The Two Paths | Page 2

of past ages, and to bring their form into
dishonour by leaving out their soul.
The following addresses are therefore arranged, as I have just stated, to
put this great law, and one or two collateral ones, in less mistakeable
light, securing even in this irregular form at least clearness of assertion.
For the rest, the question at issue is not one to be decided by argument,
but by experiment, which if the reader is disinclined to make, all
demonstration must be useless to him.
The lectures are for the most part printed as they were read, mending
only obscure sentences here and there. The parts which were trusted to
extempore speaking are supplied, as well as I can remember (only with
an addition here and there of things I forgot to say), in the words, or at
least the kind of words, used at the time; and they contain, at all events,
the substance of what I said more accurately than hurried journal
reports. I must beg my readers not in general to trust to such, for even
in fast speaking I try to use words carefully; and any alteration of
expression will sometimes involve a great alteration in meaning. A
little while ago I had to speak of an architectural design, and called it
"elegant," meaning, founded on good and well "elected" models; the
printed report gave "excellent" design (that is to say, design excellingly
good), which I did not mean, and should, even in the most hurried
speaking, never have said.
The illustrations of the lecture on iron were sketches made too roughly
to be engraved, and yet of too elaborate subjects to allow of my
drawing them completely. Those now substituted will, however,
answer the purpose nearly as well, and are more directly connected
with the subjects of the preceding lectures; so that I hope throughout
the volume the student will perceive an insistance upon one main truth,
nor lose in any minor direction of inquiry the sense of the responsibility
which the acceptance of that truth fastens upon him; responsibility for
choice, decisive and conclusive, between two modes of study, which
involve ultimately the development, or deadening, of every power he
possesses. I have tried to hold that choice clearly out to him, and to

unveil for him to its farthest the issue of his turning to the right hand or
the left. Guides he may find many, and aids many; but all these will be
in vain unless he has first recognised the hour and the point of life
when the way divides itself, one way leading to the Olive
mountains--one to the vale of the Salt Sea. There are few cross roads,
that I know of, from one to the other. Let him pause at the parting of
THE TWO PATHS.

THE TWO PATHS
BEING LECTURES ON ART, AND ITS APPLICATION TO
DECORATION AND MANUFACTURE DELIVERED IN 1858-9.

LECTURE I.
THE DETERIORATIVE POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART OVER
NATIONS.
_An Inaugural Lecture, Delivered at the Kensington Museum, January,
1858._
[Footnote: A few introductory words, in which, at the opening of this
lecture, I thanked the Chairman (Mr. Cockerell), for his support on the
occasion, and asked his pardon for any hasty expressions in my
writings, which might have seemed discourteous towards him, or other
architects whose general opinions were opposed to mine, may be found
by those who care for preambles, not much misreported, in the
_Building Chronicle;_ with such comments as the genius of that journal
was likely to suggest to it.]
As I passed, last summer, for the first time, through the north of
Scotland, it seemed to me that there was a peculiar painfulness in its
scenery, caused by the non-manifestation of the powers of human art. I
had never travelled in, nor even heard or conceived of such a country
before; nor, though I had passed much of my life amidst mountain
scenery in the south, was I before aware how much of its charm
depended on the little gracefulnesses and tendernesses of human work,
which are mingled with the beauty of the Alps, or spared by their
desolation. It is true that the art which carves and colours the front of a
Swiss cottage is not of any very exalted kind; yet it testifies to the

completeness and the delicacy of the faculties of the mountaineer; it is
true that the remnants of tower and battlement, which afford footing to
the wild vine on the Alpine promontory, form but a small part of the
great serration of its rocks; and yet it is just that fragment of their
broken outline which gives them their pathetic power, and historical
majesty. And this element among the wilds of our own country I found
wholly wanting. The Highland cottage is literally a