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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[April, 



hand to the bright idea emanating from the brain, let it be brought down 

 to practical application only after a strict inquiry into the cost. Remember 

 what I quoted on a former occasion, when contrasting the two celebrated 

 light houses, the Eddystone, and the Cordouan— no unfit emblem of the two 

 celebrated engineers who erected them may I venture to add of their re- 

 spective nations — remember, I say, " 'tis use alone that sanctifies expense. ' 



ROYAL ACADEMY. 



Professor Cockerell's Lectures on Architecture. 



(From the Athenmum.) 



Lecture V. 



The love of fine art, and the lively discussion of its principles, which oc- 

 cupied the wits and the courts of Italy in the 15th and lGth centuries, em- 

 ployed the solitary reflections of literary philosophers in the 18th; and in 

 1730, Baumgarten suggested the title of esthetics, by which these studies 

 have been designated ever since, and many works remarkable for ingenious 

 criticism, learning, and taste, have resulted. These may be ranked in two 

 classes. The first resolves the questions of taste directly into an original law 

 of our nature, implying senses by which the qualities of beauty and sub- 

 limity are perceived and felt as their appropriate objects ; it is this species 

 of hypothesis to which artists and amateurs chiefly resort. The second 

 class of hypothesis arises from the opposite view of the subject : resisting 

 the idea of any new and peculiar sense distinct from the common principles 

 of our nature, this class supposes some one known and acknowledged prin- 

 ciple or affection of the mind to be the foundation of all the emotions we 

 receive from the objects of taste, and resolves them into some more general 

 law of our intellectual or moral constitution. Thus Socrates and Hume, and 

 others, resolve them into our sense of utility — Aristotle and St. Augustine, 

 into order and design — Diderot and Allison into relation and association. 

 But though in such discussions we recognize many truths, the partiality of 

 individual views renders them often dangerous. 



When a philosopher can find 

 Some fav'rite system to his mind, 

 In every point to make it fit, 

 He'll force all nature to submit. 



Language itself fails in defining those phenomena which elude ordinary 

 observation, and even when it approaches definition, the measure of quan- 

 tity, and quality, and circumstance, can alone be adjusted by the magician 

 genius. 



The resthetical principles of architecture, as handed to us from the Creeks 

 by Vitruvius, concur with the notions of ancient philosophy, and have not 

 been controverted by the modern ; and though subjected of late years to 

 some rude attacks, they have never been superseded, and we can follow no 

 better text-book in the consideration of our subject. Those principles apply 

 to every style and invention of architecture which the world has hitherto 

 known; they belong to our physical and intellectual nature, and will never 

 change but witb an alteration in these. 



When the works of Vitruvius were first discovered, they were accounted a 

 revelation to the craft, and called " divine " by Sulpitius, the first translator; 

 and, nearly 200 years after, Perrault, in his translation, calls them " a very 

 singular piece, and an inestimable treasure in the opinion of the learned." 

 Eighteen translations, iu 41 editions, are enumerated to this day. In 1802 

 the philologist Schneider republished Vitruvius. " My whole scope," says 

 he, " has been to purify the text, so as to enable men learned in art to re- 

 construct and understand the theories of Vitruvius, hitherto obscured by in- 

 terpolations and vicious translations." But he detracts from the merit of his 

 ■work by a severity of criticism, as uncandid as it is derogatory to the cha- 

 racter of his author. He declines his apology, as " writing neither as an 

 accomplished philosopher, an eloquent rhetorician, nor as an expert gram- 

 marian, hut as an architect, laying down rules useful to those who build." 

 He calls his language obsolete and plebian, accuses him of pride and envy, 

 and rates him as a morose, inept, infirm old man, querulous and vulgar. But 

 Schneider was the less justified in such treatment, as being weak upon those 

 points in which his author was most strong, for he says, " on architectural 

 subjects, or that which has to do with the subtleties of the art, and the ques- 

 tions and disputes concerning them, I neither could nor would have anything 

 to say." So that the science has received no direct advantage from the labours 

 of Schneider, and yet how much was to be done might be understood by ten 

 discoveries in confirmation of the theories of Vitruvius, made within a few- 

 years, and chiefly by Englishmen, cited by the Professor in his previous 

 course on the literature of the art. Such discoveries suggested the desira- 

 bleness of a new English edition of Vitruvius, as highly honourable and 

 useful to this country. The last, by Mr. Gwilt, is a very useful one. 



The slanders of Schneider had been adopted in this country with little 

 honour to the parties, and no advantage to architecture. Vitruvius remained 

 the father of our art, and was entitled to our respect, as the text-book of 

 our studies. 



Having been appointed surveyor to the warlike engines and stores of the 

 empire by Augustus, Vitruvius was endowed with leisure ; and very probably 

 was instructed to collate the Greek authors on our art, whom he enumerates, 

 and who were collected and deposited in the magnificent library instituted 

 at that period. He appears then with singular advantage as transmitting 

 the well digested and received principles of the greatest masters who had 

 thought and written on architecture, to modern times ; and the principles 

 thus derived directly from the Greeks merit our closest attention. 



But a few preliminary observations on external forms, in detail and in 

 general, were to be made. The universality of certain primordial forms iu 

 all styles, favours the notion of innate ideas, the cube, the sphere, the ellyp- 

 soid in solids ; the lozenge, the wave, cymarecta, and cymareversa, the ser- 

 pentine, the ovalo, the spiral, the volute, gradation or diminution of forms, 

 are common to the art of all times and people. 



The pyramid is universal, from the compressed to the acute. Such is the 

 charm of the pediment, that " in heaven, where we may not suppose it to 

 rain," says Cicero, " the pedinvnt will surely be found ;" so in mountains, 

 trees, and fixed bodies, in which the laws of statics are observed, the pyra- 

 mid prevails; except in those forms in which dynamics demand a different 

 structure. The pyramidal inclination of the sides of buildings observed in 

 Egyptian, Hindoo, Gothic, and Mexican architecture, has, by the happy dis- 

 coveries of late years, been proved to exist in Greece also; and the inclina- 

 tion of the axis of the columns at the sides of temples (enjoined by Vitru- 

 vius, lib. iii. c. 3, long disputed,) is now beyond all doubt, and the pyramidal 

 inclination to buildiug is proved to be an universal principle. 



Gradation of columnar forms, as in the limbs of animals, and in vegetable 

 productions, is universally approved ; the cylinder, the leg of an elephant, 

 are justly repudiated : " small by degrees, and beautifully less," has been de- 

 nied by an eminent critic (P. Knight), ''because," says he, "the same is 

 large by degrees, and beautifully bigger ;" but however smart the reply, it 

 does not controvert the principle. It is, however, to be observed, that such 

 forms should diminish from the eye, as a column does above the horizon, 

 and the leg of a chair or table below it. 



The Doric cymatium, the cymareversa, the ovalo, the cavetto, or hollow, 

 are all calculated to express strength, as robust, and appearing to sustain. 

 The Lesbian cymatium, the cymarecta, in all its varieties, has not the same 

 purpose, (namely, to sustain,) and is suited to the more elegant orders. The 

 principle of the application of mouldings for beauty, is the opposition of the 

 curved to the straight surfaces, as well for light and shade as form ; and for 

 proportions and oppositions of such forms, constitute the art of profile — a 

 most difficult grace of architecture ; for by this, that variety of form and 

 grace may be given which the primary architectural masses and proportions 

 do not admit of. Variety in the details of sculpture and prufile is essential 

 to the relief of that rigorous geometrical order, which the larger features of 

 architectural composition impose : in all the arts, and even in architecture, 

 variety is an all-important principle, provided the masses are undisturbed. 

 Shakspeare describes Cleopatra as chiefly admirable for this quality \ 



Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 

 Her infinite variety. 



The Greek profile is general (more particularly in the Parthenon) is incal- 

 culably superior to any other in gradation, quantity, delicacy, and expression, 

 and should be the student's constant study. It was the observation of the 

 human, animal, and vegetable forms, by the sculptors of Greece, which gave 

 them that acknowledged superiority. The enrichment of these with homo- 

 geneous ornament, was no less remarkable, and deserves an especial treatise. 

 In fact, the elements of architecture, in the orders and their profile, consti- 

 tute the peculiar excellence of Greek architecture, which, as we have seen iu 

 history, did not extend to the composite and voluminous combinations which 

 subsequent ages adopted. 



Having thus adverted to individual forms as applied to detail, the Pro- 

 fessor remarked upon general forms, as applied to the composition of build- 

 ings. The observations already offered upon the ancient system of building 

 " in large stones and costly stones, even great stones," doubtless contributed 

 much to the universal adoption of horizontal forms of building. But this 

 tendency, thus imposed by the mechanical construction, seems also to have 

 been an abstract principle of taste, which was consulted best by the contrast 

 of the long horizontal form, with the (generally) vertical outline of the 

 country in which they were employed. When the traveller, passing through 

 a mountainous region of rugged outline, discovers through some gap the 

 horizon of an extended plain, or of the ocean, a sublime sensation is expe- 

 rienced. In such a country the rocks and mountains afford elevations com- 

 pared with which the works of man are insignificant. The temple is planted 

 on the precipitous eminence, and it attains at once the elevation of St. Pe- 

 ter's or St. Paul's. So placed, the Doric members should be massive, simple, 

 and few ; the parts broad ; it seems to have grown spontaneously from its 

 rocky bed, and to partake lin its monolithic masses of the stony aboriginal 

 material on which it is established. Its horizontal outline and regularity of 

 order are admirably calculated to contrast with the surrounding scenery of 

 vertical and irregular forms. 



On the other hand, when the road winds through interminable plains, the 

 traveller recognizes the sublime in the contrast of vertical forms of archi- 

 tecture ; for this reason, it may be presumed, the Babylonians in the plains 

 of Assyria, proposed to " build a city and a tower whose top may reach unto 

 the heavens." In the flats of Venice, in the Netherlands, in the champains 



