Nicholas Wiseman

“ There can be no doubt, therefore, that there is a manifest change in the desires for a better architecture, and those desires are gradually yet quickly giving themselves expression in action. We cannot walk the streets of London, especially those parts which are naturally the scenes of greatest activity, without being struck by the greater elevation, mass, and even elegance, which characterise not merely new buildings, but those which replace older and ruder edifices, known by a name which at once is antithetic to all ideas of beauty—warehouses. ”

“ There is certainly a character of brute force in the disposition to knock down every thing that stands in your way; while there is a graceful ingenuity, and a power of genius, manifested in attaining your aim without violating respected feelings, A man of taste, while he traces a path through his ancestral woods, avoids felling some trees, whether distinguished for their beauty or hallowed by some family reminiscence.
Now the lowest scale on which this want of reverence is shown, is in the total disregard for our Art itself. I fear our people are not as yet well educated respecting it. ”

“ In fact, considering architecture as a fine art, as the solid record of the power, genius, and thought of a people, we may say that when a nation or a race has reached the height of its civilization, according to its own self-created type, its indigenous, home-bred, time-matured culture, and then by its buildings gives expression to its principles and its feelings, with all the impressiveness which it commands, what it produces cannot fail to be beautiful in connection with these manifestations. ”

“ Yet this mass of buildings, to have erected which might seem beyond the resources, pecuniary and mechanical, of Paris or London, stands upon a desert plain; for the modern city, as if awe-struck by those giants below, has shrunk under the shelter of the ancient citadel. ”

“ Even if Science must emerge from its Cyclopean forges and its potent laboratories in the shape of a gigantic chimney, why should not Art fly up to it, and bestow on it elegance of proportions and some richness of details?
And so I close my Address to you, by expressing a sincere conviction that the prospects of Architecture are most promising, but that they will greatly increase in proportion as we can promote among all classes reverence for the sacred, and taste for the beautiful. ”

“ Yet Livy tells us that the Roman king gave splendid games to his subjects, with the rich spoils which he carried home from one of these cities. Does time grind down solid stone, and scatter it, as dust, over the face of the earth; or does this parent of the original materials of construction gradually reabsorb them into its maternal bosom, when deprived of shape and place? Certain it is, that here and elsewhere the work of destruction may be so complete, that Nature reasserts her laws and rights, and gradually, but surely, resumes her sway over the usurpations of man. ”

“ In fact, looking at our great public buildings of the day, will not a future age keep its judgment equally balanced on the question, whether we had decided between the classical style of the Treasury, or the mediaeval of the national palace, as best recording our tastes and feeling?
If this be so, must we not say, that looking at the past which has given us rules, and at the present which gives us data, our conclusion for the future of Architecture is not favourable, so far as public building is concerned? ”

“ There is not a more melancholy exemplification of decayed grandeur than a London street which has once been "respectable," and keeps up, in its desolation, the same unvarying forms as some neighbouring thoroughfare, at whose doors the carriage still lingers. ”

“ Have we any pretensions to an architectural system which all of us recognise as belonging to our age and country, the child of its peculiar civilization, the offspring of our climate and soil, and of the special tastes inspired by our love of nature? Or have we forms and models that have sprung from our institutions, our own domestic and insular predilections? ”

“ If a new architecture thus arises, and takes its place among the arts of ages, it will soon have its Leone Albertis, its Palladios, its Vignolas; who will give its rules, and true proportions, and show it perhaps to be rhythmical and harmonic, as are the depressed tympanums of the old Doric, and the high-peaked fronts of our ancient cathedrals. ”

“ Not a wall, however solidly built, has been left standing. And along that line of colossal monuments which is threaded by the Nile, temples, pyramids, and Memnoniums, with their carvings, and even their paintings, fresh without and within them, is there one single private building, from a cottage to a princely mansion, remaining; though, no doubt, hundreds and thousands of dwellings must have been built and rebuilt, to furnish workmen for these sumptuous edifices and princes to command their erection? ”

“ Baths, hippodromes, amphitheatres, markets, exchanges, forums, aqueducts, gates, mausoleums, basilicas, prisons, the treasury, the Græcostasis, triumphal arches and columns are still standing, but more than all, temples of every form and dimension, round and quadrangular, vast and small. Sometimes these buildings are isolated, sometimes they stand in groups as they do in the Roman forum. They cover the seven hills, filling its vineyards and gardens. Yet of the dwellings of the inhabitants nothing beyond shapeless lumps here and there remains. ”

“ Tibur, its most graceful templet, crowning a richly-coloured rock; while Palestrina, with its Roman palace and cathedral, is seated at ease on the terraces of Sylla's Temple of Fortune. It is everywhere the same; only public buildings have hitherto defied time and its accidents; and form the monuments of buried cities and of their extinct races.
This has then become a law, so much the more general and certain, for its only exception. Fortunately for antiquarian science, but most unhappily for the poor inhabitants of Pompeii, their city was not left to the pining and wasting action of time ”

“ But here our principle returns: while the grand old minster, and the lofty city-hall, with its quaint chimes, still stand storm and time-proof, the characteristic dwellings of those who built them are gradually declining from their type, are being taken down and replaced by modern square blocks, more and more slender at every remove; till, at length, the old experience may be confirmed, that even without any disaster occurring, public edifices alone are lasting and monumental. ”

“ But in the place where I am now addressing yon, justice, as well as an agreeable inclination, invites me to mention, with willing and hopeful praise, a new material, now successfully applied in the new buildings of the Kensington Museum, and promising to take an important place in our future architectural works. This is terra-cotta, or baked earth; which, formed by an artist with any amount of genius and taste, is hardened by the artificer up to the durability of ancient pottery, and serves at once to make a solid building, and its imperishable ornaments. ”

“ And thus the style of building, resulting from the various experiences of growth in civilization, becomes historical, apt, suggestive, and so beautiful. The Northern slopes his roof to a lofty point, and then crowns it with a spire, that it may shake off lustily the superincumbent snow, or give easy flow to the waters, and sharp resistance to the winds of an inclement climate. The Egyptian strengthened the base of his edifice, and scientifically leaned its walls inwards, for double security against earthquake or inundation. ”

“ In a former Lecture I endeavoured to show how Science might bear Art on his stout shoulders when obliged to descend to the more practical things of earth; in this I have tried to suggest how Art may, in her turn, bear Science on her pinions, when he must fly across chasms, rise above mere mechanical performances, and boldly court the eye of an educated and now artistic people. ”

“ But in our eventful days, and with our energetic population, we have other possible changes before us. We are building on a shifting soil. The ancient city of Volterra is subject to periodical landslips, known by the peculiar name of balzi. It is situated near the edge of a crumbling hill, at the foot of which runs a gnawing stream. In spite of most costly precautions, ever and anon, the earth yields, and down rushes an avalanche of buildings, fortunately cleared of their forewarned inhabitants. ”

“ Our prime ministers do not exactly dare to knock off the heads of all the opposition, or to order the mover and seconder of an adverse resolution to walk off to a Turkish bath, and have a vein opened, so to bleed luxuriously to death. A word, and down would go all the ancient and venerable monuments of kings and consuls. ”

“ If my preliminary observations brought us to the conclusion that cities might so totally perish as not to leave even a trace behind, we may be considered I trust to have gained one more step by the instances just mentioned—that the memory of a city is preserved by the survival only of great, solid, always public, and always beautiful architectural works. ”

“ In the large piles of building for religious, or charitable purposes, there seems to be a preference for mass, relieved only by strongly contrasting colours, often grimly disposed, unsuggestive, not seldom too horizontally directed. Symmetry, [9] which after all, does deserve some respect, seems to be sometimes studiously despised; prominences and relief, so necessary for chiaro-oscuro and artistic effects, are rigorously excluded; while immense plates of wall, mostly of brick, the poorest of materials, rise to a dizzy height above all surrounding buildings. ”

“ There can be no doubt that had those rulers of the universe defied public feeling, and overthrown the rude constructions of earlier Rome and the age-worn monuments of its kings, it would have been only to replace them by statelier and fairer structures. Such unfortunately is not the case in our demolitions. The railway projector does not contemplate the enrichment or embellishment of our city. He may destroy much that is not worth being preserved for its beauty, but it is generally to leave in its place something more unsightly ”

“ Did the men who built the temples reserve for themselves none of their immense wealth, to enjoy in homes proportioned to the ideas exhibited in their public buildings? We cannot imagine it; and, indeed, it would be contrary to fact to suppose it. On the contrary, Agrigentum displayed a luxury not equalled in any modern capital. Its inhabitants lived sumptuously, and employed silver for their water-tanks. ”

“ Yet man is not without the power to stamp his footprints so heavily into his conquests, as that, if won back by Nature, she cannot efface them, even by the force of all her combined agencies,—the earthquake, the storm, or the wearing action of ages. ”

“ Not only flowers are essentially homologous, side corresponding with side, but the entire tree seems to possess an instinct for symmetry: if pyramidal, throwing out its shoots equally all round, or otherwise giving roundness and equal mass to all parts of its head.
But it is in animals, and especially in His noblest work, that the Great Architect manifests a power which in man we might call ingenuity, in Him simple wisdom, of making the visible portion of His work perfectly symmetrical, while the interior of His structure is (with the exception of the head) completely devoid of that quality. ”

“ Few men, conscious of the dignity of their art, can labour with any heart for so precarious and so ignoble a futurity.
But there is a reverence for higher objects than even Art. There is a natural reverence for whatever is monumental or historical; and this feeling grows and ripens to religious reverence. Neither of these feelings seems to be much cultivated amongst us. Take the following evidence from the "City Engineer's Report on Public Companies applying for Bills in the present Session of Parliament." ”

“ However, without implying blame, where I have neither the skill, nor the right to judge, and assuming that a certain necessity here, as elsewhere, compels the artist to make the best of the worst materials, I will repeat, that in these various attempts we see the feeling by the feet for a better path, and the stretching of the hands for a higher grasp. By degrees, genius will strike, out of what is merely tentative, something novel and permanent ”

“ Architects will then be no longer tempted to startle and amaze by astounding novelties, but will seek to please by harmonies that give the eye repose. And it will be felt that the architect is not a builder up only, but a beautifier, of his materials, of their arrangement, and of their uses. ”