FINE ARTS.

RUSKIN'S STONES OF VENICE.*

THE reader has not had more than time enough fully to digest the second volume of The Stones of Venice—to realize to his own mind, under the impetuous and elaborate demonstration of Mr. Ruskin, the letter and the spirit of Byzantine architecture as it culminated in St. Mark's, and of Gothic in the Ducal Palace—when he is summoned to contemplate "the fall" of the city of the sea in her Renaissance buildings. Here, as Venice closes her stone-recorded story in decay rendered the gloomier by frivolity, Mr. Ruskin also, but in a far different tone of mind, closes his exposition.

Denunciation bad been prospectively launched against this same Renais- sance architecture in the two preceding volumes. There it served as a foil to the beauty and significance which so abundantly revealed them- selves to the inquirer into the first and second types of Venetian architec- ture: here it is the staple of the discourse, relieved only by references to the art which it superseded, whether by way of contrast, or occasioned by the traces of that old art which lingered yet in the earlier monuments of the new. There is thus some sameness of tone, though not of de- tail, in the volume and it naturally forma a less pleasurable study than its precursors. Less pleasurable, but hardly less attractive. However superior may be the temper which loves to contemplate and to unfold the beautiful, to that which engages in or watches the branding of the foul, it cannot be denied thet the feelings are as vividly at least, if not as nobly, enlisted in the latter. The arguments by which the unmasking of error can be sustained are more tangible than those which aim at the proof of excellence ; the audience more miscellaneous, and consequently larger. Few hearts are so tender bat what they feel a relish in the flaying of pretence or even im- becility. If the attack is made on what time has sanctioned or convention bolstered up, the aggressor excites sympathy for his "pluck," as well as the mere interest in antagonism and struggle. But the latter alone will suffice ; in criticism as in life, the arraignment of a defendant, or the con- viction of a criminal, collects a crowd. Hundreds will crush to the trial of a Mrs. Manning or a Tom Provis, where one cares to " assist " at the award of a Menthyon prize, or to see Mr. Disraeli distribute ten-and-six- pences to model peasants. Although, therefore, there may be less to satisfy the love of art in this volume of The Stones of Venice than in the first, and yet more especially the second, Mr. Ruskin may count on keeping his readers' attention as thoroughly alive. From this also more pointedly than from the others, must the first step in the architectural reform which he champions—the abandonment of the Renaissance style—receive its impulse. He had established general principles of constructive and decorative truth, and had shown their observance in Gothic; but the object was only half ful- filled, until he could evidence their violation in Renaissance work. As regards construction, the experimental process reasoned out in the first volume, where the author called upon his reader to build his own house to the best attainment of stability and convenient*, had partly answered this object; we have now to consider the art of architecture, not the science of building,—and, tested by the canons previously propounded and exemplified, the style of the Renaissance is found wanting both in beauty and in moral expression. Mr. Ruskin subdivides "the third or Renaissance period" of Venetian architecture into three stages ; the Early, the Roman, and the Grotesque Renaissance. And here we may take occasion to indicate, in passing, the general tendency, throughout the author's reammings, to classification of this kind. Not only are all the main topics of his discourse, whether in matters of principle or in matters of fact, thus divided into their several sections, but even in subordinate arguments and casual illustrations, the points for consideration are stated separately, and each is exhausted in its torn. This method gives a systematic character to the style, and con- veys an impression of determinate opinion. The Early Renaissance is treated of in two principal phases—the corruption of the Gothic, and a subse- • The Stones of Venice. Volume the Third : the Fall. By John Buskin, Author of " The Seven Lamps of Architecture," "Modern Painters," &e. &e. With 11- drawn by the Author. Published by Smith, Veer, and Co. quad partial recurrence to Byzantine types; and up to this point Mr. Ruskin speaks in terms of qualified but often warm praise. The Roman Renais- sance, the most distinctive development of the style, leads to an investi- gation of the whole spirit of the Renaissance schools, starting from arch. tecture, but including in its scope the arts generally and the social tee. dencies. This spirit Mr. Ruskin indicts as being composed of two ele- ments—Pride and Infidelity ; and the former is further analyzed as Pride of Science, Pride of State, and Pride of System.i. The treatment of the first of these three gives rise to much eloquent antithesis between art and science—clearly true in its basis, but pushed to a point to which few save absolute disciples will venture to follow Mr. Ruskin. Here occurs, ism„. dentally, an estimate of the teaching of the Book of yob, not the less just for being such as the mere churchgoing reader would never have thought of.

" The true and great sciences, more especially natural history, make men gentle and modest in proportion to the largeness of their apprehension and just perception of the infiniteness of the things they can never know. And this, it seems to me, is the principal lesson we are intended to be taught by the Book of Job; for there God has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and holy, and apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature, except humility. For this he is tried : and we are shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching out of the heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his no- thingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it. For, when the Deity himself has willed to end the temptation and to accom- plish in Job that for which it was sent, He does not vouchsafe to reason with him ; still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or confound him by lay- ing open before his eves the book of his iniquities. He opens before him only the arch of the aayspring and the fountains of the deep ; and amidst the covert of the reeds, and on the heaving waves, He bids him watch the kings of the children of pride, Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee ' : and the work is done.

"Thus, if, I repeat, there is any one lesson in the whole book which stands forth more definitely than another, it is this of the holy and hum- bling influence of natural seience on the human heart. And yet, even here, it is not the science, but the perception, to which the good is owing; and the natural sciences may become as harmful as any others when they lose themselves in classification and catalogue-making."

In demonstrating the "Pride of State," Mr. Ruskin stretches, or rather assumes, a point in his own favour, which, like a similar instance in the second volume, we point out in fairness to the Renaissance, at the risk of harping on one string, and in a manner that might be supposed captious. A Renaissance architect, Averulinus, wrote a treatise, wherein, comparing different orders of men—nobles, men of the middle classes, and rustics— with various stones, he says of chalcedonies, sardonyxes, &c., " Qnibus nulla macula inest qum non cernatur. Ita viri nobilitate preaditi earn vitara peragant cni nulla note potest inviri." [inveniri ?] This Mr. Ruskin translates—" And after these come the chalcedonies and sardonyxes, &e., which are so transparent that there can be seen no spot in them. Thus men endowed with nobility lead a life in which no spot can be found" : and he dilates on the fulsome adulation. We doubt the rendering of the first clause ; but no one aware of the syntactic value of the mood of the verbs " peragant" and " possit " can question for a moment that the second is an exhortation and not an assertion : "Thus should (or let) men endowed with nobility lead," &c. And the passage becomes inoffensive, and even moral.

The Grotesque Renaissance, "which is the corruption of the Renais- sance itself;" brings Mr. Ruskin to an extended definition of the nature of Grotesque generally, and the qualities by which its noble are distin- guished from its ignoble manifestations. In such inquiries as these, we know no writer who approaches Mr. Ruskin in grasp of the subject, subtlity of thought, and bright coinage of abstract qualities into express images,—re- minding us sometimes of the Socratic (or Platonic ?) arguing of an analogy between cookery and rhetoric. We can only give a few heads of the conditions through which Mr. Ruskin traces the Grotesque. He divides it first into two elements,—the ludicrous, and the terrible ; according to the predominance of either of which, the sportive grotesque or the ludi- crous grotesque is generated. Necessary play—the relaxation of men who work—produces the legitimate sportive grotesque ; inordinate play— the self-indulgence of the idle—produces the base sportive grotesque. The terrible grotesque "will be found always to unite some expression of vice and danger, but regarded in a peculiar temper, sometimes of predetermined or involuntary apathy, sometimes of mockery, sometimes of diseased and un- governed imaginativeness ; . . . . the true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, the false grotesque . . . . the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one." In referring to the-sym- bolic grotesque, we think Mr. Ruskin strains after a justification of what is anomalous, and indefensible, however excusable in many eases on the grounds not of intention but of inadequacy. The fact "that there is nothing so base in creation but that our faith shall give it wings which shall raise us into companionship with Heaven," cannot reconcile good sense or feeling to symbols, "in which the sanctity or majesty of meaning was contrasted . . . . with every appearance of malignity or baseness" ; nor can we regard it as other than plain sophistry to advance that "some- times the designer at last became wanton in his appeal to the piety of his interpreter, and recklessly poured out the impurity and the savageness of his own heart for the mere pleasure of seeing them overlaid with the fine gold of the sanctuary by the religion of their beholder." The fourth chapter of this volume is the " Conclusion " of the book. It contains, in a somewhat discursive form, an estimate of the unexampled opportunities of the present age ; of its dangers, "the pride of vain know- ledge, and the pursuit of vain pleasure " ; hopeful aspirations for the fu- ture of English architecture, based on "Mr. Hope's church, in Margaret Street, Portland Place," and for the future of English art, based on the doings of the " Preraphaelites" ; also a final assertion of "the great prin- ciple to which all that has hitherto been stated is subservient" (a prin- ciple which had been indicated with some definiteness in Modern Painters and the Seven Lamps)—" that art is valuable or otherwise only as it ex- presses the personality, activity, and living perception, of a good and great human soul ; that it may express and contain this with little help from execution, end less from science ; and that, if it have not this—if it show

t There is a contemptible spirit much abroad at present in literature— that of affecting a fantastic and absurd alliteration or jingle of sound in titles. We hope, and think, Mr. Ruskin would be above any other than an accidental compliance with it—although his "Science, State, aud System " .look suspicious.

Dot the Vigour, pereeptiont and invention of a mighty human spirit—it is worthies." To which principle we respond no doubting amen. To this " conclusion " succeed appendices and indices ; the last of these second being a guide to all that is most worth seeing in Venice in art and

architecture, from the Ruskinian point of view. If merely as a local hand- book, this appears most valuable. It contains in addition some of the noblest descriptive passages in the volame,—which, in fervid delineations

of mere scenery, is scarcely so rich as the other two. The burning of passionate love for Tintoret's works, which had blazed forth on more than one former occasion, glows at white heat through these pages. Dante, giobel Angelo, and Tintoret, are declared to be the three "greatest men whom Italy has produced." The following extract constitutes the major part of an "explanatory note" preceding the indices. Its decisive statement of the theory and proem of the whole work, absolving us from offering any less authori- tative explanation, recommends it for quotation in preference to pas- sages more conspicuous in qualities of style. "Wherever there really is a serious purpose in a book or a picture, the author does wrong who either in modesty or vanity, (both feelings have their share in producing the dislike of personal interpretation) trusts en- tirely to the patience and intelligence of the readers or spectators to pene- trate into their significance. At all events, I will, as far as possible, spare such trouble with respect to these volumes, by stating here, finally and clearly, both what they intend and what they contain ; and this the rather, because I have lately noticed, with some surprise, certain reviewers an- nouncing as a discovery, what I thought had lain palpably on the surface of the book, namely, that 'if Mr. Ruskin be right, all the architects, and all the architectural teaching of the last three hundred years, must have been wrong.' That is indeed precisely the fact ; and the very thing I meant to say, which indeed I thought I had said over and over again. I believe the architects of the last three centuries to have been wrong; wrong with- out exception ; wrong totally and from the foundation.

"This is exactly the point I have been endeavouring to prove, from the beginning of this work to the end of it. But as it seems not yet to have been stated clearly enough, I will here try to put my entire theorem into an unmistakeable form. The various nations who attained eminence in the arts before the time of Christ, each of them, produced forms of architecture which in their various degrees of merit were almost exactly indicative of the degrees of intellectual and moral energy of the nations which originated them; and each reached its greatest perfection at the time when the true energy and prosperity of the people who had invented it were at their cul- minating point. Many of these various styles of architecture were good, considered in relation to the times and races which gave birth to them; but none were absolutely good or perfect, or fitted for the practice of all future time. The advent of Christianity for the first time rendered possible the full development of the soul of man, and therefore the full development of the arts of man. Christianity gave birth to a new architecture, not only immeasurably superior to all that had preceded it, but demonstrably the best architecture that can exist; perfect in construction and decoration, and fit for the practice of all time. "This architecture, commonly called Gothic,' though in conception per- fect, like the theory of a Christian character, never reached an actual perfec- tion, having been retarded and corrupted by various adverse influences ; but it reached its highest perfection, hitherto manifested, about the close of the thirteenth century, being then indicative of a peculiar energy in the Chris- tian mind of Europe. In the course of the fifteenth century, owing to various causes which I have endeavoured to trace in the preceding pages, the Chris- tianity of Europe was undermined; and a Pagan architecture was introduced, in imitation of that of the Greeks and Romans.

"The architecture of the Greeks and Romans themselves was not good, butit was natural.; and, as I said before, good in some respects, and for a particular time. But the imitative architecture introduced first in the fif- teenth century, and practised ever since, was neither good nor natural. It was good in no respect, and for no time. All the architects who have built in that style have built what was worthless ; and therefore the greater part of the architecture which has been built for the last three hundred years, and which we are now building, is worthless. We must give up this style totally, despise it and forget it, and build henceforward only in that perfect and Christian style hitherto called Gothic, which is everlastingly the best. This is the theorem of these volumes. In support of this theorem, the first vo- lume contains, in its first chapter, a sketch of the actual history of Christian architecture, up to the period of the Reformation ,- and in the subsequent chapters, an analysis of the entire system of the laws of architectural con- struction and decoration, deducing from those laws positive conclusions as to the best forms and manners of building for all time. "The second volume contains in its first five chapters, an account of one of the most important and least known forms of Christian architecture, as exhibited in Venice, together with an analysis of its nature in the fourth chapter; and, which is a peculiarly important part of this section, an ac- count of the power of colour over the human mind.

"The sixth chapter of the second volume contains an analysis of the na- ture of Gothic architecture, properly so called ; and shows that in its ex- ternal form it complies precisely with the abstract laws of structure and beauty, investigated in the first volume. The seventh and eighth chapters of the second volume illustrate the nature of Gothic architecture by various Venetian examples. The third volume investigates, in its first chapter, the causes and manner of the corruption of Gothic architecture ; in its second chapter, defines the nature of the Pagan architecture which superseded it ; in the third chapter, shows the connexion of that Pagan architecture with the various characters of mind which brought about the destruction of the Venetian nation- and in the fourth chapter, points out the dangerous ten- dencies in the modem mind which the practice of such an architecture in- dicates.

"Such is the intention of the preceding pages, which I hope will no more be doubted or mistaken. As tar as regards the manner of its fulfil- ment, though.I hope, in the course of other inquiries, to add much to the elucidation of the points in dispute, I cannot feel it necessary to apologize for the imperfect handling of a subject which the labour of a long life, had I been able to bestow it, must still have left imperfectly treated."

The &ones of Venice, of which we here take leave, is a solemn book ; the production of an earnest, religious, progressive, and informed mind. The author of this essay on architecture has condensed into it a poetic apprehension, the fruit of awe of God and delight in nature, a knowledge, love, and just estimate of art, a holding fast to fact and repudiation of hearsay, an historic breadth, and a fearless challenge of existing social problems, whose union we know not where to find paralleled. Most of these qualitiesmay be discovered coexisting as fully elsewhere, their equal application to art, nowhere within our knowledge. The work may fur- nish examples of dogmatism and partiality ; but the dogmatism is la- borious observation expressed by conviction, and the partiality is often the impatient assertion of truth.