September 19, 19 12] 



NATURE 



«7 



confessions they contain, of a childlike limitation of 

 artistic power, may be commended to those who prac- 

 tise either the fine arts or the arts of construction, 

 and feel compelled to " trust to their imagination for 

 their facts," or to resort to the association of incom- 

 patible details for lack of knowledge, or of ability to 

 attain their ends by more reasonable means. 

 Marjorie writes of the death of James II. : — 



" He W.1S kjllt^d by .-i common splinter, 

 Quite in the middle of the Winter ; 

 Perhaps it was not at that time. 

 But I could find no other rhyme? " 



■'Quite in the middle of the winter " describes August 3, 

 1460 A.D., with no wider licence than we find assumed 

 in the works of more experienced, if less candid, 

 artists and craftsmen. Again in her sonnet to a 

 monkey — written, we must remember, when slie was 

 six or seven years of age — slie acknowledges the com- 

 pelling power of an artistic aim : — 



■'His nosers cast is of the Roman : 



e IS a very pretty ■ 



uld not Bet a rhyme for Roman 



1 was obliged to call hit 



It may seem that I have wandered widely from mv 

 text : those who found discourses on texts usually do ! 

 But there is, or ought to be, a closer connection than 

 is usually recognised between the work of the engineer 

 and that of those to whom we usually restrict the 

 title of artist. There was no great gulf fixed between 

 the fine arts and the utilitarian arts in earlier tiines. 

 Some at least of those to whom we owe the greatest 

 advances in the fine arts were eminent also in the arts 

 of construction. We may claim such men as Michel- 

 angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci as masters 

 in the arts of construction as well as in tliose witli 

 ■which their names are usually associated. The 

 separation of the beautiful and the useful is quite a 

 modern vice. But much that I have ventured to say 

 in tlie digression — if such it be — is applicable, with 

 little or no alteration of terms, to the work of our own 

 profession. The architect or engineer who, for the 

 sake of effect, fills the space between the flanges of a 

 beam or girder with slabs of stone, or cast-iron pillars 

 and arches, that could not fulfil the function of a 

 web, exhibits just the same lack of skill as Pet Mar- 

 jorie owns up to — shall I say? — like a man. Such 

 practices have no "basis in reason and propriety," 

 and the employment of such "decorative features" is 

 certainly not a " grouping of elements with science." 

 It is said that "The highest art is to conceal art"; the 

 low-est in matters pertaining to our profession is to 

 conceal ill-devised construction with false and sense- 

 less mask-;. But what I have said has, I think, a 

 sufficiently obvious bearing on the mechanical arts — I 

 need not further point the moral. 



There is .in old maxim to the effect that "the 

 designer should ornament his construction and not 

 construct his ornament." This is an admirable rule 

 so far as it goes, but it should be subordinated to a 

 higher rule, that he should ornament his structure 

 only if lie lacks the skill to make it beautiful in itself. 

 A structure of any kind that is intended to serve a 

 useful end should have the beauty of appropriateness 

 for the purpose it is to serve. It should tell the truth, 

 and nothing but the truth, and if its character be such 

 that it can be permitted to tell the whole truth, so 

 much the better. It should be beautiful in the sense 

 in which we commonly use the term w-ith respect to 

 a machine — we call a mechanical device beautiful only 

 if it .strikes us as accomplishing the end for which it 

 IS designed in the simplest and most direct wav. Our 

 works — like the highest creations in nature — should 

 be beautiful and not beautified. "Beautified" should 

 be considered n vile phrase when applied lo a work 

 of construction, no less than when used to characterise 

 NO. 2238, VOL. 90] 



a fair Ophelia. Artists accept the human form, at it.>- 

 best, as the highest embodiment of grace and beauty, 

 but there is not a curve in the figure that is not the 

 contour of some structural detail that is there for a 

 definite purpose. The practice of resorting to ex- 

 traneous adornments to minimise crudities of 

 structural scheme had its rise — if I mistake not — in 

 the comparatively recent times when culture and taste 

 were at their lowest. It is specially characteristic not 

 only of earlier times, but of the earlier stages of the 

 design of any particular product. It has already dis- 

 appeared in some cases, and will continue to disappear 

 from the practice of the arts of construction as skill 

 and taste develop. I have already alluded to the 

 abandonment of ornament in the design of machines, 

 and I think there can be no one, with any sense of 

 the fit and pleasing, who does not approve this change 

 in practice. The stage coach and horses of former 

 times were lavishly decorated — the carriage of to-day 

 is more graceful and pleasing in virtue of the simple 

 elegance of its lines. In the best domestic architecture 

 of to-day we see the same tendency to trust for effect, 

 more and more, to an artistic grouping of the lines 

 and masses of essential parts and the gradual aban- 

 donment of purely decorative features, without and 

 within. There was a time when the hulls and rig- 

 gings and sails of ships were lavishly ornamented ; 

 now even the figurehead — the last remnant of barbaric 

 taste — has disappeared ; and do we not find in a full- 

 rigged ship of to-day (or yesterday, perhaps one should 

 say) a grace and dignity that no extraneous embellish- 

 ments would enhance? From the racing yacht the 

 designer has been forced, by the demand for efficiency, 

 to cast off every weight and the adornments that 

 so beset the craft of earlier times, with the result 

 that there is left only a beautifully modelled hull, plain 

 masts, and broad sweeps of canvas, and we can 

 scarcely imagine any more beautiful or graceful product 

 of the constructive arts. These examples will serve 

 to illustrate the contention that the attainment of the 

 highest efficiency brings with it the greatest artistic 

 merit. But in the development of the yacht of to-day, 

 through many stages, the designer has been forced, 

 from time to time, to strive to combine grace with 

 efficiency. Selection on the part of clients must have 

 eliminated ungraceful forms when more beautiful ones 

 could be found, and therefore the advance has been 

 rapid. I think I may appeal to this illustration to 

 support the further contention that advance in 

 efficiency may be helped and not hindered by keeping 

 in view an aesthetic as well as a utilitarian aim. 

 Further illustrations will occur to anyone who has 

 studied the development of design of structures or 

 machines. 



It is a matter of constant remark, and with justice, 

 that steel bridges, as a class, are much less pleasing 

 to the eye than those of stone. The reasons for the 

 contrast in artistic merit are not far to seek. The 

 building of stone bridges is an ancient art, and 

 survival of the fittest, and selection — even with little 

 creative skill on the part of the designers — would have 

 led to the development of types having, of necessity. 

 at least the elegance of fitness. But further, this art 

 has come down through the times to which I have 

 referred when artistic and utilitarian aims had not yet 

 been divorced, in the practice of the crafts ; and further 

 still, the practice of building in stone has been in the 

 hands of architects as well as of engineers, and archi- 

 tects are expected to be artists, and are trained as 

 such. On the other hand, construction in steel is a 

 very modern art, and it has been in the hands of 

 engineers who usually neglect, if they do not despise, 

 the study of the fine arts. But why have architects, 

 with their artistic training, not succeeded in pro- 



