The Cruise of the Branwen

CRUISE OF THE BRANWEN from mathematical accuracy, and it is this diver– gence which gives the Parthenon its living beauty. For the essential principle of life and growth is constant variation from the rigid type. No tree grows all its branches at the same angles to the trunk, no flower springs from the earth to meet the sun in the straight lines of geometry; and so Ictinos and Callicrates built, between 447 and 438 B.c., a temple for the Athenians which should enshrine, in lines of imperishable marble, subtly wrought, the evanescent and essen– tial beauty which they loved. The principles they worked on were known to the Romans and to the builders of the great cathedrals in the pointed architecture of the West. But at some time in the seventeenth century they were forgotten, overlaid by the frigid accuracies of the school of Mansard, or by the geometric tracings of a false Renaissance. And this is why the modern reproduction of such an ancient masterpiece as the Parthenon in– variably fails to reproduce the old effect. Mere age and lapse of time have nothing to do with it. If some of our monstrosities of modern architec– ture are spared by the unwilling citizens of the next ten centuries, they will look no better then than they do to-day. But if we could see the Parthenon in the splendour of its new-born beauty, we should admire it even more than we do now, and this because the principles em– bodied in its structure are eternal, independent either of time or space, " a joy for ever " ; for they are freed from those rigid lav;,,s of accurate 138 •