II. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE 65

Cathedral? or of Pietro Basegio¹ as in anywise connected with the Ducal palace of Venice? There is much ingratitude and injustice in this; and therefore I desire my reader to observe carefully how much of his pleasure in building is derived, or should be derived, from admiration of the intellect of men whose names he knows not.

§ 6. The two virtues of architecture which we can justly weigh, are, we said, its strength or good construction, and its beauty or good decoration. Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you say a building is well constructed or well built; you do not merely mean that it answers its purpose,-this is much, and many modern buildings fail of this much; but if it be verily well built, it must answer this purpose in the simplest way, and with no over-expenditure of means. We require of a lighthouse, for instance, that it shall stand firm and carry a light; if it do not this, assuredly it has been ill built; but it may do it to the end of time, and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and have cost thousands of pounds more than it ought. To pronounce it well or ill built, we must know the utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best arrangements of stone for encountering them, and the quickest ways of effecting such arrangements: then only, so far as such arrangements have been chosen, and such methods used, is it well built. Then the knowledge of all difficulties to be met, and of all means of meeting them, and the quick and true fancy or invention of the modes of applying the means to the end, are what we have to admire in the builder, even as he is seen through this first or inferior part of his work. Mental power, observe; not muscular, nor mechanical, not technical, nor empirical,-pure, precious, majestic, massy intellect; not to be had at

till 1178, when (says the Monk Gervase) “through the vengeance of God or spite of the devil” he fell from a scaffolding and was so much injured that he had to return to France; the work was then handed over to another William (whose surname is not known), “English by nation, small in body, but in workmanship of many kinds acute and honest.”]

¹ [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii., Appendix i., “Architect of the Ducal Palace.”]

IX. E

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