A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

There is one property inherent in the productions of architectural art, which, while it frequently lends to them half their charm, at the same time tends more than anything else to warp and distort our critical judgments regarding them. We seldom can look at a building of any age without associating with it such historical memories as may cling to its walls; and our predilections for any peculiar style of architecture are more often due to educational or devotional associations than to purely artistic judgments. A man must be singularly ignorant or strangely passionless who can stand among the fallen columns of a Grecian temple, or wander through the corridors of a Roman amphitheatre, or the aisles of a ruined Gothic abbey, and not feel his heart stirred by emotions of a totally different class from those suggested by the beauty of the mouldings or the artistic arrangement of the building he is contemplating.

The enthusiasm which burst forth in the 15th century for the classical style of art, and then proved fatal to the Gothic, was not so much an architectural as a literary movement. It arose from the re-discovery—if it may be so called—of the poems of Homer and Virgil, of the histories of Thucydides and Tacitus, of the Philosophy of Aristotle and the eloquence of Cicero. It was a vast reaction against the darkness and literary degradation of the Middle Ages, and carried the educated classes of Europe with it for the next three centuries. So long as classical literature only was taught in our schools, and classical models followed in our literature, classical architecture could alone be tolerated in our buildings, and this generally without the least reference either to its own peculiar beauties, or its appropriateness for the purposes to which it was applied.

A second reaction has now taken place against this state of affairs. The revival of the rites and ceremonies of the mediæval Church, our reverent love of our own national antiquities, and our admiration for the rude but vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages,—all have combined to repress the classical element both in our literature and our art, and to exalt in their place Gothic feelings and Gothic art, to an extent which cannot be justified on any grounds of reasonable criticism.

Unless the art-critic can free himself from the influence of these adventitious associations, his judgments lose half their value; but, on the other hand, to the historian of art they are of the utmost importance. It is because architecture so fully and so clearly expresses the feelings of the people who practised it that it becomes frequently a better vehicle of history than the written page; and it is these very associations that give life and meaning to blocks of stone and mounds of brick, and bring so vividly before our eyes the feelings and the aspirations of the long-forgotten past.

The importance of association in giving value to the objects of architectural art can hardly be overrated either by the student or historian. What has to be guarded against is that unreasoning enthusiasm which mistakes the shadow for the reality, and would force us to admire a rude piece of clumsy barbarism erected yesterday, and to which no history consequently attaches, because something like it was done in some long past age. Its reality, its antiquity, and its weather stains may render its prototype extremely interesting, even if not beautiful; while its copy is only an antiquarian toy, as ugly as it is absurd.

XVII.—New Style.

There is still one other point of view from which it is necessary to look at this question of architectural design before any just conclusion can be arrived at regarding it. It is in fact necessary to answer two other questions, nearly as often asked as those proposed at the beginning of Section III. “Can any one invent a new style?”—“Can we ever again have a new and original style of architecture?” Reasoning from experience alone, it is easy to answer these questions. No individual has, so far as we know, ever invented a new style in any part of the world. No one can even be named who during the prevalence of a true style of art materially advanced its progress, or by his individual exertion did much to help it forward; and we may safely answer, that as this has never happened before, it is hardly probable that it will ever occur now.

If this one question must be answered in the negative, the other may as certainly be answered in the affirmative, inasmuch as no nation in any age or in any part of the globe has failed to invent for itself a true and appropriate style of architecture whenever it chose to set about it in the right way, and there certainly can be no great difficulty in our doing now what has been so often done before, if we only set to work in a proper spirit, and are prepared to follow the same process which others have followed to obtain this result.

What that process is, may perhaps be best explained by such an example as that of ship-building before alluded to, which, though totally distinct, is still so nearly allied to architecture, as to make a comparison between the two easy and intelligible.

Let us, for instance, take a series of ships, beginning with those in which William the Conqueror invaded our shores, or the fleet with which Edward III. crossed over to France. Next take the vessels which transported Henry VIII. to his meeting with Francis I., and then pass on to the time of the Spanish Armada and the sea fights of Van Tromp and De Ruyter, and on to the times of William III., and then through the familiar examples till we come to such ships as the ‘Wellington’ and ‘Marlborough’ of yesterday, and the ‘Warrior’ or ‘Minotaur’ of to-day. In all this long list of examples we have a gradual, steady, forward progress without one check or break. Each century is in advance of the one before it, and the result is as near perfection as we can well conceive.