456 APPENDIX, 17

struck architecture ever can be: as noble, therefore, as coins can be, or common cast bronzes, and such other multiplicable things;*-eternally separated from all good and great things by a gulph which not all the tubular bridges¹ nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries cast into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass one inch of. All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better thing, is art which proceeds from an individual mind, working through instruments which assist, but do not supersede, the muscular action of the human hand, upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most securely retain, the impressions of such human labour.

And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of the quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly expressed upon it for ever:²-

First, of thought and moral purpose;

Secondly, of technical skill;

Thirdly, of bodily industry.

The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is very great. So far it is good.³

The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single and very admirable thought of Sir Joseph Paxton’s,⁴ probably not a bit brighter than thousands of thoughts which pass through his active and intelligent brain every hour-that it might be possible to build a greenhouse larger than ever greenhouse was built before. This thought, and some very ordinary algebra, are as much as all that glass can represent of human intellect. “But one poor halfpennyworth of bread to all this intolerable deal of sack.” Alas!

“The earth hath bubbles as the water hath:

And this is of them.”⁵

* Of course mere multiplicity, as of an engraving, does not diminish the intrinsic value of the work; and if the casts of sculpture could be as sharp as sculpture itself, they would hold to it the relation of value which engravings hold to paintings. And, if we choose to have our churches all alike, we might cast them all in bronze-we might actually coin churches, and have mints of cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the century to put milled edge for mouldings, and have a popular currency of religious subjects; a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not heard this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the results which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere mechanical applications of glass and iron.

¹ [An allusion to Robert Stephenson’s tubular “Britannia Bridge” over the Menai Straits, 1845.]

² [With this statement compare Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. iii. § 2.]

³ [Here, in ed. 2 and subsequently was a footnote containing the portion of this appendix indicated above: see note 2, p. 453.]

⁴ [In ed. 1 “Mr. Paxton.” He was superintendent of the gardens at Chatsworth from 1826, and became an intimate friend of the seventh Duke of Devonshire. He was knighted in 1851, in connection with the Industrial Exhibition, of which he designed the plan; the building (the Crystal Palace) was re-erected at Sydenham 1853-1854. He died at the age of 64 in 1865.]

⁵ [1 Henry IV., Act ii. sc. 4; Macbeth, i. 3.]

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