Val dArno | Page 7

hitherto essentially of tombs.
It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in
your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County
Bank:
Remember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treasure, and
bearing other interest, which Niccola Pisano's Gothic was set to guard.

LECTURE II.
JOHN THE PISAN.
31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to
give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its chief
energy, the adornment of tombs,--having the passionate function of
doing honour to the dead.
But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture, the
decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of the

virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a
natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design
fitted for it, in civil buildings. [1]
[Footnote: "These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device:
Victory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets,
Mercury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher."--(Sagacius Gazata,
of the Palace of Can Grande. I translate only Sismondi's quotation.)]
32. _Civil_, or _civic_, I say, as opposed to military. But again observe,
there are two kinds of military building. One, the robber's castle, or
stronghold, out of which he issues to pillage; the other, the honest
man's castle, or stronghold, into which he retreats from pillage. They
are much like each other in external forms;--but Injustice, or
Unrighteousness, sits in the gate of the one, veiled with forest branches,
(see Giotto's painting of him); and Justice or Righteousness enters by
the gate of the other, over strewn forest branches. Now, for example of
this second kind of military architecture, look at Carlyle's account of
Henry the Fowler, [1] and of his building military towns, or burgs, to
protect his peasantry. In such function you have the first and proper
idea of a walled town,--a place into which the pacific country people
can retire for safety, as the Athenians in the Spartan war. Your fortress
of this kind is a religious and civil fortress, or burg, defended by
burgers, trained to defensive war. Keep always this idea of the proper
nature of a fortified city:--Its walls mean protection,--its gates
hospitality and triumph. In the language familiar to you, spoken of the
chief of cities: "Its walls are to be Salvation, and its gates to be Praise."
And recollect always the inscription over the north gate of Siena: "Cor
magis tibi Sena pandit."--"More than her gates, Siena opens her heart to
you."
[Footnote 1: "Frederick," vol. i.]
33. When next you enter London by any of the great lines, I should like
you to consider, as you approach the city, what the feelings of the heart
of London are likely to be on your approach, and at what part of the
railroad station an inscription, explaining such state of her heart, might
be most fitly inscribed. Or you would still better understand the
difference between ancient and modern principles of architecture by
taking a cab to the Elephant and Castle, and thence walking to London
Bridge by what is in fact the great southern entrance of London. The

only gate receiving you is, however, the arch thrown over the road to
carry the South-Eastern Railway itself; and the only exhibition either of
Salvation or Praise is in the cheap clothes' shops on each side; and
especially in one colossal haberdasher's shop, over which you may see
the British flag waving (in imitation of Windsor Castle) when the
master of the shop is at home. 34. Next to protection from external
hostility, the two necessities in a city are of food and water supply;--the
latter essentially constant. You can store food and forage, but water
must flow freely. Hence the Fountain and the Mercato become the
centres of civil architecture.
Premising thus much, I will ask you to look once more at this cloister
of the Campo Santo of Pisa.
35. On first entering the place, its quiet, its solemnity, the perspective
of its aisles, and the conspicuous grace and precision of its traceries,
combine to give you the sensation of having entered a true Gothic
cloister. And if you walk round it hastily, and, glancing only at a fresco
or two, and the confused tombs erected against them, return to the
uncloistered sunlight of the piazza, you may quite easily carry away
with you, and ever afterwards retain, the notion that the Campo Santo
of Pisa is the same kind of thing as the cloister of Westminster Abbey.
36. I will beg you to look at the building, thus photographed, more
attentively. The "long-drawn aisle" is here, indeed,--but where is the
"fretted vault"?
A timber