On the Old Road Volume I Part 14

Then thirdly, and lastly. You are to learn that the doing of a piece of Art such as this is _possible_ to the hand of Man just in the measure of his obedience to the laws which are indeed over his heart, and not over his dust: primarily, as I have said, to that great one, "Thou shalt _Love_ the Lord thy G.o.d." Which command is straight and clear; and all men may obey it if they will,--so only that they be early taught to know Him.

And that is precisely the piece of exact Science which is not taught at present in our Board Schools--so that although my friend, with whom I was staying, was not himself, in the modern sense, ill-educated; neither did he conceive me to be so,--he yet thought it good for himself and me to have that Inscription, "Lord, teach us to Pray," illuminated on the house wall--if perchance either he or I could yet learn what John (when he still had his head) taught _his_ Disciples.

251. But alas, for us only at last, among the people of all ages and in all climes, the lesson has become too difficult; and the Father of all, in every age, in every clime adored, is Rejected of science, as an Outside Worker, in c.o.c.kneydom of the nineteenth century.

Rejected of Science: well; but not yet, not yet--by the men who can do, as well as know. And though I have neither strength nor time, nor at present the mind to go into any review of the work done by the Third and chief School of our younger painters, headed by Burne Jones;[50] and though I know its faults, palpable enough, like those of Turner, to the poorest sight; and though I am discouraged in all its discouragements, I still hold in fullness to the hope of it in which I wrote the close of the third lecture I ever gave in Oxford--of which I will ask the reader here in conclusion to weigh the words, set down in the days of my best strength, so far as I know; and with the uttermost care given to that inaugural Oxford work, to "speak only that which I did know."

252. "Think of it, and you will find that so far from art being immoral, little else _except_ art is moral;--that life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality: and for the words 'good,' and 'wicked,' used of men, you may almost subst.i.tute the words 'Makers' or 'Destroyers.'

"Far the greater part of the seeming prosperity of the world is, so far as our present knowledge extends, vain: wholly useless for any kind of good, but having a.s.signed to it a certain inevitable sequence of destruction and of sorrow.

"Its stress is only the stress of wandering storm; its beauty the hectic of plague: and what is called the history of mankind is too often the record of the whirlwind, and the map of the spreading of the leprosy.

But underneath all that, or in narrow s.p.a.ces of dominion in the midst of it, the work of every man, 'qui non accepit in vanitatem animam suam,'

endures and prospers; a small remnant or green bud of it prevailing at last over evil. And though faint with sickness, and enc.u.mbered in ruin, the true workers redeem inch by inch the wilderness into garden ground; by the help of their joined hands the order of all things is surely sustained and vitally expanded, and although with strange vacillation, in the eyes of the watcher, the morning cometh, and also the night, there is no hour of human existence that does not draw on towards the perfect day.

"And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood that the beauty of Holiness must be in labor as well as in rest. Nay! more, if it may be, in labor; in our strength, rather than in our weakness; and in the choice of what we shall work for through the six days, and may know to be good at their evening time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward or repose. With the mult.i.tude that keep holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to the house of the Lord, and vainly there asked for what we fancied would be mercy; but for the few who labor as their Lord would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow them, all the days of their life, and they shall dwell in the house of the Lord--For Ever."[51]

FOOTNOTES:

[44] "Vulgarly"; the use of the word "scientia," as if it differed from "knowledge," being a modern barbarism; enhanced usually by the a.s.sumption that the knowledge of the difference between acids and alkalies is a more respectable one than that of the difference between vice and virtue.

[45] _Modern Painters_, volume iii. I proceed in my old words, of which I cannot better the substance, though--with all deference to the taste of those who call that book my best--I could, the expression.

[46] The _third_ edition was published in 1846, while the Pre-Raphaelite School was still in swaddling clothes.

[47] These essays were, "Recent Attacks on Political Economy," by Robert Lowe, and "Virchow and Evolution," by Prof. Tyndall,--ED.

[48] James of Quercia: see the rank a.s.signed to this master in _Ariadne Florentina_. The best photographs of the monument are, I believe, those published by the Arundel Society; of whom I would very earnestly request that if ever they quote _Modern Painters_, they would not interpolate its text with unmarked parentheses of modern information such as "emblem of conjugal fidelity." I must not be made to answer for either the rhythm or the contents of sentences thus manipulated.

[49] I foolishly, in _Modern Painters_, used the generic word "hound" to make my sentence prettier. He is a flat-nosed bulldog.

[50] It would be utterly vain to attempt any general account of the works of this painter, unless I were able also to give abstract of the subtlest mythologies of Greek worship and Christian romance. Besides, many of his best designs are pale pencil drawings like Florentine engravings, of which the delicacy is literally invisible, and the manner irksome, to a public trained among the black scrabblings of modern wood-cutter's and etcher's prints. I will only say that the single series of these pencil-drawings, from the story of Psyche, which I have been able to place in the schools of Oxford, together with the two colored beginnings from the stories of Jason and Alcestis, are, in my estimate, quite the most precious gift, not excepting even the Loire series of Turners, in the ratified acceptance of which my University has honored with some fixed memorial the aims of her first Art-Teacher.

[51] _Lectures on Art_, -- 95-6.--ED.

ART.

III.

ARCHITECTURE.

THE OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

(_Pamphlet, 1854._)

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN OUR SCHOOLS.

(_R.I.B.A. Transactions, 1865._)

THE OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.[52]

253. I read the account in the _Times_ newspaper of the opening of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham as I ascended the hill between Vevay and Chatel St. Denis, and the thoughts which it called up haunted me all day long as my road wound among the gra.s.sy slopes of the Simmenthal. There was a strange contrast between the image of that mighty palace, raised so high above the hills on which it is built as to make them seem little else than a bas.e.m.e.nt for its glittering stateliness, and those lowland huts, half hidden beneath their coverts of forest, and scattered like gray stones along the ma.s.ses of far-away mountain. Here man contending with the power of Nature for his existence; there commanding them for his recreation; here a feeble folk nested among the rocks with the wild goat and the coney, and retaining the same quiet thoughts from generation to generation; there a great mult.i.tude triumphing in the splendor of immeasurable habitation, and haughty with hope of endless progress and irresistible power.

254. It is indeed impossible to limit, in imagination, the beneficent results which may follow from the undertaking thus happily begun.[53]

For the first time in the history of the world, a national museum is formed in which a whole nation is interested; formed on a scale which permits the exhibition of monuments of art in unbroken symmetry, and of the productions of nature in unthwarted growth,--formed under the auspices of science which can hardly err, and of wealth which can hardly be exhausted; and placed in the close neighborhood of a metropolis overflowing with a population weary of labor, yet thirsting for knowledge, where contemplation may be consistent with rest, and instruction with enjoyment. It is impossible, I repeat, to estimate the influence of such an inst.i.tution on the minds of the working-cla.s.ses.

How many hours once wasted may now be profitably dedicated to pursuits in which interest was first awakened by some accidental display in the Norwood palace; how many const.i.tutions, almost broken, may be restored by the healthy temptation into the country air; how many intellects, once dormant, may be roused into activity within the crystal walls, and how these n.o.ble results may go on multiplying and increasing and bearing fruit seventy times seven-fold, as the nation pursues its career,--are questions as full of hope as incapable of calculation. But with all these grounds for hope there are others for despondency, giving rise to a group of melancholy thoughts, of which I can neither repress the importunity nor forbear the expression.

255. For three hundred years, the art of architecture has been the subject of the most curious investigation; its principles have been discussed with all earnestness and acuteness; its models in all countries and of all ages have been examined with scrupulous care, and imitated with unsparing expenditure. And of all this refinement of inquiry,--this lofty search after the ideal,--this subtlety of investigation and sumptuousness of practice,--the great result, the admirable and long-expected conclusion is, that in the center of the 19th century, we suppose ourselves to have invented a new style of architecture, when we have magnified a conservatory!

256. In Mr. Laing's speech, at the opening of the palace, he declares that "_an entirely novel order of architecture_, producing, by means of unrivaled mechanical ingenuity, the most marvelous and beautiful effects, sprang into existence to provide a building."[54] In these words, the speaker is not merely giving utterance to his own feelings.

He is expressing the popular view of the facts, nor that a view merely popular, but one which has been encouraged by nearly all the professors of art of our time.

It is to this, then, that our Doric and Palladian pride is at last reduced! We have vaunted the divinity of the Greek ideal--we have plumed ourselves on the purity of our Italian taste--we have cast our whole souls into the proportions of pillars and the relations of orders--and behold the end! Our taste, thus exalted and disciplined, is dazzled by the l.u.s.ter of a few rows of panes of gla.s.s; and the first principles of architectural sublimity, so far sought, are found all the while to have consisted merely in sparkling and in s.p.a.ce.

Let it not be thought that I would depreciate (were it possible to depreciate) the mechanical ingenuity which has been displayed in the erection of the Crystal Palace, or that I underrate the effect which its vastness may continue to produce on the popular imagination. But mechanical ingenuity is _not_ the essence either of painting or architecture, and largeness of dimension does not necessarily involve n.o.bleness of design. There is a.s.suredly as much ingenuity required to build a screw frigate, or a tubular bridge, as a hall of gla.s.s;--all these are works characteristic of the age; and all, in their several ways, deserve our highest admiration, but not admiration of the kind that is rendered to poetry or to art. We may cover the German Ocean with frigates, and bridge the Bristol Channel with iron, and roof the county of Middles.e.x with crystal, and yet not possess one Milton, or Michael Angelo.

257. Well, it may be replied, we need our bridges, and have pleasure in our palaces; but we do not want Miltons, nor Michael Angelos.

Truly, it seems so; for, in the year in which the first Crystal Palace was built, there died among us a man whose name, in after-ages, will stand with those of the great of all time. Dying, he bequeathed to the nation the whole ma.s.s of his most cherished works; and for these three years, while we have been building this colossal receptacle for casts and copies of the art of other nations, these works of our own greatest painter have been left to decay in a dark room near Cavendish Square, under the custody of an aged servant.

This is quite natural. But it is also memorable.

258. There is another interesting fact connected with the history of the Crystal Palace as it bears on that of the art of Europe, namely, that in the year 1851, when all that glittering roof was built, in order to exhibit the paltry arts of our fashionable luxury--the carved bedsteads of Vienna, and glued toys of Switzerland, and gay jewelry of France--in that very year, I say, the greatest pictures of the Venetian masters were rotting at Venice in the rain, for want of roof to cover them, with holes made by cannon shot through their canvas.

There is another fact, however, more curious than either of these, which will hereafter be connected with the history of the palace now in building; namely, that at the very period when Europe is congratulated on the invention of a new style of architecture, because fourteen acres of ground have been covered with gla.s.s, the greatest examples in existence of true and n.o.ble Christian architecture are being resolutely destroyed, and destroyed by the effects of the very interest which was beginning to be excited by them.

259. Under the firm and wise government of the third Napoleon, France has entered on a new epoch of prosperity, one of the signs of which is a zealous care for the preservation of her n.o.ble public buildings. Under the influence of this healthy impulse, repairs of the most extensive kind are at this moment proceeding, on the cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Chartres, and Paris; (probably also in many other instances unknown to me). These repairs were, in many cases, necessary up to a certain point; and they have been executed by architects as skillful and learned as at present exist,--executed with n.o.ble disregard of expense, and sincere desire on the part of their superintendents that they should be completed in a manner honorable to the country.

260. They are, nevertheless, more fatal to the monuments they are intended to preserve, than fire, war, or revolution. For they are undertaken, in the plurality of instances, under an impression, which the efforts of all true antiquaries have as yet been unable to remove, that it is impossible to reproduce the mutilated sculpture of past ages in its original beauty.

"Reproduire avec une exact.i.tude mathematique," are the words used, by one of the most intelligent writers on this subject,[55] of the proposed regeneration of the statue of Ste. Modeste, on the north porch of the Cathedral of Chartres.

Now it is not the question at present whether thirteenth century sculpture be of value, or not. Its value is a.s.sumed by the authorities who have devoted sums so large to its so-called restoration, and may therefore be a.s.sumed in my argument. The worst state of the sculptures whose restoration is demanded may be fairly represented by that of the celebrated group of the Fates, among the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. With what favor would the guardians of those marbles, or any other persons interested in Greek art, receive a proposal from a living sculptor to "reproduce with mathematical exact.i.tude" the group of the Fates, in a perfect form, and to destroy the original? For with exactly such favor, those who are interested in Gothic art should receive proposals to reproduce the sculpture of Chartres or Rouen.

261. In like manner, the state of the architecture which it is proposed to restore may, at its worst, be fairly represented to the British public by that of the best preserved portions of Melrose Abbey. With what encouragement would those among us who are sincerely interested in history, or in art, receive a proposal to pull down Melrose Abbey, and "reproduce it mathematically"? There can be no doubt of the answer which, in the instances supposed, it would be proper to return. "By all means, if you can, reproduce mathematically, elsewhere, the group of the Fates, and the Abbey of Melrose. But leave unharmed the original fragment, and the existing ruin."[56] And an answer of the same tenor ought to be given to every proposal to restore a Gothic sculpture or building. Carve or raise a model of it in some other part of the city; but touch not the actual edifice, except only so far as may be necessary to sustain, to protect it. I said above that repairs were in many instances necessary. These necessary operations consist in subst.i.tuting new stones for decayed ones, where they are absolutely essential to the stability of the fabric; in propping, with wood or metal, the portions likely to give way; in binding or cementing into their places the sculptures which are ready to detach themselves; and in general care to remove luxuriant weeds and obstructions of the channels for the discharge of the rain. But no modern or imitative sculpture ought _ever_, under any circ.u.mstances, to be mingled with the ancient work.

262. Unfortunately, repairs thus conscientiously executed are always unsightly, and meet with little approbation from the general public; so that a strong temptation is necessarily felt by the superintendents of public works to execute the required repairs in a manner which, though indeed fatal to the monument, may be, in appearance, seemly. But a far more cruel temptation is held out to the architect. He who should propose to a munic.i.p.al body to build in the form of a new church, to be erected in some other part of their city, models of such portions of their cathedral as were falling into decay, would be looked upon as merely asking for employment, and his offer would be rejected with disdain. But let an architect declare that the existing fabric stands in need of repairs, and offer to restore it to its original beauty, and he is instantly regarded as a lover of his country, and has a chance of obtaining a commission which will furnish him with a large and ready income, and enormous patronage, for twenty or thirty years to come.

263. I have great respect for human nature. But I would rather leave it to others than myself to p.r.o.nounce how far such a temptation is always likely to be resisted, and how far, when repairs are once permitted to be undertaken, a fabric is likely to be spared from mere interest in its beauty, when its destruction, under the name of restoration, has become permanently remunerative to a large body of workmen.