Besides this, however, the narrative form as applied to Architecture has advantages of its own greater than those of any other art of the same class, inasmuch as it is a great stone book in which most of the nations of the earth have recorded their annals, and written their thoughts, and even expressed their feelings in clearer and truer language than by any other form of utterance. The pyramids and temples of Egypt are a truer expression of the feelings and aspirations of their builders than we can obtain from any other source. The Parthenon at Athens brings the age of Pericles more clearly before our eyes in all its perfection of art than any written page. The Flavian Amphitheatre and the Baths of Caracalla enable us to realise imperial Rome more vividly than even the glowing pages of Tacitus. Our Mediæval cathedrals are a living record of the faith and feelings of peoples, who have left, besides these, but few materials by which one could judge of their aspirations or of their civilisation; while, if we wish to know in what India differed from Europe in those ages, and in what respect she still resembled it, it is to her contemporary temples that we must turn, and they tell us in a language not to be mistaken wherein lay the differences, and still how nearly alike the civilisations at one time were. All this, and infinitely more, we may learn from a record, which, though often ruined and nearly obliterated, never deceives. Where it first was placed, there it still remains to tell to future generations what at that spot, at some previous time, men thought and felt; what their state of civilisation enabled them to accomplish, and to what stage they had attained in their conception of a God.
Besides, however, the advantages to be obtained in an artistic point of view from treating architecture in a narrative rather than in a static form, there is, as pointed out above, still another, which, though of minor importance, still adds immensely to the interest of the subject. It is that, when so treated, the art affords one of the clearest and most certain tests known of the ethnographic relations of people one to another. It may, therefore, be as well, before proceeding further, to explain as briefly as is consistent with intelligibility what is meant by Architectural Ethnography.
PART II.
I.—ETHNOGRAPHY AS APPLIED TO ARCHITECTURAL ART.
Ethnology, though one of the youngest, is perhaps neither the least beautiful nor the least attractive of that fair sisterhood of sciences whose birth has rewarded the patient industry and inflexible love of truth which characterises the philosophy of the present day. It takes up the history of the world at the point where it is left by its elder sister Geology, and, following the same line of argument, strives to reduce to the same scientific mode of expression the apparent chaos of facts which have hitherto been looked upon as inexplicable by the general observer.
It is only within the limits of the present century that Geology was rescued from the dreams of cataclysms and convulsions which formed the staple of the science in the last century; and that step by step, by slow degrees, rocks have been classified and phenomena explained. All that picturesque wildness with which the materials seemed at first sight to be distributed over the world’s surface has been reduced to order, and they now lie arranged as clearly, and as certainly in the mind of a geologist, as if they had been squared by the tool of a mason and placed in order by the hand of a mechanic. So it is with Ethnology. Race has succeeded race;—all have been disturbed, some obliterated—many contorted—and sometimes the older, apparently, superimposed upon the newer. All at first sight is chaos and confusion, and it seems almost hopeless to attempt to unravel the mysteries of the long-forgotten past. It is true nevertheless, in Ethnology, as in the sister science, that no change on the world’s surface has taken place without leaving its mark. A race may be obliterated, or only crop up at the edge of some great basin of population; but it has left its traces either as fossil remains in the shape of buildings or works, or as impressions on language or on the arts of those who supplanted the perishing race. When these are read,—when all the phenomena are gathered together and classified, we find the same perfection of Order, the same beautiful simplicity of law pervading the same complex variety of results, which characterise all the phenomena of nature, and the knowledge of which is the highest reward of intellectual exertion.
Language has hitherto been the great implement of analysis which has been employed to elucidate the affiliation of races; and the present state of the science may be said to be almost entirely due to the acumen and industry of learned linguists. Physiology has lent her aid; but the objects offered for her examination are so few, especially in remote ages, and the individual differences are so small, as compared with the general resemblance, that, in the present state of that science, its aid has not been of the importance which it may fairly be expected hereafter to assume. In both sciences History plays an important part: in Geology, by furnishing analogies without which it would be hardly possible to interpret the facts; in Ethnology, by pointing out the direction in which inquiries should be made, and by guiding and controlling the conclusions which may have been arrived at. With the assistance of these sciences, Ethnologists have accomplished a great deal, and may do more; but Ethnology, based merely on Language[[16]] and Physiology, is like Geology based only on Mineralogy and Chemistry. Without Palæontology, that science would never have assumed the importance or reached the perfection to which it has now attained; and Ethnology will never take the place which it is really entitled to, till its results are checked, and its conclusions elucidated, by the science of Archæology.
Without the aid and vivifying influence derived from the study of fossil remains, Geology would lose half its value and more than half its interest. It may be interesting to the man of science to know what rock is superimposed upon another, and how and in what relative periods these changes occurred; but it is far more interesting to watch the dawn of life on this globe, and to trace its development into the present teeming stage of existence. So it will be when, with the aid of Archæology, Ethnologists are able to identify the various strata in which mankind have been distributed; to fix identities of race from similarities of Art; and to read the history of the past from the unconscious testimony of material remains. When properly studied and understood, there is no language so clear, or whose testimony is so undoubted, as that of those petrified thoughts and feelings which men have left engraved on the walls of their temples, or buried with them in the chambers of their tombs. Unconsciously expressed, but imperishably written, they are there to this hour. Any one who likes may read, and no one who can translate them can for one moment doubt but that they are the best, and frequently the only, records that remain of bygone races.
It is not difficult to explain why ethnographers have not hitherto considered Archæology of that importance to their researches to which it is undoubtedly entitled. We live in an age when all Art is a chaos of copying and confusion; we are daily masquerading in the costume of every nation of the earth, ancient and modern, and are unable to realise that these dresses in which we deck ourselves were once realities. Because Architecture, since the Reformation in the sixteenth century, has in Europe been a mere hortus siccus of dried specimens of the art of all countries and of all ages, we cannot feel that, before that time, Art was earnest and progressive; and that men then did what they felt to be best and most appropriate, by the same processes by which Nature works. We do not therefore perceive that, though in an infinitely lower grade, we may reason of the works of man before a given date, with the same certainty with which we can reason of those of Nature. When this great fact is once recognised—and it is indisputable—Archæology and Palæontology take their places side by side, as the guiding and vivifying elements in the sister sciences of Ethnology and Geology; and give to each of these a value they could never otherwise attain.
As may well be expected, however, when Archæology is employed to aid in these researches, results are frequently arrived at, which at first sight are discrepant from those to which the study of language alone has hitherto led scientific men. But this is no proof either of the truth or falsehood of the conclusions arrived at, or of the value or worthlessness of the processes employed. Both are essential to the question of knowledge, and it is by a skilful balancing of both classes of evidence that truth is ultimately arrived at.