Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/562

 530 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. Part II. a course of steady and uninterrupted improvement from first to last. Some new method is tried : if it is found to succeed, it is retained ; if it fails, it is dropped. Thus the general tendency constantly leads to progress and imj)rovement. And, to continue the comparison a little further, this progress in the art is not attril)utable to one or more eminent naval architects. Great and important discoveries have no doubt been made by individuals, but in these cases we may generally assume that, the state of science being ripe for such advances, had the discovery in question' not been made by one man it soon would have occurred to some other. The fact is, that in a useful art like that of ship-building, or in an art combining use and beauty like that of architecture — that is, when the latter is a real, living, national art — the progress made is owing, not to the commanding abilities of particular men, but to the united influence of the whole public. An intelligent sailor who discusses the good and bad qualities of a ship, does his part towards the advance- ment of the art of ship-building. So in architecture, the mei-it of any one admirable building, or of a high state of national art, is not due to one or to a few master minds, but to the aggregation of experience, the mass of intellectual exertion, which alone can achieve any practi- cally great i-esult. Whenever we see any work of man truly worthy of admiration, we may be quite sure that the credit of it is not due to an individual, but to thousands working together through a long series of years. The pointed Gothic architecture of Germany furnishes a negative illustration of the view which we have taken of the conditions neces- sary for great architectural excellence. There the style was not native, but introduced from France. French masons were employed, who executed their work with the utmost precision, and with a per- fection of masonic skill scarcely to be found in France itself. But in all the higher elements of beauty, the German pointed Gothic cathe- drals are immeasurably inferior to the French. They are no longer the expression of the devotional feelings of the clergy and people, and are totally devoid of the highest order of architectural beauty. The truth of the matter is, that the very pre-eminence of tlie great masonic lodges of Germany in the 14th century destroyed the art. When freemasonry became so powerful as to usurp to itself the desio-nins: as well as the execution of churches and other buildings, there was an end of true art, though accompanied by the production of some of the most wonderful specimens of stone-cutting and of con- structive skill that were ever produced. This, however, is " building," not architecture ; and though it may excite the admiration of the vulgar, it never will touch the feelings of the true artist or the man of taste. This decline of true art had nowhere shown itself during the 13th