]843.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



159 



of architecture appropriate to any other period or any other locality, 

 such a condition seems primri facie not only not essential to beauty 

 and propriety, but to be utterly incompatible with any state of archi- 

 tecture worthy to be dignified by the name of art. It may be as- 

 serted that no such principle has ever obtained in any recognized 

 school of architecture, and its conception seems altogether due to the 

 new light, (or darkness visible,) thrown upon architecture some fifty 

 or sixty years since. 



Widely as the styles of architecture, which the lapse of ages has 

 spread over Europe, may differ from each other — numerous as may 

 be the subordinate varieties to which the great divisions of style may 

 have given rise — the elements of all will be found few and simple. 

 The origin of the existing architecture of Europe, must be sought in 

 the works of the Greeks. The inventive faculties, and the fine per- 

 ceptions of that people, have produced the most perfect adaptation 

 of the m^ans afforded by architecture to the end upon which they 

 were employed, that has ever existed, and more perfect than can ever 

 exist again ; because the objects to which their architecture was adapted 

 ■were compatible with its simplest forms. Until other nations have the 

 same objects to fulfil, they never can use the same simple means 

 with equal propriety, nor consequently produce by them the union of 

 usefulness and beauty in the same degree. The simplicity of Greek 

 architecture, its oneness, (to use a phrase of the cockney poets,) is the 

 element which not only forbids its reproduction synchromcally, but 

 defies the invention of its parallel. To the simple elements which 

 the felicitous genius of the Greeks reduced to the conditions of an 

 art, may be traced all the systems of architecture which have fol- 

 lowed in succession. From the Greek to the Roman, from the Ro- 

 man to the Romanesque, from thence to the Byzantine in one di- 

 rection, and to the Arabesque in another, from the Byzantine to the 

 later Romanesque, and from thence to the Gothic, from the Gothic 

 again to the Italian Renaissance, and from thence to the classical 

 Italian schools, and the French and English schools of the 17th cen- 

 tury, are transitions familiar to every architect who has studied the 

 history of his art. These are styles, every one of which, judged by 

 the circumstances under which it arose, and the purposes to which it 

 was applied, whether civil, military, or ecclesiastical, will bear the 

 severest test by which architecture can be tried — the test of useful- 

 ness, propriety, and beauty, mutually dependant upon each other. 

 But where among them is to be found what it is presumed the Insti- 

 tute mean by synchronism and uniformity of style? If the hypo- 

 thesis be founded that Greek architecture owes its origin to the 

 Egyptians, it is evident that it never could have existed at all had 

 the Greeks been infected with such a principle. 



After ages of prosperity, English architecture languished in the 

 hands of the followers of Lord Burlington. To something analogous 

 to this synchronism we may perhaps trace its decay, since the unmi- 

 tigated imitations of Palladio by the Burlington school, ended by 

 driving the public taste to take refuge from their insipidity in the 

 frippery decorations of the Adams. 



The publication of the discoveries of Athenian Stuart was hailed 

 as the means of a thorough regeneration of architecture. Greek and 

 Roman republicanism shortly after filled the mouths of the orators of 

 Europe, and the simplicity of the Greek style carried with it a pre- 

 judice that it might be " done chap." Under these circumstances 

 Greek architecture appealed forcibly to the vulgar. Those who 

 really felt and appreciated its exquisite purity and refinement, un- 

 fortunately overlooked the fact, that those very qualities rendered it 

 inflexible to the combinations necessary to adapt classical architecture 

 to modern requisitions. The Romans knew better. When they 

 adopted the orders of the Greeks, they modified them with consum- 

 mate skill, to fit them for combination with the arch and with each 

 other. The modern Greek school jumped to a different conclusion, 

 as logical as the sentence which annihilated the Alexandrian library. 

 Greek architecture, like the Koran, being perfection, nothing could 

 be necessary or expedient which was not contained therein, and in 

 this conclusion triumphed the principle of synchronism. A brilliant 

 popularity could scarcely fail to attend a doctrine pointing out a 



royal road to architecture, rendering superfluous the tedious study of 

 the theory, the philosophy, nay, the very grammar of the art, and 

 conducting to the glory of a C dlicrates or an Apollodorus, every 

 possessor of a Stuart's Athens and a pair of compasses. Roman ar- 

 chitecture was rejected as spurious — the Italian schools dismissed 

 with contempt — Inigo Jones esteemed an ignoramus — Wren a bungler 

 — Vanbrugh a barbarian — Burlington a humbug — Chambers an im- 

 becile. They built no Greek! As reasonably may Burke or Canning 

 be decried for not declaiming in Greek. The principle would place 

 Chatham below the school-boy who spouts a Gref k oration by rote — ■ 

 no inapt parallel to the architect who compounds his odds and ends 

 out of Stuart's Athens (not forgetting the supplements to eke out his 

 ready made portico, and looks with disdain upon Vignola and Per- 

 raulf. If we suppose the boy's oration to consist of unconnected 

 words like nonsense verses, the similitude may run a little closer. 



Had Greek architecture been studied in a Greek spirit, important 

 advantages might have resulted from its revival, but it is by no means 

 certain that its peculiar forms and character will ever peruiit it to be 

 amalgamated into any such combinations as the Italians have effected 

 with the Roman, the flexibility of which, as displayed in their hands, 

 enabled it to become the universal style of modern Europe, (mo- 

 dified by each country according to its wants,) until the Greek mania 

 superseded it in Great Britain. Purity has ever been the ultimatum 

 insisted upon by the advocates of the Greek style ; but if a Greek 

 architect could rise from the dead he would scarcely admit the purity 

 of Anglo-Greek architecture. To face a building witli an ani>:t- 

 corps much below its height, for the sake of introducing a single 

 order — to back a Greek Doric povtico with two stories of windows, 

 or to flank it with arches cut into segments, and shorn of their impost 

 and archivolt, that if they are not Greek they may at least look like 

 nothing else — to associate the most decorative modification of the 

 Greek Ionic, with doors and windows mulcted of their architraves — 

 to condemn pilasters as a Roman invention, and to range Greek antae 

 on a wall — to force into combination two or three crude imitations of 

 Athenian buildings where one has been found unmanageable — our re- 

 suscitated Greek would surely not admit that either the letter or the 

 spirit of his art had been followed in such treatment of it. 



These observations on Greek architecture, in its modern accepta- 

 tion, have been put forward, because it is to the introduction of this 

 style that the principle now recognized by the Institute under the 

 name of synchronism is chiefly due, and its failure most signally ap- 

 parent — so much so, that the argument may be thought levelled at a 

 by-gone subject of discussion. The error is not, however, so worn 

 out, but that designs may still be seen for purifying St. Paul's, by ele- 

 vating a couple of lanterns of Demosthenes at the west end — opinions 

 still heard, that Blenheim might be improved by the infusion of a 

 little Athenian detail — commiseration still bestowed on Sir Christo- 

 pher Wren, for the limited intelligence upon architecture in his time. 

 If these freaks of fancy be not so rife as they may have been at an 

 earlier period of the present century, they have been replaced by 

 others not more to the credit of British architecture, upon which 

 there will be a few words to say presently. In the mean time, it may 

 be observed, that if synchronism and uniformity of style be indeed 

 essential to propriety and beauty, then have the architects of the 

 world been in a long error of some three and twenty centuries. 

 Admit the principle of synchronism, and architecture ought to have 

 stood still since it attained perfection at Athens. The Coliseum, the 

 Thermae, the Basilicas, Santa Sophia, the Alhambra, the churches of 

 Amiens and Salisbury, the Vatican, the Palazzo Farnese, the Louvre, 

 and a few other works by a few other architects, to which and to 

 whom the world in general, down to the ultra-enlightened period of 

 modern Greek, have agreed to allow some meed of praise, must all 

 be denounced as worthless, should synchronism be essential to beauty 

 and propriety, since they have all arisen from the perpetual state of 

 transition of the art. What aberration from synchronism and uni- 

 formity is to be tolerated for the purpose of forming new styles '. 

 Where is the line to be drawn by which different styles ought to have 

 been set apart as worthy to afford a new starting point for synchronous 



