CHAPTER XI.

ON THE BOUNDARIES OF TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD IN

ARCHITECTURE.

As in morals nothing is so certainly indicative

of a degraded state of society as the decline of truthfulness and the prevalence of deceit, so in art the surest signs of degradation are the decay of reality and truth, and the general adoption of systems of deception and sham.

Measured by this rule, the vernacular architecture of our day would indeed be found wanting! The system of falsehood seems ingrained in its very heart's core. The hold which it has upon every branch of architecture and construction-indeed, upon every thought and every idea of our vernacular builders, is truly amazing, and can scarcely be credited till we examine carefully into what goes on around us every day and on every side. Truthfulness and reality are not only unappreciated, but almost unknown, or known only to be disliked and ridiculed. The same unsoundness and want of principle which leads to frauds and wholesale forgeries among commercial men-which leads to the adulteration of our food and medicines, and to the manufacture of spurious articles of every possible description-revels unchecked in our architecture, because, not being there a moral crime, this is considered a fair and open field for the free exercise of that taste for counterfeits which is so deeply rooted in every branch of society.

This seems to be viewed as not only an innocent mode of giving vent to the overflowings of our enthusiasm in the cause of deception, but it is imagined that the world in general, and architecture in particular, are positive gainers by it, and that the perfection to which we have brought the art of shamming is really a thing to be proud of,-one of the great results of England's freedom,-and that the liberty of shamming is as much one of our national bulwarks, as liberty of the conscience or of the press.

Not only are our brick houses cemented over in the forms of every kind of constructive or architectural features belonging to stone,-brick arches made to look like stone lintels, and in some cases stone lintels cleverly made to imitate brick arches,-plaster, wood, or paper painted to look like marble and granite,— mean woods constantly and everywhere made to look like rich ones,-metal like stone or wood, and wood like metal, paper like tile, and everything something different from what it is, but every good and useful invention which might be made conducive to enriching our architecture with new modes of construction and decoration, is in its turn degraded by being made to pander to the universal preference for falsehood over truth, and is used, not as a new element to be treated honourably and honestly on its own merits, but only as another method of imitating at a cheaper rate something which we already possessed; or, if the new material be too valuable or of too stubborn a nature to be enlisted in the ranks of active imitation, it has to submit to it in a passive sense, and becomes vulgarized by being itself made the object of counterfeits. One half of the arts which are practised are mere imitations of something different;

one half of the manual skill which is exercised is wasted on spurious copies of something which would itself be too costly, instead of being honestly directed into some legitimate channel; and far more than one half of everything one sees is not what it appears to be, but something cheaper made to look like it.

It is not, however, in materials, construction, and decoration alone that the disease exhibits itself: the designs of our buildings are often in themselves fallacious. Buildings are made to look different from what they are. The character of a front presents the most extreme contrast to that of the parts less seen, and belongs perhaps to a building of a totally different class the architecture not only does not result from construction, but actually belies it; necessary objects, instead of being honestly treated, are made to look like something else which is neither necessary nor suitable; tricks are played to produce uniformity, to conceal doors and windows, &c., where needed, or to look like them where not needed; indeed, there is no end to the trickery and unreality to which the noble art of architecture has been subjected.

Against this deliberate and utter degradation of our art, many an indignant protest has of late years been made. It was first exposed in all its despicableness by Pugin, who, had he done nothing else, would have established his name for all future ages as the great reformer of architecture. His noble protest has been followed up by others, and it is a proud thing to think of, that among those who follow out the Gothic revival, the principle of strict truthfulness is universally acknowledged as their guiding star:true, they may often be led away from it by false

lights, they may often inadvertently fall into architectural unrealities; in an age of falsehood, they will of necessity sometimes wander into error, but with the great principle of truthfulness ever before them as their acknowledged guide, they must in the end succeed."Magna est Veritas et prævalebit."

As might have been anticipated, the continued protest against a system so inveterate as that I have been describing has brought a hornets' nest about the heads of the protesters. It might, I say, have been anticipated that the entire swarm of speculating housebuilders, the intermediate race between builders and architects, and all who practically view architecture as a trade, should rise in indignation at such an invasion of their liberties; but it was not to have been imagined that the same would be the case with men professing a respect for their profession, men who attend the meetings of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who visit the classic shores of Italy and Greece, who write books on the principles of architecture, and are the correspondents of architectural journals! One would have supposed of such persons, that however they might have been previously infected with the prevalent disease, they would have been only too grateful to have their attention called to it, and the remedy prescribed. With some it has been so, but with many the very thought of truthfulness as an element of architecture serves only to provoke silly sarcasm; and the exposure of the causes of the degradation of the art they profess to honour, instead of leading them to devote heart and hand to raising and purifying it, only excites them to vilify those who point out the evil,-to bring arguments shewing falsehood to be better than truth, or, if

obliged to admit the charge, to meet it with a tu quoque, as if our occasional failures were a conclusive refutation of our arguments.

I should not have taken the trouble to go over this well-trodden ground, nor to advocate principles which most of those who would trouble themselves to read this book would consider self-evident, were it not from a wish to meet one class of answer constantly given to our arguments,-that founded on the difficulty of defining in every instance where truth ends and fallacy begins.

When inveighing against some palpable and disgraceful sham which no argument can be invented to defend, we are often dexterously met by the proposal of a difficult case, a question of boundaries,-one so near the frontiers which sever truth from falsehood, that one is, for a moment, at fault in determining on which side it lies and it is triumphantly urged that, if we fail in deciding to which it belongs-if we condemn as false what appears unobjectionable, or admit as truthful what appears to contain an element of sham-we have at once given up our principles, and admitted that of our adversaries, viz. that there is no such thing as truth or falsehood in art. When, for instance, we object to painting deal to look like oak, we are asked what we think of Gilding; and if we defend it, it is at once said that if we may make wood or stone look like gold, surely we may make deal look like oak, or plaster like stone! If, again, we are decrying the custom of jointing plaster in imitation of stone, we may have the mediæval practice thrown in our teeth of drawing red lines in the forms of stonework on the plastering of churches; and the admission of the one practice it is argued