76 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

which do not add one whit to comfort, or cleanliness, or even to that great object of commercial art-conspicuousness. But in architecture of a higher rank, how much more is it to be condemned! I have made it a rule in the present work not to blame specifically; but I may, perhaps, be permitted, while I express my sincere admiration of the very noble entrance and general architecture of the British Museum, to express also my regret that the noble granite foundation of the staircase should be mocked at its landing by an imitation, the more blameable because tolerably successful.¹ The only effect of it is to cast a suspicion upon the true stones below, and upon every bit of granite afterwards encountered. One feels a doubt, after it, of the honesty of Memnon² himself. But even this, however derogatory to the noble architecture around it, is less painful than the want of feeling with which, in our cheap modern churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about the altar frameworks³ and pediments daubed with mottled colour, and to dye in the same fashion such skeletons or caricatures of columns as may emerge above the pews: this is not merely bad taste; it is no unimportant or excusable error which brings even these shadows of vanity and falsehood into the house of prayer. The first condition which just feeling requires in church furniture is, that it should be simple and unaffected, not fictitious nor tawdry. It may not be in our

¹ [By 1845 the four sides of the present British Museum, as designed by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A., had been erected, and the old Montagu House removed. Real granite is employed at the bottom on the sides of the principal staircase. The “imitation” refers-as explained in a review of the book at the time, where the criticism is commended (Weekly Chronicle, June 3, 1849)-to imitative granite blocks on which the Egyptian lions then rested at the entrance to the staircase. The lions are now in a different part of the Museum.]

² [The reference is to the seated “Memnon” (in the Egyptian Gallery of the Museum)-a statue in granite of Amenophis III., who erected the famous statue of himself at Thebes which the Greeks named the statue of Memnon, the fabled King of Egypt slain in the Trojan war. The Memnon in the Museum was excavated by Belzoni (see Vol. III. p. 240).]

³ [For “erect about the altar frameworks ...” the MS. has “insert the creed and commandments in frameworks ...” “I do not know (runs a discarded passage) any more striking instances of accepted and tolerated folly in this all-tolerating age than the mode in which we still suffer the wall decorator to erect the creed and commandments over our church altars in wooden pediments-frameworks daubed and splashed with green and red, or yellow and black, nor are we free from the plague even where there is real power and feeling in the architect.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]