246 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

piers or shafts as the central towers of cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the real structure of the best and strongest, are the elevation of gradually diminishing weight on massy or even solid foundation. Nevertheless, since the tower is in its origin a building for strength of defence, and faithfulness of watch, rather than splendour of aspect, its true expression is of just so much diminution of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully balanced strength, not a jot more. There must be no light-headedness in your noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful crest, with the vizor down, and the dark vigilance seen through the clefts of it; not the filigree crown or embroidered cap. No towers are so grand as the square browed ones, with massy cornices and rent battlements: next to these come the fantastic towers, with their various forms of steep roof; the best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of all in my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns, though these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes, and capable of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight pinnacled things we call towers in England (as in York Minister¹), are mere confectioner’s Gothic, and not worth classing.

§ 12. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of chief necessity,-that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily stand, in their own strength; not by help of buttresses, nor artful balancings on this side and on that. Your noble tower must need no help, must be sustained by no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings, or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own walls the strength to do this; it is to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other bulwarks; to rise and look forth, “the tower of Lebanon that looketh toward Damascus,”² like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its nurse’s arms. A tower may,

¹ [For another critical observation on York Minster, see below, ch. xxvii. § 16, p. 367.]

² [Song of Solomon, vii. 4.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]