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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[Apbiu 



who are iiicap.'ilile of tliinkiiiu; for thcmselvs, take rcfufre in pre- 

 cedent, and make it tiieir stronghidd, since it enables them to as- 

 sume a tone of authority, and to decide dogmatically without any 

 trouhle of thinking'. 



VI. Careful observance of rules will enable any one to avoid 

 ))ositive faults ; but between them and positive merits tliere is an 

 immeasurable distanre — one which defies calculation. In art, it is 

 very possible to be ;it once faultless and valueless — without any 

 siiecific fault, but also without any interest or any charm, — in a 

 word, to be altoj^ether humdrum. Perhaps it is rather unfortu- 

 nate than not for architecture, that a gi-eat deal of humdrum is 

 of necessity tolerated in it : however %vorthless or unworthy they 

 may be as producti(uis of architecture, buildings may as buildings 

 comjiletely answer the jmrpose for which they are erected. Besides 

 whicli, they must, when once erected, remain indefinitely, to the 

 discredit of the art and the corruption of public taste. Humdrum 

 poetry becomes serviceable as waste-paper ; humdrum pictures find 

 their way into lumber-rooms and garrets; but buildings of the 

 same or even worse quality cannot be so got rid of, or put out of 

 .siglit ; otherwise a good many that might be mentioned would now 

 disap]iear. 



\'il. There is something startling, perhaps diverting also, in the 

 decidedly opposite opinions entertained by two of our architectural 

 professors with regard to Vitruvius. While Professor Hosking 

 speaks of him, in his Treatise on Architecture, in the most un- 

 qualified terms of contempt, Professor Cockerell venerates him ; — 

 as to vindicating him, that is quite a different matter, anil what 

 he does not even so much as attempt, but leaves altogether un- 

 noticed the highly depreciatory remarks thrown out against his 

 idol, not by Hosking only, but by the author of the "Newleafe 

 Discourses," both in that publication and elsewhere. The ignoring 

 them may he prudent enough, but assuredly does not show much 

 of either courage or ingenuousness, keeping quite out of sight as it 

 does the fact that Vitruvius has of late years been violently im- 

 pugned by professional writers in this country, and his work de- 

 clared valueless to the architectural student ; — nay, not only 

 valueless, but in some degree mischievous also, by filling him with 

 absurd and idle notions, and affording him no insight whatever into 

 his art, — as art. If Vitruvius has been unjustly aspersed aiul 

 vilified, it was for Professor Cockerell to defend him — if he could ; 

 instead of which, in his closing lecture this season at the Royal 

 Academy, he gave liis hearers reason to suppose that the chief ac- 

 cusation brought against him had been by his German editor, 

 Schneider, on the score of his Latinity. Schneider, it seems, was a 

 mere philologist, and honestly avowed his ignorance of the subject- 

 matter of Vitruvius's writings, which I take to have been rather in 

 favour of his author than the contrary, because, had he been ca- 

 pable of judging of the value of the matter also, hardly would he 

 have entertained a higher opinion of him. The name of 

 Vitruvius is, undoubtedly, one of great traditional fame — one 

 sanctified by inveterate prejudice, partly or even principally be- 

 cause his books De Arcliitevturu represent to modern times all 

 that remains of similar writings by the ancients. That mere ac- 

 cident has conferred upon him a monopoly of reputation, there 

 being no one to share it with him ; and it has been too lightly 

 taken for granted, that, writing in classical times, he must him- 

 self have been a competent judge and expounder of classical 

 architecture. He shows himself, however, to have been at the 

 best of a very plodding turn of mind — notwitstanding his pompous 

 and priggish proems, and to liave been what would now be called a 

 mere " practical man," acquainted only with matters of routine and 

 the technicalities of his craft. While there is a very great deal in 

 nis woi'k which is utterly irrelevant, it being only in the remotest 

 degree connected with the professed subject, there is absolutely 

 nothing whatever that gives evidence of the artist or the festhetic 

 critic. There is not so much as any attempt to lay down and ex- 

 plain principles of correct taste in architecture. There is neither 

 argumentative criticism, nor reasoning, nor remark ; but every- 

 thing is treated in the dryest manner conceivable, and for the most 

 part very obscurely also. Wliat is to us his obscurity may partly 

 be laid to the charge of our own ignorance — our not being better 

 informed as to various matters that were suflficiently well under- 

 stood by those to whom he addressed himself, but which, after all 

 attempts to explain tlicm, can now only be guessed at. The 

 question then, is, of what value is Vitruvius to us, especially at 

 the present day, when by means of various ancient buildings and 

 examples that have lieen fi-om time to time discovered, explored, 

 and delineated, we have obtained a far clearer insight into the 

 principles and practice of the architects of antiquity than can 

 possibly be derived from the writings of Vitruvius .'' In some 

 instances, obscurities in his text have been explained by what has 



been observed in extant monuments ; yet that only proves that the 

 latter are infinitely more intelligible instructors than \'itruvius. and 

 that accordingly he may now be dismissed by us, for any real advan- 

 tage to be derived from the study of him. Such study will, indeed. — 

 if that be any advantage — enalile the architect to talk learnedly, 

 but will not help in the least towards making him an artist ; rather 

 will it be apt to render him a pedant, and obstruct the advance he 

 might else make in his capacity of artist, by withdrawing his at- 

 tention from what is his proper study as such ; as has too fre- 

 quently been the case. Many would have been far greater profi- 

 cients in their art, if, instead of poring — perhaps stupifying them- 

 selves also— over Vitruvius, they had thrown him entirely aside, 

 and exercised their own powers freely in comjiosition and design. 



VIII. The subject of the invisible — perhaps altogetlier imaginary 

 — curves in the lines of the Parthenon has been again brought for- 

 ward before the Institute, though it was to be hoped we should 

 hear no more of it. Matters of far greater immediate importance 

 than such nugce difficilcs and refined subtilties and s])eculations, 

 claim our attention, ere we advance so far as to be able to appre- 

 ciate such exquisite niceties in architectural optics as those attri- 

 buted to the Greeks. Little less than ludicrous is it for us to pre- 

 tend to interest ourselves with them, when we complacently tole- 

 rate the most crude and spiritless school-boy imitations of classical 

 architecture, which chiefly show how very ill the pretended origi- 

 nals have been understood. So long as we shut our eyes to the 

 glaring barbarisms in taste, and the liarsh contradictions with re- 

 gard to style, that are allowed to manifest themselves in copies of 

 that clasa, it is in vain to expect that we shall e\er open them 

 wide enough to discover such philosophically-studied minutia; as 

 are the curvatures in cpiestion, which certainly! vvere not even so much 

 as suspected till very recently, notwithstanding the diligence with 

 which the Parthenon has been examined, not only by Stuart, but 

 by many others since his time. It has been ascertained beyond 

 contradiction, that Polychromy was — to a certain extent, at 

 least — employed as an effective and legitimate mode of architectural 

 embellishment, both for the Parthenon and other Greek structures; 

 and yet even that discovery has been altogether useless to us in 

 practice, inasmuch as we have not attempted to avail ourselves of it 

 on any occasion : and if we forego a trait of Grecism that would be 

 plainly perceptible to every one, hardly is it to be supposed that 

 we shall ever think of making any use of refinements in optical 

 effect that would not be perceptible to one person in ten thousand. 

 Let us provide the shirt before we think of the ruffles for it : when 

 we can show that we are capable of fully entering into the charac- 

 ter of classical architecture with genuine artistic sentiment for it, 

 it will be time enough to think of those exquisitely subtile and deli- 

 cate touches which are now imputed to the Parthenon. For us, 

 %vho show ourseh'es so obtuse as we do to many e^'en tolerably pal- 

 pable qualities in Greek design, to concern ourselves with its finest 

 imjierceptible workings, is nothing less than absurd. Besides 

 which, Grecian architecture has of late fallen into discredit with 

 us, we having at last found out that, as our buildings are necessa- 

 rily constituted, it is nearly altogether inapplicable by us in actual 

 practice. Copy Greek orders we may, but we cannot keep up— 

 except in very particular cases indeed — anything like the genuine 

 Greek physiognomy; so that the degree of resemblance aimed at 

 and obtained, only serves to reruler the departure from the original 

 style the more evident, particularly if the order be the Doric, 

 since that refuses to accommodate itself to any other purpose than 

 a simple colonnade. 



IX. So very far are we from studiously calculating optical 

 effects with mathematical precision, that we do not seem to under- 

 stand — at least, not to be able to foresee — that difference of appear- 

 ance which takes place between a geometrical elevation, in which 

 every p.art shows itself equally distinctly to the eye, and the building 

 executed from it, in which last it is perhaps afterwards discovered 

 that much of the detail does not tell at all. Seldom is any calcu- 

 lation made with reference to the actual locality, and the distance 

 from which the structure itself will generally be viewed. Hence, 

 when erected, it is sometimes discovered that a building can be 

 seen only so far off that its lesser features are scarcely distinguish- 

 able at all, or else only from so close a point of view, that aU the 

 up])er part of it becomes so greatly foreshortened as to become 

 quite distorted, and altogether a different object from what the 

 geometrical design promised. It is not uncommon, again, to find 

 that while those parts which can be but imperfectly seen — or at 

 the best seen only in their geneial forms — are elaborately decorated, 

 those which being almost close to the eye show themselves dis- 

 tinctly, are comparatively neglected and treated as subordinate 

 ones ; — and so they may be with regard to the design as seen upon 

 paper, but not as it is seen in the building itself, lu many cases, the 



