II. The second great principle of the Gothic Revivalists is that all art employed in decoration should be informative, conveying truthful statements about natural facts, if it conveys any statement. It may sometimes merely compose its decorations of mosaics, checkers, bosses, or other meaningless ornaments: but if it represents organic form (and in all important places it will represent it), it will give that form truthfully, with as much resemblance to nature as the necessary treatment of the piece of ornament in question will admit of.
This principle is more disputed than the first among the Gothic Revivalists themselves. I, however, hold it simply and entirely, believing that ornamentation is always, cæteris paribus, most valuable and beautiful when it is founded on the most extended knowledge of natural forms, and conveys continually such knowledge to the spectator.[123]
III. The third great principle of the Gothic Revival is that all architectural ornamentation should be executed by the men who design it, and should be of various degrees of excellence, admitting, and therefore exciting, the intelligent co-operation of various classes of workmen; and that a great public edifice should be, in sculpture and painting, somewhat the same as a great chorus of music, in which, while, perhaps, there may be only one or two voices perfectly trained, and of perfect sweetness (the rest being in various degrees weaker and less cultivated), yet all being ruled in harmony, and each sustaining a part consistent with its strength, the body of sound is sublime, in spite of individual weaknesses.
The Museum at Oxford was, I know, intended by its designer to exhibit in its decoration the working of these three principles; but in the very fact of its doing so, it becomes exposed to chances of occasional failure, or even to serious discomfitures, such as would not at all have attended the adoption of an established mode of modern work. It is easy to carve capitals on models known for four thousand years, and impossible to fail in the application of mechanical methods and formalized rules. But it is not possible to appeal vigorously to new canons of judgment without the chance of giving offence; nor to summon into service the various phases of human temper and intelligence, without occasionally finding the tempers rough and the intelligence feeble. The Oxford Museum is, I believe, the first building in this country which has had its ornamentation, in any telling parts, trusted to the invention of the workman: the result is highly satisfactory, the projecting windows of the staircases being as beautiful in effect as anything I know in civil Gothic: but far more may be accomplished for the building if the completion of its carving be not hastened; many men of high artistic power might be brought to take an interest in it, and various lessons and suggestions given to the workmen which would materially advantage the final decoration of leading features. No very great Gothic building, so far as I know, was ever yet completed without some of this wise deliberation and fruitful patience.
I was in hopes from the beginning that the sculpture might have been rendered typically illustrative of the English Flora: how far this idea has been as yet carried out I do not know; but I know that it cannot be properly carried out without a careful examination of the available character of the principal genera, such as architects have not hitherto undertaken. The proposal which I heard advanced the other day, of adding a bold entrance-porch to the façade, appeared to me every way full of advantage, the blankness of the façade having been, to my mind, from the first, a serious fault in the design. If a subscription were opened for the purpose of erecting one, I should think there were few persons interested in modern art who would not be glad to join in forwarding such an object.
I think I could answer for some portions of the design being superintended by the best of our modern sculptors and painters; and I believe that, if so superintended, the porch might and would become the crowning beauty of the building, and make all the difference between its being only a satisfactory and meritorious work, or a most lovely and impressive one.
The interior decoration is a matter of much greater difficulty; perhaps you will allow me to defer the few words I have to say about it till I have time for another letter: which, however, I hope to find speedily.
Believe me, my dear Acland, ever affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin[124]