Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Archæology is at present achieving for prospective art just what geology is contributing to the progress of natural science. Crumbling relics and fossil impressions are everywhere exhumed, classified and published for the purpose of ascertaining our true relation to historical art and progressive civilization. From this source more copious materials are derived, and a surer as well as better means than language affords for solving the greatest of social problems, since there is more authentic history built into the walls of the Egyptian temples, or those of Greece, or the cathedrals of the mediæval West, than exists in all the chronicles that ever were written. The successive masterpieces of monumental art are unaltered cotemporary records which, in the age of Washington, are becoming easily read, and most lucidly translated into the universal language of mankind. The buildings and subordinate artistic productions of each historic people tell their own tale, and can never be entirely falsified by time or the blunders of copyists; but remain as left by their originators, with the undying impress of their aspirations, or their vagaries, stamped in characters of adamant.

Alexander, the great transition-servitor of Providence in the earlier ages of progress, had been prompted to visit the temples of Ammon, by the tradition that they had been visited by his ancestor, Perseus, in his expedition against Medusa, and Hercules, after the victory of Busiris. Differently inspired, but for the same final end, the great Corsican, born out of Europe, and eager to impel the car of empire even beyond his native island-home, signalized his destiny when he reached the same meeting-place of the obsolete and progressive nations, exclaiming, "Soldiers! from the summit of yonder pyramids forty centuries behold you." The pilgrim, the crusader, and the Hadgi, had successively brought back from those remote regions some degree of that veneration which is connected with hazards undergone from religious impulses. But with his savans round him, and all France quickened by an impulse from America into a higher life, Napoleon's campaign in the land of Ham, first in the history of our race, was the glorious conquest of arts as well as of arms. The Pyramids, like the shrines of Ammon, were temples; and they had been the immemorial centre of art and science. The secrets of all the natural knowledge, the high historic memories, and the mystic rites, of the ancient land of wisdom, seemed to be there still, hidden in those profound treasuries of rock, which neither time, conquest, nor curiosity, had been able to penetrate. But what was then accomplished deserves especial regard and gratitude. Connoisseurs of recondite skill and acute discrimination, led by their sagacious champion, penetrated to the profoundest chamber, wherein, some three thousand years before, some Pharaoh had been interred, and thence gleaned the richest store of antique memorials to be preserved and interpreted in other climes. The only army on earth who could endure the fatigues of such an enterprise were employed to collect the needed materials of advancing civilization; and then another providential act, equally significant, bore those treasures to London and not to Paris. All the oldest and most enduring worth is rapidly concentrating in the youngest and most progressive race. When we come to speak of sculptural art, and of its relation to the amelioration of universal mind, we shall more particularly refer to the wonderful manner in which "the Rosetta stone" came into English hands.

Under the same roof which protects the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, are the Elgin Marbles, those glorious fragments of Athens and the Parthenon. Their greatness of manner is far more imposing than any mere bulk and extent; and more original skill and science, more artistic talent is displayed in those mutilated models alone, than in all other classical remains extant. Subsequent creations are the branches only, but the Parthenon is the root from which their broad and beautiful characteristics are undoubtedly derived. It is indeed strange that, although the architecture of Rome sprung from that of Greece, and all modern styles were derived, through Rome, from the same source, never until our day was discovered the most striking peculiarity of Grecian design. It was reserved for an English architect, Mr. F.C. Penrose, to demonstrate the mathematical and optical principles on which, apparently, the whole art was founded. The Parthenon taught him the brilliant truth that there is not a straight line in the building; and there is good reason to believe that such is the rule with respect to other important Greek structures. Mathematical curves, accurately calculated, were made to correct the disagreeable effect which a perfect straight line has to a practiced eye; but the delicate taste which thus carried classicalism to the highest pitch of refinement, remained in abeyance until the dawn of an age in which monumental art will first revive all previous excellences, and then excel what it supersedes.

Not only has this age opened with an unprecedented acquaintance with Egyptian art treasures, and a more accurate knowledge of the architectural monuments of Greece, but we also enjoy the advantage of other great external aids, such as the excavation of the buried cities skirting Vesuvius, and the unexpectedly rich discovery of Etruscan tombs. As the fitting concomitant of these startling revelations, the great mind of Winckleman was prepared to give a luminous interpretation thereof; and correlative attempts were made by other masters to treat art historically and philosophically in the presence of innumerable pupils zealous in antiquarian research. Referring to the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii, Goethe remarks: "Many a calamity has befallen the world ere now, yet none like this, replete with instruction and delight for remote generations." No graphic power can convey to a stranger an adequate idea of the affluence of objects intensely interesting connected with these cities so long buried, and recently disinterred. Successive streets of plebeian homes, but pillared and sculptured as if they were the abodes of patricians, intersecting the radiant confusion of theatres and temples, imbue the visitor with that blended sense of beauty defying decay, of hoary antiquity, and of thrilling domestic incident, which can be felt only amid the solemn stillness of the excavated city. The baptism of fire here became, in the highest degree conservative. It filled up with its train the gap of eighteen centuries, and has made "the trivial fond records" which the prints of hurried footsteps and trembling figures imply, immortal in the marl which hardened over them, and has left them as touching as if they told the fate of some ancient friends. Here we have the ancients as they lived, with many of their houses adorned with the wonderful efforts of Greek genius, skillfully copied by Roman art. We look at them, astonished and enraptured at the gorgeous pomp, and at the luxurious richness of which the East has ever been so proud. The superb collection of varied art which has so recently been rescued from the ruined city, opens to our age a new school of study, and most strikingly exemplifies the progressive changes which befell art from Pericles to Augustus, from eastern Greece to western Italy.

Still more startling are the developments recently made at Nineveh. Like a second Pompeii, it has revealed the secrets of the inner life of a people, the scene of whose existence had long been forgotten. One of the fairest and most celebrated cities of the earth, and the capital of a mighty empire, its very site was for centuries unknown, and its name had become a by-word among nations. Buried beneath the ruins of its own greatness, the sun no longer shone on its colossal walls, its palaces and its temples. The wandering Arab and the enlightened European, alike ignorant of the treasures beneath their feet, rode over the plain beneath which lay buried the pride of Asshur and all the glories of the magnificent Semiramis. That which Jonah describes as "an exceeding great city of three days' journey," and Diodorus Siculus tells us was sixty miles in circuit; that which had once been the centre of civilization, and the scene of the utmost barbaric splendor, had sunk in awful silence and desolation. The change in the general aspect of the region, and the total disappearance of the mighty metropolis and its records, were perfectly appalling, until one English scholar wandered there to discover the strange monuments, and another fitting co-operative, Rawlinson, was raised up to read them. No one appears to have explored the ruins of Nineveh from about six hundred years before Christ, when it was taken by Cyaxares, to the day when Layard displayed its subterranean mysteries to a wondering world. During this long lapse of centuries, empires had risen and been swept away, and two new creeds, Christianity and Mohammedanism, had spread over the earth, when slowly and sublimely rising from their colossal tomb, came forth the winged forms of fearful majesty, and were borne to the remote West on the bosom of that mightier civilization behind which they had lingered so long.

The best specimens of original art in every successive monumental style are thus collected in London, and form the finest illustration of consecutive development; but at the same time old England is the least original in her new buildings. The greatest wonder in the three kingdoms at the present day is a monster of talent, and not a model of genius, a huge inclosure of iron and glass, without a single new molding or other feature of recent invention. But what deserves particular notice is the fact, that within that vast non-architectural structure is the finest, and probably the first, chronological exemplification of all the great national styles of preceding times. Like most modern buildings, these specimen-forms are executed in unsubstantial materials, disguised so as to represent precious and praiseworthy works. The Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Alhambra, Mediæval, Renaissance, Pompeian, and Nineveh courts, show at a glance what affluence of architectural invention in past ages existed in the East, and how debased became all attempts in this department of art in western Europe before American colonization began. It would seem as if heaven designed that nothing of marked character should be imported to interfere with early tendencies toward originality in this new artistic sphere, and that afterward all select reminiscences of the old world should be wafted toward us as fast as indigenous taste and power might arise to require their support and assimilate their worth.

The Virginia colony transferred with but little change the degraded cruciform type of sacred architecture common to the mother church of that day, and which decayed utterly with her enforced spiritual dominion. The primitive churches, such as those at Jamestown, Hampton, and Petersburg, are the most picturesque and complete ruins in the United States. The Puritans, on the contrary, built in a manner astutely original, and their rectangular ugliness remaineth unto this day. The early buildings of New England, and in the Middle States, both civic and sacred, unsymmetrical and uncouth as they may appear, have yet an air of originality and strength which will greatly tend to perpetuate the characteristic hardihood of their origin. Greek and Roman temples in small, and miniature cathedrals of mediæval design, executed in heterogeneous materials and with excruciating anomalies, are springing up in every ambitious town. But the most of these are insipid, hollow, and contemptible shams, compared with the plain and truthful, though unartistic edifices which our earnest fathers built. As soon as the passion for paltry imitation shall have exhausted its inanity, we shall see a rugged germ of originality spring from that stock, which will grow into a worthy type of American monumental art.

Several indications already justify this hope. In the first place, in all the great works which require the blending of inventive genius with constructive skill, and which are made flexile as well as firm in their adaptation to novel emergencies and the most available use, our countrymen have no superiors on earth. Our engineering works and national fabrics of every sort are confessedly unexcelled. Structures of popular taste and public utility, such as stores, banks, hotels, and ships, are universally acknowledged to be the finest extant. When our people in general, and architects in particular, shall have given equal thought and zeal to the perfection of religious art suited to our climate and customs, still greater success will doubtless be attained.

It is well known that the Greeks invented the most beautiful order of architecture, called Corinthian, at the period of Periclean decline. The exquisite little memorial of Lysicrates was their only perfected specimen, the proportions of which were never enlarged in the clime of their first bloom. A corrupted Roman modification has often been repeated, but not till the age of Washington, and nearly on the very spot where Liberty first proclaimed her complete emancipation, did an architect conceive the purpose of recasting those perfectly beautiful outlines on a colossal scale. Since Pericles and his age perished, earth has seen no fairer fabric, both as to its material form and artistic soul, than Girard college presents. Compare the Madeleine of Paris, and St. George's Hall at Liverpool, two cotemporaneous masterpieces, nearest to the same order, and most lauded by their respective nations, if you would estimate the actual progress we have made in monumental art. There is more pure Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian architecture executed in marble and now adorning Philadelphia alone, than can be found in Paris and London combined, or in any other three cities of either France or England.

The new House of Parliament now building in Westminster has already cost an enormous sum, and is profusely decorated on the interior and exterior with a great variety of graphic and sculptured art. But one familiar with the palatial and ecclesiastical architecture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will search in vain for the first original feature in the whole conglomerated pile. We, too, are building a new Capitol, and how do the two edifices compare as to intrinsic monumental worth? All nations wove native vegetation into their mural and columnar creations down to the middle of the fifteenth century of the Christian era, when all architectural invention manifestly ceased. Thenceforth shields of arms, sheets of armor, and shreds of fiddles or yet emptier fantasies usurped the entablature, darkened casements, and cumbered over-burdened shafts. Hence in the palace of Lords and Commons on the border of the Thames, if amid ten thousand vestiges of feudal fierceness and heraldic insignia, we look for structural adornments fashioned after a leaf, or flower, or tuft of foliage peculiar to the England of to-day, not one can be found. But when the original home of our national legislation was restored near the Potomac, the chief colonnade was surmounted by a new cap, bearing in graceful curve and foliation the clustered wealth of our primitive staple, corn. Since then other indications of native resources have been added; and the architect who is now serving his country and the cause of progressive art so well, boldly lays our entire domain of vegetable glories under contribution to enhance the beauty and characterize the purpose of his marble halls. When completed according to the present design, American architecture, sculpture, and painting, will therein coalesce in consummate excellence to signalize an advance in native art commensurate with the immensity of our republican domains.