xliv INTRODUCTION

To the student of Ruskin The Seven Lamps of Architecture is of further interest for the anticipation of social and political ideas which were afterwards to colour all his work. The book was written, as we have seen, in the stirring times of 1848-of Chartism at home and revolution abroad; his studies of French architecture were made during the progress of the revolution of that year. To earnest and thoughtful minds it must always be matter of desire to establish some harmony between studies in different spheres; to bring into relation conclusions arrived at in one field with things observed in another. This attempt is manifest in many passages of the present volume, and especially in the last chapter. “In these books of mine,” said Ruskin at the end of Modern Painters,¹ “their distinctive character, as essays on art, is their bringing everything to a root in human passion or human hope. ... Every principle of painting which I have stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact; and in my works on architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another, is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the workman-a question by all other writers on the subject of architecture wholly forgotten or despised.” The point was to be made more fully in The Stones of Venice,² of which (says Ruskin elsewhere) the object was to teach “the dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy life of the workman.”³ But the doctrine is implied in much of the argument in the Seven Lamps, and is at the end stated explicitly.⁴ Ruskin was already proceeding on the lines on which he afterwards based his teaching at Oxford; he was connecting architecture with social reconstruction: “so, from day to day, and strength to strength, you shall build up indeed, by Art, by Thought, and by Just Will, an Ecclesia of England, of which it shall not be said, ‘See what manner of stones are here,’ but ‘See what manner of men.’”⁵

It is curious at first sight that a book, which critical judges have ranked among Ruskin’s principal works, and which in later years has been among the most widely read of them, should be the one in which its author seemed to take least satisfaction, and which he allowed to remain longest out of print. The first edition was published, as we have seen, in 1849. The second edition appeared in 1855. The book was the first of

¹ Vol. v. pt. ix. ch. i. § 7.

² In vol. ii. ch. vi.-“The Nature of Gothic,” afterwards reprinted by William Morris; “the most important chapter in the whole book,” Ruskin calls it (Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 76).

³ Fors Clavigera, Letter 78.

⁴ See pp. 218, 264.

⁵ Lectures on Art, § 125.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]