INTRODUCTION xli

The phrase quoted above from one of the reviews-it “sounds like a hymn to architectural loveliness”-well expresses one quality of The Seven Lamps. Ruskin in later years found fault with the fine writing of the book.¹ It was published, we should remember, when the author was thirty years old. It displays, as Professor Norton says, “the ardour and exuberance of comparative youth, alike in its literary style and in the zeal of its moral enthusiasm.”² There are passages which are perhaps overcharged with ornament; but how many there are also which have imparted to the mind of every reader a fresh interest in mediæval architecture, and invested it with an element of deeper sentiment! There is probably nobody who does not find something to disagree with in The Seven Lamps of Architecture. But many of those who differ from the author most often would find, upon taking a careful inventory of their mental furniture, that they would be much the poorer, in their thoughts and feelings about architecture, if he had never published this book. “No man of feeling,” says Mr. Frederic Harrison, of the peroration to “The Lamp of Sacrifice,” “who has in him the echoes of this funeral sermon, can stand before a great mediæval cathedral without being conscious that it has gained for him a new meaning, a sublimer pathos.”³

Architects as a rule are not among the greatest admirers of the book; they often misunderstand its scope;⁴ many of the author’s obiter dicta are fanciful or doubtful; he did nothing to conciliate professional opinion, and the ideals he set before the profession were exacting.⁵ But, as with painters,⁶ so with architects: Ruskin’s “hymn” has exercised a potent influence in asserting the dignity, and enhancing the reputation, of their art.⁷ The profession in its corporate capacity showed its appreciation of his services by proposing in 1874 to confer a Gold Medal upon him-an honour which he declined;⁸ and by passing a vote of condolence with his relatives on the occasion of his death. Mr. J. M. Brydon, Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in proposing the vote, said that “Mr. Ruskin had been a power in the country for over half a century. In their own particular art probably no man in this

¹ See “Advice” of 1880, on p. 17.

² Introduction to the American “Brantwood Edition,” 1891, p. ix.

³ John Ruskin, in the “English Men of Letters” Series, 1902, p. 60.

⁴ See above, p. xxxix.

⁵ See on this point The Two Paths, preface of 1859, where Ruskin discusses the objection of architect-readers to his proposition that architects should be sculptors.

⁶ See Vol. IV. p. xlvii.

⁷ See James Fergusson’s History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, 3rd ed., revised by Robert Kerr, F.R.I.B.A., 1891, vol. ii. pp. 123-124.

⁸ The correspondence which passed on that occasion will be found in a later volume of this edition.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]