Archdeaconry

“ What wonderful works have been raised up by the architects of antiquity; what beautiful images have been carved from rude blocks of stone! what glorious thoughts, and noble creations, have been bequeathed to us by men like Homer and Æschylus, Shakespeare and Milton! And all these things, and other things—astonishing, innumerable, and almost incredible—done by a weak and insignificant creature who, one would think, in order to enable him to contend with the elements of Nature, as I think you have hinted, ought to have been made of the toughest iron. ”

“ We say advisedly “ornamental device in books,” for infinite almost are the applications of Symbol and Emblem to Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, as is testified by the Remains of Antiquity in all parts of the world, by the Pagan tombs and Christian catacombs of ancient Rome, by nearly every temple and church and stately building in the empires of the earth, and especially in those wonderful creations of human skill in which form and colour bring forth to sight nearly every thought and fancy of our souls. ”

“ I could give instances out of all the tragic writers of antiquity who have shown their judgment in this particular; and purposely receded from an established rule of the drama, when it has made way for a much higher beauty than the observation of such a rule would have been. Those who have surveyed the noblest pieces of architecture and statuary, both ancient and modern, know very well that there are frequent deviations from art in the works of the greatest masters, which have produced a much nobler effect than a more accurate and exact way of proceeding could have done. ”

“ At the same time the antiquarian may here occupy himself with the examination of the rude relics of antiquity, which lie scattered on all sides—nothing is more pleasing than that sacred enthusiasm which is kindled in the mind by the contemplation of the faded monuments of past ages, and surely no spot was ever more congenial to such sensations. ”

“ Much has only an archæological or antiquarian interest in these latter days. Consequently, though building from the bricks of the past, everything which has lost its meaning for the men of to-day will be ruthlessly excluded. ”

“ Sometimes in an archæological novel the use of strange and obsolete terms seems to hide the reality beneath the learning, and I dare say that many of the readers of Notre Dame de Paris have been much puzzled over the meaning of such expressions as la casaque à mahoitres, les voulgiers, le gallimard taché d’encre, les craaquiniers, and the like; but with the stage how different it is! The ancient world wakes from its sleep, and history moves as a pageant before our eyes, without obliging us to have recourse to a dictionary or an encyclopædia for the perfection of our enjoyment. ”

“ It cannot be said that this mass of niches and arcading at the west end is either ingenious or successful. Arcading is a very beautiful decoration where it is employed, as in a triforium, in single storeys, to cover a definite even space. ”

“ RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE AND ORNAMENT. Many things tended to bring about the art of the Renaissance. The great impulse given to learning by the study of the writings of the Greek and Roman poets, lawyers, and philosophers, and the keen study of the rich legacy of art and architecture left by Greece and Rome, may be reckoned among the chief causes which led to the development during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the Re-Birth or Renaissance both of literature and art. ”

“ The ornamented parts of the Greek and Roman Orders, figure sculpture apart, show how two cognate nations, each with transcendent abilities but of an entirely different range, abstracted the beauties of plants, and conferred them on stone and marble to emphasize and adorn the rigid forms of Architecture ”

“ Her eyes have a way of twinkling when the Archdeacon is at his best which always upsets me. The Archdeacon, his face still raised toward the large battle picture, added that there is nothing finer than the service of one’s country, nothing more inspiring for a man and nothing more likely to lead to fame. ”

“ Our ancients had to explore the remains of these far earlier days by the same faint glimmerings of legend and tradition as ourselves ... and to us, whose early youth is spent among the immortal lays, whose living substance is called up by even the pictured resemblance of these massive piles—monuments, as we would fain believe, of the days of Achilles and the Atridæ, and the old time before them—to us every rugged stone seems vocal with some old heroic legend. ”

“ And yet this innate tendency to magnify and extend into the dim, illimitable regions of antiquity whatever of human effort is deemed most worthy, is a source of difficulty to the conscientious student. Amid the wild growth of myth and marvel the antiquary or archæologist warily treads his way to surer ground, and out of scattered fragments of a by-gone age constructs anew an old order of existence, or opens a vista to the mind’s eye through which glimpses may be gained of the habits and inner life of our remote ancestors. ”

“ Archæology is worthily employed in illustrating every kind of ancient literature; most worthily of all does she occupy herself in the illustration and explanation and confirmation of the sacred writings, of the Book of books. ”

“ Here the architects of the middle ages might have found studies for every form of the sacred art which sprang from the development of the pointed arch. A mile farther we had to bow our heads under corniced elliptic arches in the romanesque style ”

“ The ambition of the old Babel-builders was well directed for this world. There are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality. It is well to have not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld all the days of their life. ”

“ I thus conclude my sketch, such as it is, of the archæology of the world. Its aim has been to bring under review the rude implements and weapons of primeval man; the colossal structures of civilised man in Egypt and India; the strangely-compounded palace-sculptures of Assyria and Babylonia; the exquisitely ornamented columns of 62Persian halls; the massive architecture of Phœnicia; the Gothic-like rock-tombs of Lycia; the lovely temples, and incomparable works of art of every kind, great and small, of Greece; the military impress of Roman conquest ”

“ Even in the title therefore in this case the inanimate object takes the first place, relegating to a secondary rank the human interest. Very wonderfully does the artist convey to our eyes a sense of the gigantic bulk and height of the huge Amphitheatre, and with accurate archæological knowledge has he reconstructed its form upon his canvas. Here are its two tiers of arcades, whose arches, we learn from the evidence of tradition, inscriptions and ancient coins, were filled, as in the painting, with groups of colossal white marble statues. ”

“ Antiquity has a charm of its own, and to smarten it up would only damage it. One day I was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic, illustrative of the command to “multiply and replenish the earth.” ”

“ To look at the world, and what it contains, and to try and render what is suggested to him,—that is the training for the artist, and it has more to do with our beloved study of archæology than if they were not concerned with the same subject. This, I say, has been proven. Sad experience, the waste of forty years of work, disappointment and despair, have taught some of our artists what others did not need to learn,—that the way to succeed was not through study of the past. The artist has no primary need of archæological knowledge ”

“ Most archæologists within my own private experience, indeed, are ladies of various ages, many of them elderly, but many more young and pretty, whose views about the styles of English architecture or the exact distinction between Durotriges and Damnonians are of the vaguest and most shadowy possible description. You all drive in brakes together to the various points of interest in the surrounding country. When you arrive at a point of interest, somebody or other with a bad cold in his head reads a dull paper on its origin and nature, in which there is fortunately no subsequent examination. ”

“ Even as the parent delights to trace in the prattle of his child the promises of future years, the archæologist may be pardoned if he is sometimes tempted to linger too fondly on those infantile efforts of the human race until he sees in them the germ of future arts, the first attempts at symbolic prefigurements, and the rudiments of those representative signs from which have sprung letters and all that followed in their train. ”

“ Many of our great antiquaries (who are not the most skilled in designing) frequently grant the preference to the ancients, rather from prejudice than judgment. That striking peculiarity which to them appears so marvellous in the works of antiquity, is often a mere chimera: for most of the antique figures and statues are totally void of expression, and we can only fancy their characters. ”

“ We protest against the degradation of the architect from his high and noble estate to the rank of a mere decorator, however skilful. We would not witness the extinction of the ancient French traditions which inspired so many masterpieces, and to which we look as the source of many yet to come. ”

“ My object is rather to trace out the re-awakening of art in the eleventh and following centuries from the slumber in which it had so long lain, than to chronicle its changes during the chaotic ages which followed the final catastrophe of the ancient world. ”

“ Our system is but one aspect of the theory of evolution, or is but the application of that theory to the topic of mythology. The archæologist studies human life in its material remains; he tracks progress (and occasional degeneration) from the rudely chipped flints in the ancient gravel beds, to the polished stone weapon, and thence to the ages of bronze and iron. He is guided by material ‘survivals’—ancient arms, implements, and ornaments. The student of Institutions has a similar method. ”

“ Archaic art seems to have the power of reproducing itself; and even the ages of heroic and barbaric myth may re-occur after periods in which society and civilisation may appear to have worn themselves out by over-refinement ”

“ The whole system of allegory, as expressed in the life and art of the middle ages, will in all times excite the admiration of poets. What colossal consistency in the Christian art!—that is, in architecture! ”

“ If there be an Archetype of eloquence in nature, ‘one should be apt enough, as the Bishop says, to conclude, that when the Author of nature condescended to inspire one of these plastic performances of human art, he would make it by the exactest pattern of the Archetype [161] .’ Or, whatever you and I and the Bishop might conclude, assure yourself that the objectors to inspired scripture will infallibly draw that conclusion. ”

“ In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life, and those works are the delight and study of archangels. ”

“ And the illustrations should also have this two-fold character; they should include subjects both ancient and modern, it being always remembered in regard to the former that their object is not to make the boy or girl an archaeologist, but simply to act as an aid to the imagination and enable it to realise what ancient civilisation was like. A good modern fancy sketch may often be more instructive from this point of view than a cut taken from a dictionary of antiquities. ”

“ In these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other revelations of the same idea through sculpture, painting, glass-staining, mosaic work, and engraving, during the Middle Ages and the two centuries following, culminated a belief which had been developed through thousands of years, and which has determined the world's thought until our own time. ”

“ But, with the facts relating to his favourite objects, and also as much as possible with the objects themselves, he must be familiar.
64Yet this familiarity will not be enough to make him an archæologist. Such knowledge may be possessed, and very often is possessed, by a mere dealer in antiquities. The true antiquary must not only be well acquainted with his facts, but he must also, when there are sufficient data, proceed to reason upon them. He puts them together, and considers what story they have to render up. ”

“ Within the same compass we might, no doubt, have touched upon a great deal besides that belongs to the study of Greek and Roman Architecture, by restricting ourselves to bare matter-of-fact, and suppressing all comment, and so treating the subject drily and superficially. ”

“ I suppose it is a matter of knowledge and imagination; but ordinary persons, of whom in questions of architecture and archæology I am one, may be grateful for a system that shows plainly what an ancient building really looked like, and what purposes it served, while he is nowhere invited to take the new for the old. ”

“ The man, in short, who measures the beauty of a cathedral not by its structural detail consciously analysed, but by its total effect in indirectly stimulating his sensations, in setting up a movement of associated ideas, is classed—and who shall say unjustly?—as no better than the reader who should pretend to rejoice in the music of Lycidas without understanding the meaning of its words. ”

“ And God said, Let there be, and there was,—the material world, at least the material manifestation of it, literally spoken into existence, the spoken word, however, but the outward manifestation of the interior forces of the Supreme Intelligence.
Every castle the world has ever seen was first an ideal in the architect's mind. Every statue was first an ideal in the sculptor's mind. Every piece of mechanism the world has ever known was first formed in the mind of the inventor. ”