But now they are thinking of other things. The Dilettanti
Society sent Mr. Penrose to Athens to study in the ancient remains there
the optical corrections which it was alleged the Greeks made in the
horizontal lines of their buildings. Mr. Penrose made careful
measurements, establishing the fact, and a folio volume of plates was
published to illustrate the discovery, and evince the unequalled nicety
of the Greek eye. But the main point, namely, that a horizontal line
above the level of the eye, in order to appear horizontal, must bend
slightly upwards, was pointed out to me years ago by a common plasterer.
It is not that our builders are degenerate, but that their art is a
trade, occupies only their hands, not their minds, and this by no fault
in them or in anybody, but by the natural progress of the world. In each
age by turn some one mental organ is in a state of hypertrophy;
immediately that becomes the medium of expression,--not that it is the
only possible or even the best, but that its time has come,--then it
gives place to another. Architecture is dead and gone to dust long ago.
We are not called upon to sing threnodies over it, still less to attempt
to galvanize a semblance of life into it. If we must blame somebody, let
it not be the builder, but his employers, who, caring less even than he
for the reality of good architecture, (for the material itself teaches
him something,) force him into these puerilities in order to gratify
their dissolute fancies.
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