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106 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
wall, than an army of pinnacles.* The limitation of size must be only in the uses of the building, or in the ground at his disposal.
§ 6. That limitation, however, being by such circumstances determined, by what means, it is to be next asked, may the actual magnitude be best displayed; since it is seldom, perhaps never, that a building of any pretension to size looks so large as it is. The appearance of a figure in any distant, more especially in any upper, parts of it will almost always prove that we have under-estimated the magnitude of those parts.1
It has often been observed that a building, in order to show its magnitude, must be seen all at once;-it would, perhaps, be better to say, must be bounded as much as possible by continuous lines, and that its extreme points should be seen all at once; or we may state, in simpler terms still, that it must have one visible bounding line from top to bottom, and from end to end. This bounding line from top to bottom may either be inclined inwards, and the mass therefore, pyramidical; or vertical, and the mass form one grand cliff; or inclined outwards, as in the advancing fronts of old houses, and, in a sort, in the Greek temple, and in all buildings with heavy cornices or heads. Now, in all these cases, if the bounding line be violently broken; if the cornice project, or the upper portion of the pyramid recede, too violently,
* I admire the simplicity with which all this good advice was tendered to a body of men whose occupation for the next fifty years would be the knocking down every beautiful building they could lay hands on; and building the largest quantities of rotten brick wall they could get contracts for. [1880.]
1 [The MS. here adds another paragraph:-
“The object of the architect, therefore, is in the next place to make the magnitude of his building felt and understood. (Much has been written on this subject which I would not repeat except so far as it seems to me not hitherto to have been thrown into such a simple form as to render it useful and easy to be remembered: almost all that is necessary to be kept in mind is evident to the plainest common-sense, and pardon for stating principles so trite or self-evident will therefore be accorded me by those only who think with me that the common-sense view of the matter is not always that which becomes the first or favourite principle in practice.)” The bracketed passage is, however, deleted.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
