38 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

APHORISM 5. Domestic luxury is to be sacrificed to national magnificence.²

which would arch our own gates and pave our own thresholds, and leave the church with its narrow door and foot-worn sill; the feeling which enriches our own chambers with all manner of costliness, and endures the bare wall and mean compass of the temple. There is seldom even so severe a choice to be made, seldom so much self-denial to be exercised. There are isolated cases, in which men’s happiness and mental activity depend upon a certain degree of luxury in their houses; but then this is true luxury, felt and tasted, and profited by. In the plurality of instances nothing of the kind is attempted, nor can be enjoyed;¹ men’s average resources cannot reach it; and that which they can reach, gives them no pleasure, and might be spared. It will be seen, in the course of the following chapters, that I am no advocate for meanness of private habitation. I would fain introduce into it all magnificence, care, and beauty, where they are possible; but I would not have that useless expense in unnoticed fineries or formalities; cornicing of ceilings and graining of doors, and fringing of curtains, and thousands such;³ things which have become foolishly

¹ [From here to the end of the sentence the MS. reads:-

“or even granting its desirableness, yet in mere selfish policy (I am ashamed to name such a motive in conjunction with the one I have been urging hitherto), in mere worldly comparison of resource and result, it would be wiser to unite our means and to build one noble building, ‘a joy for ever’ to all, than to break them up in private profitlessness.”

This passage, it will be seen, contains the germ of much of the lectures in The Political Economy of Art (1857), reprinted in 1880 under the title of A joy for Ever.]

² [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “It will be seen ...” to the end of § 7.]

³ [An odd sheet of MS. amplifies this passage:-

“...useless expense in unnoticed fineries-marble chimney-pieces of stone-mason pattern, which neither make a man more warm nor more happy than brick hearths; gilded stucco frames for circular mirrors, projecting into stranger birds with their feathers glued together or chipped off-neither frame nor mirror answering other purpose than that of holding dust and turning the room upside down; silent alabaster timepieces under bell glasses, which have not half the companionship in them of an old clock that would keep time; mahogany tables with bead work and claws which it took the carpenter many an hour to cut, and which were counted by bead and by talon in the upholsterer’s bill, but which are never seen nor cared for from one year’s end to another,-as if one of plain deal with straight legs would not as efficiently sustain either the desk or the dinner;-innumerable expenses in cornicing of ceilings...”

The subject of graining and marbling and other such “spurious arts” is discussed more at length in Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. i. §§ 39 seqq.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]