218 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

§ 24. I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment-was the carver happy while he was about it?¹ It may be the hardest work possible, and the harder because so much pleasure was taken in it; but it must have been happy too, or it will not be living. How much of the stone mason’s toil this condition would exclude I hardly venture to consider, but the condition is absolute. There is a Gothic church lately built near Rouen,² vile enough, indeed, in its general composition, but excessively rich in detail; many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently by a man who has studied old work closely. But it is all as dead as leaves in December; there is not one tender touch, not one warm stroke on the whole façade. The men who did it hated it, and were thankful when it was done. And so long as they do so they are merely loading your walls with shapes of clay: the garlands of everlastings in Père la Chaise are more cheerful ornaments. You cannot get the feeling by paying for it-money will not buy life. I am not sure even that you can get it by watching or waiting for it. It is true that here and there a workman may be found who has it in him, but he does not rest contented in the inferior work-he struggles forward into an Academician; and from the mass of available handicraftsmen the power is gone-how recoverable I know not: this only I know, that all expense devoted to sculptural ornament, in the present condition of that power, comes literally under the head of Sacrifice for the sacrifice’s sake, or worse.³

¹ [Here Ruskin approaches a side of the question which he was afterwards to develop: see “The Nature of Gothic,” Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 12, and the summary of his architectural teaching in Fors Clavigera, Letter 78: “the dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy life of the workman.” Cf. Introduction, above, p. xliv.]

² [The pilgrimage church of N. D. de Bonsecours, 2 miles from Rouen, built in 1840-1842 in the style of the thirteenth century.]

³ [The MS. inserts:-

“(for dead ornament is to my mind the most dismal mourning that a building can wear). I am grieved, therefore, when I hear of any attempts at the building of florid Gothic; we have it not in us, and it will need severe discipline before we gain it.” The bracketed passage is struck out. Below, for “stamped metals” the MS. has “stamped leathers.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]