Mere
size has, indeed, under all disadvantage, some definite value; and so
has mere splendour. Disappointed as you may be, or at least ought to
be, at first, by St. Peter's, in the end you will feel its size,--and
its brightness. These are all you _can_ feel in it--it is nothing
more than the pump-room at Leamington built bigger;--but the bigness
tells at last: and Corinthian pillars whose capitals alone are ten feet
high, and their acanthus leaves, three feet six long, give you a
serious conviction of the infallibility of the Pope, and the
fallibility of the wretched Corinthians, who invented the style indeed,
but built with capitals no bigger than hand-baskets.
Vastness _has_ thus its value. But the glory of architecture is to
be--whatever you wish it to be,--lovely, or grand, or comfortable,--on
such terms as it can easily obtain. Grand, by proportion--lovely, by
imagination--comfortable, by ingenuity--secure, by honesty: with such
materials and in such space as you have got to give it.
Grand--by proportion, I said; but ought to have said by
_dis_proportion. Beauty is given by the relation of parts--size,
by their comparison. The first secret in getting the impression of size
in this chapel is the _dis_proportion between pillar and arch. You
take the pillar for granted,--it is thick, strong, and fairly high
above your head. You look to the vault springing from it--and it soars
away, nobody knows where.
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