And all our schools of design, and committees of
taste; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all
the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which
there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and
the life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as
efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit
architecture and all art, like other things, to English law.
I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be the
beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time
and order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and
sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health,
depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish
until that takes the lead, and (this I do not _think_, but I proclaim,
as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of
society, of an understood and strongly administered legal government)
our architecture _will_ languish, and that in the very dust, until the
first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal
system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It
may be said that this is impossible. It may be so--I fear it is so: I
have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; I
simply know and assert the necessity of it.
Pages:
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314