CHAPTER II

THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE

§ 1. WE address ourselves, then, first to the task of determining some law of right, which we may apply to the architecture of all the world and of all time; and by help of which, and judgment according to which, we may as easily pronounce whether a building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb-line, whether it be perpendicular.

The first question will of course be, What are the possible Virtues of architecture?

In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty.

Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches,-acting and talking:-acting, as to defend us from weather or violence; talking, as the duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and express feeling; or of churches, temples, public edifices, treated as books of history,¹ to tell such history clearly and forcibly.

We have thus, altogether, three great branches of architectural virtue, and we require of any building,

(1.) That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do in the best way.

(2.) That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to say in the best words.

(3.) That it look well, and please us by its presence, whatever it has to do or say.*

* Appendix 13: “Mr. Fergusson’s system”² [p. 440].

¹ [See later Ruskin’s account of St. Mark’s (Stones of Venice, ii. ch. iv. § 46) as “a book of common prayer, a vast illuminated missal.”]

² [This reference remained in all editions, though in the second and later editions of the volume the appendix in question was omitted; it is in this edition restored.]

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