1843.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



ROYAL ACADEMY. 



Professor. Cockerell's Lectures on Architecture. 



CFrom the Athenaum.) 



Lecture III. 



The chronological table ' offered to the students was designed to assist their 

 study of the history of architecture, so strongly recommended ; it was a sketch 

 capable of great development — the intelligent observation of antiquity was an 

 all-important object with the architect. No consideration could confer more 

 importance and dignity on the art than that it was identified with time — 

 that the architect himself was a part of history, and that the marked works 

 he performs were, by the consent of language, termed monuments. Such a 

 table presented at one view the religious and moral, the political and tech- 

 nical influences which have guided aud developed the art. Through the 

 >arly centuries we trace it as one of the most active engines of civilization ; 

 but it is loug before we find the table rich with the names of patrons, ar- 

 chitects, or works, aud then with many voids of tedious centuries between. 

 The dearth of wisdom or wealth in governments, or genius or liberality in 

 the individuals, accounts for the barren ages ; as naturally as do the contrary 

 for the fruits of all the muses. They follow each other as natural conse- 

 quences, as effects from causes. And it is glorious to recognize the coinci- 

 dence of epochs favourable to art with the most wise-hearted and generous 

 spirits of history. 



Under whom were those more remarkable buildings of Egypt raised ? It 

 was when Sesostris built his library, and pointed to its destination by the 

 significant and enlightened subscription — Vvxns larpftov — " The health of 

 the soul." When were those bright edifices erected which have ever at- 

 tracted the traveller to Athens from every part of Europe, and still do so ? 

 It was when Pericles could discuss the buildings he designed with a So- 

 crates, a Plato, a Phidias, and an Ictiuus — and so, with minor splendour, an 

 Augustus, a Justiniau, a Medici, a Louis XIV., a Frederick the Great, a 

 George III., or a King of Bavaria, have known how to illustrate their era ; 

 aud, however a half-sighted economy has calculated and complained of the 

 cost, history may be defied to prove that states have suffered from these ex- 

 penses ; those wise princes kuew how fructifying they were in real commer- 

 cial benefits ; and never wanted the address to silence the item-counting 

 economists. " Do you complain of these expenses ?" said Pericles ; " I will 

 find the remedy. I myself will defray them, provided you will allow my 

 name to be inscribed upon the walls." He might have added — " You are 

 prompt enough to vote money to carry on an Affghan war, on a pretence, 

 into Sicily, and fill Syracuse with carcases, to your own disgrace and ruin ; 

 but these expenses, trifling in the comparison, these becoming ornaments, 

 these productive fructifying decencies of a great state, you grudge." 



When Louis's accounts of Versailles were made up, and his Minister of 

 Finance asked what was to be done with them — " Burn them," said the 

 monarch. He knew as well as Necker the secret " that the arts and 

 sciences repay with usury the expenses of the state in providing for then- 

 exercise and culture." He knew, too, that they formed not a tithe of those 

 arrogant aud unsuccessful wars which he waged with all his neighbours. 



But why are the two centuries before our era less fertile in names ? be- 

 cause the Roman sword began to supersede the olive branch of Olympia : 

 and why again do they cease after the second century of our era ? because 

 the Emperor himself (Hadrian) professed the art, and murdered his rival 

 Apollodorus, the last great architect of Greece. And now, for twelve cen- 

 turies, they are obscure under the antagonist rules of feudal aud ecclesias- 

 tical aristocracy, and re-appear only with liberty and the muses. 



Again, for himself, the architect lays to heart the care and circumspection 

 due to lasting monuments, and the penalty which the absence of these is to 

 inflict on him in the curse 



Of Ripley and his rule ; 

 and for his patrons, his duty to awaken them to the seriousness of these 

 responsibilities, the compromise of national honour and credit in works 

 which are nothing less than state matters ; and were so esteemed in Athens 

 by the appointment of a minister, the $e/j.itfpyos, answerable for their success. 

 He is humiliated in finding that his own design, with the originality of 

 which he had flattered himself, is but a repetition of former essays. Again, 

 in the contemplation of the slowness of invention, and the imitative nature 

 of our species through centuries. The arch and the dome essayed during 

 1000 years before they assumed the form of the Pantheon or the Bridge of 

 Narni ; and 1400 more are required to accomplish a humble imitation in the 

 dome at Florence. That the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, as if spell-bound, 

 did as their fathers did — that the monuments themselves are but the copies, 

 more or less altered, the successors of a remote ancestry receding into the 

 night of time. Pliny tells us that the temple of Ephesus had been seven 

 times rebuilt. The oldest monuments of Egypt and of Greece, and of our 

 Own countries, are composed of fragments of still ones : 



Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 



Multi : sed omnes Ulacrymabiles 

 Urgentur ignotique longa 

 Nocte, carent quia vate sacro. 



1 See two following pages. 



" They had no artist, and they died." 



But the technical reflections on this table are not less instructive. The 

 struggle of 2G00 years with the monolithc ;— the influence of fashions in the 

 design, and of slavery in the execution, of works, reducing the cost by at 

 least one quarter;— the lever, the lewis, the trochlea, and every engine em- 

 ployed by modern masons, are recognized in all the oldest buildings of the 

 east ; Stonehenge being one of the few buildings which displays the infancy 

 of art ;— the inferiority of ancient cities in the distant view as a conglome- 

 rate of low buildings, to those of the modern world with towers and campa- 

 niles ;— the changes which customs induce ;— the church-bell, which in the 

 seventh century hardly exceeded one cwt., and terrified Clothaire and his 

 troops under the walls of Orleans ; then the delight and boast of commu- 

 nities, and gradually becoming 80 tons in the 19th centurv at Moscow, en- 

 larging during those centuries the towers and structures'for its reception, 

 and altering by degrees the whole face of architecture ;— the use of glass,' 

 in narrow windows in the first century, a vast improvement on Phengytes', 

 used till then; the manufacture of the civilized only, till the 12th century; 

 then infusing colours with unseen lustre — glazing iu part onlv the domestic 

 windows, which had shutters below until the 1 7th, and now in one sheet 

 filling the entire sash. Meanwhile, architecture bends to this manufacture, 

 and changes its features and proportions with the phases of its improvement. 

 And, lastly, cast-iron, which within 40 years has discovered capacities which 

 will alter the whole structure of buildings. We may say with the poet 



Loin d'ici ce discours vulgaire 

 Que l'art pour jamais degetiere, 



Que tout s'eclipse, tout finit ; 

 La nature est inepassable, 

 Et le genie infatigable, 



Et le Dieu que la rajeunit. 



The principle to be inculcated seems then to be the acceptance and em- 

 ployment of every useful element of our art, and so to engraft new features, 

 and bend it to the march of human improvement, as to be consistent with 

 taste, while it is also to the great end of use. Thus we shall obtain new 

 creations iu the art — which a servile imitation refuses. 



These are amongst the advantageous reflections which the contemplation 

 of the chronological table will give rise to. 



This evening the Professor purposed offering some remarks on the prin- 

 cipal monuments of civil architecture amongst the ancients. As the ritual 

 prescribed the forms of sacred architecture, so political aud civil institutions 

 prescribed those of civil architecture : where monarchs sway we have their 

 palaces, suited to the temporal governor of the earth : regarded as God's 

 vicegerent while living, and as demi-gods when dead, their niausolea endure 

 through all ages, in the Pyramids, or in the Moles Hadriana ; and where 

 these are supported by castes, we have the Labyrinth, the Temple Palace, 

 and the treasury — in republics none of these are found, but the temple, the 

 gymnasium, the theatre, the stoa, the basilica, and public works abound; 

 when states are absolutely commercial, as Tyre or Carthage, nothing remains 

 hut their name in history ; their architecture seems to have been confined to 

 the perishable Trireme. 



The uncertainty of future existence made duration in the present the 

 earliest object of solicitude ; monuments in the pyramid or the obelisk are 

 the most remote architectural works which have reached us. In 1732 b.c 

 Jacob raised a memorial to Rachel, " that is the pillar upon Rachel's grave 

 unto this day." " The kings of Egypt," says Diodorus Siculus, did not 

 think that the fragility of the body deserved a solid habitation ; indeed, 

 they regarded their palaces as simple lodgings, in which each successively 

 inhabited ; but they considered their tombs as their peculiar habitations, as 

 their fixed and perpetual domicile. 



The subject of pyramids would never be mentioned without acknow- 

 ledgment to the labours of Colonel Vyse, which for princely liberality and 

 English endurance and disinterestedness are unparalleled, as indeed also for 

 their great interest, since on this subject, debated for so many centuries, he 

 has left nothing to desire. 



But, to the architect, no monument of antiquity could be more precious 

 than the tomb of Absalom, iu the valley of Jehosaphat, which is monolithic 

 (for the most part), or rather cut in the living rock, and exhibits an Ionic 

 temple in antis (like Solomon's temple), with a Doric entablature, an Egyp- 

 tian cornice, and a tholus or circular attic, surmounted with a conical top 

 and a pomegranate ; all features in perfect correspondence with the reason- 

 able expectations regarding Jewish architecture, which, however original in 

 plan and disposition, would never be so in ornamental style, because the 

 comparative smallness of the nation, the fortunes of individuals limited by 

 law, the agricultural habits of the people, their discouragement of taste, 

 and their position between great and flourishing countries so remarkable for 

 its cultivation as to lend their artists to the Jews, whenever occasion de- 

 manded, were all opposed to the invention of any peculiar and original style 

 of architecture. 



A beautiful representation of this remarkable tomb had appeared iu 

 Roberts' " Holy Land ;" there could be no doubt as to its identity, since 

 tradition amongst the Jews on such a point might always be accepted as full 

 and sufficient evidence — its perfect correspondence with holy writ (II Samuel, 

 ch. xviii.) is striking : — " Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared 

 up for himself a pillar, which is iu the king's dale : for he said, I have no 



