LECTURE II

ARCHITECTURE¹

Delivered November 4, 1853

29. BEFORE proceeding to the principal subject of this evening, I wish to anticipate one or two objections which may arise in your minds to what I must lay before you. It may perhaps have been felt by you last evening, that some things I proposed to you were either romantic or Utopian. Let us think for a few moments what romance and Utopianism mean.

First, romance. In consequence of the many absurd fictions which long formed the elements of romance writing, the word romance is sometimes taken as synonymous with falsehood. Thus the French talk of Des Romans, and thus the English use the word Romancing.

But in this sense we had much better use the word falsehood at once. It is far plainer and clearer. And if in this sense I put anything romantic before you, pray pay no attention to it, or to me.

30. In the second place. Because young people are particularly apt to indulge in reverie, and imaginative pleasures, and to neglect their plain and practical duties, the word romantic has come to signify weak, foolish, speculative, unpractical, unprincipled. In all these cases it would be much

¹ [The following was Ruskin’s Synopsis of the Lecture in the preliminary announcement:-

“General Decoration of Domestic Buildings.

The proper Place and Character of Decoration-Motives for Introducing It. Necessity for the Encouragement of Simple Sculpture. Examples of Economical Decoration. Means of Ornamentation at the Disposal of the Scottish Architect. Inlaying. Examples of Mediæval Domestic Work. Future Prospects of Architecture.”]

53

[Version 0.04: March 2008]