V + 

Esthetics + 

As an introduction to architecture in general the formal textbooks are occasionally useful. Let me commend particularly, however, Viollet-le-Duc’s The Habitations of Man in All Ages. The archaeology and ethnology of this work are, it goes without saying, outmoded: but for all that it has a permanent interest, and it is high time that someone took up Viollet-le-Duc’s theme and redeveloped it in the light of contemporary research. While I am restoring a classic, let me add another: Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ruskin is disregarded nowadays, as he was in his own generation, by people who have not yet caught up with him. His insight and unflinching intelligence are both needed, however, and it is no longer necessary to warn the student against his quirks and solecisms. Ruskin wrote the apology for modernism in art when he said: “There would be hope if we could change palsy for puerility,” and he anticipated modern decoration when he said: “I believe the only manner of rich ornament that is open to us is geometrical color mosaic, and that much might result from strenuously taking up that mode of design.” For that matter, Ruskin even predicted the architectural use of steel frames. The Seven Lamps of Architecture closes on a prophetic word which means far more to us today than to Ruskin’s contemporaries. “I could smile,” he said, “when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science and vigor of worldly effort; as if we were again at the beginning of new days. There is thunder on the horizon, as well as dawn.” We who have seen the lightning strike may well reread these words.⁠ ⁠… + 

As for modern books on architecture and esthetics, let me recommend a handful. Among them note W. R. Lethaby’s Form in Civilization. In sharp contrast to Professor Lethaby is Geoffrey Scott’s The Architecture of Humanism, Boston: 1914. I do not accept Mr. Scott’s main position; but there is something to be said for it, and he says it well. Both points of view are embraced in the distinction Mr. Claude Bragdon makes between the Organic and the Arranged, in one of Six Lectures on Architecture. From a limited field, Rhys Carpenter’s Esthetic Basis of Greek Art reaches conclusions which illuminate almost every province of esthetics. There is an able exposition of the absolutist, mechanical point of view in Vers Une Architecture, by the architect whose pen-name is “Le Corbusier-Saugnier.” In Speculations, Mr. T. E. Hulme presents an interesting philosophic apology for mechanism. + 