Stray Thoughts On The Origin And Progress Of The Fine Arts.

STRAY THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS .

Bx DlAGOKAS . PAUT SVI . Germany , where pointed architecture is str-rposed to have been first produced , is also the country where the finest buildings of that style have been erected , and where the taste for it has been of the greatest duration .

France , it would seem , next received a knowledge of this style , and soon rivalled her neighbour in it ; but many of the beautiful edifices that were erected in France have been rased to the ground by revolutionists . England after France received a knowledge of Gothic architecture , but the buildings erected here were mostly executed

in a plain and simple style . The Cathedral of Amiens was begun in 1220 , the same year as that of Salisbury ; andthe Saint Chapelle , at Paris , was consecrated in 1248 , twenty-eight years after . The comparison of these buildings with each other will show that England had not at that period received the knowledge

oforpos-, , sessing the knowledge , had not yet acquired the taste for that aerial lightness and luxuriance of ornament , so remarkable in the French buildings . Many of our churches are built in a mixed st yle , the Lombard and pointed united , having been commenced in the former

and finished in the latter . Canterbury , Ely , and Peterborough exhibit a union of two styles , while Salisbury , Wells , Exeter , York , and others are entirely pointed . Our cathedrals , however , cannot be compared in size "with those on the Continent . Our naves and choirs are inferior , and , with the exception of Henry the Seventh ' s Chapel at WestminsterSt . George ' s Chapel at Windsor

, , and one or two others , we have no reb ' gious or other edifices which display an equal richness of decoration with the foreign buildings . In Italy , the pointed style is found everywhere engrafted on the round , or , where the building itself is in the latter style , the bishop ' s thronesthe altar canopies & care pointed . During the

, , , prevalance of this style no peculiar name was given to it , but , afterwards , when it was superseded by the socalled return to the antique , it was considered as barbarous , and stigmatised by the name of GOTHIC . I shall noiv , in conclusion , proceed to notice that rapid and universal change which caused the rejection of pointed or Gothic

architecture , and the adoption 'in some degree of the styles of ancient Greece and Rome . This sudden desertion of all that had been most admired , and the most carefully perfected , has been assigned by some to the accidental discovery of some of the masterpieces of ancient literaturewhich had long lain hidden in monastic

, libraries , and of some specimens of ancient art , rescued frombeneath the soil of Romeby others . It has been considered as a necessary consequence of a returning taste fertile literature and the fine arts of the ancients . It has

likewise been attributed to the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 , which drove many Greeks from their homes , and by their means introduced into the Latin Empire the fondness for ancient architecture ivhich those Greeks are supposed to have preserved . But the most reasonable supposition is that which ascribes the change to a revival of industry , trade , and jmblic

spirit , and of whatever else might lead the way , as in ancient Greece , for a prevailing taste for literature and the fine arts . Men were beginning to emerge from ignorance and inaction ; a knowledge of ancient art was no longer confined to the monasteries , and kept a secret amongst the monks . As the intelligence and wealth of the laity increased , the number of important fabrics , unconnected with religion , increased also ; and as the Church , about the era of the pre-eminence of the

pointed style , began to decline in power and resources , and as the Masonic bodies , of whom I bave already spoken , were either expelled or withdrawn from most of the stations they occupied , an extensive change naturally took place in the tastes and feelings of the people in general . It is not surprising that a reversion should take place to those ancient and comparatively simple

models of Greece and Rome at a time when the expulsion of the Freemasons , who had so deeply studied the pressure and counter-pressure of the most complicated arches , left the less skilful architects imperfectly acquainted with the mysteries of the pointed style . The abandonment of pointed arches , and the return to the

ancient orders of architecture , began in Italy , soon crossed the Alps , and entered successively France , Spain , Germany , ancl England . The new or revived style was at first employed only in the members and details of the edifice , while the old was retained in ail the general attributes of the composition . It appears to have been the custom to commit the design and construction of the buildings to native artists , while foreign innovations were confined , to the ornamental details . From the time of

the Reformation , a method of building had been graduall y adopted which is usually called Tudor architecture , or Tudor Gothic , and has been styled the bastard offspring of the Grecian and the Gothic . It was inferior in elegance to the one , and in magnificence to the other , but it combined a degree of security and domestic comfort peculiarly suitable to those times . Of the general

picturesqueness of this style , notwithstanding its wildness and oddity , a celebrated writer thus speaks •— " The baron's hall seemed the offspring of the soil ; the hill , the river , the groves , the rocks , seemed ail to have risen into existence at once . Tower was heaped on tower ; there was a wilderness of pinnacles and crow-stepped

peaks ; jealous windows , barred and double barred , with iron passages which led to nothing ; ridges of roofs as sharp as knives , on which no snow could lie ; projection overlooknig projection , to throw the rain from the face of the wall ; and casements at the very summit of the edifice . " But this , as well as the purer Gothic , was now

to give way for the introduction of the Cinque-cento , or Italian style . Inigo Jones was the first in England who gave an example of a single colossal order , and this was in the Church of St . Paul ' s , Covent Garden , while Michael Angelo was the first who had , long- previously to this , resumed the colossal style in Italy . Sir C . Wren , who is said to have been inferior to Inigo Jones in

invention , but greatly his superior in the perfect unity and elegance of his designs , had an excellent opportunity of exercising his talent at the restoration of Charles the Second , ancl at a period w * hen the metropolis had been cleared of its crowded buildings by the destructive fire of 1 GGG . The noble and magnificent

Cathedral of St . Paul stands as the memorial of his greatness , and as an instance of the consistent application of the sty le I am now considering . During the reigns of Charles the Second , of William and Mary , of Anne , and the beginning of the reign of George the First , he carried on this great work , and was enabled to finish it aecordin _ r to the model he commenced with . "Buried

amidst a thick-piled city , " says Cunningham , " hampered as its architect hacl felt himself in planning the western front to suit that narrow aperture called Ludgate-hill , composed as it is of freestone , and not of marble , and stained with all impurities of coal and smoke , St . Paul's never fails to fill the mind of the commonest beholder with admiration of its exquisite unity and . varied and boundless magnificence . " Since the time of Sir C . Wren , the Cinque-cento style has been applied with more or less taste to different public and private