The Oxford Museum. By HENRY W. ACLAND, M. D., Regius Professor of Medicine, and JOHN RUSKIN, M. A., Honorary Student of Christ Church. London, 1859.
The last ten years have formed a remarkable period in the history of the ancient and honored University of Oxford. Guided by wise and discerning counsels, it has made rapid and substantial advance. The scope of its studies has been greatly enlarged, the standard of its requirements raised. Its traditionary adherence to old methods and its bigoted conservatism have been overcome, and with happy pliancy it has yielded to the demands of the times and adapted itself to the new desires and growing needs of men. Its aristocratic prejudices have not been allowed longer to confine its privileges and its operations to one class alone of the community,—and in identifying itself with the system of middle-class education, Oxford has won new claims to gratitude and to respect, and now exercises a wider and more confirmed authority over the thought of England than ever before. To us, who take pride in her ancient fame, who honor her long and memorable services in the cause of good learning, who cherish the memory of the great and good men, the masters of modern thought, whom she has nurtured, who recall the names of our own forefathers who came out from her and from her sister University with will and power to lay the foundations of our state, and whom, by her discipline, in the midst of all the refinement of hooks and the quietness of study, she had prepared to meet and to overcome the hardships of exile, poverty, and labor, in the cause of truth and freedom,—to us it may well be matter of rejoicing to witness the freshness of her spirit and the spring of her perennial youth,—to see her
"so famous, So excellent in art, and still so rising."
One of the most marked features of the advance that has lately been made is the full recognition of the Natural Sciences as forming an essential part of the scheme of University studies. For centuries there had been an "intellectual onesidedness" at Oxford. It had chiefly cultivated classic learning. But it has now undertaken to repair the deficiency that existed in this respect, and, while still retaining all its classic studies, it has added to them a full course of training in the knowledge of Nature. "Our object is," says Dr. Acland, speaking as one of the professors of the University, "our object is,—first, to give the learner a general view of the planet on which he lives, of its constituent parts, and of the relation which it occupies as a world among worlds; and secondly, to enable him to study, in the most complete scientific manner, and for any purpose, any detailed portion which his powers qualify him to grasp."
Such an object brings the University into full sympathy with the present tendencies of education in our own country. With us, scientific pursuits and the study of Nature are receiving greater and greater attention and engrossing a continually larger share of the interest, the time, and the talent of students. There already exists, and there is danger of its increase, in many of our best institutions of learning, and many of our most educated men, an intellectual onesidedness of a contrary, but not less unfortunate character, to that which long existed at Oxford. The temper of our people, the wide field for their energies, the development of the so-called practical traits of character under the stimulus of our political and social institutions, the solitary dissociation of America from the history and the achievements of the Old World, the melancholy absence of monuments of past greatness and worth,—these and many other circumstances peculiar to our position all serve to weaken the general interest in what are called classical studies, and to direct the attention of the most ambitious and active minds far too exclusively to the pursuits of science. And when to these circumstances peculiar to ourselves is added the influence of those general causes which have had the effect of leading men throughout the civilized world to give of late years more and more of thought and study to the investigation of Nature and to the pursuits resulting therefrom, it is not strange that learning, so-called, should, for the present at least, find itself but poorly off in America, and that the essential value of learned studies for an even and fair development of the intellectual faculties should be far too little regarded. The danger that arises from a too exclusive devotion to scientific pursuits is pointed out by Dr. Acland in a passage which deserves thoughtful consideration, coming as it does from a man distinguished not more for scientific eminence than for his wide and cultivated intellect.
"The further my observation has extended," he says, "the more satisfied I am that no knowledge of things will supply the place of the early study of letters,—literae humaniores. I do not doubt the value of any honest mental labor. Indeed, since the material working of the Creator has been so far displayed to our gaze, it is both dangerous and full of impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even on the ground that His moral work is greater. But notwithstanding this, the study of language, of history, and of the thoughts of great men which they exhibit, seems to be almost necessary (as far as learning is necessary at all) for disciplining the heart, for elevating the soul, and for preparing the way for the growth in the young of their personal spiritual life; while, on the other hand, the best corrective to pedantry in scholarship, and to conceit in mental philosophy, is the study of the facts and laws exhibited by Natural Science."
Oxford, having thus fully acknowledged the need of enlarging her system of education, at once set about preparing a home for the Natural Sciences within her precincts. The building of the Oxford Museum is a fact characteristic of the large spirit of the University, and of special interest from the design and nature of its architecture. It is not merely intended for the holding of collections in the different departments of physical science, but it contains also lecture- and work-rooms, and all the accommodations required for in-door study. To provide the mere shell of such a building, the University granted the sum of £30,000. The design that was selected from those which were sent for competition was of the Gothic style,—the work of Messrs. Deane and Woodward; and this style was chosen because it was believed, that, "in respect of capacity of adaptation to any given wants, Gothic has no superior in any known form of Art,"—and that, this being so, "it was, upon the whole, the best suited to the general architectural character of Mediaeval Oxford." "The centre of the edifice, which is to contain the collections, consists of a quadrangle," covered by a glass roof. The court is surrounded by an open arcade of two stories. "This arcade furnishes ready means of communication between the several departments and their collections in the area." "Round the arcade is ranged upon three sides the main block of the building,"—the fourth side being left unoccupied by apartments, to afford means for future extension. Each department of science is provided with ample accommodations, specially adapted to its peculiar needs. The building, as it stands at present, is in its largest dimensions about 330 by 170 feet. Its erection has formed an epoch not only in the history of Oxford, but also in that of Gothic Art in England.
It is the first considerable building which has for centuries been erected in England according to the true principles of Gothic Art. It is a revival of the spirit and freedom of Gothic architecture. It is no copy, but an original creation of thought, fancy, and imagination. It has combined beauty with use, elegance with convenience, and ornament with instruction. It has proved the perfect pliancy of Gothic architecture to modern needs, and shown its power of entire adaptation to the requirements of new conditions. In its details no less than in its general scope it exhibits the recognition by its builders of the essential characteristics of the best Gothic Art, and shows in the harmonized variety of its parts the inventive thought and the independent execution of many minds and hands presided over by a single will. Gothic architecture in its best development is the expression at once of law and of liberty. The exactest principles of proportion are combined in it with the freest play of fancy. Its spaces are divided mathematically by the rule and the square, its main lines are determined with absolute precision,—but within these limits of order the imagination works out its free results, and, because limited by mathematical laws, reaches the most perfect freedom of beauty.
But the system of Gothic decorations, "which," says Mr. Ruskin, "took eight hundred years to mature, gathering its power by undivided inheritance of traditional method," is not an easy thing to revive under new and difficult conditions. A single example of what has been attempted in this way in the Oxford Museum must suffice to show the spirit which pervades its construction. The lower arcade upon the central court is supported by thirty-three piers and thirty shafts; the upper arcade by thirty-three piers and ninety-five shafts. "The shafts have been carefully selected, under the direction of the Professor of Geology, from quarries which furnish examples of many of the most important rocks of the British Islands. On the lower arcade are placed, on the west side, the granitic series; on the east, the metamorphic; on the north, calcareous rocks, chiefly from Ireland; on the south, the marbles of England." The capitals and bases are to represent different groups of plants and animals, illustrating the various geological epochs, and the natural orders of existence. Thus, the column of sienite from Charnwood Forest has a capital of the cocoa palm; the red granite of Ross, in Mull, is crowned with a capital of lilies; the beautiful marble of Marychurch has an exquisitely sculptured capital of ferns;—and so through all the range of the arcades, new designs, studied directly from Nature, and combining art with science, have been executed by the workmen employed on the building.
To complete the beauty of the court, massive corbels have been thrown out from the piers, upon which statues of the greatest and most famous men in science are to be, or are already, placed. These shafts and capitals and statues have been, in great part, the gift of individuals interested in the progress and successful completion of such a building. The Queen presented five of the statues; and her example has been followed by many of the graduates of the University and lovers of Art in England.