Part 9

In Old English architecture this variety is a very real though accidental beauty. It has the double charm of intensifying the primary expression of domesticity by the very sense of the sacrifice which has been made to it, and of giving the building, however small, a touch of historical character. But what if these beauties of the old architecture are sought to be obtained in the modern by sacrifices of convenience, economy, and domesticity, and by a deliberate planning of structural “after-thoughts,” or subsequent necessities, from the beginning! What if a house, full of small and uncomfortable rooms connected, or rather isolated, by mazes of dark staircases, landings, and passages, has been manifestly built at one blow, and at twice the cost at which a simple and symmetrical and scarcely less--nay, to the initiated, more--beautiful house of the same period of architecture might have been built, without the sacrifice of any modern convenience? Surely, if the devil were an architect his “favourite sin” would be this kind of “cottage of gentility.”

The “variety” of a real Old English house is not only nearly always the outcome of some convenience or necessity discovered or arising after the first building of it, but is nearly always obviously so. Some little difference of style not too great to break harmony, will indicate a difference of date; or it will be shown by some infraction of the lines of the original building. The library or parlour which cuts off a return of the label of the pantry window is manifestly an addition. But it would be too ridiculous to copy such proofs of accident and alteration into a nineteenth-century rectory, villa, or mansion; and the consequence is, that to an understanding eye its variety is often in appearance, as it is in reality, mere imbecility aping the movements of reason.

There is no real anachronism in the revival of the ordinary details of Old English house architecture, though there is sometimes in that of the material. The “half-timbered” wall belongs only to times and places in which bricks and tiles are not to be had, and in which abundance of the best oak timber is. But hooded gables, deep cornices, bracketed bays, weather-tiled walls, the projection of upper over lower stories, and almost all the other charming features of the mode, have sound reasons of use which hold as good now as they did in the year 1600; and in these reasons alone consists their architectural charm. The characteristic Old English chimney--the most ornamental feature of the style--has its full justification in use; the loading of the top with projecting layer after layer of bricks, laid even or notch-wise, forming that security against hurricane which is so often sought, in the “factory” style, by the one or more long iron rods which agreeably break the sky-line of many modern mansions. Even the scalloped tile, which so often replaces the square in old weather-tiled walls, has its utilitarian purpose--a saving of material; the greatest breadth of the scallop being superposed upon the juncture of the tiles below, so as to protect it from wet. The projection, in a long low house of the modest rectory or farmhouse type, of the bedroom story over the basement is the feature farthest of all from being merely ornamental. In such a house more space was usually wanted for bedrooms than for living-rooms and offices, and a very moderate projection of the upper story supplies this additional space.

XXIV

ARCHITECTURAL STYLES

I

Every one has a perfectly definite impression of what is meant by an architectural style; and would recognise a building as Egyptian, Greek, Ecclesiastical Gothic, Norman, or Moresque, not merely by the characteristic details of each of these manners, but still more by a perfectly distinct character attained in each manner by the combination of those details--a character which is totally different from any effect that could result from any such random though more or less constant collocation of details as is to be found, for example, in the bastard “Italian Gothic.” This, though it was made popular by Mr. Ruskin, has about as much relation to a true style as a curiosity-shop has to a well-ordered living-room. It is a remarkable fact, and one especially worth dwelling upon in this context, that Italy, the country of the arts, never had an architecture, and could never even adopt one from its neighbours without degrading or abolishing its character as a style. The so-called “Romanesque” was an incongruous hybrid until it was developed into the “Norman” by the northern nations of Europe; and though the pointed arch made its appearance in Italy very early, no Italian architect ever seems to have had any perception of its artistic capacity, even when he adopted in his buildings the constructive system to which that feature belonged. Italy had great architects, but no great architecture. Buildings like St. Mark’s, the Doge’s Palace, the Duomo of Florence, etc., owe their influence upon the imagination to the personality of the architect, which has known how to impress itself on a combination of in themselves unmeaning or incongruous forms, rather than to that imaginative integrity of style which makes every Old English parish church look as if the Spirit had builded its own house. Every great architect--like every great poet, painter, or musician--has his own style, whether he works on the lines of a great integral style like the Northern Pointed, or in a mongrel mode like that of the Romanesque, or in no accepted manner at all. Sir Christopher Wren could not build a common brick house without imposing his own character upon it. But this personal character or style, which always marks the work of the great artist, is usually almost beyond the power of analysis; and, were it otherwise, would scarcely be worth the trouble of analysis, which would only serve the purpose of encouraging imitations of that which owes its value to its unique individuality.

The five styles above named--_i.e._ the Egyptian, the Greek, the Pointed Gothic, the Norman, and the Moresque--are so much distinguished from all other modes of building by the integrity with which a single idea is carried out in every detail, that in comparison with them there is no other manner which deserves to be called a style. And it is hard to conjecture the possibility of the development in the future of any sixth style which shall deserve to rank with them; for these five seem to have exhausted the five possible modes in which weight or mass of material--apparently the foundations of all architectural expression--can be treated. Two of these styles, the Norman and the Moresque, though equal to the others in artistic integrity, are immeasurably inferior to them in significance; the first three having dealt with and exhausted the only modes in which the primary fact of weight of material in stone construction can be subordinated to religious expression, and the field itself of religious expression in architecture having been in like manner cleared by these styles: for when the Material, the Rational, and the Spiritual have once found utterance in stone--as they have done in the temple-architectures of Egypt, Greece, and Northern Europe--what fourth religious aspect remains to inspire a new art?

It is proposed in these papers to consider the several expressional themes of the five great architectures, and to give a brief exposition of the way in which they are worked out. It should be premised, however, that as it does not require a knowledge of how an effect is produced in order to feel that effect, so it is not pretended that any very distinct consciousness of the adaptation of means to expressional ends must have existed in the minds of the inventors of the great styles of architecture. All artistic production involves a large element of lucky accident, of which the true artist alone knows how to avail himself; and it is often from a lucky accident in a happy season that a great work or a great art will take its origin, as the dropping of a grain of sand into a saturated solution of certain salts will form the centre and cause of its sudden crystallisation. As sound philosophy is only sound sense spread out, so true criticism of great work is only right perception spread out; and the use of criticism of such work is not so much to teach men to enjoy it, as to enable them to pronounce a prompt and assured and demonstrable condemnation of bad or inferior work when false or exaggerated claims are put forth in its favour.

The three primary architectures seem to have owed their origin to three accidents. The immense and wholly unreasonable massiveness which characterises the Egyptian style is probably due to its having emerged from caverns. It carried into the air its memory of having had the rocky earth for its roof and walls, and of the time when its close-packed squadrons of granite shafts were a necessity which it cost nothing to provide. The Parthenon, again, is a manifest glorification in stone of the forms of the wooden hut; and the pointed arch, with all its immense consequences, arose from the constructional accident of cross-vaulting.

Weight, then, which is the most general and characteristic attribute of matter, was taken by the Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic architects as the ground of their several ideas--whether consciously or not, is no concern of ours. The Egyptian architect, as will be shown, subordinated every detail, from the mass of the pyramid--which may be regarded as the form taken by weight in the abstract--down to almost every particular of decoration, to the creation of an effect of compulsory submission to an irresistible and for-ever-enduring material power. The mightiest bulk of Alp or Apennine is a bubble compared with an Egyptian temple, which is the awful _life_ of ponderosity and crushing earthliness; and there is no need to pause in order to point out how aptly this expression suited the political and religious character of the people out of whom Israel fled.

In the architecture of Greece, weight--representative of material force--was still the theme; but it was material force which had met with its match, the force of mind; and the ponderous entablature, every detail of which expresses weight, is lifted and borne beautifully in air by a series of members every one of which conveys the impression of an opposite ascendant force, which recognises but does not suffer in the least degree from its burthen, beneath which the animated shaft is seen to fling away a part of its supporting power just at the point where most weight is borne, and the Caryatides of the Pandrosium can afford to stand with one knee bent easily forward. Here, then, again was a great and new phase of the human mind envisaging the universe, expressed by simple reference to weight of material in its temples.

The third great phase--that in which an ascetic spirituality, refusing all willing alliance with earthliness, only recognises it as a thing to sbe defied and to be made the measure of the spirit’s predominance--obtained its artistic expression by employing material weight as the symbol of its opponent; which it neither suffers from nor enters into alliance with, but vanquishes, converts, and glorifies in ascending streams of life.

The Moresque style also owes its singular integrity of effect to a peculiar mode of regarding the idea of gravitation: if that can be called a mode of regarding it which consists in a most ingenious and fanciful ignoring of it, either as an oppressor, an ally, or a vanquished foe. The honeycombed domes of the Alhambra and the Mosque of Cordova hang apparently suspended in air upon “pendentives,” like sunny clouds in station; and the astonishing art by which innumerable details are made to concur in this effect would justify this style in ranking with the three foregoing, had this effect any symbolic meaning for the human race and its religions; but it has no meaning for men who have their feet upon the earth, and is only adapted for the palaces and temples of a race of sylphs or gnomes.

Lastly, the Norman style, though no less consistent an exponent of one idea than are the other temple styles, is founded upon no reference to superincumbent weight, but depends almost wholly upon its boast of the mass and eternal stability of the wall. It well conveys the solemn expression of a calm eternity of time; but for religious purposes it will not bear the least comparison with the flamelike Gothic, expressing at once the peace and ardour of the “eternal moment.”

In the following papers a short analysis will be given of the somewhat obscure means by which the well-recognised expressions of these five great architectures are obtained.

II

The symbolisation of material life and power by an elaborately artistic treatment of the mere fact of weight, which is the most universal and obvious attribute of matter, is the object of every general form and of almost every, so-called decorative, detail of Egyptian architecture; the few exceptions, such as the occasional intrusion of the lotus and palm into the capitals of the columns, being due to an obscure but probably intimately related symbolism of a different kind.

The pyramid is the simplest artistic form by which mere weight can be expressed. It is nothing more nor less than a mound or mountain shaped so as to give it an artistic consciousness. The form of the Egyptian Temple is nothing but the expression of this elementary form of weight with emphasis upon emphasis, until there results such an accumulation and concentration of the idea of weight that the whole building seems as if it would crush the earth on which it stands. This effect is mainly produced by a multiplication of the pyramidal form in the masses of the building; by its truncation at various heights, which introduces the powerful element of suggestion; by numerous inferior members which emphasise the expression by contrast; and by such a multiplication and formation of shaft and capital as to convey the idea of an overwhelming burthen above them. The great double-towered Propylon of the typical Egyptian Temple is, in its entire mass, a truncated pyramid; and, as simply such, is a much more forcible expression of pyramidal form than the pyramid itself. This expression is doubled by the division of the upper part of the mass into two low towers. Immense _cavetto_ cornices crown these towers, and intensify their effect by the strongest contrast. Their pyramidal outline is emphasised to the eye by the great roll-mouldings which follow the angles of the masonry from summit to base. Finally, the plane of the great doorway by which the two masses of the Propylon are joined leaves that of the pyramidal mass and becomes nearly perpendicular, while the sides of the doorway become actually perpendicular--constituting a _cumulative_ contrast which seems to double the already manifold emphasis of the main bulk of the building. The comparatively low mass of the body of the temple behind the Propylon is still the truncated pyramid crowned with the contrasting cornice; but the truncation occurs so near the ground, and so far from what would be the apex were the converging lines of wall continued upwards, that the pyramidal form would scarcely have been suggested, were it not for its plainer manifestation in the Propylon; but, with this aid, the eye at once catches the idea of the decapitated pyramid throughout. Through openings in these strongly inclined walls appeared the vertical colonnades; and such niches or apertures as were practised in these walls had the contrast of perpendicular jambs. In front of the vast ponderosity of the Egyptian Temple rose the final and most effective contrast to the whole--the “fingers of the sun”: the pair of tall and slender monoliths, which only tapered sufficiently to give them the reality and the appearance of security. In the interior of the building the idea of weight had to be conveyed in a different manner--namely, by the bulk, number, and form of the columns. Every detail of shaft and capital--with the two or three exceptions already spoken of--was calculated to express actual sufferance from the burthen borne by them. The shafts bulge towards the base, and the capitals likewise swell as they approach their juncture with the shafts; shaft and capital being usually clothed with vertical convex mouldings: the exact reverse of the Doric shaft, which, as will be shown, had exactly the opposite idea to convey. Unlike the repose and sufficiency of the Doric column, the Egyptian expresses violent and yet insufficient energy, which seems to rush towards and to be partially driven back by the entablature. The immense thickness of wall, wherever it was shown, was emphasised by sculpture in very low relief. These are only the main elements of an effect which, and the means of producing which, will be more forcibly felt by a corresponding analysis of Greek architecture, which culminates in the Doric of the Parthenon.

This temple has a double basement, the first of which is on a “dead level”; from this rises the second basement, in which the true life of the building commences. In 1837 Mr. Pennethorne announced the important discovery that the lines of this basement, together with those of the entablature, are not horizontal lines, but parabolic curves; and Mr. Penrose, in 1852, in a work published by the Society of Dilettanti, gave the actual measurements of these curves; which are found to prevail not only in the horizontal but in all the vertical lines and faces, in the inclined lines of the pediment, and in the axes of the shafts. These curves are so subtle--the rise being only an inch or two in as many hundred feet--that they are rather felt than seen; but that they are felt, even by the comparatively gross modern eye, is clear enough from the different way in which it is affected by the Parthenon itself and by any imitation of it by modern builders. It is probable that these curves were in some instances meant to correct optical illusions, by which straight lines would look hollow, etc.; but a far greater motive for their introduction was an effect of animation in the whole and in every part and of unity through the predominance of general curves, which a cultivated eye can discern very easily, but which is probably beyond our present powers of analysis. Above the basement the Doric Temple externally--and the Greek Temple’s architectural beauty is all outside--consists of two parts, of opposite and exactly balanced significance. The first consists of a colonnade of shafts, each of which rises at once from the stylobate, without the footing or “base” found in subsequent styles. The shaft diminishes somewhat rapidly, until it impinges upon and ends in the capital; which is an hyperbolic “ovolo,” spreading widely under the “abacus” or tile, which constitutes the neutral point, or point of rest, between the column and the entablature. The outlines of the shaft (always fluted in early Greek architecture) converge from the base towards the capital--not in straight lines, but in decided parabolic curves, of which the departure from straight lines is greatest at about two-thirds of the height of the shaft. This curve of the shaft is called the _entasis_; and upon it depends mainly the expressional life of the shaft. It will be remembered that there is a similar swelling in the Egyptian shaft; but this is where it approaches the base. Its position in the Greek shaft expresses an ascendant energy of force, which is manifested most strongly as it approaches the capital. In the one case yielding under weight is expressed, in the other superabundant power. This animated expression is multiplied by every multiplication of the outline provided by the flutings, which in the Greek shaft are concave, expressing concentration of force towards the centre; whereas, in the Egyptian the flutings are convex, expressing further a tendency to bulge and burst under their burthen. A little under the capital, and just where the Greek shaft is thinnest, one or more deep channels are incised in its substance, showing that power can be triumphantly cast away just where power is most needed. The Egyptian shaft, at the same point, is usually bound with a heavy thonglike moulding, as if to prevent it from being crushed. The ovolo, which constitutes the Doric capital, provides and expresses the distribution of the power of the shaft to meet the superincumbent entablature; and the “quirk” or sudden diminution of its breadth immediately under the abacus is a repetition of the device of the incised channels for proving the existence of superabundant power. At the point where the Greek entablature is met with easy grace by the noble spread of the hyperbolic ovolo, the Egyptian capital, as a rule, diminishes and seems to dash itself with violence towards the point of conflict.

As every feature of the column thus expresses cheerful and abundant energy, every detail of the entablature is a mode of expressing the weight which is thus met and carried with such graceful power. The Doric entablature is made up of three parts--architrave, frieze, and cornice--each expressing in a different manner the idea of weight. The architrave is a massive layer of stone with its face unbroken by any sort of “decoration”; it projects beyond the neck of the shaft, so that a line dropped from it would about touch the outer circumference of the shaft at its base. In this member, then, weight is expressed by a simple mass directly imposed upon the centres of support. The frieze is a similar layer of masonry having its face broken up by triglyphs--members resembling, and no doubt originating in, the terminations of beams of timber. These triglyphs are slightly projecting quadrilateral masses of stone, considerably higher than they are broad, and cut into deep vertical channels. They would express little besides the memory of the old timber construction, were it not for the _guttæ_ which hang below them, separated from them by a fillet. These guttæ, by multiplying the vertical lines of the triglyphs, confer upon them the appearance of pendants, the force of the earthward tendency being increased by the fillets, whose momentary interruption of that tendency seems to increase it. To increase what Franz Kugler calls the “triglyphic character,” little pendants sometimes occur at the top of the chamfered sides of the triglyphs. No one can realise the whole force of this extremely simple means of expression except by trying what the Doric entablature would be without it. There is, or was, a church in the Waterloo Road, massively built and preserving pretty well all the features of the Doric Temple, except the triglyphs and guttæ. Their omission makes the whole building light-headed. There seems to be no meaning in the vast current of upward force in the fluted shafts, if that is all they have to carry. Any one can satisfy himself of this point by simply covering the frieze, in a print of a Doric Temple, by a slip of white paper. Of course this all-important triglyphic character, though only expressed in the frieze, is felt to apply to the entire mass of the entablature, of which the weight is thus _made visible_.