ัวษซำฐฟโ

114 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

generally the most magnificent which, without the use of materials systematically small or large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the conditions and structure of its work, and displays alike its power of dealing with the vastest masses, and of accomplishing its purpose with the smallest, sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic commandment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy splinters into springing vaults and swelling domes. And if the nobility of this confessed and natural masonry were more commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in chiselling and polishing stones which would have been better left as they came from the quarry, would often raise a building a storey higher. Only in this there is to be a certain respect for material also: for if we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known ease of the workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly; it will be well to take advantage of the stone’s softness, and to make the design delicate and dependent upon smoothness of chiselled surfaces: but if we build in granite or lava, it is a folly, in most cases, to cast away the labour necessary to smooth it; it is wiser to make the design granitic itself, and to leave the blocks rudely squared. I do not deny a certain splendour and sense of power in the smoothing of granite, and in the entire subduing of its iron resistance to the human supremacy.¹ But in most cases, I believe, the labour and time necessary to do this would be better spent in another way; and that to raise a building to a height of a hundred feet with rough blocks, is better than to raise it to seventy with smooth ones. There is also a magnificence in the natural cleavage of the stone to which the art must indeed be great that pretends to be equivalent; and a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain heart from which it has been

¹ [The MS. adds:-

“So only that enough rigidity of form be left to mark this resistance. (In this respect I think the right hand lion of the two Egyptian ones in the British Museum the finest piece of sculpture in the world.)”

The reference is to the two red granite lions couchant in the Egyptian Gallery, which once guarded the gate of a brick-built temple or palace in Upper Nubia (see T. Nichols’ Handy-Book of the British Museum, p. 69).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]