ART. IV. RUSKIN'S ARCHITECTURAL WORKS.

Modern Painters. By a Graduate of Oxford. First American from the third London edition. John Wiley, New York. 1854.

Stones of Venice. By JOHN RUSKIN.

The Seven Lamps of Architecture. By JOHN RUSKIN, author of "Modern Painters." John Wiley, New York. 1852.

THE lectures of Mr. Ruskin are productions remarkable for originality of thought, truthfulness, and vigor. But it is impossible to read a page in any of his works, without receiving from it a warning to distrust his conclusions; for we see at once that he is the very man, of all others, most likely to run into extremes. His tone is so emphatic, his confidence in himself so apparent, the impulsiveness of his nature so evident, that we are inclined to doubt him, even when he is right, because of the want of that calm and quiet style, and easy deference to the opinions of others, which always impresses the reader with a belief that the sentiments expressed are the result of deliberation, even though, in point of fact, they may be but the crudest imaginings. And yet, there can be no doubt that Ruskin has done more to develop the true principles of art than any other writer of the age. What though, in "Modern Painters," he exaggerates to the uttermost the merits of Turner, and, in his "Stones of Venice," makes the ducal palace the ne plus ultra of architecture, yet, in the one work he develops the true principles of painting, and in the other, analyzes, with exquisite skill, the elements which, combined, make an edifice the representative of stability, adaptation, and beauty. No painter can place his pallet on his thumb, no architect lean over his drawing-table, after having read Ruskin, without doing something better in his art than he ever did before; because Ruskin's words are like branding-irons—they make marks that cannot be effaced, and which influence, unconsciously to himself, most probably, the efforts of the individual. To painters and architects,

then, we say, read Ruskin; not to become copyists, but, if you please, as Raphael looked at the works of Titian, that your own style, whatever that is, may become elevated, warmed and improved.

In no country has Ruskin done more good, in no country will more good be done by him, than in the United States; because we are the people, of all others, to make hints available and never was there a writer so prolific in hints as this one.

Now-a-days, works on architecture abound. From Stewart's Antiquities of Athens to Downing's publications, there is the widest range of choice. Formerly, it was not so. Architecture was traditional. Where Greece got the Parthenon from, however, it is difficult to say, except in the genius which, borrowing the idea of the vocal Memnon from Egypt, turned the seated Monolith into the graceful Apollo, made the statue as radiant as morning, and told the story of the music of sunrise by the lyre that the sculptor gave unto the god. But where Rome obtained her temples is most evident. Greece was the source of her architectural traditions. But the Romans were copyists. They spoiled when they attempted to improve. The composite wanted the elegance of either the Ionic or the Corinthian, which it sought to unite. As the mysteries of the Bona Dea were a degradation of the rites of Eleusis, so Roman architecture was a depraved adaptation of that of Greece to the purposes of the seven-hilled city. Centuries elapsed before "working drawings" came to be preserved. But, at last, printing did for architecture what it had accomplished for abstract thought, and there were produced books to which the ignorant in these matters might resort for models. Unfortunately, the best model is not always that which is preserved; and Palladio and Vitruvius -neither of whom originated any thing that approached to Grecian simplicity and grandeur-fashioned for a season the taste of the world. Let him who doubts, sit for an hour on the Acropolis, with the ruins of the Parthenon before him, and then close his eyes on architecture until he opens them

in the streets of Vicenza, in a search to find something that may equal what he has left, among the palaces of Palladio. Louis XIV. perpetuated Palladio; Greece was forgotten at Versailles. It was Rome only that was remembered in the Louvre.

Presently, England began to take an interest in the subject. Stewart made accurate drawings of the best specimens of Grecian architecture; and it became possible to repeat, in England, the Doric temple of Theseus, and the Ionic one of Minerva, and the Corinthian one of Jupiter, and to make a fac simile of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates. And now Greek architecture became the rage; and "the decline and fall of the Roman empire" in architecture was so rapid that it needed no chronicler, for it happened in less than a lifetime. About this period American experience began, and it may be safely said that portions of our country were infested with Grecian temples, from vast cathedrals to cabinets d' aisance. This was, after a while, more particularly the case in the State of New York, which, having immortalized the sages of Greece and Rome in the nomenclature of her towns and villages, perpetuated Grecian architecture in white pine and shingles.

The original plan of the Capitol at Washington was confessedly "copied out of a book," so far as its architecture went, by Dr. Thornton, who, was neither an architect nor a builder; and that Palladian character was given to it, which could not subsequently be departed from, even by the genius, skill and taste of those who completed it, and who are now to add to it. The President's house is another "copy out of a book," a closer one than even the Capitol, which, after all, has features that give to it some claim, in some of its details, to originality.

The Roman copies of Greek art were, doubtless, many of them made from memory; hence, perhaps, the cause of their inaccuracy and inferiority. But the climate of Greece and Italy not being unlike, and the purposes of the public edifices of the two countries being in the main, the same, there was at least

one merit common to both, the merit of adaptation. Stewart put it in the power, as we have seen, of the English and Americans to make fac similes. But the purposes to which this accuracy of imitation was applied by them, being wholly diverse, and the climate being different, too, the English and American copies lost this greatest of all architectural merit; the one preserved by Rome, through all the ignorance and bad taste of her architects-the merit of adaptation-and we became but little better than the Chinese-we copied the patch and all!

But while Grecian and Roman Architecture were being matured and imitated, there was another architecture coming into being the architecture of occasion. Gothic is a name that has been given to it. But it is a poor name and means little. It is a skin-deep name. It explains neither the principles, the origin, nor the aim of the class to which it belongs. Like the name of Le nois faineant, of Ivanhoe, it tells nought of the king that is beneath it, for right noble and king-like is this architecture of occasion. It is this architecture of which Ruskin is, in truth, the eulogist, his fault being that he runs away with the excellencies of certain specimens of it, just as we in America ran away with the Parthenon, turning it into a bank in Philadelphia, and into God knows what not, elsewhere.

Now, this architecture of occasion has the merit of adaptation to the circumstances that the edifice requires. This is the fundamental truth on which it rests. To this, which is the divinity of architecture, every thing must be sacrificed. But, like all divinities, it is perfectly consistent with beauty; and the genius of the architect exhibits its poetry, not in its ornaments, but in using those forms for the development of its truthfulness, which man finds innate within himself to rejoice in and admire. Mere ornament is vicious in art. Who would ornament the trunk of the oak, and yet, what is more graceful than the curves in which its roots buttress it upon the soil, or its branches spread themselves away from it to the heavens ?

It is impossible to illustrate the view here suggested, without either copying from Ruskin, word for word, or in attempting original phraseology, to fall far below him. His "Stones of Venice" tells the story better than it was ever told before, and to this great work we commend our readers. In choosing our garments we consult the seasons and our wants. Why should we not do the same in the choice of the houses we are to live in, when it falls to our lot to build them. I want a country-seat, says a man of wealth to an architect, and I prefer the Italian villa style. How often is this said? How much more sensible would it be to say:

I have such and such wants in regard to rooms, etc., and so much money-give me the suggestions of your experience as to the best mutual arrangements, and consult grace and refinement in form and proportions, and have a mind to the summers and winters of our climate, for I prefer to live in the house all the year round. What is the Italian villa style? The individual about to embark in the luxury of buildingthe privilege, by the way, of the rich and foolish-as a general thing, knows as little, probably, about the Italian villa style, as he knows about Hebrew. But he has a fancy that he does not like the Gothic, about which he knows still less, and so, he chooses the other. This much, his common sense, however, ought to tell him, that his models of the Italian villas, if built by men of sense in Italy, were most probably adapted to the climate of that country, and that the climate of the United States was a very different one. And that, therefore, if his architect obeyed his instructions, he would probably regret his doing so, one half the year, at least, if not all the year. Now Italian churches are frequently distinguished by bell towers, rising high and square above the body of the building" campaniles," they are called. They are square because that shape gives ample room where the bells require it; and there being no snow in Italy, there is no reason for the steep pitched roofs of Germany; for after all the steep roofs of Gothic architecture, of which the so called steeple is one of the modifications, are but specimens of the architec