The Poetry of Architecture. John Ruskin
JOHN RUSKIN
POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE
SEVEN LAMPS
MODERN PAINTERS
Volume I
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK, CHICAGO
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE;
OR,
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE NATIONS OF EUROPE CONSIDERED IN ITS ASSOCIATION WITH NATURAL SCENERY AND NATIONAL CHARACTER.
LIST OF PLATES.
| Facing Page | ||
| Fig. | 1. Old Windows; from an early sketch by the Author | 13 |
| " | 2. Italian Cottage Gallery, 1846 | 20 |
| Cottage near la Cité, Val d'Aosta, 1838 | 21 | |
| " | 3. Swiss Cottage, 1837. (Reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) | 28 |
| " | 4. Cottage near Altorf, 1835 | 29 |
| " | 5. Swiss Châlet Balcony, 1842 | 32 |
| " | 6. The Highest House in England, at Malham | 42 |
| " | 7. Chimneys. (Eighteen sketches redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) | 48 |
| " | 8. Coniston Hall, from the Lake near Brantwood, 1837. (Reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) | 50 |
| " | 9. Chimney at Neuchatel; Dent du Midi and Mont Blanc in the distance | 20 |
| " | 10. Petrarch's Villa, Arquà, 1837. (Redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) | 98 |
| " | 11. Broken Curves. (Three diagrams, redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) | 101 |
| " | 12. Old English Mansion, 1837. (Reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) | 116 |
| " | 13. Windows. (Three designs, reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) | 122 |
| " | 14. Leading Lines of Villa-Composition. (Diagram redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) | 164 |
PREFATORY NOTES.
Of this work Mr. Ruskin says in his Autobiography:—"The idea had come into my head in the summer of '37, and, I imagine, rose immediately out of my sense of the contrast between the cottages of Westmoreland and those of Italy. Anyhow, the November number of Loudon's Architectural Magazine for 1837 opens with 'Introduction to the Poetry of Architecture; or the Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character,' by Kata Phusin. I could not have put in fewer, or more inclusive words, the definition of what half my future life was to be spent in discoursing of; while the nom-de-plume I chose, 'According to Nature,' was equally expressive of the temper in which I was to discourse alike on that, and every other subject. The adoption of a nom-de-plume at all implied (as also the concealment of name on the first publication of 'Modern Painters') a sense of a power of judgment in myself, which it would not have been becoming in a youth of eighteen to claim. … "
"As it is, these youthful essays, though deformed by assumption, and shallow in contents, are curiously right up to the points they reach; and already distinguished above most of the literature of the time, for the skill of language, which the public at once felt for a pleasant gift in me." (Præterita, vol. I. chap. 12.)
In a paper on "My First Editor," written in 1878, Mr. Ruskin says of these essays that they "contain sentences nearly as well put together as any I have done since."
The Conductor of the Architectural Magazine in reviewing the year's work said (December, 1838):—"One series of papers, commenced in the last volume and concluded in the present one, we consider to be of particular