1839.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



215 



The conclusion to which we liave come then, is — That sculptnre makes 

 its highest effort when it strives to express moral or mental perfection ; 

 and tlien is in the higheit regions of poetry : that therefrom it falls 

 gradnally, and through many stages, down to mere imitation ; and thence 

 still continues to fall from excellent to the most worthless objects. 

 That probably in its lowest, certainly in its highest, exertion, it is 

 superior to architecture; and both as a poetical and political servant 

 much more vvortliy. 



But utility backs architecture. Now utility is imperial, and must first 

 be consulted : however, there is a limit toiler territory ; stepping beyond 

 wliicli, she becomes an aggressor, and should be strenuously driven 

 back. In no matter whatsoever connected with art, should utility be 

 allowed to interfere, if she have no just claim to concern herself with 

 it. Slie sliould never be permitted to approacli beauty, for she is the 

 natural enemy of beauty, and has such spite against her, as that, whenever 

 she can get near enough she scratches, and pinches, and bruises her, till 

 she is next to death ; and if thenceforth beauty live at all, she is so 

 distorted and deformed as that one can scarcely recognise her. A limb 

 here gone, and a feature there, or the back entirely broken. Wlien 

 architecture, therefore, who is tlie servant of utility, can make good 

 her claim to meddle, there is no help for it, but to let her meddle, and 

 to curse her for a busy-body ; but if she can support no claim, she 

 should be carefully put out of the way. 



The application of these remarks to the Nelson memorial is easy. 

 The tirst thing to be desired, is peifect imitation ; after that, excellence 

 of model ; and if the poetical step can be taken beyond, so much the 

 better. Then follows the question — What claim can architecture put 

 into meddler Can it be useful in anyway? It will deform the 

 work much : can it do any great service in compensation? The only 

 one that suggests itself, is this — that it will protect the delicate ma- 

 terial, tlie only material tit for sculpture to make its highest attempts 

 upon, from the liard usage of our climate. If that service be allowed as 

 necessary, architecture may be permitted to render it ; but then in the 

 least officious, and most unpretending manner. A plain, though as 

 fair-proportioned as possible, temple may cover the marble piece of 

 sculpture ; sucli as shall not draw attention from, but ratlier lead it to, 

 the ligure or group within, and as may harmonise with its meaning. But 

 if the acceptnig of this service at the hands of architecture be reluctant, 

 how shall its interference be endured, when it is in no way useful ; a 

 building answering no useful purpose, is a sort of deformity witho\it 

 deformity's excuse And can such be a tit work for a testimonial to 

 Nelson ? And if not a whole building, how inlinitely less a part ? — 

 a column for instance. What can be more absurd, if there be any 

 truth in what has been herein before said, than the selecting of a frag- 

 ment. One, well in its place, laimeaning and absurd out of it ; which 

 is shaped to fit to its place, and is therein perhaps ornamental, but is 

 unshapelv anywhere else ; which moreover, either really or feignedly, 

 answers a purpose in its place, none out of its place. A colimin apart 

 from its pediment is like a leg apart from its body; and is as ridiculous 

 standing alone as a leg would appear, which should run about by 

 itself. 



As an excuse for appending the column to a building, the pedi- 

 ment is thrown out ; which overhanging seems to require support. 

 For the purpose of support it is vvell, and the proportions of the column 

 may be as perfect, in the different orders, as it is possible for them to 

 be ; but they have been fixed with a reference to the building the 

 column is attached to, the pediment it supports, and perhaps to the 

 grouping of several. But is it not absurd to take it away from its pedi • 

 ment, and set it up solitary, naked, its proportions undeveloped by any 

 attendant thing : an imitation of notliing, therefore not beautiful in its- 

 self; connected with nothing, therefore contributing nothing to the 

 ornament ofanytliing ; — properly a support, yet bearing nothing, except, 

 in some instances, a piece of sculpture— that is, the imitation of man's 

 form ; an imitation addressing itself to the eye, yet perched far beyond 

 the eye's reach, where a chimney-pot would almost serve as well. As 

 an apparent remedy for the inappropriateness of a single column, some 

 have carved bas-reliefs, winding their weary way gradually up to it 

 top, as if in contemplation of that advance of science, which should 

 furnish man with wings, and enable him to flutter in air and whirl 

 about the sculpture for examining it. Till that shall happen, all the 

 bas-reliefs are effectually thrown away, tliat are placed beyond the first 

 row or two. Who but a crow can see them ? Why not just chip the stone, 

 in the way the street pavement is chipped ? That would answer quite as 

 well as the bas-reliefs, and the spectator would not be vexed with the 

 never-to-be-gratified desire of seeing what all the carving is about up in 

 the air. There has been one step further in absurdity — the casting of 

 the column and reliefs in bronze, making that, which in stone is obscure 

 enough, ten times more obscure; as in that wretched thing in the Place 

 Vendome. Why, when form (sculptured form) is at any distance 

 from the eye, it loses distinctiou (i. e. in the case of bas-rejiefs) ; the 



forms are confounded with the hack-ground ; therefore the figures 

 in the metopes of the Parthenon were distinguished by painting the back- 

 ground blue : and the Athenians in that, sliowed that they knew what 

 they were about. They never placed the forms they had sculptured 

 out of sight, or even so placed them that they should be in 

 the least indistinct. The worst instructed among them would have 

 cracked his sides with laughter to have seen the Duke of York perched 

 up in the clouds. Had the Duke been a bird, his position there would 

 not have been ridiculous, but only useless — useless because we should 

 desire to examine him, his shape, feathers, and so forth ; but up there, 

 tail, claws, beak, would have been all alike, and no one would be able 

 to say, if he was looking at a bird or a tortoise. Perhaps the artist was 

 enamoured of the Duke's title of Highness, and would in his work sym- 

 bolise it ; or that he desired to panegyrise the Duke, and signify the 

 mounting of his so\d to Heaven : so that, with the contrary purpose, 

 with a wish to satirise and condemn, he would have set his sculpture at 

 the bottom of a hole as deep as the present column is high, whereby 

 the descent of the soul should be designed. 



The column, and the piece of sculpture together, as a work, is ridi- 

 culous — it is contended. The column, as the principal (having the 

 sculpture as a mere appendage), is equally ridiculous; and its selection 

 betrays ignorance of the great purposes of art. The sculpture, as the 

 principal, were well ; the column, as an appendage to it, ornamental or 

 useful, still more ridiculoi's than when a principal. And the sculpture 

 being raised by it far beyond the reach of examination, the whole wsrk 



is both beneath and beyond observation. 



W. 



OF THE ANCIENTS. 

 Tait. 



ON THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS 

 Br J. Fleming 



The use of immense blocks of stone for the formation of public 

 buildings, temples, and monuments, has Irom the times of remote an- 

 tiquity been ever considered as an honourable testimonial of the per- 

 severance and labour of those who erected them, and as a proof that 

 they not only built for the purposes of present use, and ornament, 

 but also for the benefit and instruction of posterity. Had the 

 Ej;yptians, the Greeks, or the Romans even, constructed their great 

 public works with blocks of stone of no larger size than those which 

 we are in the habit of employing for ours, it would inevitably have 

 followed, that in the many irruptions of barbarian nations, which 

 desolated those countries in their decline, and whose principal object, 

 next to the all-predominant one of plunder, was to destroy and efface 

 to the utermost of their power every work of art, and evidence that a 

 people -wiser and more celebrated than themselves had existed, 

 those splendid remains, which defied their utmost eftbrts, and are still 

 the glory of their respective places, and the admiration of all who 

 behold them, would have been swept away from the face of the earth 

 and their very names have perished with their existence — and the 

 traveller and scholar of the present day would have found as much 

 classic pleasure in wandering over the steppes of Tarlary, or tlie vast 

 wilds of Siberia, as he would in visiting the spots where Athens, 

 Thebes, and Palmyra stood— besides a host of other names equally 

 celebrated in history, and have gazed upon the place where the Eternal 

 City stood, with nogreater degree of interest than he now does upon 

 the site of Babylon, 



And yet that vast mis-shapen heap was once the mightiest and proud- 

 est city the world ever saw, and the boast of all antiquity. Her walls, 

 which were three days' journey in circumference, and whereon six 

 chariots could drive abreast ! So colossal are her temples and palaces 

 stated to have been by the ancient liistorians, that they are considered 

 by many as utterly unworthy of belief; and thus likewise would the 

 accounts of the great temples of Cariiac and Luxor have been 

 received, did they not remain to this day in an almost perfect state, 

 to attest their own magnificent and gigantic proportions. These edi- 

 fices are coeval with Babylon ; so are the Pyramids of Cairo and the 

 walls of Balbec ; on the summit of the former of which are stones 

 eighteen feet square, and in the latter of sixty feet in length ; upon 

 which, as the wild and simple Arab pauses in his rapid career to look 

 on these enormous masses, he exclaims with wonder, that he beholds 

 the works of the giants of old times ! 



Anil why have these buildings survived a city whose structures 

 excelled theirs ? Because she, like a selfish spendthrift, thought only 

 of present show, and constructed her edifices of materials which would 

 not stand the wrecks of time and barbarians wrath — while they, built 

 of materials which needed not the aid of cement, which scorned even 

 fire itself; they built for posterity — and it has done them justice. The 

 efforts of the Saracens to destroy one of the Pyramids were tremen- 

 dous, and incessant, until their engineers were forced to give up the 

 attempt as impracticable, and retire in disgrace from the unworthy 

 attempt to mar what they could not make. 



