and two serpent tails. Sometimes drowning men, the
+_rari nantes in gurgite vasto_, appear caught up in the coils of these
+tails. Below are dolphins. Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show
+the manner in which she twists the course of ships. For varieties of her
+type see Monum. dell'Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Tavv. 52-3.
+
+The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the following
+heads--rivers, lakes, fountains.
+
+There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very
+frequently employed in ancient mythography.
+
+In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form combined with
+that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic coin of Metapontum in
+Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen, Ancient Coins of Greek Cities
+and Kings,) the river Achelous is represented with the figure of a man
+with a shaggy beard and bull's horns and ears. On a vase of the best
+period of Greek art (Brit. Mus. No. 789; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of
+Lit., New Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented
+with a satyr's head and long bull's horns on the forehead; his form,
+human to the waist, terminates in a fish's tail; his hair falls down his
+back; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a combination of
+the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles, in the commencement
+of the Trachiniae.
+
+                  [Greek: Acheloon lego,
+  os m' en trisin morphaisin exetei patros,
+  phoiton enarges auros allot' aiolos,
+  drakon heliktos, allot' andreio kytei
+  bouproros, ek de daskiou geneiados
+  krounoi dierrhainonto krenaiou potou].
+
+In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is united at the
+waist with the shoulders of a bull's body, in which it terminates. This
+occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No. 452.) On the coins of Oeniadae
+in Acarnia, and on those of Ambracia, all of the period after Alexander
+the Great, the Achelous has a bull's body, and head with a human face.
+In this variety of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in
+the first variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion
+of the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears to
+the human head. On the analogy between these, varieties in the type of
+the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses of the marine
+goddess Thetis are represented, see Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb. ii. pp.
+106-113. It is probable that, in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and
+also of the Achelous, the singular combinations and transformations are
+intended to express the changeful nature of the element water.
+
+Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are represented by
+this combination of the bull and human form, which maybe called, for
+convenience, the Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the
+archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually
+represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the
+hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in
+Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the
+head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always represented
+standing, never reclining.
+
+The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium, in Magna
+Graecia, has been considered, with great probability, a representation of
+this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which are of a very early period,
+the head of the bull is turned round; on those of Thurium, he stoops his
+head, butting: the first of these actions has been thought to symbolise
+the winding course of the river, the second, its headlong current. On
+the coins of Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the
+adjunct of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The
+ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles. This
+probably represents the river bank. Two bulls' head occur on the coins
+of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Burgon that
+the two rivers of the place are expressed under this type.
+
+The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining
+position, though probably not so much employed in earlier Greek art as
+the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar to us, from its
+subsequent adoption in Roman mythography. The earliest example we have
+of a reclining river-god is in the figure in the Elgin Room commonly
+called the Ilissus, but more probably the Cephissus. This occupied one
+angle in the western pediment of the Parthenon; the other Athenian
+river, the Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a
+male and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed,
+is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.
+
+It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition first led
+the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position. The head of
+the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether he had bull's
+horns, like the Sicilian figures already described. His form is
+youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him there is a flow like
+that of waves, but the idea of water is not suggested by any other
+symbol. When we compare this figure with that of the Nile (Visconti,
+Mus. Pio Clem., i., Pl. 38), and the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre,
+both of which are of the Roman period, we see how in these later types
+the artist multiplied symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the
+original simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in
+the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal bearded
+figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the vegetable
+produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are sixteen naked boys, who
+represent the sixteen cubits, the height to which the river rose in a
+favorable year. The statue is placed on a basement divided into three
+compartments, one above another. In the uppermost of these, waves are
+flowing over in one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the
+other two compartments are the animals and plants of the river; the
+bas-reliefs on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated
+symbolic panorama of the Nile.
+
+The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the base are, in
+two compartments, scenes taken from the early Roman myths; flocks,
+herds, and other objects on the banks of the river. (Visconti, Mus. P.
+Cl. i., Pl. 39; Millin, Galerie Mythol., i. p. 77, Pl. 74, Nos. 304,
+308.)
+
+In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two interesting
+representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these we have, within
+a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full face, with dishevelled
+hair, and with a dolphin on either side; on the reverse a female figure
+sailing on a swan, below which a wave moulding, and above, a dolphin.
+
+On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with the
+youthful head of a river-god, inscribed "Hipparis" on the obverse. On
+some smaller coins we have the swan flying over the rippling waves,
+which are represented by the wave moulding. When we examine the chart of
+Sicily, made by the Admiralty survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a
+lake through which the river Hipparis flows.
+
+We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented both
+their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan flying over the
+waves would represent a lake; the figure associated with it being no
+doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place: the head, in a circle of
+wave pattern, may express that part of the river which flows through the
+lake.
+
+Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing from a
+lion's head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., taf.
+CXXXIV.), where Hercules stands, receiving a shower-bath from a hot
+spring at Thermae in Sicily. On the coins of Syracuse the fountain
+Arethusa is represented by a female head seen to the front; the flowing
+lines of her dishevelled hair suggest, though they do not directly
+imitate, the bubbling action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which
+it rises is symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type
+presents a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle
+of wave pattern described above.
+
+These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek
+mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind of figurative
+and symbolic language is employed, but there is a constant tendency to
+multiply accessories and details, as we have shown in the later
+representations of harbors and river-gods cited above. In these crowded
+compositions the eye is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has
+to examine; the language of art becomes more copious but less terse and
+emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the
+refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias.
+
+Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures,
+generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and
+leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian
+cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted
+female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a
+youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms,
+and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Mueller
+(Denkmaeler d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind
+in the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.
+
+On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representations of the
+Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in their military
+expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured wavy lines, in which
+boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli, Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this
+rude conventional imitation is combined with a figure. In a recess in
+the river bank is a reclining river-god, terminating at the waist. This
+is either meant for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the
+river, and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have
+here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation.
+
+On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav. 15) a storm of
+rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius, who has a vast
+outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the Townley collection, in
+the British Museum, is a Roman helmet found at Ribchester in Lancashire,
+with a mask or vizor attached. The helmet is richly embossed with
+figures in a battle scene; round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair
+in the forehead is so treated as to give the idea of waves washing the
+base of the turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of
+a town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great battle
+was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant. London, iv., Pl.
+1-4).
+
+In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori, Inscript.
+Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female figures, one of whom is
+certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the earth; another, Thetis, or the
+sea; the centre of the three seems to represent Aphrodite associated, as
+on the coins of Camarina, with the element of fresh water.
+
+This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an arched veil.
+Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows a tall water plant,
+and below the swan other water plants, and a stork seated on a _hydria_,
+or pitcher, from which water is flowing. The swan, the stork, the water
+plants, and the _hydria_ must all be regarded as symbols of fresh water,
+the latter emblem being introduced to show that the element is fit for
+the use of man.
+
+Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures of nymphs
+reclining with urns, or standing holding before them a large shell.
+
+One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is the mosaic
+of Palestrina (Barthelemy, in Bartoli, Peint. Antiques) which may be
+described as a kind of rude panorama of some district of Upper Egypt, a
+bird's-eye view, half man, half picture, in which the details are
+neither adjusted to a scale, nor drawn according to perspective, but
+crowded together, as they would be in an ancient bas-relief.
+
+
+  22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION.
+
+I do not mean what I have here said of the Inventive power of the Arab
+to be understood as in the least applying to the detestable
+ornamentation of the Alhambra.[105] The Alhambra is no more
+characteristic of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of Gothic: it is a
+late building, a work of the Spanish dynasty in its last decline, and
+its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to be transferred to patterns
+of carpets or bindings of books, together with their marbling, and
+mottling, and other mechanical recommendations. The Alhambra ornament
+has of late been largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment
+of Regent Street and Oxford Street.
+
+
+  23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER.
+
+Let B A C, Fig. LXXII., be the original angle of the wall. Inscribe
+within it a circle, _p_ Q N _p_, of the size of the bead required,
+touching A B, A C, in _p_, _p_; join _p_, _p_, and draw B C parallel to
+it, touching the circle.
+
+Then the lines B C, _p p_ are the limits of the possible chamfers
+constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the line Q _q_,
+N _d_, _r u_, _g c_, &c., or from any other point chosen as a centre in
+the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers in straight lines,
+as _a b_, _e f_. There are, of course, an infinite number of chamfers to
+be struck between B C and _p p_, from every point in Q A produced to
+infinity; thus we have infinity multiplied into infinity to express the
+number of possible chamfers of this species, which are peculiarly
+Italian chamfers; together with another singly infinite group of the
+straight chamfers, _a b_, _e f_, &c., of which the one formed by the
+line _a b_, passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal
+early Gothic chamfer of Venice.
+
+Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A _l_ or A _m_,
+radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken, from which, with
+any radii not greater than the distance between such points and Q, an
+infinite number of curves may be struck, such as _t u_, _r s_, N _n_
+(all which are here struck from centres on the line A C). These lines
+represent the great class of the northern chamfers, of which the number
+is infinity raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N _n_
+(for northern) represents the average condition; the shallower chamfers
+of the same group, _r s_, _t u_, &c., occurring often in Italy. The
+lines _r u_, _t u_, and _a b_ may be taken approximating to the most
+frequent conditions of the southern chamfer.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. LXXII.]
+
+It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give a
+relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the North and
+South; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invariably fall within the
+line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or inclined to A C at an
+angle greater than A C Q, and often perpendicular to it; but never
+inclined to it at an angle less than A C Q.
+
+
+  24. RENAISSANCE BASES.
+
+The following extract from my note-book refers also to some features of
+late decoration of shafts.
+
+"The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting examples of
+Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars are surrounded each by a
+wreath, one of vine, another of laurel, another of oak, not indeed
+arranged with the fantasticism of early Gothic; but, especially the
+laurel, reminding one strongly of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as
+beautiful, of Veronese and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and
+richly interlaced--the last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work--and
+the vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as
+those of the Noah,[106] though more injured by time. The capitals are
+far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more masculine
+in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of support, though of
+course showing the tendency to error in this respect; and finally, at
+the angles of the pure Attic bases, on the square plinth, are set
+couchant animals; one, an elephant four inches high, very curiously and
+cleverly cut, and all these details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy,
+and affection quite worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the
+marked fault of being utterly detached from the architecture. The
+wreaths round the columns look as if they would drop off the next
+moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect of mice
+who had got there by accident: one feels them ridiculously diminutive,
+and utterly useless."
+
+The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to there being
+no other groups of figures near them, to accustom the eye to the
+proportion, and to the needless choice of the largest animals,
+elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position so completely
+insignificant, and to be expressed on so contemptible a scale,--not in a
+bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture, but as independent figures.
+The whole building is a most curious illustration of the appointed fate
+of the Renaissance architects,--to caricature whatever they imitated,
+and misapply whatever they learned.
+
+
+  25. ROMANIST DECORATION OF BASES.
+
+I have spoken above (Appendix 12) of the way in which the Roman Catholic
+priests everywhere suffer their churches to be desecrated. But the worst
+instances I ever saw of sacrilege and brutality, daily permitted in the
+face of all men, were the uses to which the noble base of St. Mark's was
+put, when I was last in Venice. Portions of nearly all cathedrals may be
+found abandoned to neglect; but this base of St. Mark's is in no obscure
+position. Full fronting the western sun--crossing the whole breadth of
+St. Mark's Place--the termination of the most noble square in the
+world--the centre of the most noble city--its purple marbles were, in
+the winter of 1849, the customary _gambling tables_ of the idle children
+of Venice; and the parts which flank the Great Entrance, that very
+entrance where "Barbarossa flung his mantle off," were the counters of a
+common bazaar for children's toys, carts, dolls, and small pewter spoons
+and dishes, German caricatures and books of the Opera, mixed with those
+of the offices of religion; the caricatures being fastened with twine
+round the porphyry shafts of the church. One Sunday, the 24th of
+February, 1850, the book-stall being somewhat more richly laid out than
+usual, I noted down the titles of a few of the books in the order in
+which they lay, and I give them below. The irony conveyed by the
+juxtaposition of the three in Italics appears too shrewd to be
+accidental; but the fact was actually so.
+
+Along the edge of the white plinth were a row of two kinds of books,
+
+  Officium Beatae Virg. M.; and Officium Hebdomadae sanctae, juxta Formam
+    Missalis et Breviarii Romani sub Urbano VIII. correcti.
+
+Behind these lay, side by side, the following:
+
+  Don Desiderio. Dramma Giocoso per Musica.
+  Breve Esposizione della Carattere di vera Religione.
+
+On the top of this latter, keeping its leaves open,
+
+  La Figlia del Reggimento. Melodramma comica.
+  _Carteggio di Madama la Marchesa di Pompadour, ossia
+     raccolta di Lettere scritte della Medesima._
+  _Istruzioni di morale Condotta per le Figlie._
+  _Francesca di Rimini. Dramma per Musica._
+
+Then, a little farther on, after a mass of plays:--
+
+  Orazioni a Gesu Nazareno e a Maria addolorata.
+  Semiramide; Melodramma tragico da rappresentarsi nel Gran Teatro
+    il Fenice.
+  Modo di orare per l'Acquisto del S. Giubileo, conceduto a tutto il
+    Mondo Cattolico da S. S. Gregorio XVI.
+  Le due illustre Rivali, Melodramma in Tre Atti, da rappresentarsi
+    nel nuovo Gran Teatro il Fenice.
+  Il Cristiano secondo il Cuore di Gesu, per la Pratica delle sue
+    Virtu.
+  Traduzione dell'Idioma Italiana.
+  La chiava Chinese; Commedia del Sig. Abate Pietro Chiari.
+  La Pelarina; Intermezzo de Tre Parti per Musica.
+  Il Cavaliero e la Dama; Commedia in Tre Atti in Prosa.
+
+I leave these facts without comment. But this being the last piece of
+Appendix I have to add to the present volume, I would desire to close
+its pages with a question to my readers--a statistical question, which,
+I doubt not, is being accurately determined for us all elsewhere, and
+which, therefore, it seems to me, our time would not be wasted in
+determining for ourselves.
+
+There has now been peace between England and the continental powers
+about thirty-five years, and during that period the English have visited
+the continent at the rate of many thousands a year, staying there, I
+suppose, on the average, each two or three months; nor these an inferior
+kind of English, but the kind which ought to be the best--the noblest
+born, the best taught, the richest in time and money, having more
+leisure, knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation.
+These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the condition of
+the states in which the Papal religion is professed, and being, at the
+same time, the most enlightened section of a great Protestant nation,
+would have been animated with some desire to dissipate the Romanist
+errors, and to communicate to others the better knowledge which they
+possessed themselves. I doubt not but that He who gave peace upon the
+earth, and gave it by the hand of England, expected this much of her,
+and has watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they
+crossed the sea, and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and
+of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller nor
+his courier were at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but that such
+accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and that a day will
+come when they will be made clearly legible to us, and when we shall see
+added together, on one side of the account book, a great sum, the
+certain portion, whatever it may be, of this thirty-five years'
+spendings of the rich English, accounted for in this manner:--
+
+To wooden spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at Geneva, and
+elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell cameos and bits of mosaic
+bought at Rome, so much; to coral horns and lava brooches bought at
+Naples, so much; to glass beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa,
+so much; to pictures, and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much;
+to avant-couriers and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so
+much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights, so
+much; to ball-dresses and general vanities, so much. This, I say, will
+be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other will be written:
+
+To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland, and
+Piedmont, so much.
+
+Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in time?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [93] Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I.
+
+  [94] Compare Appendix 12.
+
+  [95] L'Artiste en Batiments, par Louis Berteaux: Dijon, 1848. My
+    printer writes at the side of the page a note, which I insert with
+    thanks:--"This is not the first attempt at a French order. The
+    writer has a Treatise by Sebastian Le Clerc, a great man in his
+    generation, which contains a Roman order, a Spanish order, which the
+    inventor appears to think very grand, and a _new_ French order
+    nationalised by the Gallic cock crowing and clapping its wings in
+    the capital."
+
+  [96] The lower group in Plate XVII.
+
+  [97] One of the upper stories is also in Gally Knight's plate
+    represented as merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in
+    reality, covered with as delicate inlaying as the rest. The whole
+    front is besides out of proportion, and out of perspective, at once;
+    and yet this work is referred to as of authority, by our architects.
+    Well may our architecture fall from its place among the fine arts,
+    as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted
+    to the Greek architecture, which is _utterly useless_ to us--or
+    worse. _One_ most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our
+    English abbeys,--Mr. E. Sharpe's "Architectural Parallels"--almost a
+    model of what I should like to see done for the Gothic of all
+    Europe.
+
+  [98] Except in the single passage "tell it unto the Church," which
+    is simply the _extension_ of what had been commanded before, i.e.,
+    tell the fault first "between thee and him," then taking "with thee
+    one or two more," then, to all Christian men capable of hearing the
+    cause: if he refuse to hear their common voice, "let him be unto
+    thee as a heathen man and publican:" (But consider how Christ
+    treated both.)
+
+  [99] One or two remarks on this subject, some of which I had
+    intended to have inserted here, and others in Appendix 5, I have
+    arranged in more consistent order, and published in a separate
+    pamphlet, "Notes on the Construction of Sheep-folds," for the
+    convenience of readers interested in other architecture than that of
+    Venetian palaces.
+
+  [100] Not, however, by Johnson's _testimony_: Vide Adventurer, No.
+    39. "Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,--the
+    low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, _digesting
+    dictionaries_, or accumulating compilations."
+
+  [101] We have done so--theoretically; just as one would reason on
+    the human form from the bones outwards: but the Architect of human
+    form frames all at once--bone and flesh.
+
+  [102] Of course mere multiplicability, as of an engraving, does not
+    diminish the intrinsic value of the work; and if the casts of
+    sculpture could be as sharp as the sculpture itself, they would hold
+    to it the relation of value which engravings hold to paintings. And,
+    if we choose to have our churches all alike, we might cast them all
+    in bronze--we might actually coin churches, and have mints of
+    Cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the century to put
+    milled edges for mouldings, and have a popular currency of religious
+    subjects: a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not heard
+    this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the
+    results which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere
+    mechanical applications of glass and iron.
+
+  [103] I shall often have occasion to write measures in the current
+    text, therefore the reader will kindly understand that whenever they
+    are thus written, 2 ,, 2, with double commas between, the first
+    figures stand for English feet, the second for English inches.
+
+  [104] I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my
+    kind friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, for help given me in a thousand ways
+    during my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages
+    elucidatory of my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark's library.
+
+  [105] I have not seen the building itself, but Mr. Owen Jones's work
+    may, I suppose, be considered as sufficiently representing it for
+    all purposes of criticism.
+
+  [106] The sculpture of the Drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace,
+    of which we shall have much to say hereafter.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
+
+
+Footnote [31] 'Greek porticos' changed to 'Greek porticoes'.
+
+Page 42: 'Sec. XL. It is not' corrected to 'Sec. XI. It is not'.
+
+Page 161: Added 'r' to 'timbe' in 'long stone or piece of timbe'.
+
+Page 180: 'XII. 2. Inlet' corrected to 'Sec. XII. 2. Inlet'.
+
+Page 237: 'rererence' changed to 'reference' in 'How is ornament to be
+  treated with rererence'.
+
+Page 247: 'Sec. XIV. Now this is' corrected to 'Sec. XIX. Now this is'.
+
+Page 273: 'no' changed to 'not' in 'a peculiar look, which I can no
+  otherwise describe'.
+
+Page 333: comma changed to period at the paragraph ending with
+  'separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly definable'.
+
+Page 370: 'two-thsrds' corrected to 'two-thirds'.
+
+Page 397: 'bodly' corrected to 'bodily' in 'merely through the channel
+  of the bodly dexterities'.
+
+Page 398: 'calld' corrected to 'called' in 'Men engaged in the practice
+  of these are calld artizans'.
+
+Page 401: 'necesary' corrected to 'necessary' in 'as Rubens was of that
+  necesary for his'.
+
+Page 406: Space placement corrected in 'I found it a sugly at last' to
+  'I found it as ugly at last'.
+
+Page 423: 'Milligen' corrected to 'Millingen' in 'Compare also Milligen,
+  Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings'.
+
+Page 433: space between 'rappresent' and 'arsi' removed in 'Tre Atti, da
+  rappresent arsi'.
+
+Page 433: 'del' corrected to 'dell' in 'Traduzione del' Idioma
+  Italiana'.
+
+
+
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