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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2018
The subject which I am permitted to-night to bring before this Society is one I have long had at heart, and one which the daily experience of my practice at Hayward's Heath prevents my passing by merely on account of the difficulties which evidently attend the realisation of my hopes, should such an issue be granted to them. I refer to the want in our county of an asylum for the care and treatment of the insane of the middle class–a class with which, while separated by education and calling, we, in our profession, are, on the other hand, too often linked by the cominoli bond of narrow means and pressing daily cares.
∗ Architecture as distinguished from Building.—“Architecture,” says Mr. Ruskin, “is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure. It is very necessary to distinguish carefully between architecture and building. To build—literally to confirm—is, by common understanding, to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of considerable size. Thus, we have church-building, house-building, ship-building, and coach-building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess this art are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may justify; but building docs not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects, and it is no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which makes a carriage commodious or a ship swift. …… Let us, therefore, at once confine the name (of architecture) to that art which, taking up and admitting as conditions of its working the necessities and common use of the building, impresses on its form certain characters, venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary. Tims, I suppose, no one would call the laws architectural, which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of thai bastion he added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, that is architecture. It would be similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machicolations architectural features, so long as they consist only of an advanced gallery, supported on projecting masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But it these projecting masses be carved beueath into rounded courses, which are useless, and if the headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, that is architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line so sharply and simply, because there are few buildings which have not some pretence or colour of being architectural; neither can there be any architecture which is not based on good building; but it is perfectly easy and very necessary to keep the ideas distinct, and to understand fully that architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.”—The Seven Lamps of Architecture.Google Scholar
My meaning thus is to BUILD the Sussex Middle Class Asylum, but not to try any ARCHITECTURE on it, and this for the simple reason that, in the present transition stage of English art, there are few men who deserve the name of architect, and that, moreover, these few are so engaged on buildings, public and private, that they do not undertake to build lunatic asylums. And as for the men who do so, I repeat that I personally would prefer the workmanship of the village builder, in its native absence of beauty, to their pretensious designs—designs which, contrary to all true art, sacrifice internal comfort and use to debased attempts at external effect. I could unfortunately write pages in practical illustration of this assertion.Google Scholar
∗ Lord Shaftesbury, in his evidence before the select committee (1859), which I have already had occasion to quote, says, “In a vast proportion of cases, I should say, in every possible respect, both with a hope of cure and with a view to the security and comfort and general happiness and enjoyment of existence, that the best way is to send the patient to some good private asylum; because we find now, and all our experience goes to show, that association is one of the best means of curing lunacy; a well-manayed association is one of the test modes possible.”Google Scholar
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