PUGIN ON GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.

IT is matter for surprise, if not of reproach, that the study of Gothic architecture, which flourished in this country for four cen- turies, and of which we still possess numerous fine examples, should have gradually declined, until its very first principles were lost sight of. That a style of building almost exclusively devoted to ecclesiastical uses, and fostered by monastic institutions, should have become debased by being diverted to secular purposes and practised by laymen, is not to be wondered at ; it was almost a natural consequence of the change of creed at the Reforma- tion: but that two such architects as Nino JONES and Cimino- MEI/ WREN should have remained utterly unobservant of the essential characteristics of Gothic, after being called upon to add to or restore those noble structures old St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, can only be accounted for by that one-sided partiality for a particular class of architecture which blinds its votaries to the beauties of every other. One would have supposed that WREN, whose genius for construction instinctively led him to emulate the boldness and lightness of the Gothic, would have appreciated the exquisite elegance and daring skill of the Pointed style, and inves- tigated its science out of pure admiration : but, so strong is the professional bias, that almost every architect has some exclusive preference, which he indulges to the dislike or neglect of every thing different. The late Mr. WILKINS had a pedantic fondness for Greek architecture, Mr. B-ARRY is deeply imbued with love of Italian, and Mr. Peens regards with profound reverence the Gothic : our author, however, adheres with a more rigid con- sistency than either of his contemporaries to the style of his adop- tion. But, not content with maintaining the leading principles of Pointed architecture, and preserving its proportions and ornamental features in all their purity, Mr. PUGIN worships its forms with the enthusiasm of a devotee, and anathematizes all others with the intolerant fury of a bigot : he not only regards Pointed, or, as he styles it, Christian architecture, as part of the institution of its church—seeing in the lofty and tapering spire

" That points with silent finger up to Heaven"

an emblem of the resurrection—but he considers it to be the per- fection of art, and peculiarly adapted to the climate and habits of this country.

Bating this sectarian dogmatism, these lectures give a most mas- terly and forcible exposition of the main principles of the science of architecture in general, and of those that govern the Gothic in particular : much as the subject has been discussed, we have never before met with so clear and cogent an argument in favour of the Pointed style. Mr. Penns expresses himself with such felicitous conciseness, that we cannot do so well as by quoting his own words. He thus enunciates the FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN.

1st, That there should be no features about a building which are not neces- sary for convenience, construction, or propriety ; 2d, That all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building. The ne- glect of these two rules is the cause of all the bad architecture of the present time. Architectural features are continually tacked on buildings with which they have no connexion, merely for the sake of what is termed effect ; and ornaments are actually constructed, instead of forming the decoration of con- struction, to which in good taste they should be always subservient. In pure architecture, the smallest detail should have a meaning or serve a pur- pose; and even the construction itself should vary with the material employed, and the designs should be adapted to the material in which they are executed. Strange as it may appear at first sight, it is in Pointed architecture alone that these great principles have been carried out; and I shall be able to illus- trate them from the vast cathedral to the simplest erection. Moreover, the architects of the middle ages were the first who turned the natural properties of the various materials to their full account, and made their mechanism a vehicle for their art.

That these principles are boldly and successfully carried out in the Pointed style, every one will admit ; but to deny this merit to other styles, is mere rash and unfounded assertion, and may serve as an instance of the narrow-minded view and positive tone of the writer. To discuss the point, however, would occupy too much space: we will give Mr. PUGIN the benefit of his COMPARISON OF THE GOTHIC AND GREEK STYLES.

A Pointed church is the masterpiece of masonry. It is essentially a stone building. its pillars, its arches, its vaults, its intricate intersections, its rami- fied tracery, are all peculiar to stone, and could not be consistently executed itt any other material. Moreover, the ancient masons obtained great altitude and great extent with a surprising economy of wall and substance: the wonderful strength and solidity of their buildings are the result, not of the quantity OF size of the stones employed, but of the art of their disposition. To exhibit the great excellence of these constructions, it will here be necessary to draw a comparison between them and those of the far-famed classic shores of Greece. Grecian architecture is essentially wooden in its construction ; it originated in wooden buildings, and never did its professors possess either sufficient imagina- tion or skill to conceive any departure from the original type. Vitruvius shows that their buildings were formerly composed of trunks of trees, with lintels or brest-summers laid across the top, and rafters again resting on them. This is at once the most ancient and barbarous mode of building that can be imagined; it is heavy, and, as I before said, essentially wooden : but is it not extraordi- nary, that when the Greeks commenced building in stone, the properties of this material did not suggest to them some different and improved mode of con- struction? Such, however, was not the case : they set up stone pillars as they had set up trunks of wood; they laid stone lintels as they had laid wood ones' flat across ; they even made the construction appear still more similar to wood, by carving triglyphs, which are merely a representation of the beam- ends. The finest temple of the Greeks is constructed on the same principle as

a large wooden cabin. • • The Greeks erected their columns, like the uprights of Stonehenge, just so far apart that the blocks they laid on them would not break by their own weight. The Christian architects, on the contrary, during the dark ages, with stone scarcely larger than ordinary bricks, threw their lofty vaults from slender pillars across a vast intermediate space, and that at an amazing height, where they had every difficulty of lateral pressure to contend with.

The strongest argument in favour of the Pointed style, is its per- fect union oEfitness and beauty : whatever is useful and necessary to the suppoit of the building, or the requirements of its purpose, is converted into a means of ornament. This characteristic Mr. PUGIN illustrates very fully, and satisfactorily develops ; instancing the buttresses and pinnacles, the mouldings and bosses, the clus- tered columns and arches, and even the gables and chimney,shafts, of pure Gothic structures; and exemplifying the neglect of this essential principle in specimens of debased Gothic. In contending for the superiority of the Pointed style for churches over what he de- lights to call the "Pagan," Mr. PUGIN is triumphant. The sec- tional view of St. Paul's demonstrates that its semicircular arches, its columns and pilasters, are but devices to screen flying buttresses : its swelling cupola is a mere cheat, the real support of the ball and cross being a conical framework between the external dome and the internal vault : that of St. Peter's is of stone, and forms the real covering of the building.

It would be impossible to follow Mr. Punts into the details of his subject, without cuts and plates, which he introduces in profu- sion, to illustrate the picturesque elegance of the Pointed style. In all that relates to the construction and ornaments of building, we go the whole length of his admiration of Gothic ; but in the article of furniture and decoration, we think he clings too tenaciously to precedent. The arched timber-roofs are no less admirable for lightness and elegance than the flying-buttresses, but the internal pannellings of walls and heavy beams of flat ceilings are cumbrous and quaint : the fashion of the portable shrines, reliquaries, and other moveables, is very trumpery, and little better than the "Brumma- gem Gothic" ornaments which he ridicules so justly. The mon- strous absurdity of these misapplications of architectural design to furniture decoration by modern manufacturers is happily exposed.

MONSTROSITIES OF GOTHIC-PATTERN METAL-WORK.

Modern grates are not nnfrequently made to represent diminutive fronts of castellated or ecclesiastical buildings, with turrets, loopholes, windows, and doorways, all in a space of forty inches. The fender is a sort of embattled parapet, with a lodge-gate at each end ; the end of the poker is a sharp-pointed finial; and at the summit of the tongs i is a saint. It s impossible to enumerate half the absurdities of modern metal- workers; but all these proceed from the false notion of disguising instead of beautifying articles of utility. How many objects of ordinary use are rendered monstrous and ridiculous simply because the artist, instead of seeking the mast convenient form and then decorating it, has embodied some extravagance to conceal the real purpose for which the article has been made. If a clock is re- quired, it is not unusual to cast a Roman warrior in a flying chariot, round one of the wheels of which, on close inspection, the hours may be descried; or the whole front of a cathedral church reduced to a few inches in height, with the clock-face occupying the position of a magnificent rose-window. Surely the inventor of this patent clock-case could never have reflected, that, according to the scale on which the edifice was reduced, his clock would be about two hundred feet in circumference, and that such a monster of a dial would crush the proportions of almost any building that could be raised. But this is nothing when compared to what we see continually produced from those inexhaustible mines of bad taste Birmingham and Sheffield: staircase-turrets for inkstands, monumental crosses for light-shades, gable-ends hung on handles for door-porters, and four doorways and a cluster of pillars to support a French

lamp ; while a pair of pinnacles supporting an arch is called a Gothic-pattern scraper, and • wary compound of quatrefoils and fan tracery an abbey garden- seat. Neither relative scale, form, purpose, nor unity of style, is ever consi- dered by those who design these abominations: if they only introduce a qua- trefoil or an acute arch, be the outline and style of the article ever so modern and debased, it is at once denominated and sold as Gothic.

The preposterous patterns of papering and carpets and the bad taste of modern upholstery also are incidentally exhibited. The

impropriety of introducing shadino to give relief to the pattern, or

pictorial representations of figures and scenery, is explained in the following

RATIONALE OF DESIGNS FOR HANGINGS.

While I am on this topic, it may not be amiss to mention some other absur- dities which may not be out of place, although they do not belong to metal- work. I will commence with what are termed Gothic-pattern papers, for banging walls, where a wretched caricature of a Pointed building is repeated from the skirting to the cornice, in glorious confusion—door over pinnacle and pinnacle over door. This is a great favourite with hotel and tavern keeper!. .Again, those papers which are shaded are defective in principle; for, as a paper is bung round a room, the ornament must frequently be shadowed on the light side. The variety of these miserable patterns is quite surprising; and as the ex- pellee of cutting a block for a bad figure is equal if not greater than for a good one, there is not the shadow of an excuse for their continual reproduction. A moment's reflection must show the extreme absurdity of repeating a perspec- tive over a large surface with some hundred different points of sight : a panel or wall may be enriched and decorated at pleasure, but it should always be treated in a consistent manner.

Flock-papers are admirable substitutes for the ancient hangings; but then, they must consist of a pattern without shadow, with the forms relieved by the introduction of harmonious colours. Illuminated manuscripts of the thir- teenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, would furnish an immense number of exquisite designs for this purpose.

These observations will apply to modern carpets, the patterns of which are generally shaded. Nothing can be more ridiculous than an apparently reversed groining to walk upon, or highly relieved foliage and perforated tracery for the decoration of a floor.

The ancient paving-tiles are quite consistent with their purpose, being merely ornamented with a pattern not produced by any apparent relief, but only by contrast of colour ; and carpets should be treated in precisely the same manner. Turkey carpets, which are by far the handsomest now manufactured, have no shadow in their pattern, but merely an intricate combination of coloured in- tersections.

The unfitness of Italian, Swiss, Moorish, and Egyptian archi- tecture for the climate of England, and the incongruous effect of these admixtures of styles, are sufficiently manifest ; we must, how- ever, find room for the following description of

A MODERN CASTELLATED VILLA.

What absurdities, what anomalies, what utter contradictions do not the builders of modern castles perpetrate ! Now many portcullises which will not lower down, and drawbridges which will not draw up! how many loopholes in turrets so small that the most diminutive sweep could not ascend them On one side of the house machicolated parapets, embrasures, bastions, and all the show of strong defence, and round the corner of the building a conservatory leading to the principal rooms, through which a whole comwny of horsemen might penetrate at one smash into the very heart of theallEansion ! for who would hammer against nailed portals when he could kick his way through the greenhouse? In buildings of this sort, so far from the turrets being erected for any particular purpose, it is difficult to assign any destination to them after they are erected, and those which are not made into chimnies seldom get other occupants than the rooks. But the exterior is not the least inconsistent por- tion of the edifices: for we find guard-rooms, without either weapons or guards ; sally-ports, out of which nobody passes but the servants, and where a military man never did go out ; donjon-keeps, which are nothing but drawing-rooms, boudoirs, and elegant apartments; watch-towers, where the housemaids sleep, and a bastion in which the butler cleans his plate : all is a mere mask, and the whole building an ill-conceived lie. We will now turn to those mansions erected in what is termed the Abbey style ; which are not more consistent than the buildings I have just described. To this class Foothill belonged, now a heap of ruins, and modern ruins too, of mere brick and plaster. In such a house something of an ecclesiastical este- eior bad been obtained at an enormous expense, and a casual passer-by might Lave supposed from some distance that the place really belonged to some reli- gious community; hut on a nearer approach the illusion is soon dissipated, and the building, which had been raised somewhat in the guise of the solemn ar- chitecture of religion and antiquity, discovers itself to be a mere toy, built to Suit the caprice of a wealthy individual, and devoted to luxury. The seem- ingly abbey-gate turns out a modern hall, with liveried footmen in lieu of a conventual porter ; the apparent church-nave is only a vestibule ; the tower, a lantern staircase ; the transepts are drawing-rooms ; the cloisters, a furnished Mae; the oratory, a lady's boudoir ; the chapterhouse, a dining-room ; the ns alone are real; every thing else is a deception. It yet remains to be determined what is the most suitable style for street architecture, where the admission of light and air, and economy of space, especially in frontage, have to be regarded. Even Mr. PUGIN, we suspect, would not contend for buttresses and pointed arches in shops and rows of houses. An architect of ge- nius might immortalize himself by creating a new style of civic architecture, based on the essential requisites for domestic and trading uses ; taking into account not only the climate but the habits of the time, and the discoveries of science as applied to the economy of materials. These considerations Mr. Pilau/ rejects en- tirely: in his worship of the perfections of the Pointed style, he forgets that its authors never contemplated the altered state of things that renders it ineligible for private dwellings in crowded cities. For the cloisters of a college, and the country mansion, it is equally well adapted as for the cathedral church and the baronial hail; where, ground not being an object, a number of floors piled on another are not required. The very fitness of the Gothic, the Grecian, and other styles, to the purposes for which they were de- signed, alike disqualifies them for modern dwellings in great towns.

The volume is beautifully gut up ; and the variety and spirit of its etchings and wood-cuts render it attractive as a picture-book.