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CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 113
to the vertebræ, which it is not well to surrender. I hold, therefore, that for this and other reasons, the masonry of a building is to be shown: and also that, with certain rare exceptions, (as in the cases of chapels and shrines of most finished workmanship,) the smaller the building, the more necessary it is that its masonry should be bold, and vice versâ. For if a building be under the mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase its apparent size (too easily measurable) by any proportionate diminution in the scale of its masonry. But it may be often in our power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones, or, at all events, introducing such into its make. Thus it is impossible that there should ever be majesty in a cottage built of brick; but there is a marked element of sublimity in the rude and irregular piling of the rocky walls of the mountain cottages of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland.1 Their size is not one whit diminished, though four or five stones reach at their angles from the ground to the eaves, or though a native rock happen to project conveniently, and to be built into the framework of the wall. On the other hand, after a building has once reached the mark of majestic size, it matters, indeed, comparatively little whether its masonry be large or small, but if it be altogether large, it will sometimes diminish the magnitude for want of a measure; if altogether small, it will suggest ideas of poverty in material, or deficiency in mechanical resource, besides interfering in many cases with the lines of the design, and delicacy of the workmanship. A very unhappy instance of such interference exists in the façade of the church of St. Madeleine2 at Paris, where the columns, being built of very small stones of nearly equal size with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a close trellis. So then, that masonry will be
1 [See on this subject The Poetry of Architecture, §§ 47 seq., Vol. I. pp. 42 seq.]
2 [Of this church the foundation was laid by Louis XV. in 1764. The works were interrupted by successive political events, and not completed till 1842. There were in consequence several architects, but the church owes its present form mainly to the designs of Couture (1777). Ruskin had seen it in course of completion, and admired it as a good copy of the Greek style: see The Poetry of Architecture, § 225 n., Vol. I. p. 168.]
VIII. H
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
