On The Art Collections At South Kensington, Considered In Reference To Architecture.*

out of the hackneyed grooves ; no more complaints , in short , of want of the means of instruction . When Lorenzo de Medici gave Michelangelo the run of his garden . 'filled with antique statues , the boy quickly understood that he was expected to teach himself , and that there were masters all around him , each on his pedestal—mute marbles , it is true , and yet speaking to

him with the voices of Phidias , Scopas , and Praxiteles . Here , too , is a garden better stored than the good Lorenzo ' s : — -hero , indeed , Michelangelo teaches in his turn !

I have not the felicitous expression of your excellent President , and therefore I the more admired the just and striking manner in Avhich , in his opening address , "iie made it evident that the non-acquaintance of artists with precedent monuments of art led but to a laborious travelling over old ground , to a finding out of supposed novelties , which ha'd nothing new in them , —in short , to

a constant striving without any real progress . I cannot but think thafc when a man knows little or nothing of what past generations have done , he will himself produce little or nothing of good for the future : for obvious reasons , the ignorant are rarely , if ever , original : it is impossible even lor the most self-reliant or indifferent artist entirelto the influence of the

monuy escape ments of art around him : ancl , if he be ignorant of the historical development of art , he Avill only tho more be influenced by the passing fashion ; that is , ho will blindly follow some favourite model , who , for aught ; he knows , is but an imitator himself : need I say this is the evil of our day ? It is an old objectionthat too great a- familiarity Avith

, precedent art is liable to enslave and deaden tho inventive faculties . I shall not stop to expose this fallacy ; it is , however , true , that at the present da } r we have too many special devotees of special styles , of which they know but the husk : this comes of getting a smattering only : it is exactly what a Avider and more universal range of study would prevent .

Let us then see Avhat the South Kensington Museum in particular offers to the architectural student . In the first place , it must be borne in mind that the Museum is but , as it Avere , a creation of yesterday ; thafc

the collections are still rapidly growing : that they are only provisionally arranged ; and that from necessary causes they are liable to continual shifting and displacement : at present , therefore , the Arfc Museum must be regarded as a rich treasury , in which all may make research ; in which discoveries may be made , sometimes the more interesting even from their being unexpected ;

but not as a completely methodised institution . It must not , however , be supposed that these arfc collections have been got together without design or definite system : on the contrary , a methodic and Avellunderstood scheme has from the first been carried out . The museum , on its first foundation in 1852 , Avas specially intended to serve as an adjunct and necessary

complement to the Government Schools of Arfc , —and , generally speaking , to forward the interests of industrial or ornamental design : with the latter view the incipient collection was , of course , soon made accessible to the public , and a new national museum Avas founded . Two leading principles thereupon , as it were , came to the surfaceand have never since been lost siht of

, g ; tbe first was , thafc ifc was not desirable to trench on the province of any existing public collection ; and the second , that Avhatever Avere its range or speciality , it should be developed on the widest and most liberal basis -, that the collection should in fact become the national museum in its own speciality . NOAV the nation already possessa- vast and rapidl-increasing collection of works of art

y of the classical epochs ; the arts of Greece and Rome , — of all Pagan antiquity , in short ,- —were Avell represented at tho British Museum ; but there they stopped . A beginning , it is true , had been made in the direction of Mediteval art , but efforts in that direction Avere not very

kindly looked upon by the governing body of that great institution ; and whilst Prance , for instance , with her Musee de Clnny , possessed a most valuable and practically useful collection of works of Mediaaval and Renaissance art , England had taken but the first timid step in that direction . The Avork to be done was thus clearly indicated ; and

thenceforth the creation of a collection , illustrating all art , of what we may term the modern or Christian epoch , other than painting and its accessory developments , — branches already provided for elsewhere , — -Avas undertaken ; and I think we may now point with satisfaction , to the progress made in ten years' time ; for at this moment Ave have a collection almost as much superior

to the Musee de Ckmy as the latter was to the Mediteval collections of the British Museum in 1 S 52 . Tho South Kensington Museum , then , offers to all and especially to architects , as the true masters and leaders of all industrial artists , a treasure of Avorks of decorative art in almost eveiy vehicle , ranging from the first timid efforts of tho Byzantine artists of the earlcenturieswhen arfc

y , aAVoke in Europe from the night of barbarism which had eclipsed the old Roman Empire ; through the successive phases of Medimval Christian arfc ; Gothic , as ifc is still convenient to term it ; Renaissance , or Cinque-cento in all its varieties , —Louis Quatorze , Rococo , Baroco , & c , doAvn to the revived Gothic of our own day , and the brilliant and facile styles of modern Prance .

To follow all these phases in detail would be far beyond my present limits . I am embarrassed with the abundance of materials at my choice . I have selected , — not , it is true , at random , but Avith great indecision , — the beautiful objects yon see before you , to serve me in in some respects as texts for the imperfect and discursive illustrations Avhich are , I fear , alone possible to-night . Bufc , in the first place , lefc us say a few words on the great question of the present aspect of arfc in reference to the revival of obsolete styles ; because I fancy ifc will

occur to some of my hearers to suppose , that I am going to advocate an eclectic system of culling forms and details from first one object and then another , from styles and local peculiarities , from characteristic features induced by specialities of material or vehicle , & c . ; and so forming as ifc were a modern composite order of architecture . Now this is exactly Avhat I Avish to guard against ; and

though I fear the endeavour is beyond my skill , I am most anxious to shoAV that this is not the true use of precedent art ; and that , on the contrary , as I have said before , the wider and more liberal are the studies of the true artist , the more completely exempt will he be from the enthralling influence of obsolete styles . My Avishis to show that a close and earnest analysis of beautiful

Avorks of arfc will nob lead to their vulgar imitation ; but , on the contrary , to a healthy perception of the greafc principles Avhich are , aa ifc were , latent in them , and Avhich , Avhen truly apprehended , Avill exercise such a general refining and instructive influence on the student as Avill strengthen and invigorate his original powers , and not Avarp and fetter them as the weak fibre of

ignorance . There is a great chain of art , as it were , reaching doAvn from classical antiquity almost to our own times . I say almost , for the only sudden breaks in the links have been in our OAVII day , by the eclectic revivals of the present century : we are now , in fact , operating a great Renaissance . Jusfc as , in the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries , European society at large reverted with passionate eagerness to the arts and literature of classical antiquity ; so now Ave , in this present age , are reviving Modiajvalism , —Ave are even reproducing the Renaissance itself . Unhappily , however , these revivals are for the most part only literal resuscitations of extinct styles ; from Avhafc cause I scarcely know , they nearly always lack that vitality , that creative or rather transmuting force , which , in the Middle ages , laid hold of precedent art , and . gave an' entirely new colouring , fresh and distinctive garbs