The Architect and His Art [pp. 72-84]

THE ARCHITECT AND HIS ART.
"I KNOW not," says Viollet le Duc, "whether poets, musi cians, and painters are ever suddenly inspired to write an
ode, to compose a sonata, or paint a picture; I am inclined to,
think not, because no poet, musician, or painter of genius has
ever revealed to us any such phenomenon in his experience. The
sacred fire does not kindle itself. In order to create a blaze we
must heap wood and live coals together, arrange the sticks, and
blow the smoldering pile until it breaks into a flame."
We have not to inquire very deeply into the means and
methods of art, whether they be those of the painter, the
sculptor, or the architect, before reaching this conclusion. We
find that every great creation of art is a growth, a development,
a result of previously acquired facts grouped and fused under
some dominating impulse or idea. The poet browses up and
down the present and the past, stores his mind from others'
harvests, gleans again the oft-gleaned fields; but when his song
flows forth, freighted with the rich spoils of patient industry, it
has the spontaneity of an inspiration. While viewing the noble
river we forget the springs and rills that comprise its source.
The painter presents an image that seems flashed upon the
canvas with the ease and celerity of thought, with the vividness.and truth of nature; but behind all this there is the laborious,
painstaking, studious inquiry into the appropriateness of every
detail, that the harmony and value of the most insignificant
part may have due reference to the effect of the whole. Following the methods of the architect we shall reach a like conclusion
in his case. When he has an edifice to construct he first collects
all the data, the requisites, comprehending use, cost, and location, the nature of the material to be employed-in short, every