Selections From The Seven Lamps Of Architecture - Intro

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_ This book began to assume shape in Ruskin's mind as early as 1846; he actually wrote it in the six months between November, 1848, and April, 1849. It is the first of five illustrated volumes embodying the results of seven years devoted to the study of the principles and ideals of Gothic Architecture, the other volumes being _The Stones of Venice_ and _Examples of the Architecture of Venice_ (1851). In the first edition of _The Seven Lamps_ the plates were not only all drawn but also etched by his own hand. Ruskin at a later time wrote that the purpose of _The Seven Lamps_ was "to show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture had been produced." He is really applying here the same tests of truth and sincerity that he employed in _Modern Painters_. Chronologically, this volume and the others treating of architecture come between the composition of Volumes II and III of _Modern Painters_. Professor Charles Eliot Norton writes that the _Seven Lamps_ is "the first treatise in English to teach the real significance of architecture as the most trustworthy record of the life and faith of nations." The following selections form the closing chapters of the volume, and have a peculiar interest as anticipating the social and political ideas which came to colour all his later work. _

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