DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29898#0048
12
HISTOEY OF ARCHITECTURE.
Part I.
almost impossible to indicate one single building in any part of the
world, designed during the prevalence of this true form of art, which
was not thought beautiful, not alone by those who erected it, but
which does not remain a permanent object of admiration and of study
even for strangers in all future ages.
The result of the other system is widely different from this. It has
now been practised in Europe for more than three centuries, and by
people who have more knowledge of architectural forms, more construc-
tive skill, and more power of combining science and art in effecting a
great object, than any people who ever existed before. Notwithstand-
ing this, from the building of St. Peter’s at Itome to that of our own
Parliament Houses, not one building has been produced that is admitted
to be entirely satisfactory, or which permanently retains a hold on
general admiration. Many are large and stately to an extent almost
unknown before, and many are ornamented with a profuseness of which
no previous examples exist ; but with all this, though they conform
with the passing fashions of the day, they soon become antiquated and
out of date, and men wonder how such a style could ever have been
thought beautiful, just as we wonder how any one could have admired
the female costumes of the last century which captivated the hearts of
our granclfathers.
It does not require us to go very deeply into the philosophy of the
subject to find out why this should be the case ; the fact sirnply being
that no sham was ever permanently successful, either in morals or in
art, and no falsehood ever remained long without being found out, or
which, when detected, inevitably did not cease to please. It is literally
impossible that we should reproduce either the circumstances or the
feelings which gave rise to classical art and made it a reality ; and
though Gothic art was a thing of our country and of our own race, it
belongs to a state of society so totally different from anything that now
exists, that any attempt at reproduction now must at best be a masque-
rade, and never can be a real or earnest form of art. The designers
of the Eglinton Tournament carried the system to a perfectly legitimate
conclusion when they sought to reproduce the costumes and warlike
exercises of our ancestors ; and the pre-Raphaelite painters were equally
justified in attempting to do in painting that which was done every
day in architecture. Both attempts failed signally, because we had
progressed in the arts of war and painting, and could easily detect the
absurdity of these practices. It is in architecture alone of all the arts
that the false system remains, and we do not yet perceive the impossi-
bility of its leading to any satisfactory result.
Bearing all this in mind, let us try if we can come to a clearer
definition of what this art really is, and in what its merits consist. Let
us suppose the Diagram (AVoodcut No. 2) to represent an ordinary
HISTOEY OF ARCHITECTURE.
Part I.
almost impossible to indicate one single building in any part of the
world, designed during the prevalence of this true form of art, which
was not thought beautiful, not alone by those who erected it, but
which does not remain a permanent object of admiration and of study
even for strangers in all future ages.
The result of the other system is widely different from this. It has
now been practised in Europe for more than three centuries, and by
people who have more knowledge of architectural forms, more construc-
tive skill, and more power of combining science and art in effecting a
great object, than any people who ever existed before. Notwithstand-
ing this, from the building of St. Peter’s at Itome to that of our own
Parliament Houses, not one building has been produced that is admitted
to be entirely satisfactory, or which permanently retains a hold on
general admiration. Many are large and stately to an extent almost
unknown before, and many are ornamented with a profuseness of which
no previous examples exist ; but with all this, though they conform
with the passing fashions of the day, they soon become antiquated and
out of date, and men wonder how such a style could ever have been
thought beautiful, just as we wonder how any one could have admired
the female costumes of the last century which captivated the hearts of
our granclfathers.
It does not require us to go very deeply into the philosophy of the
subject to find out why this should be the case ; the fact sirnply being
that no sham was ever permanently successful, either in morals or in
art, and no falsehood ever remained long without being found out, or
which, when detected, inevitably did not cease to please. It is literally
impossible that we should reproduce either the circumstances or the
feelings which gave rise to classical art and made it a reality ; and
though Gothic art was a thing of our country and of our own race, it
belongs to a state of society so totally different from anything that now
exists, that any attempt at reproduction now must at best be a masque-
rade, and never can be a real or earnest form of art. The designers
of the Eglinton Tournament carried the system to a perfectly legitimate
conclusion when they sought to reproduce the costumes and warlike
exercises of our ancestors ; and the pre-Raphaelite painters were equally
justified in attempting to do in painting that which was done every
day in architecture. Both attempts failed signally, because we had
progressed in the arts of war and painting, and could easily detect the
absurdity of these practices. It is in architecture alone of all the arts
that the false system remains, and we do not yet perceive the impossi-
bility of its leading to any satisfactory result.
Bearing all this in mind, let us try if we can come to a clearer
definition of what this art really is, and in what its merits consist. Let
us suppose the Diagram (AVoodcut No. 2) to represent an ordinary