The architecture of humanism; a study in the history of taste

40 THE

ARCHITECTURE OF

HUMANISM

arts, mayimpose,

then even that

element of value

which Romanticism

introduced, becoming

mute

and ineffective, is sacrificed in

the failure of the

whole.I

It

wouldbe

amistake

to

imaginethatRomanticisal

wasinany

way

anewforce

at

thetimewhen,with

the French Revolution, its

various manifestations-

cameinto such startling prominence as to require

attention and receive a name. Any movement

strong
enough to become conspicuously

dominant;

mustlongpreviously,itissafetosuppose,havebeen

latently
operative.

And,

in

architecture, although|

the RomanticMovement ofthenineteenth century!

dealt the final
death-blow to the

tradition of the

Renaissance,yetthattradition, itmust notbefor-

gotten,
wasitself aromantic movement.

The cult

ofmedisevalism, stimulatedby therevivalofballad

literatureandby antiquarian novelists,is notmore

romanticist than the idealisation of antiquity,

four

centuriesearlier,stimulatedbytherevivalofclassi*:

poetryandtheenthusiasticantiquarianismof

Paduaix*;

scholars. Nor,forthatmatter,
isitmore

romanticist

than the neo-Greek

architectural movement

ofthe

Hellenisingemperorsinantiquityitself. Why,then,

itis natural toask, should
amotive

which inthe

second and fifteenth
centuries proved a

source of

strength,
be regarded, in the nineteenth,as adis-

astrousweakness?