he overlooked the fact that long before Troy was dreamt of, Egyptian kings had raised pyramids which endure to the present day, and the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties had filled the valley of the Upper Nile with temples and palaces and tombs which tell us not only the names of their founders, but reveal to us their thoughts and aspirations with a distinctness that no sacred poet could as well convey. From that time onward the architects have covered the world with monuments that still remain on the spot where they were erected, and tell all, who are sufficiently instructed to read their riddles aright, what nations once occupied these spots, what degree of civilisation they had reached, and how, in erecting these monuments on which we now gaze, they had attained that quasi-immortality after which they hankered.

Sculpture and painting, when allied with architecture, may endure as long, but their aim is not to convey to the mind the impression of durability which is so strongly felt in the presence of the more massive works of architectural art. Even when ruined and in decay the buildings are almost equally impressive, while ruined sculptures or paintings are generally far from being pleasing objects, and, whatever their other merits may be, certainly miss that impression obtained from the durability of architectural objects.

VII.—Materials.

Another very obvious mode of obtaining architectural effect is by the largeness or costliness of the materials employed. A terrace, or even a wall, if composed of large stones, is in itself an object of considerable grandeur, while one of the same lineal dimensions and of the same design, if composed of brick or rubble, may appear a very contemptible object.

Like all the more obvious means of architectural effect, the Egyptians seized on this and carried it to its utmost legitimate extent. All their buildings, as well as their colossi and obelisks, owe much of their grandeur to the magnitude of the materials employed in their construction. The works called Cyclopean found in Italy and Greece have no other element of grandeur than the size of the stones or rather masses of rock which the builders of that age were in the habit of using. In Jerusalem nothing was so much insisted upon by the old writers, or is so much admired now, as the largeness of the stones employed in the building of the Temple and its substructions.

We can well believe how much value was attached to this when we find that in the neighbouring city of Baalbec stones were used of between 60 and 70 ft. in length, weighing as much as the tubes of the Britannia Bridge, for the mere bonding course of a terrace wall. Even in a more refined style of architecture, a pillar, the shaft of which is of a single stone, or a lintel or architrave of one block, is always a grander and more beautiful object than if composed of a number of smaller parts. Among modern buildings, the poverty-stricken design of the church of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg is redeemed by the grandeur of its monolithic columns, whilst the beautiful design of the Madeleine at Paris is destroyed by the smallness of the materials in which it is expressed. It is easy to see that this arises from the same feeling to which massiveness and stability address themselves. It is the expression of giant power and the apparent eternity of duration which they convey; and in whatever form that may be presented to the human mind, it always produces a sentiment tending towards sublimity, which is the highest effect at which architecture or any other art can aim.

The Gothic architects ignored this element of grandeur altogether, and sought to replace it by the display of constructive skill in the employment of the smaller materials they used, but it is extremely questionable whether in so doing they did not miss one of the most obvious and most important principles of architectural design.

Besides these, value in the mere material is a great element in architectural effect. We all, for instance, admire an ornament of pure gold more than one that is only silver gilt, though few can detect the difference. Persons will travel hundreds of miles to see a great diamond or wonderful pearl, who would not go as many yards to see paste models of them, though if the two were laid together on the table very few indeed could distinguish the real from the counterfeit.

When we come to consider such buildings as the cathedral at Milan or the Taje Mehal at Agra, there can be no doubt but that the beauty of the material of which they are composed adds very much to the admiration they excite. In the latter case the precious stones with which the ornamental parts of the design are inlaid, convey an impression of grandeur almost as directly as their beauty of outline.

It is, generally speaking, because of its greater preciousness that we admire a marble building more than one of stone, though the colour of the latter may be really as beautiful and the material at least as durable. In the same manner a stone edifice is preferred to one of brick, and brick to wood and plaster; but even these conditions may be reversed by the mere question of value. If, for instance, a brick and a stone edifice stand close together, the design of both being equally appropriate to the material employed, our judgment may be reversed if the bricks are so beautifully moulded, or made of such precious clay, or so carefully laid, that the brick edifice costs twice as much as the other; in that case we should look with more respect and admiration on the artificial than on the natural material. From the same reason many elaborately carved wooden buildings, notwithstanding the smallness of their parts and their perishable nature, are more to be admired than larger and more monumental structures, and this merely in consequence of the evidence of labour and consequent cost that have been bestowed upon them.

Irrespective of these considerations, many building materials are invaluable from their own intrinsic merits. Granite is one of the best known, from its hardness and durability, marble from the exquisite polish it takes, and for its colour, which for internal decoration is a property that can hardly be over-estimated. Stone is valuable on account of the largeness of the blocks that can be obtained and because it easily receives a polish sufficient for external purposes. Bricks are excellent for their cheapness and the facility with which they can be used, and they may also be moulded into forms of great elegance, so that beauty may be easily attained; but sublimity is nearly impossible in brickwork, without at least such dimensions as have rarely been accomplished by man. The smallness of the material is such a manifest incongruity with largeness of the parts, that even the Romans, though they tried hard, could never quite overcome the difficulty.

Plaster is another artificial material. Except in monumental erections it is superior to stone for internal purposes, and always better than brick from the uniformity and smoothness of its surface, the facility with which it is moulded, and its capability of receiving painted or other decorations to any extent.

Wood should be used externally only on the smallest and least monumental class of buildings, and even internally is generally inferior to plaster. It is dark in colour, liable to warp and split, and combustible, which are all serious objections to its use, except for flooring, doors, and such purposes as it is now generally applied to.

Cast iron is another material rarely brought into use, though more precious than any of those above enumerated, and possessing more strength, though probably less durability. Where lightness combined with strength is required, it is invaluable, but though it can be moulded into any form of beauty that may be designed, it has hardly yet ever been so used as to allow of its architectural qualities being appreciated.

All these materials are nearly equally good when used honestly each for the purpose for which it is best adapted; they all become bad either when employed for a purpose for which they are not appropriate, or when one material is substituted in the place of or to imitate another. Grandeur and sublimity can only be reached by the more durable and more massive class of materials, but beauty and elegance are attainable in all, and the range of architectural design is so extensive that it is absurd to limit it to one class either of natural or of artificial materials, or to attempt to prescribe the use of some and to insist on that of others, for purposes to which they are manifestly inapplicable.

VIII.—Construction.

Construction has been shown to be the chief aim and object of the engineer; with him it is all in all, and to construct scientifically and at the same time economically is the beginning and end of his endeavours. It is far otherwise with the architect. Construction ought to be his handmaid, useful to assist him in carrying out his design, but never his mistress, controlling him in the execution of that which he would otherwise think expedient. An architect ought always to allow himself such a margin of strength that he may disregard or play with his construction, and in nine cases out of ten the money spent in obtaining this solidity will be more effective architecturally than twice the amount expended on ornament, however elegant or appropriate that may be.

So convinced were the Egyptians and Greeks of this principle, that they never used any other constructive expedient than a perpendicular wall or prop, supporting a horizontal beam; and half the satisfactory effect of their buildings arises from their adhering to this simple though expensive mode of construction. They were perfectly acquainted with the use of the arch and its properties, but they knew that its employment would introduce complexity and confusion into their designs, and therefore they wisely rejected it. Even to the present day the Hindus refuse to use the arch, though it has long been employed in their country by the Mahometans. As they quaintly express it, “An arch never sleeps;” and it is true that by its thrust and pressure it is always tending to tear a building to pieces; in spite of all counterpoises, whenever the smallest damage is done, it hastens the ruin of a building, which, if more simply constructed, might last for ages.

The Romans were the first who introduced a more complicated style. They wanted larger and more complex buildings than had been before required, and they employed brick and concrete to a great extent even in their temples and most monumental buildings. They obtained both space and variety by these means, with comparatively little trouble or expense; but we miss in all their works that repose and harmony which is the great charm that pervades the buildings of their predecessors.

The Gothic architects went even beyond the Romans in this respect. They prided themselves on their constructive skill, and paraded it on all occasions, and often to an extent very destructive of true architectural design. The lower storey of a French cathedral is generally very satisfactory; the walls are thick and solid, and the buttresses, when not choked up with chapels, just sufficient for shadow and relief; but the architects of that country were seized with a mania for clerestories of gigantic height, which should appear internally mere walls of painted glass divided by mullions. This could only be effected either by encumbering the floor of the church with piers of inconvenient thickness or by a system of buttressing outside. The latter was the expedient adopted; but notwithstanding the ingenuity with which it was carried out, and the elegance of many of the forms and ornaments used, it was singularly destructive of true architectural effect. It not only produces confusion of outline and a total want of repose, but it is eminently suggestive of weakness, and one cannot help feeling that if one of these props were removed, the whole would tumble down like a house of cards.

This was hardly ever the case in England: the less ambitious dimensions employed in this country enabled the architects to dispense in a great measure with these adjuncts, and when flying buttresses are used, they look more as if employed to suggest the idea of perfect security than as necessary to stability. Owing to this cause the French have never been able to construct a satisfactory vault: in consequence of the weakness of their supports they were forced to stilt, twist, and dome them to a most unpleasing extent, and to attend to constructive instead of artistic necessities. With the English architects this never was the case; they were always able to design their vaults in such forms as they thought would be most beautiful artistically, and, owing to the greater solidity of their supports, to carry them out as at first designed.^[12]

It was left for the Germans to carry this system to its acme of absurdity. Half the merit of the old Round arched Gothic cathedrals on the Rhine consists in their solidity and the repose they display in every part. Their walls and other essential parts are always in themselves sufficient to support the roofs and vaults, and no constructive contrivance is seen anywhere; but when the Germans adopted the pointed style, their builders—they can hardly be called architects—seemed to think that the whole art consisted in supporting the widest possible vaults on the thinnest possible pillars and in constructing the tallest windows with the most attenuated mullions. The consequence is, that though their constructive skill still excites the wonder of the mason or the engineer, the artist or the architect turns from the cold vaults and lean piers of their later cathedrals with a painful feeling of unsatisfied expectation, and wonders why such dimensions and such details should produce a result so utterly unsatisfactory.

So many circumstances require to be taken into consideration, that it is impossible to prescribe any general rules in such a subject as this, but the following table will explain to a certain extent the ratio of the area to the points of support in sixteen of the principal buildings of the world.^[13] As far as it goes, it tends to prove that the satisfactory architectural effect of a building is nearly in the inverse ratio to the mechanical cleverness displayed in its construction.

At the head of the list stands the Hypostyle Hall, and next to it practically is the Parthenon, which being the only wooden-roofed building in the list, its ratio of support in proportion to the work required is nearly as great as that of the Temple at Karnac. Spires only wants better details to be one of the grandest edifices in Europe, and Bourges, Paris, Chartres, and Salisbury are among the most satisfactory Gothic cathedrals we possess. St. Ouen, notwithstanding all its beauty of detail and design, fails in this one point, and is certainly deficient in solidity. Cologne and Milan would both be very much improved by greater massiveness: and at York the lightness of the supports is carried so far that it never can be completed with the vaulted roof originally designed, for the nave at least.

The four great Renaissance cathedrals, at Rome, Florence, London, and Paris, enumerated in this list, have quite sufficient strength for architectural effect, but the value of this is lost from concealed construction, and because the supports are generally grouped into a few great masses, the dimensions of which cannot be estimated by the eye. A Gothic architect would have divided these masses into twice or three times the number of the piers used in these churches, and by employing ornament designed to display and accentuate the construction, would have rendered these buildings far more satisfactory than they are.

In this respect the great art of the architect consists in obtaining the greatest possible amount of unencumbered space internally, consistent in the first place with the requisite amount of permanent mechanical stability, and next with such an appearance of superfluity of strength as shall satisfy the mind that the building is perfectly secure and calculated to last for ages.

IX.—Forms.

It is extremely difficult to lay down any general rules as to the forms best adapted to architectural purposes, as the value of a form in architecture depends wholly on the position in which it is placed and the use to which it is applied. There is in consequence no prescribed form, however ugly it may appear at present, that may not one day be found to be the very best for a given purpose; and, in like manner, none of those most admired which may not become absolutely offensive when used in a manner for which they are unsuited. In itself no simple form seems to have any inherent value of its own, and it is only by combination of one with another that they become effective. If, for instance, we take a series of twenty or thirty figures, placing a cube at one end as the most solid of angular and a sphere at the other as the most perfect of round shapes, it would be easy to cut off the angles of the cube in successive gradations till it became a polygon of so many sides as to be nearly curvilinear. On the other hand by modifying the sphere through all the gradations of conic sections, it might meet the other series in the centre without there being any abrupt distinction between them. Such a series might be compared to the notes of a piano. We cannot say that any one of the base or treble notes is in itself more beautiful than the others. It is only by a combination of several notes that harmony is produced, and gentle or brilliant melodies by their fading into one another, or by strongly marked contrasts. So it is with forms: the square and angular are expressive of strength and power; curves of softness and elegance; and beauty is produced by effective combination of the right-lined with the curvilinear. It is always thus in nature. Rocks and all the harder substances are rough and angular, and marked by strong contrasts and deep lines. Among trees, the oak is rugged, and its branches are at right angles to its stem, or to one another. The lines of the willow are rounded, and flowing. The forms of children and women are round and full, and free from violent contrasts; those of men are abrupt, hard, and angular in proportion to the vigour and strength of their frame.

In consequence of these properties, as a general rule the square or angular parts ought always to be placed below, where strength is wanted, and the rounded above. If, for instance, a tower is to be built, the lower storey should not only be square, but should be marked by buttresses, or other strong lines, and the masonry rusticated, so as to convey even a greater appearance of strength. Above this, if the square form is still retained, it may be with more elegance and less accentuation. The form may then change to an octagon, that to a polygon of sixteen sides, and then be surmounted by a circular form of any sort. These conditions are not absolute, but the reverse arrangement would be manifestly absurd. A tower with a circular base and a square upper storey is what almost no art could render tolerable, while the other pleases by its innate fitness without any extraordinary effort of design.

On the other hand, round pillars are more pleasing as supports for a square architrave, not so much from any inherent fitness for the purpose as from the effect of contrast, and flat friezes are preferable to curved ones of the late Roman styles from the same cause. The angular mouldings introduced among the circular shafts of a Gothic coupled pillar, add immensely to the brilliancy of effect. Where everything is square and rugged, as in a Druidical trilithon, the effect may be sublime, but it cannot be elegant; where everything is rounded, as in the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, the perfection of elegance may be attained, but never sublimity. Perfection, as usual, lies between these extremes.

X—Proportion.

The properties above enumerated may be characterised as the mechanical principles of design. Size, stability, construction, material, and many such, are elements at the command of the engineer or mason, as well as of the architect, and a building remarkable for these properties only, cannot be said to rise above the lowest grade of architectural excellence. They are invaluable adjuncts in the hands of the true artist, but ought never to be the principal elements of design.

After these, the two most important resources at the command of the architect are Proportion and Ornament; the former enabling him to construct ornamentally, the latter to ornament his construction; both require knowledge and thought, and can only be properly applied by one thoroughly imbued with the true principles of architectural design.

As proportion, to be good, must be modified by every varying exigence of a design, it is of course impossible to lay down any general rules which shall hold good in all cases; but a few of its principles are obvious enough, and can be defined so as to enable us to judge how far they have been successfully carried out in the various buildings enumerated in the following pages.

To take first the simplest form of the proposition, let us suppose a room built, which shall be an exact cube—of say 20 feet each way—such a proportion must be bad and inartistic; and besides, the height is too great for the other dimensions, apparently because it is impossible to get far enough away to embrace the whole wall at one view, or to see the springing of the roof, without throwing the head back and looking upwards. If the height were exaggerated to thirty or forty feet, the disproportion would be so striking, that no art could render it agreeable. As a general rule, a room square in plan is never pleasing. It is always better that one side should be longer than the other, so as to give a little variety to the design. Once and a half the width has often been recommended, and with every increase of length an increase of height is not only allowable, but indispensable. Some such rule as the following seems to meet most cases:—“The height of a room ought to be equal to half its width, plus the square root of its length.” Thus a room 20 feet square ought to be between 14 and 15 feet high; if its length be increased to 40 feet, its height must be at least 161⁄2; if 100, certainly not less than 20. If we proceed further, and make the height actually exceed the width, the effect is that of making it look narrow. As a general rule, and especially in all extreme cases, by adding to one dimension, we take away in appearance from the others. Thus, if we take a room 20 feet wide and 30 or 40 feet in height, we make it narrow; if 40 wide and 20 high, we make a low room. By increasing the length, we diminish the other two dimensions.

This, however, is merely speaking of plain rooms with plain walls, and an architect may be forced to construct rooms of all sorts of unpleasing dimensions, but it is here that his art comes to his aid, and he must be very little of an artist if he cannot conceal, even when unable entirely to counteract, the defects of his dimensions. A room, for instance, that is a perfect cube of 20 feet may be made to look as low as one only 15 feet high, by using a strongly marked horizontal decoration, by breaking the wall into different heights, by marking strongly the horizontal proportions, and obliterating as far as possible all vertical lines. The reverse process will make a room only 10 feet high look as lofty as one of 15.

Even the same wall-paper (if of strongly marked lines) if pasted on the sides of two rooms exactly similar in dimensions, but with the lines vertical in the one case, in the other horizontal, will alter the apparent dimensions of them by several feet. If a room is too high, it is easy to correct this by carrying a bold cornice to the height required, and stopping there the vertical lines of the wall, and above this coving the roof, or using some device which shall mark a distinction from the walls, and the defect may become a beauty. In like manner, if a room is too long for its other dimensions, this is easily remedied either by breaks in the walls where these can be obtained, or by screens of columns across its width, or by only breaking the height of the roof. Anything which will divide the length into compartments will effect this. The width, if in excess, is easily remedied by dividing it, as the Gothic architects did, into aisles. Thus a room 50 feet wide and 30 high, may easily be restored to proportion by cutting off 10 or 12 feet on each side, and lowering the roofs of the side compartments, to say 20 feet. If great stability is not required, this can be done without encumbering the floor with many points of support. The greater the number used the more easily the effect is obtained, but it can be done almost without them.

Externally it is easier to remedy defects of proportion than it is internally. It is easier than on the inside to increase the apparent height by strongly marked vertical lines, or to bring it down by the employment of a horizontal decoration.

If the length of a building is too great, this is easily remedied by projections, or by breaking up the length into square divisions. Thus, A A is a long building, but B B is a square one, or practically (owing to the perspective) less than a square in length, in any direction at right angles to the line of vision; or, in other words, to a spectator at A’ the building would look as if shorter in the direction of B B than in that of A A, owing to the largeness and importance of the part nearest the eye. If 100 feet in length by 50 feet high is a pleasing dimension for a certain design, and it is required that the building should be 500 feet long, it is only necessary to break it into five parts, and throw three back and two forward, or the contrary, and the proportion becomes as before.

The Egyptians hardly studied the science of proportion at all; they gained their effects by simpler and more obvious means. The Greeks were masters in this as in everything else, but they used the resources of the art with extreme sobriety—externally at least—dreading to disturb that simplicity which is so essential to sublimity in architecture. But internally, where sublimity was not attainable with the dimensions they employed, they divided the cells of their temples into three aisles, and the height into two, by placing two ranges of columns one above the other. By these means they were enabled to use such a number of small parts as to increase the apparent size most considerably, and at the same time to give greater apparent magnitude to the statue, which was the principal object for which the temple was erected.

The Romans do not seem to have troubled themselves with the science of proportion in the designs of their buildings, though nothing can well be more exquisite than the harmony that exists between the parts in their orders, and generally in their details. During the Middle Ages, however, we find, from first to last, the most earnest attention paid to it, and half the beauty of the buildings of that age is owing to the successful results to which the architects carried their experiments in balancing the parts of their structures the one against the other, so as to produce that harmony we so much admire in them.

The first great invention of the Gothic architects (though of Greek origin) was that of dividing the breadth of the building internally into three aisles, and making the central one higher and wider than those on each side. By this means height and length were obtained at the expense of width: this latter, however, is never a valuable property artistically, though it may be indispensable for the utilitarian exigencies of the building. They next sought to increase still further the height of the central aisle by dividing its sides into three equal portions which by contrast added very much to the effect: but the monotony of this arrangement was soon apparent: besides, it was perceived that the side aisles were so low as not to come into direct comparison with the central nave. To remedy this they gradually increased its dimensions, and at last hit on something very like the following proportions. They made the height of the side aisle half that of the central (the width being also in the same proportion); the remaining portions they divided into three, making the triforium one-third, the clerestory two-thirds of the whole. Thus the three divisions are in the proportion of 1, 2, and 3, each giving value to the other, and the whole adding very considerably to all the apparent dimensions of the interior. It would have been easy to have carried the system further and, by increasing the number of the pillars longitudinally and the number of divisions vertically, to have added considerably to even this appearance of size; but it would then have been at the expense of simplicity and grandeur: and though the building might have looked larger, the beauty of the design would have been destroyed.

One of the most striking exemplifications of the perfection of the Gothic architects in this department of their art is shown in their employment of towers and spires. As a general rule, placing a tall building in juxtaposition with a low one exaggerates the height of the one and the lowness of the other; and as it was by no means the object of the architects to sacrifice their churches for their towers, it required all their art to raise noble spires without doing this. In the best designs they effected it by bold buttresses below, and the moment the tower got free of the building, by changing it to an octagon and cutting it up by pinnacles, and lastly by changing its form into that of a spire, using generally smaller parts than are found in the church. By these devices they prevented the spire from competing in any way with the church. On the contrary, a spire or group of spires gave dignity and height to the whole design, without deducting from any of its dimensions.

The city of Paris contains an instructive exemplification of these doctrines—the façade of the Cathedral of Notre Dame (exclusive of the upper storey of the towers), and the Arc de l’Etoile being two buildings of exactly the same dimensions; yet any one who is not aware of this fact would certainly estimate the dimensions of the cathedral as at least a third, if not a half, in excess of the other. It may be said that the arch gains in sublimity and grandeur what it loses in apparent dimensions by the simplicity of its parts. The façade of the cathedral, though far from one of the best in France, is by no means deficient in grandeur; and had it been as free from the trammels of utilitarianism as the arch, might easily have been made as simple and as grand, without losing its apparent size. In the other case, by employing in the arch the principles which the Gothic architects elaborated with such pains, the apparent dimensions might have been increased without detracting from its solidity, and it might thus have been rendered one of the sublimest buildings in the world.

The interior of St. Peter’s at Rome is an example of the neglect of these principles. Its great nave is divided into only four bays, and the proportions and ornaments of these, borrowed generally from external architecture, are so gigantic, that it is difficult to realise the true dimensions of the church, except by the study of the plan; and it is not too much to assert, that had a cathedral of these dimensions been built in the true Gothic style, during the 13th or 14th century, it would have appeared as if from one-third to one-half larger, and might have been the most sublime, whereas St. Peter’s is now only the largest temple ever erected.

It would be easy to multiply examples to show to what perfection the science of proportion was carried by the experimental processes above described during the existence of the true styles of architecture, and how satisfactory the result is, even upon those who are not aware of the cause; and, on the other hand, how miserable are the failures that result either from the ignorance or neglect of its rules. Enough, it is hoped, has been said to show that not only are the apparent proportions of a building very much under the control of an architect independent of its lineal dimensions, but also that he has it in his power so to proportion every part as to give value to all those around it, thus producing that harmony which in architecture, as well as in music or in painting, is the very essence of a true or satisfactory utterance.

XI.—Carved Ornament.

Architectural ornament is of two kinds, constructive and decorative. By the former is meant all those contrivances, such as capitals, brackets, vaulting shafts, and the like, which serve to explain or give expression to the construction; by the latter, such as mouldings, frets, foliage, &c., which give grace and life either to the actual constructive forms, or to the constructive decoration.

In mere building or engineering, the construction being all in all, it is left to tell its own tale in its own prosaic nakedness; but in true architecture construction is always subordinate, and as architectural buildings ought always to possess an excess of strength it need not show itself unless desired; but even in an artistic point of view it always is expedient to express it. The vault, for instance, of a Gothic cathedral might just as easily spring from a bracket or a corbel as from a shaft, and in early experiments this was often tried; but the effect was unsatisfactory, and a vaulting shaft was carried down first to the capital of the pillar, and afterwards to the floor: by this means the eye was satisfied, the thin reed-like shafts being sufficient to explain that the vault rested on the solid ground, and an apparent propriety and stability were given to the whole. These shafts not being necessary constructively, the artist could make them of any form or size he thought most proper, and consequently, instead of one he generally used three small shafts tied together at various intervals. Afterwards merely a group of graceful mouldings was employed, which satisfied not only the exigencies of ornamental construction, but became a real and essential decorative feature of the building.

In like manner it was good architecture to use flying buttresses, even where they were not essential to stability. They explained externally that the building was vaulted, and that its thrusts were abutted and stability secured. The mistake in their employment was where they became so essential to security, that the constructive necessities controlled the artistic propriety of the design, and the architect found himself compelled to employ either a greater number, or buttresses of greater strength than he would have desired had he been able to dispense with them.

The architecture of the Greeks was so simple, that they required few artifices to explain their construction; but in their triglyphs their mutules, the form of their cornices and other devices, they took pains to explain, not only that these parts had originally been of wood but that the temple still retained its wooden roof. Had they ever adopted a vault, they would have employed a totally different system of decoration. Having no constructive use whatever, these parts were wholly under the control of the architects, and they consequently became the beautiful things we now so much admire.

With their more complicated style the Romans introduced many new modes of constructive decoration. They were the first to employ vaulting shafts. In all the great halls of their Baths, or of their vaulted Basilicas, they applied a Corinthian pillar as a vaulting shaft to the front of the pier from which the arch appears to spring, though the latter really supported the vault. All the pillars have now been removed, but without at all interfering with the stability of the vaults; they were mere decorative features to explain the construction, but indispensable for that purpose. The Romans also suggested most of the other decorative inventions of the Middle Ages, but their architecture never reached beyond the stage of transition. It was left for the Gothic architects freely to elaborate this mode of architectural effect, and they carried it to an extent never dreamt of before; but it is to this that their buildings owe at least half the beauty they possess.

The same system of course applies to dwelling-houses, and to the meanest objects of architectural art. The string-course that marks externally the floor-line of the different storeys is as legitimate and indispensable an ornament as a vaulting shaft, and it would also be well that the windows should be grouped so as to indicate the size of the rooms, and at least a plain space left where a partition wall abuts, or better still a pilaster or buttress, or line of some sort, ought to mark externally that feature of internal construction.

The cornice is as indispensable a termination of the wall as the capital is of a pillar; and suggests not only an appropriate support for the roof, but eaves to throw the rain off the wall. The same is true with regard to pediments or caps over windows: they suggest a means of protecting an opening from the wet; and porches over doorways are equally obvious contrivances. Everything, in short, which is actually constructive, or which suggests what was or may be a constructive expedient, is a legitimate object of decoration, and affords the architect unlimited scope for the display of taste and skill, without going out of his way to seek it.

The difficulty in applying ornaments borrowed from other styles is, that although they all suggest construction, it is not the construction of the buildings to which they are applied. To use Pugin’s clever antithesis, “they are constructed ornament, not ornamented construction,” and as such can never satisfy the mind. However beautiful in themselves, they are out of place, there is no real or apparent use for their being there; and, in an art so essentially founded on utilitarian principles and common sense as architecture is, any offence against constructive propriety is utterly intolerable.

The other class, or decorative ornaments, are forms invented for the purpose, either mere lithic forms, or copied from the vegetable kingdom, and applied so as to give elegance or brilliancy to the constructive decoration just described.

The first and most obvious of these are mere mouldings, known to architects as Scotias, Cavettos, Ogees, Toruses, Rolls, &c.—curves which, used in various proportions either horizontally or vertically, produce when artistically combined, the most pleasing effect.

In conjunction with these, it is usual to employ a purely conventional class of ornament, such as frets, scrolls, or those known as the bead and reel, or egg and dart mouldings; or in Gothic architecture the billet or dog-tooth or all the thousand and one forms that were invented during the Middle Ages.

In certain styles of art, vegetable forms are employed even more frequently than those last described. Among these, perhaps the most beautiful and perfect ever invented was that known as the honeysuckle ornament, which the Greeks borrowed from the Assyrians, but made so peculiarly their own. It has all the conventional character of a purely lithic, with all the grace of a vegetable form; and, as used with the Ionic order, is more nearly perfect than any other known.

The Romans made a step further towards a more direct imitation of nature in their employment of the acanthus leaf. As applied to a capital, or where the constructive form of the bell beneath it is still distinctly seen, it is not only unobjectionable, but productive of the most pleasing effect. Indeed it is doubtful if anything of its class has yet been invented so entirely satisfactory as the Roman Corinthian order, as found, for instance, in the so-called Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome. The proportions of the order have never yet been excelled, and there is just that balance between imitation of nature and conventionality which is indispensable. It is not so pure or perfect as a Grecian order, but as an example of rich decoration applied to an architectural order it is unsurpassed.

With their disregard of precedent and untrammelled wildness of imagination, the Gothic architects tried every form of vegetable ornament, from the purest conventionalism, where the vegetable form can hardly be recognised, to the most literal imitation of nature.

While confining himself to purely lithic forms, an architect can never sin against good taste, though he may miss many beauties; with the latter class of ornament he is always in danger of offence, and few have ever employed it without falling into mistakes. In the first place, because it is impossible to imitate perfectly foliage and flowers in stone; and secondly, because if the pliant forms of plants are made to support, or do the work of, hard stone, the incongruity is immediately apparent, and the more perfect the imitation the greater the mistake.