The father of mental
philosophy, Aristotle, begins his work on ethics by telling us, that
nothing exists without some theory or reason attached to it. The
following out of this view leads to classification--that great engine
of knowledge. We see things at first in isolated individuality or
confused masses. Investigation teaches us to separate them into
groups, which have some common and important principle of unity,
though each individual of the group may be different from the others
in detail. Thus we arrive at the great classifications of natural
science, with which every one is more or less familiar. But the works
of men have their classification too, for in human effort like causes
produce like effects. Most people know what schools of poetry,
painting, and music are. In architecture, we know, too, that there are
great divisions--such as classic and Gothic. But many have yet to
learn how far classification may go; and it is a new feature to have
the peculiar national architecture of Scotland separated from that of
England, and its peculiarities traced to interesting national events
and habits. The common observer is apt to think that all buildings are
much alike, or that each is alone in its peculiarities. Before
classification can take place, there must be a collection and
comparison of leading characteristics; and this is not easily
accomplished with the edifices scattered over a whole country. It may
be said that it was never done for Scotland, until Mr Billings
completed his great series of engravings of the baronial and
ecclesiastical antiquities of Scotland.
Taking the former--the
baronial--for our text, we find ourselves now for the first time in a
condition to discover the leading features of the Scottish school of
architecture, and to connect it with the history of Scotland. We know
that until the wars of Wallace and Bruce, the two countries, England
and Scotland, could scarcely be said to be entirely separated; at all
events, they did not stand in open hostility to each other. Endless
animosities, however, naturally followed a war in which the one
country tried to enslave the other, and where the weaker only escaped
annihilation by a desperate struggle. It is not unnatural, therefore,
to expect that the habits of the two countries diverged from each
other as time passed on; and this process is very distinctly shewn in
the character of the edifices used by the barons and lairds of
Scotland. A very few of the oldest strongholds resemble those of the
same period in England. The English baronial castle of the thirteenth
century generally consisted of several massive square or round towers,
broad at the base, and tapering upwards, arranged at distances from
each other, so that lofty embattled walls or curtains stood between
them, making a ground-plan of which the towers formed the angles. The
doors and windows were generally in the Gothic or pointed style of
architecture, and the vaulted chambers were frequently of the same.
There are not above three or four such edifices in Scotland. The most
complete, perhaps, is the old part of Caerlaverock, in Dumfriesshire;
another fine specimen is Dirleton, in East Lothian; and to these may
be added Bothwell, in Clydesdale, and Kildrummie, in Aberdeenshire.
This style was long
followed in England. It is known as the baronial, and architects in
all parts of the country, when building a modern mansion in the
castellated manner, have invariably followed it. It is easy to see,
however, that it was early abandoned in Scotland, the people not
taking their forms of architecture from a nation with which they had
no connection but that of hostility. The first species of national
baronial architecture to which they resorted was a very simple one,
characteristic of an impoverished people. It consisted of little more
than four stone walls, forming what in fortification is called a
blockhouse. The walls were extremely thick, with few apertures, and
these suspiciously small. But these old towers or keeps were not
without some scientific preparations for defence. In the more ancient
baronial castles, the large square or round towers at the angles
served to flank the walls or curtains between them; that is, supposing
an enemy to be approaching the main gate, he could be attacked on
either side from the towers at the angles. To serve the same purpose,
the Scottish keeps had small bastions or turrets at the corners,
which, projecting over the wall, flanked it on each face. The simple
expedient here adopted is at the root of all the complex devices of
fortification. The main thing is just to build a strong edifice, and
then, by flanking outworks, to prevent an enemy from getting up to it.
In other respects, these square towers were scarcely to be considered
peculiarly Scottish. They are to be found in all parts of the
world--along the Wall of China; in the Russian steppes; in Italy,
where they are sometimes remains of republican Rome; and in Central
India. They constitute, in fact, the most primitive form of a
fortified house.
When we come a century
or two later, the difference between the English and Scottish styles
becomes more distinct and interesting. Almost every one is acquainted
with that beautiful style of building called in England the Tudor or
Elizabethan, with its decorated chimneys, its ornamented gables, and
large oriel or bow windows. It is not well suited for defence, and
denotes a rich country, where private warfare has decayed. This class
of edifice is rarely, if at all, to be found north of the border; but
much as it is to be admired, a contemporary style sprang up in
Scotland entirely distinct from it, yet, in our opinion, quite fitted
to rival it in interest and beauty. It was derived, in some measure,
from Flanders, but chiefly from France. The Scots naturally looked to
their friends as an example, rather than to their enemies. Many of the
Scottish gentry made their fortunes in the French service, and when
they came home, naturally desired to imitate, on such a scale as they
could afford, the chateaux of their allies and patrons. The state of
the country, too, made it a more suitable pattern than the Tudor
style. France was still a country of feudal warfare--so was Scotland;
and it was necessary in both to have defence associated with ornament.
The chief peculiarity of this new style was, the quantity of
sharp-topped turrets, which form a sort of crest to the many details
of the lower parts of the buildings. These are not solely ornamental;
they succeeded the bastions of the old square towers, and served the
same purpose. Among the secondary peculiarities of these buildings,
may be counted an extremely rich and profuse ornamentation of the
upper parts--probably the only portions out of the way of mischief.
Indeed, the edifice is sometimes a mere square block for two or three
storeys, while it is crowned, as it were, with a rich group of turrets
and minarets, gables, window-tops, ornamented chimneys, and gilded
vanes. In many instances, the great square block of older days
received this fantastic French termination at a later time--as, for
instance, the famous castle of Glammis, in Strathmore.
It almost appears as if
this style, which has its own peculiar beauties, had been adopted out
of a national antagonism to the contemporary style in England. The
Tudor architecture has always a horizontal tendency, spreading itself
out in broad open screens or wall-plates, diversified by occasional
angular eminences--as, for instance, in the tops of the decorated
windows. But in the Gallo-Scottish style everything tends to the
perpendicular, not only in the long, narrow shapes of the buildings
themselves, and their tall, spiral turrets, but in the many
decorations which incrust them. This decoration has an extremely rich
look, from the quantity of breaks, and the absence of bare wall or
long straight lines. Thus, to save the uniform plainness of the
straight gable-line, it is broken into small gradations called
'crow-steps.' Every one who looks at old houses in Scotland must be
familiar with this feature, and must have noticed its picturesqueness.
It appears to have been derived from the Flemish houses, where,
however, the steps or terraces are much larger, and not so effective,
since, instead of merely breaking and enriching the line of the gable,
they break it up, as it were, into separate pieces.
The Scottish style has
not, indeed, slavishly adopted any foreign model. It is, as we have
remarked, chiefly adopted from the French; but it has characteristics
and beauties of its own. No one, we believe, had any conception of
their extent and variety, until they were brought to light by the
artistic labours of Mr Billings. In some instances, to bring out the
full effect of the ornamental parts of these buildings without
overloading his picture with the more cumbrous plain stone-work, he
brings forward, by some artistic manoeuvre, the crest of the building,
as if the spectator saw it from a scaffold or a balloon level with the
highest storey. The effect of the rich Oriental-looking mass of
decoration thus concentrated is extremely striking, and one is apt to
ask, if it is possible that the country so often characterised as
bare, cold, and impoverished, could have produced these gorgeous
edifices. Their number and distribution through the most remote parts
of the land are equally remarkable. Among Mr Billings's specimens, we
have, in the southern part of Scotland, Pinkie, near Musselburgh;
Auchans and Kelburn, in Ayrshire; Newark, on the Clyde; Airth and
Argyle's Lodging, in Stirling. Going northward, we come to Elcho and
Glammis, and to Muchalls and Crathes, in Kincardineshire. It is
remarkable, that the further north we go, the French style becomes
more conspicuous and complete. Many of the finest specimens are to be
found in Aberdeenshire. Fyvie Castle, which was built for a Scottish
chancellor--Seton, Earl of Dunfermline--is almost a complete French
chateau of the sixteenth century, such as the traveller may have seen
in sunny Guienne or Anjou; and there it stands transplanted, like an
exotic, among the bleak hills of the north. It is only natural to find
in connection with such a circumstance, that Seton received his
education in France, and passed a considerable part of his life there.
Whether from such an example or not, the Aberdeenshire lairds seem to
have been all ambitious of possessing French chateaux; and thus in the
county of primitive rock, where there is certainly little else to
remind us of French habits or ideas, we have some admirable specimens
of that foreign architectural school in Castle Fraser, Craigievar,
Midmar, Tolquhon, Dalpersie, and Udny. Nearer Inverness, we have
Balveny, Castle-Stewart, and Cawdor.
The same foreign
influence is exhibited in our street architecture, some specimens of
which are engraved in the work to which we have referred.[4] Every one
knows that the lofty Scottish edifices with common stairs--houses
built above each other, in fact--give our large towns a character
totally different from those of England; but it is equally clear that
the practice was derived from France, where it is still in full
observance literally among all classes, since the different social
grades occupy separate floors of the same edifices. In the _coup
d'etat_ of 1851, it will be remembered, that in making the arrests of
the leading men supposed to be inimical to Louis Napoleon, one of the
difficulties--as the affair took place at midnight--was to know the
floors in which they lived; for these great statesmen and generals
inhabited houses with common stairs.
We have here discussed
one special feature of Mr Billings's work, on account of the remarks
which it suggests; but it is only right to mention, before parting
with it, that it contains engravings of every thing that is remarkable
in the ancient architecture of Scotland, whether it be called civil
and baronial or ecclesiastical. Certainly, the remains of antiquity in
North Britain were never previously so amply and completely
illustrated. Nor is it without reason, that some contemporary critics
have maintained this to be the most entire collection of the sort
which any nation possesses. The chief merits of the views consist in
their accuracy and effect. They are wonderfully clear and minute, so
that every detail of the least importance is brought out as distinctly
as in a model, while this is accomplished without sacrifice of their
artistic effect as pictures.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland. By William
Burn and W. Billings. 4 vols. 4to. Blackwoods, Edinburgh. |