RUSKIN'S LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING. * Jr is superfluous to

say of any work by Mr. Ruskin on art that it contains matter deserving of serious attention, presented in a man- ner that is original and impressive ; almost as superfluous to say that it puts forth propositions to which in their sweeping univer- sality it is impossible to assent, and supports views always in- genious and generally self-commending by arguments of which no logically-constituted mind can admit the force. We know no books to which more than to Mr. Ruskin's Hesiod's famous maxim ap- plies, that the half is of higher worth than the whole. The half which is precious is that which proceeds from Mr. Ruskin's direct perceptions and keen sensibility to beauty, his purity of feeling and his exalted moral tone ; the half with which we could dispense, except as a psychological curiosity, is that consisting of generali- zations extending beyond the writer's direct experience, of ex- pressions of opinion to which an exasperated antagonism con- tributes more than a calm judgment, and too frequently of theo- logical eccentricities in which evident and undeniable earnestness constitutes the only redeeming element. These general cha- racteristics of his previous works are all present in the four lec- tures delivered at Edinburgh, and now published with admirably- executed illustrations drawn by the lecturer himself. The grand and, gorgeous rhetoric which so often bursts forth in The Stones of Venice is here subdued to a more colloquial strain, and the es- sential value of the thoughts will on that account be more readily discerned. The treatment, too, is less systematic; a circumstance upon which those critics of Mr. Ruskin who found his exhaustive and regular analysis ridiculous and tiresome will probably base a charge of obscurity and incompleteness. Incomplete the lectures will undoubtedly appear to those who expect in them a manual of architecture and painting ; for they are nothing but four hours' talk, by a man profoundly in earnest, about a few practical matters in the two arts ; after listening to which the audience must have gone home not a bit more able than before to dispute learnedly on pictures and buildings, but with a new feeling as to the value and significance of both, and a new point of view from which to study and enjoy them. And, like all Mr. Ruskin's other works, we conceive it to be impossible that any intelligent persons could listen to the lectures, however they might differ from the judgments asserted and from the general propositions laid down, without an elevating influence and an aroused enthusiasm, which are often more fruitful in producing a true taste and correct views of art than the soundest historical generalizations and the Most learned technical criticism delivered with the coldness of a geometer, and received by the memory and

• Lectures on Architecture and Painting, delivered at Edinburgh, in November 1853. By John Ruskin. Author of .` The Stones of Venice," "Modern Painters," &c. Published by Smith, Elder, and Co.

understanding alone, but in which the heart and the senses own no' interest.

The architectural truths which Mr. Ruskin endeavours to im-

press upon his audience are, broadly, the power of every individual man building a house to afect the art, and his duty to do his ut- most within his private sphere that right art and not wrong art" should prevail ; and the correlative proposition that right art is Gothic art, and wrong art that which passes under the name of- Greek in the nineteenth century. He proves the superiority of the Gothic by its superior strength at an equal cost, by its choice of those forms in its construction and ornamentation which may be presumed to be more beautiful from their frequent occurrence in nature, by its greater variety and consequent power to yield un- ceasing gratification, by the fulness of meaning in its ornaments as compared with the ignoble conventionalism of modern classic ornamentation, and lastly, by the artistic activity it excites and fosters in the subordinate workmen. His practical result is, that every men who builds a new house, or repairs an old one, should renounce all that is classic as he would deadly sin, and, regardless alike of fashion or congipity, should instantly discard windows with horizontal tops, doors with so-called classic porticos, and roofs flat and hidden. The new windows are to be pointed arches, or at' least to have their bearing arches pointed; the doors are to be pro- vided with good old porches closed at the side; and the roofs are to rise high and steep into the sky, throwing out dormer windows with fantastic spontaneity of ornament, and giving the servants of the house air and space. In brief, we must recur to the middle.: age, to the models of Verona, of Rouen, of Bruges, and other cities well known to all lovers of the picturesque, either by personal in- spection or by Prout's drawings, before our towns are anything but an opprobrium to our taste, the proof and the cause of our low, morals. If any one object that all this would cost much money, Mr. Ruskin truly answers, that much money is spent now upon houses, only it is spent without the guidance of a love for beauti- ful ornamentation, and therefore tastelessly and without producing its due effect. And even supposing a little more money were spent, upon the outside of houses, would it be spent with less return to the spender and to the community than now when looked up in silver plate upon the sideboard and in costly jewels ? Here is a striking passage on the cumulative effect of street decoration.

"Nay, but, you say, we ourselves shall not be benefited by the sculpture on the outsides of our houses. Yes, you will, and in an extraordinary, de-

gree; for, observe farther, that architecture differs from painting peculiarly in being an art of accumulation. The prints bought by your friends, and hung up in their houses, have no collateral effect with yours : they must be

separately examined, and if ever they were hung ride by aide they would rather injure than assist each other's effect. But the sculpture on your friend's house unites in effect with that on your own. The two houses form

one grand mass—far grander than either separately ; much more if a third

be added—and a fourth ; much more if the whole street—if the whole city— join in the solemn harmony of sculpture. Your separate possessions of pic- tures and prints are to you as if you sang pieces of music with your single voices in your own houses. But your architecture would be as if you all sang together in one mighty choir. In the separate picture, it is rare that

there exists any very high source of sublime emotion ; but the great con- certed music of the streets of the city, when turret rises over turret, and case- ment frowns beyond casement, and tower succeeds to tower along the farthest ridges of the inhabited hills,—this is a sublimity of which you can at pre- sent form no conception; and capable, I believe, of exciting almost the deepest emotion that art can ever strike from the bosoms of men. "And justly the deepest; for it is a law of God and of Nature, that your pleasures, as your virtues, shall he enhanced by mutual aid. As by joining

hand in hand you can sustain each other best, so hand in hand you can delight each other best. And there is indeed a charm and sacredness in street architecture which must be wanting even to that of the temple: it is a little thing for men to unite in the forms of a religious service, but it is much for them to unite, like true brethren, in the arts and offices of their daily lives."

Mr. Ruskin acknowledges, at the close of this lecture, one very' powerful influence in our modern social circumstances operative against his views. It is the tendency to change our habitations, characteristic of all but those who are fortunate enough to possess hereditary town palaces or country estates. Ho suggests no re- medy except the cultivation of a feeling opposed to constant change : but in truth, the circumstance lies deeper than the ("tears of change, and is connected with our modes of holding property,

and the dispersion of families in the various occupations of life.

Housesin towns must for the most part be speculations of builders ; and though that is no reason why they should be ugly,

it is a reason against their occupiers taking that delight in their-

decoration that might be taken in a family heirloom. We suspect that the houses which Mr. Ruskin would point out as models were the hereditary seats of merchant or burgher aristocrats, as great in their way and their times as the Ellesmeres and Sutherlands of London ; and it is only by restoring something like the old social condition that the old civic architecture can be recreated But with the hereditary seats of our landed aristocracy, with great town mansions intended for the permanent residences of families that at least hope for permanence, Mr. Ruskin's arguments have the deepest concern. And if once the senseless taste or fashion for mere masses of stone with blisters of unmeaning ornament ceased

to regulate the construction of such homes, the speculators would soon follow, and a noble street architecture might in fifty years alter London for the better, as completely as the last fifty ye,arti has altered it, if not for the worse at least with very slight ad- vance towards anything worthy of admiration.

The two lectures on painting are devoted to Turner and the PrEeraphaelites. The first very clearly describes the stages of land-

scape-painting from Giotto to Turner ; giving perfectly intelli- gible grounds, of which we suspect many persons have hitherto felt some want, for the comparatively low place Kr. Buskin assigns to Claude, Salvator, Gaspar Poussin, and generally to the land- scape-painters of the seventeenth century, in relation both to the earlier Italians and to the English landscape school. The prefer- ence for both of the latter over the former, is precisely analogous to that expressed by most men of taste for ballad poetry and the poets of the Revolutionary epoch over the artificial school of Which Pope is a good type. The lecture on PrEeraphaelitism mainly enforces the position that Raphael marks correctly the commence- ment of the modern sera, the essential of which as regards art and everything else is the denial of Christ. As' however, the Pras- raphaelites have not announced the reversal of this tendency as their mission, probably Mr. Ruskin would have done better to take less disputable ground., and to confine himself to the purely artistic bearings of the subject; under which aspect he lays it down as the characteristic of Prwraphaelitism to seek truth first, beauty only as an accessory and in complete subordination to truth. We gladly turn from Mr. Ruskin's theology—generally narrow and absurd, it appears to us—to two charming anecdotes of Turner, illustrative of the generous temper so often denied him.

"I will give you two plain facts illustrativeat Turner's jealousy.'

"You have, perhaps not many of you, heartrbf a painter of the name of Bird : I do not myself know his works, but Turner saw some merit in them ; and when Bird first sent a picture to the Academy for exhibition, Turner was on the hanging committee. Bird's picture had great merit; but no place for it eould be found. Turner pleaded hard for it. No, the thing was impossible. Turner sat down and looked at Bird's picture a long time ; then insisted that a place must be found for it. He was still met by the assertion of impracticability. He said no more, but took down one of his own pic- tures, sent it out of the Academy, and hung Bird's in its place.

"Match that, if you can, among the annals of hanging committees. But he could do nobler things than this. When Turner's picture of Cologne was exhibited in the year 1826, it was hung between two portraits, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, of Lady Wallscourt and Lady Robert Manners. The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly bright, and it had a most injurious effect on the colour of the two portraits. Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and complained openly of the position of his pictures. You are aware that artists were at that time permitted to retouch their pictures on the walls of the Academy. On the morning of the opening of the exhibi- tion at the private view, a friend of Turner's, who had seen the Cologne in all its splendour, led a group of expectant critics up to the picture. He started back from it in consternation. The golden sky had changed to a dun colour. He ran up to Turner, who was in another part of the room. Tur- ner, what have you been doing to your picture?' ' Oh,' muttered Turner, in a low voice, 'poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It's only lamp-black. It'll all wash off after the exhibition !' He had actually, passed a wash of lamp- hlack in water-colour over the whole sky, and utterly spoiled his picture for the time, and so left it through the exhibition, lest it should hurt Law- rence's.

"You may easily find instances of self-sacrifice where men have strong motives, and where large benefits are to be conferred by the effort, or gene- ral admiration obtained by it ; but of pure, unselfish, and perfect generosity, showing itself in a matter of minor interest, and when few could be aware of the sacrifice made, you will not easily find such another example as this."