glorious 'badges' which are now the proud distinction of their respective houses. 8. "In a survey of these primitive strong-holds, these rude citadels of our national faith and honor, every feature is invested with traditionary interest. They are intimately associated with our native literature, civil and sacred; with history, poetry, painting, and the drama; with local tradition, and legendary and antiquarian lore."-WILLIAM BEATTIE, M.D. 9. Gothic architecture in England has passed through several gradations or stages, which very truly mark the successive historical eras. Thus, in the Abbey of St. Alban's may still be seen remains of the ancient Saxon, with its ponderous columns and broad semicircular arches. In Saxon strength that abbey frown'd, On ponderous columns short and low.-SCOTT. 10. Yet in this very same structure the Norman style― which gives to the arch its first slight tendency toward a pointed appearance, introducing a rudely foliated' capital and a moulded base, and clustered and lighter columns, but still rejecting the pointed spires of the later Gothic-is introduced upon a Saxon basis, new and lighter arches having been thrown in, and the massive clustered pillars having been evidently chiseled, at vast labor and expense, out of the original Saxon, thus ingrafting the new style upon the primitive stock. Thus the old Saxon abbey becomes a fine specimen of the more modern Norman-Gothic. 11. "Bold is the abbey's front, and plain; But broadly sweeps the Norman arch Where slender columns guard the space The triple arch through arch disclose, The thwart-rib and the fretted rose." 12. The great western entrance of this celebrated abbey, which consists of a projecting porch elaborately ornamented, niched, and pillared, and subdivided into numerous compartments, shows a varied mingling of the styles of different ages. "Beside this porch, on either hand, It seems some shade of parted years And here, beneath the wide-stretch'd ground 13. In the engraving at the head of this lesson are represented the different eras of Gothic architecture in England, by references to the windows of Gothic edifices of different periods-exhibiting a gradual progress from the broad and plain semicircular Saxon-Norman style to the pointed and ogee13 arches, compound curves, and beautiful flowing tracery of later times. It is to this latter style of tracery that Scott so beautifully refers, in his description of Melrose Abbey: 14. "The moon on the east oriel14 shone Through slender shafts of shapely store By foliaged tracery combined; Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand In many a freakish knot had twined; Then framed a spell when the work was done, 15. It is pleasant to linger over these monumental relics, with which is associated so much of the history, literature, and religion of modern times. But, while they speak of the past, they also convey, in their broken arches and mouldering columns, the same lesson that is taught by older ruins of a pagan age-that this is a "fleeting world," and that the proudest monuments which man can raise are doomed to crumble beneath the touch of time. 16. When yonder broken arch was whole. So fleets the world's uncertain span; Gives mortal monuments a date Beyond the power of time and fate. The towers must share the builder's doom; But better boon benignant heaven To faith and charity has given, And bids the Christian hope sublime Transcend the bounds of fate and time.--SCOTT. ELF-IN, pertaining to elves or fairies. 2 CLEW, thread used in the embroidery. 3 FANE, a temple; a church. 4 AL-BI-ON, here used for England. 5 JOUST (just), a tilt; a tournament. • PORT-CUL'-LIS, a frame armed with iron over a gateway, to be let down for defense. 7 FO'-LI-A-TED, in the form of leaves. 8 PIN-NET, for pinnacle. 110 NAVE, the middle of a church. 11 CHOIR (kwire), the part of a church_appropriated to the singers. In most modern churches the singers are placed in certain seats in the galleries. 12 The bones of the British martyr, St. Albanus, are said to have been deposited in a gorgeous shrine within the walls of the abbey. 13 O-GEE', a moulding somewhat like the letter S. 9 The Saxon Offa, king of the Mercians, the supposed founder of the Abbey of St. Al-14 O'-RI-EL, a bay-window, or curved window ban's, lived near the close of the eighth projecting outward. century. 15 DOLE, a gift; a pittance. LESSON V.-OF THE USEFUL IN ARCHITECTURE. 1. THE senses make the first demand in almost every path in human life. The necessity of shelter from the cold and heat, from sun and shower, leads man at first to build a habitation. 2. What this habitation shall be depends partly on the habits of the man, partly on the climate in which he lives. If he is a shepherd, and leads a wandering life, he pitches a tent. If he is a hunter, he builds a rude hut of logs or skins. If he is a tiller of the soil, he constructs a dwelling of timber or stones, or lodges in the caverns of the rocky hill sides. 3. As a mere animal, man's first necessity is to provide a shelter; and, as he is not governed by the constructive instinct of other animals, the clumsiest form which secures him against the inclemency of the seasons often appears sufficient; there is scarcely any design apparent in its arrangement, and the smallest amount of convenience is found in its interior. This is the primative, or savage idea of building. 4. Let us look a step higher in the scale of improvement. On the eastern borders of Europe is a tribe or nation called the Croats, who may be said to be only upon the verge of civilization. They lead a rude forest and agricultural life. They know nothing of the refinements of the rest of Europe. They live in coarse, yet strong and warm houses. But their apartments are as rude as their manners, and their cattle frequently share the same rooms with themselves. 5. Our third example may be found in many portions of the United States, and especially on our Western frontiers. It is nothing less common than a plain rectangular house, built of logs, or of timber from the forest saw-mill, with a roof to cover it, windows to light it, and doors to enter it. The heat is perhaps kept out by shutters, and the cold by fires burnt in chimneys. It is well and strongly built; it af fords perfect protection to the physical nature of man; and it serves, so far as a house can serve, all the most imperative wants of the body. It is a warm, comfortable, convenient dwelling. 6. It is easy to see that in all these grades of man's life, and the dwellings which typify them, only one idea has as yet manifested itself in his architecture-that of utility. In the savage, the half civilized, and the civilized states, the idea of the useful and the convenient differ, but only in degree. it is still what will best serve the body-what will best shelter, lodge, feed, and warm us-which demands the whole attention of the mere builder of houses. 7. It would be as false to call only this architecture as to call the gamut music, or to consider rhymes poetry; and yet it is the frame-work or skeleton on which architecture grows and wakens into life; without which, indeed, it can no more rise to the dignity of a fine art than perfect language can exist without sounds. LESSON VI.-OF EXPRESSION IN CIVIL OR PUBLIC ARCHI TECTURE. 1. PASSING beyond the merely useful in building, which is limited by man's necessities, the chief beauty of architecture, considered as one of the fine arts, is to be found in the expression of elevated and refined ideas of man's life. The first and most powerful expressions of this art are those of man's public life or of his religious and intellectual nature, as seen in the temple, the church, the capitol, or the gallery of Its secondary expression is confined to the manifestation of his social and moral feelings, as shown in the dwellings which he inhabits. 2. In the forms of the Gothic cathedral are embodied the worshiping principle in man-the loving reverence for that which is highest and holiest, and the sentiment of Christian brotherhood. These harmonies are expressed in the principal lines, which are all vertical-that is, aspiring-tending upward; in the circumstance that the whole mass falls under or within the pyramidal form, which is that of flame or fire, symbolical of love; in the pointed character of all the openings, which, as expressive of firmness of base, denotes embracingness of tendency and upward ascension as its ultimate aim, and in the clustering and grouping of its multiple parts. Gothic architecture being thus representative rather of the unity of love than of the diversities of faith, it seems proper that it should be the style for all ecclesiastical and other purposes having reference to religious life. 3. But other forms of architecture are equally expressive. In Roman art we see the ideal of the State as fully manifested as is, in Gothic, the ideal of the Church. Its type-form, based on the simple arch, is the dome-the encircling, overspreading dome, whose centre is within itself, and which is the binding together of all for the perfection and protection of the whole. Hence the propriety of using this style in statehouses, capitols, Parliament-houses, town-halls, where this idea is to be expressed. 4. Again: we have, in the Greek temple, as it is found in the several Grecian orders, still another architectural type. As these orders have their individual expressions, as shown in the simple and manly Doric, the chaste Ionic, and the ornate Corinthian, they furnish the most suitable varieties of a harmoniously elegant style that can be conceived for simple halls, for courts of justice, for schools, and for public, oratorical, lecture, and philosophical rooms. Hence buildings which have but one object, and which require one expression of that object, can not be built in a style better adapted to convey the single idea of their use than in the Grecian temple form. Here every thing falls under the horizontal line the level line of rationality; it is all logical, orderly, syllogistically perfect, as the wisdom of the schools.-Literary World. |