ADDENDA TO LECTURES I. AND II 83

charm in the simple construction which is lost in the scientific one. This I am also perfectly ready to grant. There is a charm in Stonehenge which there is not in Amiens Cathedral, and a charm in an Alpine pine bridge which there is not in the Ponte della Trinità at Florence,¹ and, in general, a charm in savageness which there is not in science. But do not let it be said, therefore, that savageness is science.

59. Proposition 2nd.-Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture. That is to say, the highest nobility of a building does not consist in its being well built, but in its being nobly sculptured or painted.

This is always, and at the first hearing of it, very naturally, considered one of my most heretical propositions.² It is also one of the most important I have to maintain; and it must be permitted me to explain it at some length. The first thing to be required of a building-not, observe, the highest thing, but the first thing-is that it shall answer its purposes completely, permanently, and at the smallest expense. If it is a house, it should be just of the size convenient for its owner, containing exactly the kind and number of rooms that he wants, with exactly the number of windows he wants, put in the places that he wants. If it is a church, it should be just large enough for its congregation, and of such shape and disposition as shall make them comfortable in it and let them hear well in it. If it be a public office, it should be so disposed as is most convenient for the clerks in their daily avocations; and so on; all this being utterly irrespective of external appearance or aesthetic considerations of any kind, and all being done solidly, securely, and at the smallest necessary cost.

The sacrifice of any of these first requirements to external appearance is a futility and absurdity. Rooms must not be darkened to make the ranges of windows symmetrical. Useless wings must not be added on one side, to balance

¹ [For a reference to this bridge, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 161).]

² [The proposition is implied both in the Seven Lamps, ch. i., and in the Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. ii.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]