398 STYLE IN ARCHITECTURE. 



we reproduce the faults rather than the virtues of the style. 

 It would be far more profitable to go to the original source 

 from which the Renaissance revivalists drew their imagination. 

 We should then pay less attention to the superficial and orna- 

 mental features, and try instead to get at the fundamental 

 elements of which all true architecture is composed. 



As Carlyle said : 



" If we would know a work of art from a daub or an artifice, we must look 

 for eternity shining through time, the God-like rendered visible." 



Sir Christopher Wren expresses the same sentiment in a 

 letter from Paris at the time when the Louvre and Versailles 

 were being built. He writes of the Palace of Versailles: 



" The mixture of brick stone, blue tiles and gold make it look like a rich 

 livery ; not an inch within but is crowded with little curiosities of ornaments, 

 the women as they make here the language and fashions, and meddle with 

 politics and philosophy, so they sway also in architecture, works of liligrand 

 and little knacks are in great vogue ; but building certainly ought to have 

 the attributes of Eternal, and therefore the only thing incapable of new 

 fashions." 



Carlyle 's " Eternity shining through time " and Wren's 

 " Attribute of the Eternal " express what Michael Angelo, 

 Wren and the great luasters of the Renaissance did achieve in 

 their architecture. The detail with them was always thotight- 

 fttl, refined and scholarly, reminiscent of antiquity, and the 

 design often rich in sculpture, but the parts were always stib- 

 ordinated to some great dominant and original conception. 

 Such a unified scheme of design will stand the great test of 

 architecture, that it impresses the beholder at a distance. 



We are apt in these days of railway travelling to ignore the 

 importance of the approach to cities. Perhaps the invention 

 of the motor-car may revive this aspect of design. It is prob- 

 able that the designers of the great Renaissance buildings gave 

 much thought to the impression produced on travellers enter- 

 ing the town. All visitors to Rome know that the full appre- 

 ciation of the magnitude of the dome of St. Peter's can best 

 be obtained several miles out of the city. The Doges Palace, 

 Venice, is another example. Ruskin's Bible of Praise of the 

 details of this noble building has made people blind to its finest 

 qualities. The scheme of design is very simple. On the lower 

 floors it has two continuous arcades, repeating the design un- 

 changed right round the building, above a huge cubical mass 

 of plain wall surface, broken only by a few massed and sym- 

 metrical window openings and a central strongly emphasised 

 balcony. Yet this simple design grows more and more beauti- 

 ful as the spectator floats away from it across the lagoon, 

 when its beautiful detail, which " the stones of \'enice " 

 rightly exalted, has vanished from the eye. 



Another test of a good design is to look at an elevation side- 

 ways, as in fact in all narrow streets we generally do as a fact 

 see our buildings. Plowever sharp the perspective may be, the 

 ■scheme of a unified composition will always be apparent and 

 can alwavs be enjoyed ; an over complex design, on the con- 

 trary, will appear confused and bewildering. 



