ranks, possessed of education to have patronised better taste; and in architecture, and some other arts, no one solves the question of what is really right by saying that there have been errors in the tastes of different ages. 2507. The specimens of Greek sculpture, whose beauty is founded in nature herself, will throughout all time excite the admiration of the world; because in this case, the standard or type being nature, mankind generally may be supposed to be competent judges of the productions of the art. But it is very different in architecture, whose types in every style are, as respects their origin, uncertain; and when we are asked whether there be a real and permanent principle of beauty in the art, though we must immediately reply in the affirmative, we are at the same time constrained to refer it to the quality of fitness. If this were not the case, how could we extend our admiration to the various styles of Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Gothic, and Italian architecture? These at first appear, compared with each other, so dissimilar, that it seems impossible to assign beauty to one without denying it to the rest. But on examination each will be found so fitted to its end, that such cause alone will be found to be the principal source of the pleasure that an educated mind receives from each style; and that thence it arises, rather than from any certain or definable combinations of forms, lines, or colours that are in themselves gratifying to the mind or agreeable to the organs of sensation. If this be true, what becomes of the doctrine of the German æsthetical school, so vaunted of by self-constituted critics and reviewers, who pass their judgment ex ca hedra on works they have never seen, and, strange to say, are tolerated for a moment by the public? The truth is, the public rarely give themselves the trouble to judge; and unless led, which is easily done by the few, do not undertake the trouble of judging for themselves. That the Egyptian pyramid, the Grecian and the Roman temple, the early Christian basilica, the Gothic cathedral, the Florentine palace, the Saracenic mosque, the pagoda of the East, are all beautiful objects, we apprehend none will dispute; but there is in none of them a common form or standard by which we can judge of their beauty: the only standard on which we can fall back is the great fitness of them, under their several circumstances, for the end proposed in their erection. 2508. We are thus unavoidably driven to the conclusion that beauty in its application to architecture changes the meaning of the word with every change of its application; for those forms which in one style are strictly beautiful on account of their fitness, applied to another become disgusting and absurd. By way of illustrating this, let us only picture to ourselves a frieze of Grecian triglyphs separating the nave and clerestory of a Gothic cathedral. From what we have been taught to consider the type of the Doric frieze connected with its triglyphs an idea of fitness immediately arises in the mind; but we cannot trace its fitness in a dissimilar situation, neither can we comment on such an incongruity better than in the oft-quoted lines of Horace : "Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam The influence of circumstances in every age has imparted to each style of architecture its peculiar beauty and interest; and until some extraordinary convulsion in society give the impetus to a new one, we are constrained to follow systems which deprive us of other novelty than those of changes which are within the spirit of the universally established laws of the art. Turn to the Gothic churches of the present day, the little pets of the church commissioners and clergy. What objects of ineffable contempt the best of them are! The fact is, the religious circumstances of the country have so changed that they are wholly unsuitable in style to the Protestant worship. Had, with the scanty means afforded to the architects, such a model as St. Paul's, Covent Garden, been adopted, we might have seen a number of edifices in the country, though "Facies non omnibus una Nec diversa tamen,' that might have been an honour to the age in which we live, and suitable to the circumstances of the times. 2509. Unity and harmony in a work necessarily enter into that which is beautiful; and it will not therefore require any argument to show that from a mixture of styles in any building incongruity and unfitness, and consequently a want of unity and harmony, must be the result. Hence we cannot agree with those wise reviewers who advocate the possibility of amalgamating the arch with the severe Grecian style. We leave them to their dreams, and trust that before we give them credence we may have some proof of their practical power in this respect. 2510. Symmetry is that quality which, as its name imports, from one part of an assemblage of parts enables us to arrive at a knowledge of the whole. It is a subordinate, but nevertheless a necessary, ingredient in beauty. It is necessary that parts performing the same office in a building should be strictly similar, or they would not ex vi termini be symmetrical; so, when relations are strictly established between certain parts, making one the measure of another, a disregard of the symmetry thus induced cannot fail of destroying beauty. But here again we have to say, that for want of attention to the similarity of the parts, or neglect of the established relations on which the whole is founded, they have lost their symmetry, and have thus become unfit for their purpose; so that thus again we return to fitness as the main foundation of beauty. 66 2511. Colour abstractedly considered has little to do with architectural beauty, which is founded, as is sculpture, on fine form. We are here speaking generally, and are not inclined to assert that the colour of a building in a landscape is unimportant to the general effect of that landscape, or that the colours used on the walls of the interior of a building are unessential considerations; but we do not hesitate to say that they are of minor consequence in relation to our art. We believe it would be difficult to paint (we mean not in the sense of the artist) the interior of the banqueting room at Whitehall, were it restored to its original destination, and divested of the ruinous accessories which from its original purpose have turned it from a banqueting room into a chapel,- we believe, we say, that it would be difficult to paint it so as to destroy its internal beauty. But as we intend to be short under this head, we shall quote a brochure touching on this subject published by us in 1837. 2512. One of the beauties tending to give effect to the edifices of Greece has been, on the testimony of almost all travellers, the colour of the materials whereof they are composed. Dr. Clarke observes that a warm ochreous tint is diffused over all the buildings of the Acropolis, which he says is peculiar to the ruins of Athens. Perhaps," says the author. "to this warm colour, so remarkably characterising the remains of ancient buildings at Athens, Plutarch alluded" (In Vita Periclis) “in that beautiful passage cited by Chandler, where he affirmed that the structures of Pericles possessed a peculiar and unparalleled excellence of character; a certain freshness bloomed upon them and preserved their faces uninjured, as if they possessed a never-fading spirit, and had a soul insensible to age." It is singular that recent discoveries have incontestably proved that this species of beauty at all events did not originally exist in them, inasmuch as it is now clearly ascertained that it was the practice of the Greeks to paint the whole of the inside and outside of their temples in party colours. It had been some time known that they were in the habit of painting and picking out the ornaments on particular parts of their buildings; but M. Schaubert, the architect of the King of Greece, found on examination that this fell far short of the extent to which this species of painting was carried, and M. Semper, another German architect, has fully corroborated the fact in his examination of the Temple of Theseus. The practice was doubtless imported into Greece from Egypt, and was not to be easily abandoned, seeing the difficulty of falling away from the habits of a people whence it seems certain the arts of Greece more immediately came. It is by no means uncommon for a person to be fully alive to all the beauties of form, without at the same time having a due feeling or perception of the beauty resulting from harmony in colouring. It is therefore not to be assumed that the Greeks, though given to a practice which we would now discourage, possessed not that taste in other respects which has worthily received the admiration of posterity. The practice of painting the inside and outside of buildings has received the name of polychromatic architecture, and we shall here leave it to the consideration of the student as a curious and interesting circumstance, but certainly without a belief that it could add a charm to the stupendous simplicity and beauty of such a building as the Parthenon. 2513. After all that we have said of fitness, it will be expected that in decoration it shall form a principal ingredient. By the term decoration we understand the combination of objects and ornaments that the necessity of variety introduces under various forms, to embellish, to enrich, and to explain the subjects whereon they are employed. The art of decoration, so as to add to the beauty of an object, is, in other words, that of carrying out the emotions already produced by the general form and parts of the object itself. By its means the several relations of the whole and the parts to each other are increased by new combinations; new images are presented to the mind whose effect is variety, one great source of pleasure. From these observations two general rules may be deduced in respect of decoration. First, that it must actually be or seem to be necessary. Second, that such objects must be employed in it as have relation to the end of the general object of the design. We are not to suppose that all parts of a work are susceptible of ornament. Taste must be our guide in ascertaining where decoration is wanted, as well as the quantity requisite. The absence of it altogether is in many cases a mode of decoration. As in language its richness and the luxuriance of images do not suit all subjects, and simplicity in such cases is the best dress, so in the arts of design many subjects would be rather impoverished than enriched by decoration. We must therefore take into consideration the character of the building to be decorated, and then only apply such ornament as is necessary and suitable to that character. We may judge of its necessity if the absence of it causes a dissatisfaction from the void space left; of its suitableness, by its developing the character. History has recorded the contempt with which that decorator was treated who ornamented the-senate house with statues of wrestlers, and the gymnasium with statues of senators. 2514. By some the art of architecture itself has been considered nothing more than that of decorating the buildings which protection from the elements induces us to raise. 2515. The objects which architecture admits for decoration result from the desire of producing variety, analogy, and allegory. We here follow Quatremère de Quincy. (Encyc. Method.) The first seems more general than the others, as being common among all nations that practise building. It is from this source we have such a multitude of cutwork, embroidery, details, compartments, and colours, more or less minute, which are found in every species of architecture. It would be useless for the most philosophical mind to seek for the origin of these objects in any want arising out of the mere construction, or in any political or superstitious custom. Systems of conjecture might be exhausted without arriving one point nearer the truth. Even in the most systematic of the different kinds of architecture, namely, that of the Greeks, we cannot avoid perceiving a great number of forms and details whose origin is derived from the love of variety, and that alone. In a certain point of view, thus considered, an edifice is nothing more than a piece of furniture, a vase, an utensil, the ornaments on which are placed more for the purpose of pleasing the eye than any other. Such, for instance, are the roses of caissons in ceilings and sofites, the leaves round the bell of the Corinthian capital, the Ionic volutes, and many others, besides universally the carving of mouldings themselves. These ornaments, drawn from the storehouse of nature, are on that account in themselves beautiful; but it is their transference to architecture, which in the nature of things can have but a problematical and conjectural origin, that seems to indicate a desire to vary the surface. Unless it was the desire of variety that induced them, we know not what could have done so. 2516. It has been well observed by the author we have just quoted, that though the art has been obliged to acknowledge that many of its decorations depend in their application on such forms as necessity imposes, and in the formation of them on chance, caprice, or whatever the love of variety may dictate, yet in the disposition of them there must reign an order and arrangement subordinate to that caprice, and that at this point commences the difference between architecture as an art subservient to laws which are merely dependent on the pleasure imparted to the eye, and those which depend on the mere mechanical disposition of the building considered as a piece of furniture. Architecture, of all the arts, is that which produces the fewest emotions of the minds of the many, because it is the least comprehensible in regard to the causes of its beauty. Its images act indirectly on our senses, and the impressions it seems to make appear reducible chiefly to magnitude, harmony, and variety, which after all are not qualities out of the reach of an architect of the most ordinary mind, and therefore not at least the first and last - unattainable where economy does not interfere to prevent the result to be attained. 2517. Analogy, the second of the objects by which decoration is admitted into architecture, seems to be resultant from the limited nature of all human inventions in the arts, and the power of being unable to invent except by imitation and alteration of the forms of objects pre-existent. It is most difficult to discard altogether what have been considered types in architecture, and that difficulty has so prevailed as to limit those types to their most probable origin in the case of the orders. 2518. The reader will begin to perceive that our analogy in decoration tends upon trees for columns, the ends of beams for triglyphs, and the like. Whatever truth there may be in this analogy, it is now so established as to guide the rules of decoration that are involved in it; and it must be conceded, that if we are desirous of imitating the peculiar art of any country, we have no hope of success but by following the forms which the construction in such country engenders; and we must admit that, as far as external circumstances can direct us, the architecture of Greece, which, modified, has become that of the whole of Europe, and will become that of America, seems so founded on the nature of things, that, however we may doubt, it would not be prudent to lead the reader away from the consideration, and perhaps from a belief, that such is the truth. Without holding ourselves bound by the analogy of the types of the tree and the cross beam, which appear to have guided the architects of Greece, we can without hesitation assert, that whenever those have been abandoned the art has fallen on the most flagrant vices; witness the horrors of the school of Borromini, where the beams are broken, pediments, which are the gables of roofs, are broken into fantastic forms, and none of the parts seem naturally connected with each other. The works of the school in question seem indeed so broken up, that the study of them would almost convince an impartial and competent judge that the converse of its practice is sufficiently beautiful to establish the truth of the types whereon we have here and before expressed our scepticism. "Sitôt," says De Quincy, "que le génie decorateur s'est cru libre des entraves de l'analogie, toutes les formes caractéristiques se sont contournées, perverteés, et dénaturées, au point qu'il y a entr'elles et celle de la bonne architecture, plus de distance qu'entre celles-ci et les types de la primitive construction." 2519. In the decoration of architecture, neither of the other two means employed are more important than that ocular language which architecture occasionally employs in its ornaments. By its use architecture is almost converted into painting, and an edifice becomes a picture, or a collection of pictures, through the aid of the sculptor. We shall refer to no other building than the Parthenon to prove the assertion. Here the history of the goddess is embodied in the forms of the building, and to the decoration thus introduced the subordinate parts of the sculpture, if it be not heresy so to call them, is kept so under that we are almost inclined to cry out against their not having been principals instead of accessories. This is the true principle upon which buildings should be decorated to impress the mind of the spectator with the notion of beauty, and the principle which, carried out, no matter what the style be, will insure the architect his most ample reward, reputation. The matter that is supplied by allegory for decoration in architecture may be considered under three heads — attributes, figures, and paintings. 2520. The first takes in all those foliages, plants, flowers, and fruits, which from their constant use in sacrifices were at last transferred from the altar to the walls of the temple. The garlands, festoons, chaplets, and crowns which we find sculptured on temples seem to have had their origin from the religious ceremonies performed in them; as do the instruments of sacrifice, vases, the heads of the victims, pateræ, and all the other objects employed in the worship of the ancients. Thus, in architecture, these have become conventional signs, indicating the destination of the buildings to which they are applied. From the particular application of some ornaments on temples we derive in the end a language in the arts of imitation. It was thus that the eagle grasping in his talons the attribute of Jupiter, came to represent eternity and omnipotence; the myrtle and dove of Venus, the passion of love; the lyre and laurel of Apollo, to point to harmony and glory; the spear and helmet of Mars, to represent war. Palms and crowns became the emblems of victory, as did the olive the emblem of peace. In the same way the ears of corn of Ceres, the serpent of Esculapius, the bird of Minerva, and the cock of Mercury were equivalent to the expression of abundance, science, and vigilance. Instruments of the arts, sciences, in short, all objects useful to the end for which an edifice is erected, naturally become signs of that edifice; but applied otherwise become absurd. What, for instance, could be more ridiculous than placing ox sculls and festoons on the frieze of a Protestant church? — and yet this has been done in our own days. 2521. Figures of men and animals come under the second head. The application of these may be seen to their highest perfection in the Parthenon, to which we have already alluded. They may be introduced in low, high, or full relief. In the last case their situation is usually that of a niche. We shall say no more on the subject of figures than that of course they must have relation to the end for which the edifice is erected, and if not in that respect perfectly intelligible are worse than useless. 2522. The walls of Pompeii furnish ancient examples of the decoration obtained by the aid of painting, as do the loggie of the Vatican and the ceilings of the Farnesina modern examples of it. Herein the moderns have far surpassed anything we know of the ancient application of painting. Sculpture, however, seems more naturally allied to architecture than painting, and, except in purely decorative painting on walls and ceilings, the introduction of it seems bounded within narrow limits. The rules as to fitness of the subjects introduced, applicable to the first two heads, are equally so under that of painting. SECT. II. THE ORDERS. 2523. An order in architecture is a certain assemblage of parts subject to uniform established proportions, regulated by the office that each part has to perform. It may be compared to what organisation is in animal nature. As from the paw of a lion his dimensions may be deduced, so from a triglyph may be found the other parts of an example of the Doric order, and from given parts in other orders the whole configuration may be found. As the genus may be defined as consisting of essential and subservient parts, the first-named are the column and its entablature, which, as its name imports, is as it were the tabled work standing on the column. The subservient parts are the mouldings and detail into which the essential parts are subdivided, and which we shall hereafter separately consider. The species of orders are five in number, Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite, each of whose mass and ornaments are suited to its character and the expression it is intended to possess. These are the five orders of architecture, in the proper understanding and application whereof is laid the foundation of architecture as an art. The characters of strength, grace, and elegance, of lightness and of richness, are distinguishing features of the several orders, in which those characters ought to be found not only in the column employed, but should pervade the whole composition, whereof the column is, as it were, the regulator. The mode of setting up, or, as it is technically termed, profiling an order, will be given in a subsequent part of this section. Here we shall merely observe that the entablature is subdivided into an architrave, which lies immediately upon the column, a frieze lying on the architrave, and a cornice, which is its uppermost subdivision. The height of these subdivisions together, that is, the whole height of the entablature, is one fourth that of the column according to the practice of the ancients, who in all sorts of entablatures seldom varied from that measure either in excess or defect." Palladio, Scamozzi, Alberti, Barbaro, Cataneo, Delorme, and others," says Sir William Chambers, "of the modern architects, have made their entablatures much lower in the Ionic, Composite, and Corinthian orders than in the Tuscan or Doric. This, on some occasions, may not only be excusable but highly proper; particularly where the intercolumniations are wide, as in a second or third order, in private houses, or inside decorations, where lightness should be preferred to dignity, and where expense, with every impediment to the conveniency of the fabric, are carefully to be avoided; but to set entirely aside a proportion which seems to have had the general approbation of the ancient artists is surely presuming too far." 2524. As rules in the fine arts which have obtained almost universal adoption are founded on nature or on reason, we may be pretty certain that they are not altogether empirical, albeit their origin may not be immediately apparent. The grounds on which such rules are founded will, however, in most cases become known by tracing them to first principles, which we shall here endeavour to do in respect of this very important relation of height between the column and its entablature. We were first led into this investigation by the perusal of a work by M. Lebrun, entitled Théorie de l'Architecture Grecque et Romaine deduite de l'analyse des Monumens antiques, fol. Paris, 1807; but our results differ very widely from those of Lebrun, as will be seen on reference to that work. 2525. One of the most obvious principles of proportion in respect of loads and supports, and one seemingly founded on nature herself, is, that a support should not be loaded with a greater mass or load than itself; or, in other words, that there should be an equality between weights and supports, or, in the case in point, between the columns and entablature. In respect of the proportion of the voids below the entablature between the columns or supports, a great diversity of practice seems to have prevailed, inasmuch as we find them varying from 103 to 2.18, unity being the measure of the supports. Lebrun makes the areas of the supports, weights, and voids equal to one another, and in what may be termed the monumental examples of the Doric order, such as the Parthenon, &c., he seems borne out in the law he endeavours to establish; but in lighter examples, such as the temple (Ionic) of Bacchus at Teos, where the supports are to the voids as 1 : 205, and in the temple of Minerva Polias, where the ratio is as 1 218, he is beyond all question incorrect: indeed there hardly seems a necessity for the limitation of the voids he prescribes, seeing that, without relation separately to the weight and support, stability would be obtained so long as the centre of gravity of the load fell within the external face of the support. If it be admitted that, as in the two examples above mentioned, the voids should be equal to the supports jointly, we have a key to the rule, and instead of being surprised at the apparently strange law of making the entablature one fourth of the height of the column, we shall find that no other than the result assumed can flow from the investigation. 2526. In fig. 861. let AB be the height of the column, and let the distance between the columns be one third of the height of the column= CD. Now if AB be subdivided into four equal parts at a, b, and c, and the horizontal lines ad, be, and cf be drawn; also, if CD be divided horizontally into four equal parts, and lines be drawn perpendicularly upwards intersecting the former ones, the void will be divided into sixteen equal parallelograms, one half whereof are to be the measure of the two whole supports BC and DE; and DE being then made equal to one half of CD, it will be manifest, from inspection, that the two semi-supports will jointly be equal to eight of the parallelograms above mentioned, or one half of the void. We have now to place the entablature or weight AGHI upon the supports or columns, and equal to them in mass. Set up from A to F another row of parallelograms, each equal to those above mentioned, shown on the figure by AFKI. These will not be equal to the supports by two whole parallelograms, being in number only six instead of eight; dividing, therefore, 8, the number in the supports, by 6, the number already obtained, we have 1.333, &c., which is the height to be assigned to AG, so that the weight may exactly equal the supports, thus exceeding one quarter of the height of the support (or column) by such quarter, a coincidence sufficient to corroborate the reason on which the law is founded. Fig. 861. 333 of |
