1. Letters on “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”
Folkestone, Saturday [April 18, 1849].
Dear Mr. Harrison, — I now return you the whole of the sheets — carefully compared in every part: but there are one or two matters which will I am sorry to say cause you more trouble than I had the slightest intention elastic as my conscience is — of inflicting upon you. I shall not again so miscalculate my powers of revision as to leave all — at the last — upon my kind friend's shoulders, as I have done now, though after so often feeling the advantage of your assistance in the detection of errors, I feel I shall hardly be able to trust anything to the press that has not passed through your hands.
To begin at the beginning, I have added a footnote to the Preface and titles for list of Plates. You will find the places of the Plates which I could not fix marked on the slips.
2ndly, I enclose a proof of a new page, 51, of which I tried to cancel the first copy. Would you kindly compare p. 52 with the last revise thereof and make it correspond. I have looked over the new p. 51; it is all right.
3rd. In slips E. and G.2 note that braccias should be braccia, the Italian plural, unless there is some difference in the words for the arm and the measure; and I have altered Sixths into Palmi, only I am not quite sure whether the four-inch measure is the Palmo perhaps Mr. Williams can tell you this at once, or furnish you with some book of Italian measures. The inches ought also if there is any difference between Italian and English inches to be specified as Italian. Please notice this particularly arranging the names above the measures as you and Mr. Williams think best, remembering that there go six of the [Palmi ?] to the 24-inch braccio.
4th. Please don't put Note 1, Note 2, but only 1 and 2, etc. Then, Note 6 3 does not read nicely; I want it put simply thus Compare Iliad Σ 1 with Odyssey Ω 5-10 putting Sigma and Omega for numbers of books and the lines: only I haven't an Iliad to find the line. Can you find the Shout of Achilles from the wall, or can Mr. Williams? and put the line that in the Odyssey is all right line 5 to 10.
Then, you will find a reference in chap. 6, § 1, note 14, which must be added.4 Thus: —
15, p — “The Flowers lost their light, the river its music.” Yet not all their light nor all its music. Compare Modern Painters, Vol. II. Chap. . ss. . [sic]
Now this Chapter and ss. my good friend Mr. H. only can find for me; it is the Chapter headed — “Various Theories concerning Ideas of Beauty” (by-the-by I am not quite sure if it be in first volume or second), and the paragraph is the beginning of the passage about association the paragraph ending “wrath, ravage, and misery of man.”
Then Notes 14 and 15 have to be made 15, 16; and finally as Mr. Coleridge must not have it his own way at the end, would you add on this: —
Noble verse but erring thought: contrast George Herbert. . . . [Quotation as in note on p. 271 above.]
That will do better for a finish. I am quite tired, dear Mr. H.: good-bye and a thousand thanks to you and remembrances to all,
Ever yours,
J. RUSKIN.
GENEVA, June 5th (1849).
MY DEAR SIR, — I have seen with much pleasure the favourable notices of the Lamps in the London Journals; for, considering the way in which the book clashes with many wide interests and received opinions, I had not hoped for so kind a reception of it; but as none of the reviewers appear to have understood the purpose and value of the illustrations,6 I think it right that you at least should have it in your power to give some answer to any verbal objections that may be made to their apparent rudeness.
I have been a little too modest in the Preface and had calculated too much on the reader's discovery of what I ought to have told him; namely, that though indeed many portions of the plates on which I spent considerable time, have, owing to the softness of the steel, ended in “a blot,” yet, such as they are, they are by far the most sternly faithful records of the portions of architecture they represent which have ever yet been published; and I am [276/277] higher than that which is at present set upon plates of more delicate execution.
Plate VI. Arch from the Fa�ade of the Church of San Michele, Lucca
Few persons have any idea of the inaccuracy of architectural works generally. That of Gaily Knight,7 for instance, has been frequently referred to authoritatively respecting the architecture of Italy; yet in the plate, in that work, of the church of San Michele of Lucca, the ornaments on the walls between the arches have been drawn entirely out of the draughtsman's head; nourishes of the pencil being substituted for the monochrome figures. The degree of fidelity of the drawing in Plate VI. of the Seven Lamps of a single arch of this church, I can only illustrate to you by a particular instance. Just above the head of the strange long-eared quadruped at the top of the arch, the sloping border of the block of stone out of which he is cut is seen to become thicker, and to be divided by a line which looks like a mistake. In that place, the block of serpentine above did not fit exactly into its place, and the builder has fitted in a thin wedge-shaped bit of marble to fill up the gap, which is marked by the double line. In like manner, it will be noticed that the partition between this quadruped and the horseman in front of him is double, while all the other partitions are single bars of marble this also is fact. Such a degree of accuracy as this may perhaps at first appear ludicrous but I have always held it for a great principle that there are no degrees of truth; and from habit I have made it just as easy to myself to draw a thing truly as falsely. The accuracy of the other plates, excepting those specified as taken from somewhat obscure Daguerreotypes, is not less; and I believe a time will come when even their execution will be thought better of than it is at present. That, however, I contentedly leave to public judgment. One point by-the-bye should be noticed, that, as the plates are all of fragments, I did not think it necessary to risk losing some of their accuracy by reversing them on the steel and they are therefore reversed in the impression.
I remain, my dear Sir,
Very truly yours,
J. RUSKIN.
II. The MSS, of “The Seven Lamps of Architecture” with additional passages
THE MSS. to which the editors have had access in the preparation of this volume are (1) the MS. of the book, together with various sheets of earlier drafts, (2) a copy of the second edition (1855), corrected by Ruskin for the revised edition of 1880. Both of these are now the property of an American collector, who purchased them from Mr. George Allen in 1902. A detailed collation of all differences between the MSS. and the printed text was, however, made before the MSS. were parted with, and this collation has been repeatedly used in the present volume. A reproduction of a page of the MS. is also given (p. 222).
One or two of the early sheets are headed " Sutton Bonnington, Loughborough" (Yorkshire), having, as it would seem, been written there, when Ruskin was travelling to Scotland in the spring of 1848.
'On the back of one of these sheets is a draft of the scheme for the whole book, which bears out the author's statement (see above, p. 138 n.) of the difficulty he had to keep the number of the "lamps" down to seven. This is the scheme:8Lamp of Sacrifice.
" " Truth.
" " Beauty.
" " Purity — Power? majesty, etc., in severe lines and simplicity.
Palazzo Vecchio. Civic buildings in grandeur, etc. Doge's Palace, Palazzo Pitti, Strozzi, Warwick Castle, and Italian towers, etc.
" " Obedience? Order? in composition, subordination of parts, etc.
Necessity of universal return to Early English, if anything to be done in England head of obedience, then freedom for fancy in details. Type: North transept of Rouen.
" " Lamp of History. Veneration for past works as well as record in new ones. Class under this, Ambition ?
Under this certainly place Age, Picturesqueness, etc. (The picturesque not in decay; head of donkey and horse, decayed apple and sound one.)
" " Life. Various character of buildings. Vitality in ornament.
Some additional passages from the MS. have already been given (e.g. pp. 38, 45, 125, 192), and examples of interesting variations have been supplied, in notes under the text. It remains in this Appendix to give such longer passages as seem to be of interest.
The following are the preliminary drafts of the Preface (to edition 1) referred to on p. 3 n.
The MS. (it should be explained) contains three drafts of the opening portion of this preface. The longest (a) is the original of the preface to the first edition, but after the 4th paragraph, ending " at the correspondent extremities," (above, p. 5) the following passage is added:
“I have to thank M. de Marvy,9 a young French artist, whose works will probably be soon known and highly esteemed among us, for much valuable information on the subject of engraving, of which I wish that I had made better use.”
The MS. does not contain the final paragraph beginning "I could have wished," but concludes with adding (after the word "Flamboyant") "and Salisbury, as a fair type of the early English, and early English decorated."
In the second MS. (6) the first two sentences are almost identical with (a); but in the next sentence the words " obtained in every case" down to "the opinions founded upon them" (above, p. 3) are left out, and the MS. proceeds as follows:
"I am prepared to bear the charge of impertinence, which can hardly but attach to the writer who assumes an attitude of authority in his remarks upon the practice even of a single art much more of several. But there are some things respecting which men feel too strongly to be silent; and, I think, some also on which they feel too strongly to be wrong; I have been grieved into this impertinence, and have suffered too much from the destruction of the Buildings that I loved, and the despite done to the Painters that I reverenced, to reason cautiously respecting either the modesty or the probable advantage of my appearance in their Defence.”
"It has, however, been justly said, that any traveller who would set down simply and exactly what he had heard and seen, could hardly fail of noting some matters which might interest many wiser than himself, and I believe that at least in the always personal observations which are scattered through the following pages, there may be something of value even to the experienced architect.
"But as for the opinions with which they are associated, I have set them down first because I could not help it; and secondly because in the midst of the opposite and uncertain principles which appear in our present architecture, a positive appearance of any kind has, I think, a pleasantness about it, and perhaps some usefulness, even though it be wrong; as even weeds are of use that grow on a bank of sand. I have, however, some right to speak upon this subject, as I have loved architecture to my much sorrow,10 more than most men, and passed more time among the older examples of it than the professional occupations of the architect commonly leave to him."
The third MS. (c) is as follows:
"The observations which form the subject of the following pages were originally thrown together in the preparation of one of the sections of the concluding volume of Modern Painters. Finding, however, that they assumed so independent a character as somewhat to interfere with the symmetry of the more comprehensive essay, and believing also that the course of the abuses which they deprecate is so rapid, and the urgency of the needs which they represent so immediate, that their usefulness, if any, would be materially diminished by any further delay in their publication, the writer has permitted them to appear in a separate form.
"He has to express his obligations to a young French engraver, M. de Marvy, whose works will probably be soon, as they deserve, well known to the public, for the communication to him of the means by which he has been enabled to engrave nine out of the twelve of the illustrations of the volume,11 entirely with his own hand, and to render them very nearly facsimiles of drawings in every instance made on the spot, with care more scrupulous than he has found usual, even in architects' drawings, to preserve not only the proportions, but the true light and shadow of their subjects. In one or two cases, details or arrangements of chiaroscuro which were incomplete in the author's memoranda, have been supplied by reference to daguerreotypes taken under his superintendence.
“(The three line engravings are from the author's drawings, Plate etched by him and finished by Mr. J. C. Armytage, Plates and by Mr. Armytage and Mr. J. Cousen.)
“He has only further to express his regret that the delay in the publication of the volume of which the present chapters were intended to form a part, should be prolonged, but the time requisite for the [280/281] arrangement of evidence only to be obtained by research in many branches of physical science as well as of art, and the care especially necessary in the statement of views liable to no ordinary share of opposition, render such delay altogether unavoidable."
we may notice the preliminary draft of the Introduction to the work, referred to on p. 19 n.:
“It is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, when men propose to themselves the attainment of a perfection, in any kind, which experience or reason, had either been temperately consulted, would have shown to be impossible under the conditions of their action, or with the means at their disposal. But it is a more dangerous, because a less ridiculous error, to permit the consideration of human means, or even of natural limitations, to interfere with the abstract conception, or hinder the reverent acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. Nor can any enterprise be wisely conducted, nor any object in the highest degree of its capabilities attained, unless the understanding of the nature and nobility of the end precede, and be kept distinct from, all consideration of the means and materials thereunto: so that doubtfulness of the one may not cause indistinctness of the other. For the fewer and feebler these means may be, the more necessary it is that they should be used with discretion, and precision, and energy, which can only be when the perfectness of the thing to be reached is absolutely proposed, and when the entire admirablenes- and difficulty of what is to be done are comprehended. I find, however, that in their discussions of operations in which the powers of man are the instruments, most writers, desiring to show their wisdom by an accurate, and their humility by a modest estimate of their instruments, and thus encumbering themselves with considerations of facts which no single experience can be long enough, nor any human experience authoritative enough, absolutely to arrange or to value, have lost sight of those general and simple principles of right and of desirableness, to which a man's sense and conscience, aided by Revelation, are in all subjects faithful guides, and which, if set fairly enough and often enough in their simplicity before the eyes and the thoughts of men, would at all events give true direction to their powers unknown as well as known rendering therefore their success surer and higher; yet teaching humility better by their absolute unattainableness than the ignoble calculation which sets before the sight nothing but what the hand can reach, and contemplates rather the decrepitude of the limb than the reward of the journey.
"To regulate the aims, is a nobler work than to order or husband the powers, of men, and a work which must be done the first; accepting always as a certain truth, that when approach to an object is impossible there is crime in desire, and when approach is possible, [281/282] in despondence. There is also the further danger attendant on the habit of too coldly calculating our power; not only that our shortcomings may be greater, but that we may be more easily reconciled to them, and even led into the error fatal especially in moral subjects, of thinking that what is man's utmost is in itself well, that evil is diminished by its apparent compulsoriness, or in other words, that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive."
Following the above, on the same sheet of white quarto, is this note: " Then introduce apology for bringing arguments from divine things, showing that all principles that are worth anything must be drawn from them." The apology in question will be found in the text (see above, p. 24).
The following unpublished passage, headed "Introductory 2," is also among the MS. sheets of the "Introductory" chapter. Its main ideas are given in the second and third paragraphs of the text (see pp. 20-22 above):
"... ruling necessities, to be interfered with by too minute a calculation of the impediments of which their removed position prevents them from justly estimating the magnitude. Every analogy of arduous practical life directs us to this division of function: and as the fisherman contending with waves and currents, leaves his comrade on the cliff to mark for him the movements of the shoals, and the soldier descending into conflict concerns himself only with the point of earth which he has to hold or to win, leaving to another the direction of his energy and disposal of his life, so must all men in their struggles with difficulty of whatever kind either submit themselves to guidance from those who are not so engaged or else are not encircled by its intricacies, or, to their great loss, become themselves alternately soldier and leader, and alternately labour and consider, as the traveller involved among the rifts of a glacier must concern himself for a time only with his extrication from a gulf or his passage of a chasm, and then pause to calculate his advances, and determine the most prudent direction of renewed effort. Nor in the accepting of divided duty, must we forget the frequent need of that charity on both sides which forgives to those who direct their sometimes slight and inconsiderate estimate of obstacles they have not to encounter: and to those who execute, the failure or discouragement which may seem to such inconsideration unaccountable or premature. "It is not therefore to ask respect for the theories of right which are advanced in the following pages, but to ask pardon for their apparent wildness and disregard of probable means for their working out, that I remind the reader of the peculiar necessity of due observance of their principles in subjects uniting the technical and imaginative elements so essentially as the Art of Architecture, uniting them as closely as humanity does the soul and body: but with a more infirmly balanced liability to prevalence of the Lower part over the Higher, and of the nice embarrassments of the Constructive over the purity and simplicity of the Reflective Element. It is not, I repeat, to ask respect for the theories let the reader test them as mercilessly as he will; if they be [282/283] true or right I have no fear of their not being acknowledged, else I should contradict what I have just said, that every man's sense and feeling are enough to determine for him what is right, or in other words, that the candid theorist's is the easiest and perhaps least honourable of all necessary work. But in order to account for the simplicity with which that work has been attempted, and for the speculative breadth of the greater number of the positions which I have taken, I can only allege my conviction of the necessity of extricating from the confused mass of partial traditions and dogmata with which the art has been encumbered by its unconsidered practice, those large principles of right which are applicable to every stage, style and rank of it; which demand no conditions, imply no limitations, and which in brief I believe to be so verily the roots and headmost springs of all architectural success, that the highest measures of that success are attributable to this influence, and the lowest, without it, impossible. I do not think that I claim too much for these in calling them the Lamps of . . ." (continued as in the text, p. 22 above).
The following seems to be a rejected draft of the opening portions of the second Chapter: —
“There is not a more dangerous enemy to the practice of any virtue than an over regard, or even an habitual reference, to its results. Indeed it is in strictness of language not virtue, but worldly wisdom, with whose biddings we comply, when our object is the award which has been divinely assigned to the doing of duty; instead of the duty itself. This is both confessed and comprehended in deeds of charity or of devotion. The love is the virtue, not the act or exhibition of love; and although love cannot exist without acting, yet the act would be useless if the act were caused by any other motive than love. And the love is as much a virtue when it is fruitless as when it is effectual. This is the first and most trite of moral principles. Yet with respect to the virtue of truthfulness we are apt to lose sight of its essence as a character well pleasing and divine; and to regard only its necessity in the dealings of men with each other; so that deception which is not harmful is sometimes called innocent. Nevertheless truth is to be sought for its own sake as much as charity: and a breach of truth is criminal in itself, even though attended by no evil consequences, as a breach of charity is criminal, though not manifested in malignant action. I trust that there is no occasion for me to argue this point, when simply stated, and yet in consequence of our not often enough contemplating it, there has arisen such a laxness and flexibility in our practice of truthfulness, as frequently to leave the very estates of honour and dishonour divided only by a blind path. How much of evil has arisen in the world from the mere neglect, not the determined violation, but the idle and flippant regardlessness of truth in minor matters, I may more wisely leave the reader to consider than myself [283/284] pretend to preach; observing this only, that no matter can indeed be trifling, and no occasion contemptible, which affords opportunity for the exercise of so noble a virtue as truthfulness; that to speak truth with care, constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty; and that (sic) which I trust, there are men in the world, many, who would hold to truth at the cost of future or life, there are few who hold to it at the cost of a little daily care, thought and self-sacrifice. Now this should not be, for seeing that there is of all sins no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty, no one more 'wanting the good of virtue and of being ' than this of lying, it must be a very singular and refined insolence and folly to fall into the foulness of it on small and light temptation; much more in sport and for pleasure: and therefore above all things it is becoming a man of honour to see that no trace of lying enter into those noble pleasures to which he looks for teaching as well as for rest, especially into such as are connected with the arts, for though lit may remain a matter of disputation how far concealments and deceits may be tolerable or necessary in war or policy, or in the government of inferior creatures, or of nations, or in stern necessities and difficulties, it can be no matter of dispute whether they are tolerable in our pleasures: all pleasures which depend upon them must be base, and with all severity to be condemned and avoided. It needs, however, some acuteness and discretion to determine in such subjects" [here this passage breaks off].
A half sheet of foolscap is with the MS., containing a rejected portion of one of the opening paragraphs of Chapter III., as follows: —
“It will be well, therefore, to endeavour to follow in reasoning what the involuntary action of Memory would seem to suggest, and to see what are indeed the universal roots of this enduring nobility; not distracting ourselves, if possible, by any considerations of the styles of places or epochs; nor permitting reference to mechanical construction, except where the perception of it seems to be an element of the feelings in question. These two branches of feeling, based on the acknowledgment of power, and on the sense of beauty, are evidently not incompatible though distinct. The former often includes the latter and has precedence of it; and as regards the spectator, it is a nobler thing to reverence the work of the master spirit than to delight in the fairness of the external form; and as regards the architect, the expression of majesty depends exclusively upon dispositions of his own ordering, that of beauty frequently upon imitations of natural objects made lovely to his mind and for his choice.
“What, then, let us first ask, are the essential characters of that architecture which has for its chief object the awakening of the sense of awe or veneration ?
“And much it is to be desired that the understanding of these noble characters were commoner among architects than it is." [284/285] Another sheet has the following fragment: " I believe, therefore, that we may broadly assume, that a building, if it have merit at all, will have one of these two characters distinctively developed; and that by fixing our attention upon one or other of them, and striving to realise it alone in our designs, we shall succeed better than by endeavouring to unite the two in a perfect splendour; and this not only because in the work of nature herself they have different places and functions, but because Architecture has herself two forms of energy: one imitative, in which she copies natural organic forms as being able to imagine none fairer; the other disposing and modifying such forms to her own will; and it is this last action which gives to her work that spirituality which seems to me its most awful attribute. Without, therefore, entering into any question of the nature of the sublime or beautiful, but assuming those natural appearances and forms to be such which are generally so esteemed, let us observe what peculiar conditions of both these characters result in architecture from its governing power on the one hand, and imitative choice on the other. "When this modifying power is displayed together with a choice of the natural forms or resemblances which most harmonize with it, we have a majesty nearly as great" [here this passage breaks off].
The following paragraph in the MS. was omitted from the printed text of chapter iv. §§1, 2 (see above, p. 140):
“This incapability of human invention to advance without aid from natural form is especially shown, it seems to me, in the failures which attend any attempt to ornament features of a size larger than those of which nature furnishes decorated examples. We may find a striking instance in the difficulty, noticed already in the third chapter, of ornamenting large curvilinear surfaces. Of small masses, spherical or oval or cylindrical, or otherwise bounded by curved superficies, nature has furnished us with innumerable examples decorated with the most lavish richness: and for his ball or boss or rosette, or finial or column, the architect has ready to his hand millions of models in the family of the Radiata10 and Molluscs, and in starry and globular vegetables, in the star fishes, the echini, the sea anemones, the crabs and sponges, in all the genera of the rose, in the pine cone and apple, in the artichoke, thistle, and thousands more, together with every forest stem which ivy clasps or briony climbs; there is not a sea wave but casts on shore, not a ray of light but colours and opens for him, some new model of perfect form. But let him beware how he magnifies these from their ordained proportion. I do not know any mistakes so common or so fatal as that unhappy idea (which I have combated in another place11) [285/286] that the proportions or forms of a small thing are good for a great one. It is a most palpable yet a most prevalent absurdity. Every right form, whether in nature or in art, is fitted to a given size, and becomes monstrous if it is expanded. You must not surround your columns, because they are twelve feet in diameter, with ivy leaves two feet long; you must not build a dome three hundred feet from the ground on the pattern of an artichoke:12) or a sea urchin. If nature has furnished no decorated example of a similar size, you cannot decorate at all. Your invention will be of no use to you; you will have to divide your object into parts, and treat those parts separately, or if you leave it a mass, to let that mass alone. And this is precisely what takes place in the case of large curvilinear surfaces. Every attempt to adorn them has failed, and the rich patterns of the domes of the Caliphs would look contemptible beside the plain roofs of Sta. Maria del Fiore and St. Paul's. Yet if you are not content with the rude tiles and grey metal, you may do better if you will look to your teacher's work. Nature builds domes though she does not decorate them, some dark, indeed, and stern, like those that stand on bases of black pillars above the valleys of Auvergne;13) but some most light and fair. Watch the lines of snow wreath and gradations of sunset shadow on the front of the Dome du Gouter or Mont Blanc du Tacul,14) and consider how near you might come to them with a pure dome of rosy marble."
In another sheet of MS. part of the above runs thus:
“If nature has furnished you with no decorated example on a similar or approximate scale, you must either divide the object into bold parts and treat those parts separately, or else leaving it a mass treat it with a surface decoration independent of its form, as in interior mosaics or frescoes. And as this method is especially inexpedient on the outside of domes, their interior being like a panorama surface susceptible of effects of extended space, while their exterior is always of marked outline and of definite light and shade, so that their specific form cannot be conquered, every attempt etc.
The following passages were written for Chapter VII., "The Lamp of Obedience":
“If it be true, as I have sometimes feared it is, that Poetry is gradually losing her power over our hearts, I should look for the cause of her diminished dominion less to an alteration in the tendencies of popular thought or the channels of national enthusiasm, than to her [286/287] own abuse of an influence whose continuance from the beginning depended, as to the end it must depend, upon the purity and justice with which she enshrined truth and directed emotion. And in nothing more has her forfeiture of her own privileges and betrayal of her mission been more singularly evident than in the constancy with which her words have been dedicated to the setting forth in every colour that could either adorn it or disguise, that worst and wildest phantom of mental hallucination, that most treacherous and subtle dream of all that entrap the unregulated desires of men — Liberty!
“Most subtle indeed of all dreams — and least substantial, for the feeblest ray of reason might show us that not only its attainment but its Being is impossible. There is no such Thing in the Universe, there never can be. The Stars have it not. The Earth has it not. The Sea has it not — the Pestilences and Tempests of the Air have it not ! And we men have the mockery and imagination of it sometimes only for our worst and most merciless Punishment.
“In one of the noblest poems, for its imagery and its music, belonging to the recent school of our own Literature, the writer has caught from the contemplation of inanimate nature, the fire which kindles his pain of this wild and fatal abstraction. But with what strange fallacy of Interpretation — for if there be any one principle more widely preached than another — more deeply proved — more strenuously exhibited — more unconditionally and absolutely accepted — by every atom of visible or demonstrable creation; that principle is not Liberty, but Law. And as I have already asserted, and shall afterwards endeavour more certainly to show, while a certain degree of apparent freedom is necessary to admit of the sufficient individuality in the markings and energies of things” [here the draft breaks off; the passage was re- written in the text, see above, pp. 248-249].
“Of the laws belonging to its excellence, and more especially where numbers are to be concerned in its production or practice the licence which is left to the workings of individual minds is more severely withdrawn. In this respect architecture is greater than other arts greater in proportion to the severity of her laws: for it is owing to her noble relations with all that is universally important to men: with the daily life, the polity, the history and the religious faith of nations, that it is, and imperatively, a condition of her very existence that she should accept and show forth figured and embodied in her forms and systems — those great principles of Obedience and of Loyalty to which their life owes its happiness — their polity its power their History its pride, and their Faith its Acceptance.
“Without, therefore, the light of experience without any aid but that of the simplest evidence of reason — we might firmly conclude ...” [continued as in the text, above, p. 251].
Created 12 July 2010
Last modified 4 April 2020