"Say what we will of it, it was, however morbid, as vivid and intense in its animation as ever any phase of mortal mind; and it could have lived till now, if it had not taken to telling lies." (p. 154.)

The application of this life to the question of the machine-work, which is one of the great evils of our day, is too valuable to be curtailed.

"I said, early in this essay, that hand-work might always be known from machine-work; observing, however, at the same time, that it was possible for men to turn themselves into machines, and to reduce their labour to the machine level; but so long as men work as men, putting their heart into what they do, and doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen they may be, there will be that in the handling which is above all price: it will be plainly seen that some places have been delighted in more than others-that there has been a pause, and a care about them; and then there will come careless bits, and fast bits; and here the chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly and anon timidly; and if the man's mind as well as his heart went with his work, all this will be in the right places, and each part will set off the other; and the effect of the whole, as compared with the same design cut by a machine or a lifeless hand, will be that of poetry well read and deeply felt, to that of the same verses jangled by rote." "To those who love architecture, the life and accent of the hand are everything. They had rather not have ornament at all, than see it ill-cut-deadly cut, that is. I cannot too often repeat, it is not coarse cutting, it is not blunt cutting, that is necessarily bad; but it is cold cutting-the look of equal trouble everywhere the smooth diffused tranquillity of heartless pains-the regularity of a plough in a level field." (p. 156.)

We have next a very remarkable criticism of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, at Rouen.

"There is a Gothic church lately built near Rouen, vile enough, indeed, in its general composition, but excessively rich in detail; many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently by a man who has studied old work closely. But it is all as dead as leaves in December; there is not one tender touch, not one warm stroke, on the whole façade. The men who did it hated it, and were thankful when it was done." (p. 160.)

To conclude this chapter, Mr. Ruskin is almost hopeless as to the possibility of a new life springing up among us; and limits to "geometrical colour-mosaic" all exertions of the present day, which have any prospect of success. Our readers need not be told that we differ here from Mr. Ruskin. We know from personal experience that the very vitality which he has so vividly described has been exhibited in late works by artizans, or artists rather, in metal work, woodcarving, and sculptured ornament.

The disquisition on the Lamp of Memory is introduced by a deeply beautiful passage, describing a scene near Champagnole in the Jura. The author had mused long on the sources of its impressiveness; till at last he tried to imagine that the scene before him was laid in some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. "A sudden blankness and chill" came upon him with the thought, and he first learnt the full value of memory. The Jura scene "had been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue :" the spectator was no longer in a solitude; all he saw was not only a vision of present

beauty, but was linked inseparably with the remembrance of the past. But architecture is "the centralisation and protectress of this sacred influence" of memory; whence Mr. Ruskin deduces a number of important reflections with respect to domestic as well as the higher kinds of building. In our habit of building now for a life only, never for posterity, in the miserable tenements of our growing suburbs,-houses of a day, in which no one wishes to be succeeded by his descendants, he sees the evidence of the decay of all respect for home, all contentment with a man's own social position. In contrast to this he refers to the solidity and beauty and refinement of the meanest smallest houses in the older architecture of Europe. All our readers should make themselves acquainted with our author's thoughtful and beautiful reasoning on this subject. In this chapter also we have a definition of that most undefinable of characters, the picturesque, as "parasitical sublimity"; i. e., "a sublimity dependent on the accidents, or on the least essential characters, of the objects to which it belongs." We commend this to our readers' reflection: the idea is beautifully illustrated by Mr. Ruskin in a comparison of the faces in pictures of Francia or Angelico, and those by Rembrandt, Salvator, and Caravaggio; and in many other ingenious lines of thought.

The transition hence to the consideration of the "restoration" of architectural monuments is obvious. Mr. Ruskin defines "restoration" to mean "the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed." (p. 179.) He indignantly and vehemently denounces all restoration: a necessity of restoration he takes to be a necessity of destruction; and boldly avows that in the case even of a dilapidated church, he would destroy every inch of it, or cobble and patch it till it can by no possibility stand longer; but he would "restore" it never. For ourselves, while we own that we tremble every time we hear of a Church-restoration-however many of them we commemorate in our pages-yet we cannot go to the same length as Mr. Ruskin. We are not artists only: we have a duty to consult, the comeliness and decency of God's house, and this we must harmonise, as well as we can, with a reverent regard for the fabrics considered only as monuments of art. With Mr. Ruskin's forcible protest against any unnecessary destruction of venerable buildings, we most wholly and heartily coincide. The concluding passage of this chapter is so beautiful that one pardons, even forgets, the anachronism.

"Do not part with it [ancient architecture] for the sake of the formal square, or of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street, nor opened quay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but remember that there will surely be some within the circuit of the disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these wherein to walk; for some other forms to meet their sight continually like him who sat so often where the sun struck from the west, to watch the lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky; or like those, his hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the dark streets of Verona." (p. 182.)

We must hurry over the concluding chapter on Obedience: full as it is, like the rest, of lessons of deep wisdom, over and above its primary

meaning and application. Mr. Ruskin shows that an architecture to be great must be natural: "that from the cottage to the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its language or its coin." (p. 186.) Whence he ridicules the vulgar cry for a new architecture, or an original style. What we want is not a new style, but genius to work on the style we have: and, more than all,

"There are some things which we not only want, but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and racing in the world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, will never enable us to do without: and these are obedience, unity, fellowship, and order. And all our schools of design, and committees of taste; all our academies and lectures, and journalism, and essays; all the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and the life of our English intellect, will, in this matter, be as useless as efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit architecture and all art, like other things, to English law." (p. 189.)

Mr. Ruskin, after again and again urging the necessity of some one style being adopted, suggests four, out of which a choice might be made the Pisan Romanesque, the Italian Pointed, the Venetian Pointed, and the English earliest Middle-Pointed: the latter, he adds, "the most natural, perhaps the safest, choice." Another question remains ought we to have an architecture? Mr. Ruskin ends his fascinating volume in gloom and evil augury. Inclined himself to long for better things, he dares scarcely hope for them. The political convulsions of Europe, our own social difficulties, seem to him tokens that forbid any eager anticipations of a purification of the Church, or a revival of sacred art, or of good times to come. "There is thunder in the horizon," he says, as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar."

66

We have now completed our hurried survey of the Seven Lamps of Architecture, having quoted enough, we hope, to make every one of our readers anxious to see for himself this eloquent and deeply instructive volume. Many, we know, will reckon the author an enthusiast and transcendentalist: let them, nevertheless, glean for themselves some of the valuable lessons and thoughts with which the book abounds. It is a book for amateurs to read; for it will make the thoughtless thoughtful, and open new fields of contemplation and sources of interest, and suggest and deepen important principles to all. And the professional architect would be much benefited by pondering many of the conclusions here enforced. A famous architectural professor is reported to have said that Mr. Ruskin wished to make the profession work in chains: we have ourselves heard an eminent architect characterise this book as "almost mad," adding that "design was an inspiration, and not to be learnt out of books." The former of these needs, it is plain, the lamp of obedience: the latter wholly mistook Mr. Ruskin's object. It was not to be an architect's vade mecum that this volume was written: its aim is to discover the mighty principles which made ancient art what it was, and to commend the same to us. And we willingly give our testimony that Mr. Ruskin has with marvellous

intelligence and force accomplished this aim. Whether these Seven Lamps be all, or only some, of the necessary conditions of Christian art; whether Mr. Ruskin's illustrations are all applicable or not; whether his conclusions are all correct or not, we say that he has forced upon our minds the conviction that there is no success to be gained in Christian art without those guiding principles, self-sacrifice, truth, and obedience, which he has so well enunciated. He has conferred on us a great obligation: and we regard his volume with feelings of gratitude and admiration.

MR. POOLE AND MR. FREEMAN. No. I.

1 A History of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England, by GEORGE AYLIFFE POOLE, M.A. London: J. Masters, 1848, 8vo. pp. xiv. 415. 2 A History of Architecture, by EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A. London: J. Masters, 1849, 8vo. pp. xxviii. 456.

THERE are resemblances, as well as differences, between the two works with which we have headed this article, which irresistibly lead us, as they have already led other reviewers, to couple them in a joint notice. In the first place they both discourse of architecture; Mr. Poole exclusively of that which is at once English and Ecclesiastical; Mr. Freeman, though rigorously fulfilling the bond of his title-page, yet throughout showing that his heart was chiefly won by those pages of his work which realized these two conditions. Secondly, both authors regard their subject from the same point of view, the view which we have ever upheld-which regards ecclesiastical architecture as the handmaid of the Catholic Church, and the English Communion as a branch of that Church. Further, to come to more material considerations, both writers have chosen the same publisher and the same size, considerations which have necessarily involved a great external resemblance.

It would not be quite so easy to recapitulate their differences, which are partly those of the subject matter, and partly arising from the idiosyncrasy of the two writers, which shows itself very strongly in their respective pages. Mr. Freeman, though sternly limiting himself to

architectural considerations, has, as we have remarked, not concealed his individual likings for the ecclesiastical phase of his subject. The following extracts from his preface will indicate the turn of his mind, and the aim which he has proposed to himself in the publication before us.

"And now, at the risk of repeating what I have said in the General Introduction, I cannot help making a few remarks on the principle which I have pursued in the treatment of what is the real staple of the work, the parts devoted to Romanesque and Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture. The general idea which I have all along kept in my mind during the composition of the present work is, briefly and simply, the Historical Study of the Art of Architecture. This was the view which I have always set before myself in my own

studies, and as it is one which I could not but see had been neglected, I was proportionably glad of the opportunity offered me of drawing it out in a more formal and public manner." (p. xi.)

"I am persuaded that the Ecclesiological movement, deeply as I sympathize with its most important bearings, has been in some respects prejudicial to the view of architecture for which I am contending. Young as it even now is, it has gone through many phases, and though it has now quite overgrown, at least in the hands of its leading supporters, that narrow insular exclusiveness with which it set out, the tendency of those times is not yet altogether worn away. It was a natural re-action at the time when it arose to carry the feeling in favour of Gothic architecture too far, and almost to anathematize even the study of any other; Norman Romanesque happily escaping by being considered as a Gothic form." (p. xiii.)

"These evils are however entirely incidental; and no one can deny the direct and most important benefits conferred upon architectural science by the Ecclesiological school. I do not think they can be fairly charged with introducing into architectural studies matters unconnected therewith; architecture is only an incidental feature in their pursuits, just as it is in those of archæologians. The two studies, differing in other respects, have a common point, and each, viewing that common point from its own position, treats it accordingly. If I consult the 'Ecclesiologist' on an architectural question, I have no right to complain if I find the information I am searching for side by side with an article on Gregorian Chants, any more than if a similar search in the 'Archæological Journal' brings me into the vicinity of a discourse on bronze celts or Roman pottery. Neither the chants nor the celts have any interest for myself personally, but both are legitimate objects of study treated of in their proper places." (p. xiv.)

The object of Mr. Poole in writing his history, is thus briefly summed up by himself in the first sentence of his preface.

"The author has endeavoured in this volume, to combine a general history of the greater English ecclesiastical architects of the middle ages, with an equally general view of their works, and of the characters which distinguish the buildings of their respective ages: and he hopes that the result of a plan thus loosely didactic, may be to excite some additional interest in the masters of a great art in its highest application, and a more vivid, as well as a more just perception of the merits of their works." (p. i.)

This sentence of Mr. Poole's involves a subtle fallacy which runs through his whole work, and renders it, in spite of the laborious toil which the learned writer has clearly bestowed upon it, far less satisfactory and complete a manual of what it professes to be, than we had a right to expect from its eminent author, or than he might with a different treatment of the same materials have rendered it.

Architecture is not a mimetic art, as sculpture and painting are, but a constructive one. Sculpture and painting are methods of perpetuating the imitations of some model, either material, or ideal, but for the time being invested in the artist's eye with a substantive existence. Architecture does not imitate, but it creates a certain distribution of material substances, calculated to give shelter and assistance to men and things in the performance of certain duties, or the fulfilment of certain laws of existence. Ecclesiastical architecture is of course, the art of constructing ecclesiastical buildings-buildings, that is, which are either immediately to serve for the purposes of religious worship and instruction, that is churches and schools generally, or mediately to sub