I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to
give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its
chief energy, the adornment of tombs,--having the passionate function
of doing honour to the dead.
But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture,
the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of
the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is
a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design
fitted for it, in civil buildings. [1]
[Footnote: "These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device:
Victory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets,
Mercury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher."--(Sagacius Gazata,
of the Palace of Can Grande. I translate only Sismondi's quotation.)]
32. _Civil_, or _civic_, I say, as opposed to military. But again
observe, there are two kinds of military building. One, the robber's
castle, or stronghold, out of which he issues to pillage; the other,
the honest man's castle, or stronghold, into which he retreats from
pillage. They are much like each other in external forms;--but
Injustice, or Unrighteousness, sits in the gate of the one, veiled with
forest branches, (see Giotto's painting of him); and Justice or
Righteousness _enters_ by the gate of the other, over strewn forest
branches.
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