BOOK VII.
CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY.ENGLAND.
Itis perhaps not too much to assert that during the Middle Ages Architecture was practised in England with even greater success than among any of the contemporary nations. In beauty of detail and elegance of proportion the English cathedrals generally surpass their Continental rivals. It is only in dimensions and mechanical construction that they are sometimes inferior. So lovingly did the people of this country adhere to the Art, that the Gothic forms clung to the soil long after they had been superseded on the Continent by the classical Renaissance; and the English returned to their old love long before other nations had got over their contempt for the rude barbarism of their ancestors. It is now more than a century since Horace Walpole conceived the idea of reproducing the beauties of York Minster and Westminster Abbey in a lath and plaster villa at Strawberry Hill. The attempt, as we now know, was ridiculous enough; but the result on the Arts of the country most important. From that day to this, Gothic villas, Gothic lodges, and Gothic churches have been the fashion—at first timidly, and wonderfully misunderstood, but now the rage, and with an almost perfect power of imitation. The result of this revived feeling for Mediæval art which interests us most in this place is, that every Gothic building in the country has been carefully examined and its peculiarities noticed. All the more important examples have been drawn and published, their dates and histories ascertained as far as possible, and the whole subject rendered complete and intelligible. The only difficulty that remains is, that the works in which the illustrations of English art are contained range over 70 or 80 years—the early ones published before the subject wasproperly understood; and that they are in all shapes and sizes, from the most ponderous folios to the most diminutive of duodecimos. Their number too is legion, and they therefore often go over the same ground. The one book that now seems wanted to complete the series of publications on the subject, is a clear and concise, but complete narrative of the rise and progress of the style, with just a sufficient amount of illustration to render it intelligible. Two volumes in 8vo, of 500 pages each, might suffice for the distillation of all that is contained in the 1001 volumes above alluded to: and with 1000 illustrations, if well selected, the forms and peculiarities of the style might be rendered sufficiently clear. But less would certainly not suffice.
Under these circumstances, it will be easily understood that nothing of the sort can be attempted in this work. With only one-tenth of the requisite space available, and less than that proportion of illustration, all that can be proposed is to sketch the great leading features of the subject, to estimate the value of the practice of the English architects as compared with those on the Continent, and to point out the differences which arose between their methods and ours, in consequence of either the local or social peculiarities of the various nationalities.
This compression is hardly to be regretted in the present instance, since any one may with very little trouble master the main features of the history in some of the many popular works which have been published on the subject, and all have access to the buildings themselves. It need hardly be added, that these are far better and truer exponents of the feelings and aspirations of those who erected them than all the books that ever were written. Unless a man learns to read the lessons these stone books so vividly convey, by an earnest personal investigation of the monuments themselves, of one style at least, he will hardly ever be able to understand the subject; but for the purpose of such a study, the English Mediæval architecture is perhaps the most complete and perfect. Nowhere else can all the gradations of change be so easily traced; and in no other style was there so little interference from extraneous causes. Throughout, the English sought only to erect the building then most suitable to its destination, with the best materials available for the purpose; and the result is therefore generally more satisfactory and more harmonious than in other countries where the architects were more trammelled by precedents, or more influenced by local peculiarities.
CHRONOLOGY.
CHRONOLOGY.
CHRONOLOGY.
After the departure of the Romans, the various tribes that inhabited the island were left so feebly organised, and so unequally balanced, that they could find no better occupation for their time than that of cutting each other’s throats; in which they were afterwards so ably seconded by the Saxons and Danes, that it is in vain to look for any development of the arts of peace among them. They were equal to the erection of a Stonehenge or an Avebury in honour of those who fell in the struggles against their foreign invaders; but beyond this their architectural aspirations do not seem to have reached.
With the establishment of the Heptarchy, and more especially after Alfred’s glorious reign, we might expect something better. The country was then converted to Christianity. Churches were wanted; and there were Italian priests to be found who could tell the inhabitants what was being done at Rome and elsewhere on the Continent. But against this we have the knowledge that the dominant race was Saxon or Danish—Aryanpur sang—and art had consequently no place in their affections. Their churches were probably small and rude, just sufficient for their purposes, and no more; and designed, like railway stations, to last only till necessity compel an enlargement. Most probably, too, the greater number were built of wood; and for the true Saxon style we ought perhaps to look to the Norwegian wooden churches—described in the last book—as types of the style, rather than to the towers erected, probably, as additions to the original wooden churches. Of these towers, many still remain in our island; but in almost every case the wooden nave has been superseded by one of stone and generally in the pointed-arch style of architecture.
With the Norman Conquest a new state of things was inaugurated. Great tracts of country and great part of the wealth of the conqueredraces escheated to the Conqueror, and in the division of the spoil the clergy seem in some cases to have been even more fortunate than the laity. But however this may have been, it will be easily understood that a French hierarchy vowed to celibacy would be able to find no better way of employing their easily acquired wealth than in the display of architectural magnificence. During the century which succeeded the Conquest, the Saxon cathedrals, with scarcely an exception, were swept away to make room for nobler buildings designed by foreign architects, and all the larger abbey churches were likewise rebuilt. All this was done with such grandeur of conception, and so just an appreciation of the true principles of architectural effect, that even now the Norman nave, in spite of its rudeness, is frequently a more impressive specimen of art than the more polished productions of the succeeding centuries.
The impulse once so nobly given, the good work proceeded steadily but rapidly. During the three centuries which succeeded the Conquest, all the artistic intellect of the nation seems to have been concentrated on this one art. Poetry hardly existed, and Painting and Sculpture were only employed as the handmaids of architecture. But year by year new and improved forms of construction were invented and universally adopted. New mouldings, and new applications of carvings and foliage, were introduced; and painting on opaque substances and even on glass was carried to an astonishing degree of perfection. All this was done without borrowing and without extraneous aid, but by steadily progressing to a well-understood object with a definite aim. It is true that occasionally, as at Westminster Abbey, we detect the influence of French arrangements; but even there the design is carried on in so essentially English a manner, with details so purely English, as to make us feel even more strongly how essentially native the style had become.
The Ethnic combination, which led to the marvellous perfection of Gothic art during the Edwardian period, was as fortunate as can well be conceived. It was a Celtic hierarchy and aristocracy steadied by a Saxon people; with the substratum of an earlier Celtic race, held in absolute subjection by the Saxons, but rising again, at least partially, to the surface, under the Norman domination. It was something like what happened in Athens when a Dorian race was superimposed on one of Pelasgic origin; and, although the conditions were here reversed, and the field far more limited, the result was still most successful. Within the limits of a century, the French had jumped from the tentative example of St. Denis (1144) to the perfection of the Sainte Chapelle (1244). Our St. Stephen’s Chapel was not finished till a century afterwards; but while the French hardly ever went beyond their great 13th century effort, in the 16th century we were building the Royal Chapels at Windsor, Westminster, and Cambridge.
The French wars and the wars of the Roses seem to have altered the original state of affairs to a very considerable extent. The Norman nobility were decimated—almost, indeed destroyed—and another stratum of society came gradually to the surface, but this time certainly not Celtic. On the walls of the churches of the Lancastrian period we read—faintly, it must be confessed—the great Saxon motto, “The greatest possible amount of accommodation at the least possible expenditure of money and thought.” During this period, too, the cathedral and conventual hierarchies were yielding before the development of the parochial system. It may be wrong to assert that the Reformation began as early as 1400, but it is true that the seeds were then sown, which afterwards ripened into the explosion of the Commonwealth. Some very grand churches were no doubt erected during the Lancastrian period, and some beautiful additions made to existing edifices; but they were hard and mechanical as compared with that which preceded them. They were the work of accomplished masons, not wrought out with the feelings of educated gentlemen; and, though we may admire, we cannot quite adore even the best and noblest productions of their age.
Under the Tudors the style went out in a blaze of glory. Nothing can be more gorgeous and fascinating than the three Royal Chapels, and the other contemporary fan-roofed buildings; but they are like the fabled dying hues of the dolphin—bright and brilliant, but unnatural and fleeting. It was the last spasmodic effort of an expiring style, and soon passed away.
After the reformation was complete there was no longer any want of new churches, and the great incentive of making a house worthy of the service of God was taken away; so that during Elizabeth’s reign, architecture was almost wholly occupied in providing new and more extensive mansions for the nobility and landed gentry. Spacious rooms, well-lighted galleries, comfortable chambers, and good accommodation for servants were the demands of the time, with sufficient stateliness, but at the least possible outlay. Comfort and economy are the inherent antitheses of architectural effect; and then, as now, brought the art down from its exalted pedestal almost to the level of a mere useful art. But the Bodleian Library and other buildings in our Universities show that the art lingered even in the 17th century, and that men still looked upon mullions and pinnacles as objects on which a little money might be advantageously spent. But it was no longer the old art: of course there are exceptions, but that was struck down on the battlefield of Towton in 1461, only to be partially galvanised into life at Bosworth, twenty-four years afterwards.
Although Gothic architecture continued to be employed in the Universities and in remote corners of the land long after it had ceased to be practised abroad, it must not therefore be assumed that thepeople of England generally regarded it with admiration. To them it was the symbol of a superstition from whose influence they gloried in escaping, or the emblem of a feudal tyranny from which they were just emerging into partial freedom. During Elizabeth’s reign the struggle was hardly over; the wounds of the combatants were still fresh and bleeding, the anger of the contest had by no means subsided, and they looked with hate and abhorrence on whatever recalled the stern realities of the past. We can now afford to look on the Middle Ages with far different feelings; our wounds have long since been healed, and hardly a scar remains. Time has thrown its veil of poetry over what was then a mere prosaic matter of fact, hiding those features which were once so repulsive, and softening much which even now it is impossible to forget. They shrunk from what they felt as a reality; we cherish it because it has faded into a dream.
Bearing in mind the prevalence of these feelings, we should not be surprised that so soon as classical art was presented to them the people rushed to it with avidity. The world was then ringing with praise of the newly disseminated poetry of Virgil, the eloquence of Cicero, and the glorious narratives of Livy. A new light was dawning, and the cry arose on all sides, “Away with the Middle Ages, with their superstition and their tyranny. Roman greatness, Roman literature, and Roman art are to regenerate the world!” We are now convinced that the Classical Renaissance was not successful; but is it quite clear that a Mediæval revival will not prove even a greater and more disastrous mistake?
Be this as it may, in the whole range of artistic history it would be difficult to find any single monograph that might be made so complete in itself, or all the details of which are so well known, as that of Mediæval art in England. We know its birth and parentage; we can follow it through youth to the bloom of manhood. We can admire it in the staid maturity of its power, and in the expiring efforts of its failing strength; and we know the cause of its decay and death. To those who are able to grasp it, no story can be more interesting; while to those who desire to understand what architecture really is, how it can be cultivated so as to insure success, and by what agencies it is sure to decay and finally to die, no subject is capable of being more instructively treated.