As examples of Gothic, ranging from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, the cathedrals of Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, and Bourges, form a kind of cinque-foil round Notre Dame of Paris, of which it is impossible to say which is the more precious petal; but any of those leaves would be worth a complete rose of any other country’s work except Italy’s. Nothing else in art, on the surface of the round earth, could represent any one of them, if destroyed, or be named as of any equivalent value.
Central among these, as in position, so in its school of sculpture; unequalled in that specialty but by the porch of the north transept of Rouen, and, in a somewhat latter school, by the western porches of Bourges; absolutely unreplaceable as a pure and lovely source of art instruction by any future energy or ingenuity, stands—perhaps, this morning, I ought rather to write, stood[138]—Notre Dame of Paris.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
[From “The Pall Mall Gazette,” March 16, 1872.]
MR. RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE: A DEFENCE.
To the Editor of “The Pall Mall Gazette.”
Sir: I receive many letters just now requesting me to take notice of the new theory respecting Turner’s work put forward by Dr. Liebreich in his recent lecture at the Royal Institution.[139] Will you permit me to observe in your columns, once for all, that I have no time for the contradiction of the various foolish opinions and assertions which from time to time are put forward respecting Turner or his pictures? All that is necessary for any person generally interested in the arts to know about Turner was clearly stated in “Modern Painters” twenty years ago, and I do not mean to state it again, nor to contradict any contradictions of it. Dr. Liebreich is an ingenious and zealous scientific person. The public may derive much benefit from consulting him on the subject of spectacles—not on that of art.
As I am under the necessity of writing to you at any rate, may I say further that I wish your critic of Mr. Eastlake’s book[140] on the Gothic revival would explain what he means by saying that my direct influence on architecture is always wrong, and my indirect influence right; because, if that be so, I will try to exercise only indirect influence on my Oxford pupils. But the fact to my own notion is otherwise. I am proud enough to hope, for instance, that I have had some direct influence on Mr. Street; and I do not doubt but that the public will have more satisfaction from his Law Courts[141] than they have had from anything built within fifty years. But I have had indirect influence on nearly every cheap villa-builder between this[142] and Bromley; and there is scarcely a public-house near the Crystal Palace but sells its gin and bitters under pseudo-Venetian capitals copied from the Church of the Madonna of Health or of Miracles. And one of my principal notions for leaving my present house is that it is surrounded everywhere by the accursed Frankenstein monsters of, indirectly, my own making.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
John Ruskin.
March 15.
[From “The Pall Mall Gazette,” March 21, 1872.]
MR. RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE: A REJOINDER.