CONSTRUCTIVE FALSEHOODS

ARCHES. 263

Gothic woodwork; I speak not of this style or that, but of all Gothic work in wood without distinction. Think of a professing arch cut out of a simple board! and then go in honest daylight through the first Gothic cathedral within your reach and count the cost. Do not pass unnoticed the baptismal font, though that, of course, is stone, but look to the organ-loft, rood-screen, or prebendal stalls. Perhaps the "communion-table" may be an honest "table," and not an "altar:" if so, it will be also of wood. Go next to the bishop's throne: casting back, perhaps, an oblique glance at the stone or marble that records a prelate who once sat there. You shall observe that one and all these things are positively Gothicised by gratuitous arches; that, in fact, the holy prelate was architecturally ensconced, from holy baptism to holy burial, in one continuous system of hypocritical arches and lying pillars.

Could all these things but find a tongue, and be converted to Pre-Raffaellitism, what strange noises would mingle with the "confession" in our cathedral services!

Like bishop, like king. If there be one royal name full-grown Gothic should pronounce with reverence, it were assuredly that of Edward the Third. Here, then, is a transcript-in moiety, for want of space-of what, on the constructive honesty principle, we must call the twice sevenfold lie she has placed between his "canonised bones" and heaven. The Reader will observe how it is echoed by the tabernacled niches beneath.

(See woodcut overleaf.)

No doubt this is what Barrow would call "a lusty hyperbole." In regard to the principle we are concerned with, there is but a numerical difference between the lie above and the tabernacle lies beneath.

I have no heart to go into the multitudinous dishonesties of Mr. Ruskin's special style, the "Flamboyant." Perhaps some future edition of the "Seven Lamps" will explain the moralities of that twisted column at p. 94. of the first edition. There can, indeed, be few of the "Stones of Venice," but must begin to feel uneasy in their sockets.

But we have not done yet with our own Gothic: here is something no less pervasive and inseparable.

ORGANIC FALSEHOOD.

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We read in the sixth chapter of the second volume of the "Stones of Venice" that the fifth great Gothic element is "Rigidity:" and of this element we have the following explanation:

"I mean not merely stable, but active rigidity, which gives stiffness to resistance. Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most part, by their own weight and mass; but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or the fibres of a tree, an elastic tension, writhed into every form of nervous entanglement.”

No one will dispute this account of Gothic architecture; and few, perhaps, but will wonder, after learning that "repose" is so indispensable a quality, that "there is no art, no pursuit whatever, but its results may be classed by this one test alone,” "* to find the stones of a building complacently described as "jutting," "starting," "knitting themselves," and "writhed into every form of nervous entanglement." (Ibid.)

This, however, is not the point. I suppose it will be granted that stones in a building can only stand (save by virtue of iron cramping, or such like disingenuous contrivance) "by their own weight and mass:” and that all such words as starting, knitting, writhing, and elastic tension describe just so many qualities as, by their nature, stones cannot have. Shall we, in pity, put out the "Lamp? Shall we forget the irrefragable precept? If not, we must resume our formula, and say, "There go,” &c.

* Modern Painters, part iii. sec. i. chap. vii. § 5.

But, what are we to say of Grecian building? Here are no Dædalean artifices, labyrinthine mysteries, or feats of bravery. The parts, few and simple, invite inquiry. All looks like a mathematical problem, whose very essence is the intrinsic. Yet, beneath that fair exterior, what a mockery of architectural truth! That oblong building is not the petrified wooden hut every one of all its members would say it is. The column is not a tree, but a succession of marble strata. The echinus is not the stump of the branches. The abacus is not a tile nor does it keep the column from rotting. The architrave is not an architrave (principal beam), for it is no beam at all; nor are the triglyphs the rafter ends; nor the guttæ, wooden pegs that help to keep them upright. We know, of course, that they are not; just as we know that "intersectional mouldings" do not intersect. All this alters not the irrefragable principle." The Parthenon is one conglomerate of false construction from top to bottom.

Now all this is the more remarkable, since it not only includes the principal features in a building, the name of which has been long synonymous with perfection, but characterises a style out of which all subsequent architecture has been developed. There are few things more demonstrable than the genealogy of architecture; and-the use of the arch alone excepted the precise points of departure, even of the Gothic style. We may add, therefore, to our account of damages, and say, "There go the Parthenon, the Propylæum, the Temple of Theseus,

ALL ARCHITECTURE INVOLVED.

267

those of Sunium, Pæstum, and every other fragment we honour with the name of Doric."

"And there go all that it inherit ""-seeing that all other Classic styles are but modifications, more or less, of the same falsehood. "Quod non fecerunt Barbari," as the Italians say, has been done by a single "Lamp."

There remain the Egyptian, Assyrian, Chinese, and the wig-wam; but these are out of our category. Mr. Ruskin has no more affection for these than for the Renaissance, "accursed of deliberate purpose." The consequences, therefore, are complete. Some may believe him teeming with another architectural universe. For myself, all I can discover at present is a heap of ruins covering the body of Samson, and a Westminster Reviewer scratching on a broken tablet-"To Mr. Ruskin belongs the merit of recalling to manliness, veracity, and morality, pursuits too long given over to Dilettantism and Conventionalism."

We will not end with personal pleasantries: the true conclusion is plain enough. Architecture appeals to æsthetic feelings, and must be understood on æsthetic principles. To bring it to the bar of constructive logic, and catechise it with questions of truth and falsehood, is beside the mark. This is just the "summum jus, summa injuria." Your verdict will but bring you, as I have said before, as to another point, within the prohibition, "Be not righteous overmuch." You may not, perhaps, "destroy yourself: " you will most infallibly destroy architecture.