PEOGRESS OF THE AKTS. 240 



ably connected and definite artificial system. Xor can \vc doubt that 

 it was exercised by a class of artists who formed themselves by laborious 

 studv and practice, and by communication with. each, other. There 

 must have been bodies of masters and of scholars, discipline, traditions, 

 precepts of art. How these associated artists diffused themselves over 

 Europe, and whether history enables us to trace them in a distinct 

 form, I shall not here discuss. ' But the existence of a course of instruc- 

 tion, and of a body of rules of practice, is proved beyond dispute by 

 the great series of European cathedrals and churches, so nearly iden- 

 tical in their general arrangements, and in their particular details. 

 The question then occurs, have these rules and this system of instruc- 

 tion anywhere been committed to writing ? Can we, by such evidence, 

 trace the progress of the scientific idea, of which we see the working 

 in these buildings ? 



o 



We are not to be surprised, if, during the most flourishing and vig- 

 orous period of the art of the middle ages, we fiud none of its precepts 

 in books. Art has, in all ages and countries, been taught and trans- 

 mitted by practice and verbal tradition, not by writing. It is only in 

 our own times, that the thought occurs as familiar, of committing to 

 books all that we wish to preserve and convey. And, even in our 

 o'.vu times, most of the Arts are learned far more by practice, and by 

 intercourse with practitioners, than by reading. Such is the case, not 

 only with Manufactures and Handicrafts, but with the Fine Arts, with 

 Engineering, and even yet, with that art, Building, of which we are 

 now speaking. 



We are not, therefore, to wonder, if we have no treatises on Archi- 

 tecture belonging to the great period of the Gothic masters; or if -it 

 appears to have required some other incitement and some other help, 

 besides their own possession of their practical skill, to lead them to 

 shape into a literary form the precepts of the art which they knew 

 so well how to exercise : or if, when they did write on such subjects, 

 they seem, instead of delivering their own sound practical principles, 

 to satisfy themselves with pursuing some of the frivolous notions and 

 speculations which were then current in the world of letters. 



Such appears to be the case. The earliest treatises on Architecture 

 come before us under the form which the cornmentatorial spirit of the 

 middle ages inspired. They are Translations of Vitruvius, with Anno- 

 tations. In some of these, particularly that of Cesare Cesariano, pub- 

 lished at Como, in 1521, we see, in a very curious manner, how the 

 habit of assuming that, in every department of literature, the ancients 



