No new Style possible.

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for granted that they are known, and that the only question is which of these old or existing styles we are to use for any particular building.

Some readers will be exclaiming already, as I have heard and read till I am sick of it, 'Why are we to copy any of them? Are we never again to have a new and original style, a Victorian as well as an Elizabethan or a Queen Anne style? Are not the architectural critics continually telling us that we can never have any good architecture except in some style which is "genuine," "original," or "true," and not merely copied or imitated?' To all which the simple answer is, that no builder in any period of the world ever did more than imitate or follow some existing style, though in old times they were clever enough to make small modifications which were seen to be improvements and so came to be generally accepted, and thus one style gradually changed into another. At least that took place until all the Gothic styles had successively gone out of fashion, and then the seventeenth century architects thought they would begin again and take up and copy the old Roman architecture, from which the Norman style had sprung (which was actually sometimes called Roman to distinguish it from pointed Gothic), and thence all the later developments of Gothic. Therefore the modern Italian style is otherwise called the Renaissance, or the Palladian, introduced in England first by Inigo Jones, who stuck a horrible Corinthian portico on the west front of old St. Paul's. The only difference is that from that time down to the present nobody has been able to invent any modifications which have come to be generally accepted as improvements, and so no new style has been developed as the old ones were. Modifications enough have been indeed

54

Mixture of Styles.

displayed, but it is difficult to believe that even their inventors thought them beautiful, or aimed at more than appearing to be 'original,' and they die off as mere abortive offshoots of the old style on which they were engrafted, whatever that may be. The same has to be said of the attempts to make new styles by compounding old ones. Not that there is any demonstrable à priori objection to what is called eclecticism: it is only a question of experience whether it is successful or not. The objections that are sometimes made by small critics who have got up their Rickman well, to the mixing of any two successive Gothic styles, are mere prudery and nonsense; for every two successive styles were mixed at their own period of transition, and there is hardly a cathedral in England which does not exhibit styles, several generations apart historically, close together, and they are certainly not incongruous. I do not say the same of Gothic and Italian, of which it is equally certain that no successful mixture has been made yet.

6

Those who may decline to accept this account of the development of new styles in old times on my authority will perhaps accept it on that of Mr. Street, who says in an essay on his favourite foreign Gothic in a certain ritualistic book called the Church and the World, It is idle to talk in the glib way so common in the professional papers of the day about the invention offhand of a new style. Such deliberate invention in art is impossible, unless the whole history of art is wrong.' And again, 'The history of the art of northern nations is almost entirely the story of a gradual changing, and generally Deterioration of detail after it had passed its climax, I suppose he means, for otherwise the latter part of this statement is manifestly incorrect, and indeed suicidal. Mr. Street

The 'Vigorous' Style.

55

is at any rate a good authority on the history of Gothic architecture, though I decline to follow him into the mystical regions of what he dexterously christened the 'vigorous' style, a word which may mean anything that anybody pleases. Certainly no plain man would guess that a square abacus is vigorous' and the almost invariably round English ones 'weak.' If we may prefer real meanings to mystical ones, and if vigour means strength, a round abacus has more vigour. than a square one in proportion to its mass. If Mr. Street and his school prefer square abaci to round ones as a matter of taste by all means let them say so: one opinion is as good as another on such a point. But these pretences of reasons for things which admit of no demonstration are nothing but artistic clap-trap.

There is moreover another real reason, as I said above twenty years ago when this outcry for a new style began, why no such thing is to be expected. The varieties of geometrical forms suitable for building are manifestly not unlimited. It is true that we cannot prove that the limits have been reached, just as no mechanical invention which is not mathematically impossible (like perpetual motion for instance) can be pronounced either possible or impossible until it is made: and then we want no discussion as to its possibility. But the openings in walls must have either flat or arched tops, and the flat were used up in Egyptian and Greek architecture. Arches can have no shapes that have not been tried over and over again in every possible variety. The admissible shapes of pillars and their capitals are as few. Door and window jambs can have no kinds of shapes that have not been used already. Window tracery was exhausted in the three Gothic styles which are distinguished by the only three

56

Why new Styles cannot be Invented,

possible forms, geometrical, flowing, and perpendicular, unless you add monstrosities. Nobody can imagine that there is anything fresh to be done in the shapes of roofs. If throwing the different parts of buildings together without any plan at all is to be called a style, even that has been quite sufficiently exhibited within the last few years, and I shall have more to say of that presently. If any man believes that other modes of building are still open, let him produce them; at any rate he has no right to call upon us to accept his creed until he does.

6

What then is the real difference between the present state of architecture in this respect and its old condition, before all the original styles,' as Mr. Fergusson calls them, had each had their day and gone out for the time? It is only this. It is only this. In those days there was never more than one style in fashion at once, and now there are several or many. Builders then understood only one mode of building, and even rebuilt or continued in their own style anything which had been done before wholly or partially in another. But an architect was no more original who designed a window of geometrical or flowing or perpendicular tracery in the days when no one thought of using any other, than he is now when people use any style they like. Plenty of large modern Gothic windows, whether bad or good in taste or execution, are as original in design as those in York or Exeter cathedrals. And on the other hand the practicable patterns of windows of few lights are so limited in number that they were necessarily used over and over again in the most genuine Gothic times.

One of the greatest fallacies put forth by the demanders of a new style is that of denouncing modern Gothic as the copying of an old style, and setting up Re

And would be Useless if they could.

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naissance or Italian as a new one, when their very names condemn them in that respect at any rate. It is odd that critics of the Evelyn school, when that style was reviving, more correctly in point of history, however ignorantly otherwise, denounced the Gothic style as 'modern' and set up the other as the 'truly antient.'

All this outcry for a new style is of the nature of crying for the moon,' and is mere cant, repeated by one person after another without any one of them reflecting what it means. What we want is not a new style but the genius or taste to build decently in any style. If a new one were invented to-morrow, it would very soon be old, and would be only one more than we have already to choose out of and copy. If the old Gothic builders could make the variety they did with only one style lasting for a century, surely our architects might manage it with half a dozen; and if they cannot build. well with half a dozen styles they would do no better with a dozen. Only two things are wanted to produce good architecture; taste, or the power of designing what is pleasing; and practical or scientific knowledge, which is only to be acquired as it is in engineering; which differs from architecture in requiring no taste. One can be taught, but unfortunately the other cannot, though it may be cultivated and improved,

Architects and Master-builders.-It has been alleged with some truth, though with some exaggeration, that one great cause of the difference between antient and modern architecture is that in old times the builders designed for themselves; and not merely the master-builders, whom we should now call the contractors, but the workmen by a sort of joint-stock or co-operative genius or instinct. For the latter proposition as a matter of history I say at once that not one scrap of evidence has been produced,