The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

ten the passage. Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort, even

in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. 4 * *

1856

From The Stones of Venice

[THE SAVAGENESS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE]1

I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was first generically applied to the

architecture of the North; but I presume that, whatever the date of its original

usage, it was intended to imply reproach, and express the barbaric character

of the nations among whom that architecture arose. It never implied that they

were literally of Gothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been orig

inally invented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and their

buildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness,2 which, in

contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations, appeared

like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Goth and the Roman

in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, in the utmost impotence

of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became the model for the imitation

of civilized Europe,3 at the close of the so-called Dark Ages, the word Gothic

became a term of unmitigated contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From

that contempt, by the exertion of the antiquaries and architects of this century,

Gothic architecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among

us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and sacred

ness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient reproach should

be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent honorableness, adopted in

its place. There is no chance, as there is no need, of such a substitution. As

far as the epithet was used scornfully, it was used falsely; but there is no

reproach in the word, rightly understood; on the contrary, there is a profound

truth, which the instinct of mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is

true, greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude and

wild; but it is not true that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, or despise.

Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character that it deserves our pro

foundest reverence. The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have

thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of knowledge, but

I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable the spectator to

1. From vol. 2, chap. 6. had been "to show that the Gothic architecture of 2. Lack of refinement, roughness. Goths: a Ger-Venice had risen out of .. . a state of pure national manic people who by the 3rd century C.E. had set-faith and domestic virtue; and that its Renaissance tled north of the Black Sea. architecture had arisen out of.. . a state of con3. Renaissance architecture, based on imitating cealed national infidelity and domestic corrupclassical buildings, was distasteful to Ruskin. He tion." later stated that his aim in The Stones of Venice

 .

THE STONES OF VENICE / 1325

imagine the kind of contrast in physical character which exists between

Northern and Southern countries. We know the differences in detail, but we

have not that broad glance and grasp which would enable us to feel them in

their fullness. We know that gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the

Apennines; but we do not enough conceive for ourselves that variegated

mosaic of the world's surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference

between the district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the

swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind.4 Let us, for a moment,

try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, and imagine the

Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient prom

ontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an angry spot of thunder, a gray

stain of storm, moving upon the burning field; and here and there a fixed

wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the

most part a great peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid

like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer

to them, with bossy5 beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with

terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses

of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their gray-green shad

ows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping

under lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see

the orient colors change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the

pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the

Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of

the Volga, seen through clefts in gray swirls of rain cloud and flaky veils of the

mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands: and then, farther

north still, to see the earth heave into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy