CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 87

likely to prevail when once they are admitted, being apt to catch the fancy alike of uninventive architects and feelingless spectators; just as mean and shallow minds are, in other matters, delighted with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled with the conceit of detecting the intention to over-reach: and when subtleties of this kind are accompanied by the display of such dexterous stone-cutting, or architectural sleight of hand, as may become, even by itself, a subject of admiration, it is a great chance if the pursuit of them do not gradually draw us away from all regard and care for the nobler character of the art, and end in its total paralysis or extinction. And against this there is no guarding, but by stern disdain of all display of dexterity and ingenious device, and by putting the whole force of our fancy into the arrangement of masses and forms, caring no more how these masses and forms are wrought out, than a great painter cares which way his pencil strikes.* It would be easy to give many instances of the danger of these tricks and vanities; but I shall confine myself to the examination of one which has, as I think, been the cause¹ of the fall of Gothic architecture throughout Europe. I mean the system of intersectional mouldings, which, on account of its great importance, and for the sake of the general reader, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for explaining elementarily.²

§ 21. I must, in the first place, however, refer to Professor Willis’s account³ of the origin of tracery, given in the sixth chapter of his Architecture of the Middle Ages;⁴ since the publication of which I have been not a little amazed to hear of any attempts made to resuscitate the inexcusably absurd theory of its derivation from imitated vegetable form-inexcusably,

* A great painter does care very much, however, which way his pencil strikes; and a good sculptor which way his mallet: but in neither of them is the care that their action may be admired, but that it may be just. [1880.]

¹ [The MS. reads: “the very first and chief cause.”]

² [Cf. above, Introduction, p. xxi.]

³ [The MS. reads: “clear and irrefragable account.”]

⁴ [Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, especially of Italy, by R. Willis, M.A., F.R.S. Cambridge, 1835. Ruskin afterwards made the acquaintance of Willis (Jacksonian Professor of Applied Mechanics at Cambridge); see above, Introduction, p. xl.]

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