is one of Symmetry.

83

book of Mansions of England' or any such title, they would have seen that after the days of castellation and of large halls, which must stand alone and unbalanced, great houses always originally aimed at symmetry on at least one face, as churches also did not symmetry of the smaller details, which may judiciously be varied, as in the western towers of some cathedrals, but general symmetry of outline. I say 'originally' because the absence of symmetry is often due to alterations or additions. Smaller houses were naturally less symmetrical, because they had not rooms enough of equal size to make considerable features on each side of some central part of the building. But the modern notion, that

cutting out a lot of rooms in cards and throwing them together anyhow is the way to plan a Gothic house, is at variance with every real style of architecture that ever existed.

Confining ourselves to Gothic, for it is not pretended that any other style preferred lopsidedness to symmetry when there was no reason for it, has not every cathedral a front substantially symmetrical? It is true that a few of the foreign ones have the western towers differing much more than ours—and much worse they look; but still there is a general symmetry between them, except in a very few cases of great difference, and those look worst of all. And why? Because, cæteris paribus, symmetry on each side of an axis is pleasing and lopsidedness unpleasing. At the same time the eye does not expect symmetry in both directions. Every building has a front and a back, or by whatever other names you like to distinguish them; and it is not to be expected that they should be alike. In churches the grand entrance is at one end, and the chancel at the other, and you expect some kind of

84

Symmetry and Variety.

external difference. King's Chapel may be allowed as a single grand exception. In most other public buildings the front is still more distinguished from the back, and external symmetry between them would be felt to be false and at variance with the known internal arrangement. But on each side of the middle of a large front the rooms are not naturally so unlike in either height or size, one way at least, that they may not very conveniently be similar; and so they are generally made in the later Gothic times, after houses began to have a multitude of rooms and of something near the same size, as we have now.

But having so disposed of the main front as substantially symmetrical, it is perfectly legitimate to add a wing, or a tower (if there is any reason or object for one) or any other building on one side only; and the Gothic builders certainly never stuck another on the other side, as the Palladians did, merely for the sake of balancing or symmetry, except the two western towers of cathedrals. The modern fashion of dogmatising about reality, verticality, horizontality, irregularity, and such like qualities, as being the characteristics of one style or another, has done nothing but mischief. As Paley said, 'nothing is easier to invent than a maxim,' and in nine cases out of ten they are invented ex post facto to support some foregone conclusion, or are hastily generalised from some two or three instances which the inventor has met with. The old builders would listen with amazement if they heard such rules imputed to them. Considering that we profess to recognise no philosophy but that of induction from the largest experience we can get, it is wonderful how readily mankind accept anything that sounds plausible as an universal maxim or axiom, if it is con

Fallacy of Maxims.

85

fidently stated and well repeated until a fashion of repeating it is established; and that in things of far more consequence than architecture.

Fallacy about Orientation.-The first architectural specimen of such maxims that occurs to me is one that has been repeated dozens of times, and will be so again, though every one could refute it very soon by his own observation. Somebody, I daresay, found a church or two pointing not due east, but in the direction of sunrise on the day of the saint after whom the church is named; and he at once jumped to the conclusion that such a charming bit of ecclesiology ought to be universal if it was not. So, without going to look whether the half a dozen churches nearest him conformed to that rule, which he would certainly have found that they do not, he straightway published it as the solution of the problem why so many churches do not stand cardinally; and deduction from general rules is so much less trouble and so much pleasanter to most people than induction from a course of observation, that this piece of nonsense came to be accepted and repeated continually. Any book of churches with the cardinal points indicated will show you in five minutes that there is not the least foundation for it, and that there was never any rule but this, that churches should point to the east unless there was some local reason for deviating not very much, though some of the finest are even beyond N.E. or S.E. St. Peter's at Rome has the chancel actually at the west, which would be a puzzle for sticklers for the eastward position', of the minister at the communion. In fact, as Mr. Fergusson says, orientation was never recognised at all in Italy.

Shams, Plaister.-Again, we have the preachers against shams,' who profess to have discovered that

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Absurd Rage against Plaister.

in all genuine styles of architecture, and especially Gothic, the real materials and constructive forms were never concealed by any others; and they rage against painting deal to look like oak, and go about skinning church interiors of their genuine ancient Gothic plaister, and exposing rough walls, such as you would not leave in the scullery of a cottage, though at other times they will go and daub all this same plaister over with their own vulgar painting, making it a double sham, if plaister is one. And lately, by way of a specimen of consistency, we have had some of this school, headed by a Gothic architect of the straitest sect, wanting to cut off the solid stonework of St. Paul's in order to veneer it with marble. Their excuses for their inconsistencies only make them still more ludicrous. Their most eminent realistic preacher, Mr. Ruskin, was hard put to it to find absolution for his favourite Italian builders having veneered some of their churches with thin marble slabs: not indeed so bad as cutting off solid stonework to stick that on, as it was only veneering bricks instead of plaistering them. And at last he found it in the fact that the fastenings of the marble slabs were not invisible, so that by looking sharp you can see that they are slabs and not solid blocks. At that rate plaister certainly can be no sham, for it is mistakeable for nothing else—unless it is painted into sham stones.

It is satisfactory to find that while some of the inferior but extreme Gothicists go about committing this plaister-skinning iniquity, the most eminent of our architects, whose name will go down in connection with the Gothic restorations of this age fifty times more than theirs, has pronounced strongly against it. I find that he said in a paper read at the Northampton

Sir G. Scott on Destruction of Plaister. 87

Architectural Society, quoted in the Architect at Christmas 1874:

'There are some principles common to all kinds of art, which modern architects, in mere caprice or in painful striving after novelty sometimes venture to depart from. Ever since civilisation began it has been the rule to finish the interior of a building with all possible care. Every ancient building, whether of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, or Mediæval times, was carefully faced internally with wrought stone, or plaister, and decorated. We now see churches whose interiors are faced with rough brickwork, relieved perhaps with lines of red and black, and others in which the rudest rubble is pointed with the blackest mortar, ingeniously combining the harshness of barbarism with the disingenuousness of civilisation. It is a duty to protest against making our churches the field for the exhibition of such vagaries. Let those who, satiated with feeble refinement, can find no relief but in still weaker affectation of barbarism, confine their taste to their own drawing rooms, but let our churches be spared. Unfortunately the evil is not confined to new buildings. Numbers of fine old churches have been stripped internally and reduced to a nakedness compared with which Puritan whitewash is decency.'

I know two adjacent ones so scarified by Mr. Street under the name of restoration. If architects think it below their dignity to mind what is said by amateurs, they will hardly venture to say that Sir G. Scott's experience is to be set aside for their theories of what Gothic architecture ought to be. The inconsistency of these destructive and vigorous' theorists is made more striking by their additional invention of the phrase 'Conservative Restoration,' of which I shall have more

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