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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[May, 



rather than columns to support it ; beautiful, indeed, but so fragile that the 

 blow of a stick or the movement of an awkward visitor would put the whole 

 fabric in peril. If, instead of a friable stone or marble, these shafts were 

 made of brass, the mind would relapse into that security which is ever the 

 first requirement of our art. 



The love of the marvellous is dangerous ; exaggeration is the first sign of 

 a mind indifferent to the value and beauty and sufficiency of truth, and the 

 surest sign of depravation of judgment. Truth must ever be the best found- 

 ation of taste, and can alone be constant and enduring — 



Rien n'est beau que le vrai ; le vrai seul est aimable ! 

 II doit regner partout, et meme dans la Fable. 

 De toute fiction, l'adroite faussete, 

 Ne tend qu'a faire aux yeux briller la verite. 



Boileau, Ep. ix., v. 43. 



The Egyptian, the Roman, and sometimes the Greek, indulged in the gi- 

 gantic, with a view to the expression of a prodigious energy. But the 

 middle ages were prone to the marvellous, surprise was the great scope of 

 the Gothic architect. /Esthetics were not, indeed, likely to have been stu- 

 died under the education to which the mind at that time had access. Mira- 

 cles infatuated the understanding ; superstition was the foundation ; a domi- 

 nant hierarchy was little communicative of the lights of science it possessed. 

 The poetical vein received its chief aliment from the east; our scholars 

 brought home from Cordova the Arabian taste for excess and hyperbole. 

 The chastening counsel of a Locke, a Newton, or a Bacon, were wanting to 

 regulate that exuberant and uncultured fancy, and that enterprising skill 

 which the practical experiments in building promoted at so much cost anil 

 zeal in those ages. 



The two styles of building, till the 15th century, were termed more Ro- 

 mano, in semi-circular arches, which followed the old basilica model of St. 

 Peter's and St. Paul's, and more Germano, in which the pointed arch was 

 employed after the 13th century; it was in the latter taste that the greatest 

 works were executed. 



However great and admirable, in many respects, the specimens which have 

 been left us by those able practitioners, it is not believed by the most com- 

 petent judges that theoretical science was cultivated to any extent. From 

 Cesare Cesariano, the architect of Milan cathedral, and one of the earliest 

 translators of Vitruvitis, doubtless one of the most learned architects of his 

 day (1524), we may learn something of the principles which guided the 

 middle ages, which were full of the mystical terms of the pseudo-science of 

 the Freemasons. They consisted of a series of triangles or pyramids, no 

 doubt in allusion to the triune, which guided the plan, elevation, and section; 

 see D'Agencourt's architecture, plate 46, in which the sections of Milan and 

 Bologna cathedrals illustrate those doctrines. The minster at Bath appears 

 to have been built after this theory (1503) by Dr. Oliver King, who was a 

 skilful architect and politician, and had been employed in France to conclude 

 a peace with Charles VIII., and who, therefore, would be acquainted with 

 the most approved art of that day on the continent. 



The middle age church was wholly founded on superstitious associations. 

 According to more Romano, it was enough that the plan described the cross, 

 the universal symbol in " hoc vince." But according to more (lermano, the 

 Saviour himself was to he figured ; the choir, therefore, was inclined to the 

 south, to signify, that " he bowed his head and gave up the ghost," John, 

 c. xx, v. :>0 ; and there are few cathedrals in which this deflection in not re- 

 markable. The nave represents the body, and the side, which " one of the 

 soldiers pierced," (John, xix. 34), considered to be the south as the region 

 of the heart, is occupied at Wells by a chantrcy, at Winchester with the 

 chap- 1 of William of Wyekham, and is constantly the pulpit from which the 

 faithful were reminded " to look on him whom they had pierced," Zech. xii. 

 10: who " was wounded for our transgressions," Isa. liii. 5. For the same 

 reason the south was considered the most holy : the Old Testament was 

 represented on that side, while the New Testament, and the local or national 

 Hagiology, was placed to the north. The same superstition still gives value 

 to the south side of the churchyard for burial. At the head of the cross 

 was the chapel of the Virgin, at the Fountain of Intercession with her son. 

 At the foot, the west end, was the " Parvis," supposed by some to be a cor- 

 ruption of " i'aradis," that happy station from which the devout might con- 

 template the glory of the fabric, which was chiefly illustrated in this front 

 and from whence they might scan the great sculptured picture, the calendar 

 for unlearned men, as illustrative of Christian doctrine and of the temporal 

 history of the church tinder its princes and its prelates. Three great niches 

 leading into the church, the centre one often above forty feet wide, were 

 adorned with the statues of the apostles and holy men, who " marshal us 

 the way that we should go ;" in front the genealogy of Christ, the Final 

 Judgment, the History of the Patriarchs, &c. 



The details, indeed, display the degraded state of the fine arts, and of 

 course, of the artists themselves, in the quaintness and disproportion of the 

 sculpture. But extending our indulgence to the performers, regarded in 

 illiberal times only as workmen, we shall admire their native genius, strug- 

 gling with their moral condition, often on the verge of dignity and grace in 

 execution, and in point of conception frequently reaching an elevation alto- 

 gether original. It must be confessed that the continental churches, espe- 

 cially those of Amiens, Rheims, and Paris, surpass the magnificence of our 

 own cathedrals, both in the extent of plan by their double ailes, as well as 

 by their height. But it may be questioned whether a more complete and 



correct picture of Christian doctrine and dispensation, and Christian history, 

 is to be found anywhere than in Wells Cathedral. 



But the same want of cultivated judgment which is apparent in the 

 sesthetical of the arts of the middle ages, is traced also in the imperfection 

 of their statics and stereotomy, in which again solidity is sacrificed to super- 

 stition. The indispensable figure of the cross is a striking example. The 

 arches of the nave in the northern basilica, found their abutment abundantly 

 in the western termination, which was commonly fortified by prominent 

 buttresses (called by the early commentators of Vitruvius, tetra-style, or 

 hexa-style, according to their number) ; but at their eastern termination, 

 towards the lofty pillar of the transept, no such abutment existed. And 

 though the pointed arch was eminently calculated to obviate lateral pressure, 

 yet the smallest failure of foundation or superstructure, threw so much weight 

 against these pillars as to occasion them to bend. To counteract this, and 

 secure their stability, the principle of that age, of " pondus addit robur," 

 namely, the weighting the pillars of the transept with a tower or spire, was 

 resorted to very commonly ; but this often increasing the evil, the last dis- 

 figuring remedy, the construction of a reversed arch between them, was em- 

 ployed. 



Similar criticisms apply to all parts of the middle age architecture, mixed, 

 however, with redeeming excellencies of peculiar skill hitherto unsurpassed.— 

 See sections 1 to 8 of Wren's surveys, in the " Parentalia," 204 to 309. 



The fifth of those principles of Vitruvius, which the Professor had at- 

 tempted to illustrate, was Decor, usually considered to refer to that important 

 part of architecture, ornament ; but our author rather appeared to refer to 

 consistency of character, fitness of style and ornament to the Deity, and the 

 purpose or the rank to which the work might be dedicated, quoted in the 

 preceding lecture. But as no part of the art required a nicer judgment, tact, 

 and reasoning than this of character and special physiognomy, so was none 

 more commonly transgressed in many modern buildings ; and a stranger 

 might be conducted to some of them, and defied to guess whether he beheld 

 a library or a town hall, a church or a music room, a theatre, a prison, a 

 brewhouse, or a floor-cloth manufactory, a gentleman's mansion or a union 

 workhouse. 



Appropriateness and fitness of character is the special recommendation of 

 all the great critics, from Aristotle to Pope. If, says Horace, to a horse's 

 neck a human head is joined, or a female head and breast should terminate 

 in a fish, you will despise the painter ; or if upon the stage you exhibit the 

 graces and the levities of youth, hashed up with the manly strength of middle 

 fife or the rigour of old age, the audience would yawn, and at length over- 

 whelm you with indignant hisses. It is, in fact, the significance and appro- 

 priateness resulting from the coincidence of use and beauty, the one the ex- 

 planation and plain result of the other, which we adore in the works of 

 Nature, and which the great artists have best known how to imitate in 

 theirs. 



Sir C. Wren remarks on the Temple of Peace — " It was not, therefore, 

 unskilfulness in the architect, that made him choose this flat kind of aspect 

 for his temple; it was his wit and judgment. Each deity had a peculiar 

 gesture, face, and dress hieroglyphically proper to it, as their stories were 

 but morals involved ; and not only their altars and sacrifices were mystical, 

 but the very forms of their temples. No language, no poetry can so describe 

 Peace, and the effects of it in men's minds, as the design of this temple natu- 

 rally paints it, without any affectation of the allegory. It is easy of access, 

 and open, carries an humble front, but embraces wide ; is luminous and 

 pleasant, and content with an internal greatness, despises an invidious ap- 

 pearance of all that height it might otherwise boast of; but rather, fortifying 

 itself on every side, rests secure on a square and ample basis." On the 

 Temple of War, he says, " As studiously as the aspect of the Temple of Peace 

 was contrived in allusion to Peace and its attributes, so is this of Mars appro- 

 priated to War; a stioug and stately temple shows itself forward, and that 

 it might not lose any of its bulk, a vast wall of near 100 feet high is placed 

 behind it ; (because, as Vitruvius notes, things appear less in the open air ;) 

 and though it be a i-in-rle wall, erected chiefly to add glory to the fabric, and 

 to muster up at once a terrible front of trophies and statues, which stand 

 here in double ranks, yet an ingenious use is made of it, to obscure two ir- 

 regular entrances," &c. 



The German Moller, who is as true and as accomplished an artist as any 

 of modern times, on this point says, " On comparing the elevation of the 

 Merchants' Guildhouse, at Mentz, with the church of Oppenheini, which 

 was finished in the same year, we see how anxious the ancients were, and 

 how well they contrived to impart to every building its peculiar character. 

 Just as the merit of historical painting, and of every art of design, (without 

 which all the rest is valueless,) consists in the importance and peculiarity of 

 its character, so they are principal requisites in buildings, whenever the 

 latter lay claim to the appellation of works of art. In the church at Op- 

 penheini, all the parts are lightly towering up, so that the eye of the spec- 

 tator in the interior is involuntarily raised, and the elevated richly orna- 

 mented windows, and slender aspiring pillars, promise from the outside 

 already a beautiful and sublime interior. But in the Merchants' Guildhouse, 

 the whole exterior announces at once an object very different from that of a 

 church. The few and small windows are easily closed against fire and rob- 

 bers; and their battlements again, with their projecting canopies and angular 

 enrichments, clearly show that the destination of the building is to preserve 

 and to protect. And in the same way as the main forms correspond with 

 the object of the structure, so likewise do the ingeniously designed orna- 



