Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

disconnected lines, they write various legends, never untrue, of the former political state of the mountain kingdom to which they belonged, of its infirmities and fortitudes, convulsions and consolidations, from the beginning of time.

Part 4.

SCULPTURE.

"My friend, all speech and humor is short-lived, foolish, untrue. Genuine work alone, what thou workest faithfully, that is eternal.

"Take courage, then-raise the arm-strike home and that right lustilythe citadel of Hope must yield to noble desire, thus seconded by noble efforts."

Part 4.

SCULPTURE.

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 if we choose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings, could the mass and majority 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 fasti diousness 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.

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

« ZurückWeiter »