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92          Books: Buildings and Monuments-Art of Etching. 
did not want anything decorative." Mr. Carlyle notices the same kind
of disbelief in 
the Fine Arts:- 
" ' May the Devil fly away with the Fine Arts!' exclaimed confidentially
once, in 
my hearing, one of our most distinguished public men; a sentiment that often
recurs 
to me. I perceive too well how true it is, in our case. A public man, intent
on any 
real business, does, I suppose, find the Fine Arts rather imaginary. The
Fine Arts, 
wherever they turn up as business, whatever committee sit upon them, are
sure to be 
the parent of much empty talk, laborious hypocrisy, dilettantism, futility;
involving 
huge trouble and expense and babble, which end in no result, if not in worse
than 
none. The practical man, in his moments of sincerity, feels them to be a
pretentious 
nothingness; a confused superfluity and nuisance, purchased with cost,--what
he in 
brief language denominates a bore. It is truly so, in these degraded days
:-and the 
Fine Arts, among other fine interests of ours, are really called to recognise
it, and see 
what they will do in it. For they are become the throne of Hypocrisy, I think
the 
highest of her many thrones, these said Arts; which is very sad to consider!
Nowhere, not even on a gala-day in the Pope's Church of St. Peter, is there
such an 
explosion of intolerable hypocrisy, on the part of poor mankind, as when
you admit 
them into their Royal Picture-gallery, Glyptothek, Museum, or other divine
temple of 
the Fine Arts. Hypocrisy doubly intolerable; because it is not here, as in
St. Peter's 
and some other churches, an obliged hypocrisy but a voluntary one. Nothing
but 
your own vanity prompts you here to pretend worshipping; you are not bound
to 
worship, and twaddle pretended raptures, criticisms, and poetic recognitions,
unless 
you like it ;-and you do not the least know what a damnable practice it is,
or you 
wouldn't! I make a rule, these many years back, to speak almost nothing,
and 
encourage no speech in picture-galleries; to avoid company, even that of
familiar 
friends, in such situations; and perambulate the place in silence. You can
thus 
worship or not worship, precisely as the gods bid you; and are at least under
no 
obligation to do hypocrisies, if you cannot conveniently worship. 
" The fact is, though men are not in the least aware of it, the Fine
Arts, divorced 
entirely from truth this long while, and wedded almost professedly to falsehood,
fiction, and such like, are got into what we must call an insane condition:
they walk 
abroad without keepers, nobody suspecting their sad' state, and do fantastic
tricks 
equal to any in Bedlam,-especially when admitted to work 'regardless of expense,'
as we sometimes see them! What earnest soul passes that new St. Stephen's,
and 
its wilderness of stone pepperboxes with their tin flags atop, worth two
millions I am 
told, without mentally exclaiming Apage, and cutting some pious cross in
the air! If 
that be ' ideal beauty,' except for sugarwork, and the more elaborate kinds
of ginger- 
bread, what is real ugliness ? To say merely (with an architectonic trumpet-blast
that cost two millions), ' Good Christians, you observe well I am regardless
of 
expense, and also of veracity, in every form ?' Too truly these poor Fine
Arts have 
fallen mad! 
"The Fine Arts once divorcing themselves from truth, are quite certain
to fall 
mad, if they do not die, and get flown away with by the Devil, which latter
is only the 
second-worst result for us. Truth, fact, is the life of all things; falsity,
' fiction,' or 
whatever it may call itself, is certain to be death, and is already insanity,
to whatever 
thing takes up with it. Fiction, even to the Fine Arts, is not a quite permissible
thing. Sparingly permissible, within iron limits; or if you will reckon strictly,
not 
permissible at all ! The Fine Arts too, like the coarse and every art of
man's god- 
given faculty, are to understand that they are sent hither not to fib and
dance, but to 
speak and work; and, on the whole, that God Almighty's facts, such as given
us, are 
the one pabulum which will yield them any nourishment in this world. 0 Heavens,
had they always well remembered that, what a world were it now!" 
BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS, MODERN AND MEDiscvAL. By George Godwin.-Pub- 
lished in the Builder. 
THE eighth number of this work completes one of the most interesting volumes,
either for the architectural student or the general drawing-table, which
the present 
season has produced. It strikingly proves how much art there may be in typography.
The excellent printing in this volume quite alters the character of the woodcuts
which 
originally appeared in the Builder. 
THE ART OF ETCHING. By Alfred Ashley.-Darling, London. 
So far as etching can be learnt from a book this work tells pretty clearly
as much 
as is necessary, and is therefore useful to those who cannot have the benefit
of any 
practical lessons from a teacher.