symbols of architecture, which undeniably have more
of
knowledge than
love in them,—so
accustomed have the people become to these things,
that the great art of which these have been the only
language now almost invariably fails to strike any
responsive chord in the human heart or to do any of
that work which it is the peculiar province of the
fine arts to accomplish. Instead of leading the
age, it seems to lag behind it, and to content itself
with reflecting into our eyes the splendor of the
sun which has set, instead of facing the east and
foretelling the glory which is coming. Architecture,
properly conceived, should always contain within itself
a direct appeal to the sense of fitness and propriety,
the common-sense of mankind, which is ever ready to
recognize reason, whether conveyed by the natural motions
of the mute or the no less natural motions of lines.
Now history has proved to us, as has been shown, how,
when the eloquence of these simple, instinctive lines
has been used as the primary element of design, great
eras of Art have arisen, full of the sympathies of
humanity, immortal records of their age. It cannot
be denied, on the other hand, that our eclectic architecture,
popularly speaking, is not comprehended, even by the
most intelligent of cultivated people; and this is
plainly because it is based on learning and archeology,
instead of that natural love which scorns the limitations
of any other
authorities and precedents than
those which can be found in the human heart, where
the true architecture of our time is lying unsuspected,
save in those half-conscious Ideals which yearn for
free expression in Art.
Let our artists turn to Greece, and learn how, in
the meditative repose of that antiquity, these Ideals
arose to life beneficent with the baptism of grace,
and became visible in the loveliness of a hundred
temples. Let them there learn how in our own humanity
is the essence of form as a language, and that to
create, as true artists, we must know ourselves
and our own distinctive capacities for the utterance
of monumental history. After this sublime knowledge
comes the necessity of the knowledge of precedent.
The great Past supplies us with the raw material,
with orders, colonnades and arcades, pediments, consoles,
cornices, friezes and architraves, buttresses, battlements,
vaults, pinnacles, arches, lintels, rustications,
balustrades, piers, pilasters, trefoils, and all the
innumerable conventionalities of architecture.
It is plainly our duty not to revive and combine these
in those cold and weary changes which constitute modern
design, but to make them live and speak intelligibly
to the people through the eloquent modifications of
our own instinctive lines of Life and Beauty.
The riddle of the modern Sphinx is, How to create
a new architecture? and we find the Oedipus who shall
solve it concealed in our own hearts.
* * * *
*
THE ORDEAL BY BATTLE.