CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 173

top of the north gate: it cannot therefore be closely seen except¹ from the wooden stairs of the belfry; it is not intended to be so seen, but calculated for a distance of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the eye. In the vault of the gate itself, half as near again, there are three rows of mouldings, as I think, by the same designer, at all events part of the same plan. One of them is given in Plate I., fig. 2 a. It will be seen that the abstraction is here infinitely less; the ivy leaves have stalks and associated fruit, and a rib for each lobe, and are so far undercut as to detach their forms from the stone; while in the vine-leaf moulding above, of the same period, from the south gate, serration appears added to other purely imitative characters. Finally, in the animals which form the ornaments of the portion of the gate which is close to the eye, abstraction nearly vanishes into perfect sculpture.²

§ 33. Nearness to the eye, however, is not the only circumstance which influences architectural abstraction. These very animals are not merely better cut because close to the eye; they are put close to the eye that they may, without indiscretion, be better cut, on the noble principle, first, I think, clearly enunciated by Sir Charles Eastlake,³ that the closest imitation shall be of the noblest object. Farther, since the wildness and manner of growth of vegetation render a bonâ fide imitation of it impossible in sculpture-since its members must be reduced in number, ordered in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under the most earnestly imitative treatment,-it becomes a point, as I think, of good judgment, to proportion the completeness of execution of parts to the formality of the whole; and since five or six leaves must stand for a tree, to let also five or six touches stand for a leaf. But since the animal generally admits of perfect outline-since its form is detached, and may be fully represented, its sculpture may be more complete and faithful in all its parts. And

¹ [The MS. inserts, “as I saw it.”]

² [The MS. adds, “and all this in a most severe and early time.”]

³ [In his Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts, 1848.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]