These principles of spectacular publicity demand a nice adjustment of the conspicuous features of the plant to the current vagaries in decorative art and magnificence,that is to say, conformity to the sophistications current on that level of culture on which these unlettered men of substance live and move and have their being. As touches the case of the seats of learning, these current lay sophistications draw on several more or less diverse, and not altogether congruous, lines of conventionally approved manifestation of the ability to pay. Out of the past comes the conventional preconception that these scholastic edifices should show something of the revered traits of ecclesiastical and monastic real-estate; while out of the present comes an ingrained predilection for the more sprightly and exuberant effects of decoration and magnificence to which the modern concert-hall, the more expensive cafes and clubrooms, and the Pullman coaches have given a degree of authentication. Any one given to curious inquiry might find congenial employment in tracing out the manner and proportion in which these, and the like, strains of aesthetic indoctrination are blended in the edifices and grounds of a well-advised modern university.
It is not necessary here to offer many speculations on the enduring artistic merit of these costly stage properties of the seats of learning, since their permanent value in that respect is scarcely to be rated as a substantial motive in their construction. But there is, e. g., no obvious reason why, with the next change in the tide of mannerism, the disjointed grotesqueries of an eclectic and modified Gothic should not presently pass into the same category of apologetic neglect, with the architectural evils wrought by the mid-Victorian generation.
But there is another side to this architecture of notoriety, that merits some slight further remark. It is consistently and unavoidably meretricious. Just at present the enjoined vogue is some form of bastard antique. The archaic forms which it ostensibly preserves are structurally out of date, ill adapted to the modern materials and the modern builder's use of materials.
Modern building, on a large scale and designed for durable results, is framework building. The modern requirements of light, heating, ventilation and access require it to be such; and the materials used lend themselves to that manner of construction.
The strains involved in modern structures are frame-work strains;whereas the forms which these edifices are required to simulate are masonry forms. The outward conformation and ostensible structure of the buildings, therefore, are commonly meaningless, except as an architectural prevarication. They have to be adapted, simulated, deranged, because in modern use they are impracticable in the shape, proportion and combination that of right belonged to them under the circumstances of materials and uses under which they were once worked out. So there results a meaningless juxtaposition of details, that prove nothing in detail and contradict one another in assemblage. All of which may suggest reflections on the fitness of housing the quest of truth in an edifice of false pretences.
These architectural vagaries serve no useful end in academic life. As an object lesson they conduce, in their measure, to inculcate in the students a spirit of disingenuousness. But they spread abroad the prestige of the university as an ornate and spendthrift establishment; which is believed to bring increased enrolment of students and, what is even more to the point, to conciliate the good-will of the opulent patrons of learning. That these edifices are good for this purpose, and that this policy of architectural mise en scene is wise, appears from the greater readiness with which funds are procured for such ornate constructions than for any other academic use. It appears that the successful men of affairs to whom the appeal for funds is directed, find these wasteful, ornate and meretricious edifices a competent expression of their cultural hopes and ambitions.
