194 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

beings, except Renaissance architects, any instance of a parallel or comparable stupidity: but one can imagine a savage getting hold of a piece of one of our iron wire ropes, with its rings upon it at intervals to bind it together, and pulling the wires asunder to apply them to separate purposes; but imagining there was magic in the ring that bound them, and so cutting that to pieces also, and fastening a little bit of it to every wire.

§ 8. This much may serve us to know respecting the first family of wall cornices. The second is immeasurably more important, and includes the cornices of all the best buildings in the world. It has derived its best form from mediæval military architecture, which imperatively required two things; first, a parapet which should permit sight and offence, and afford defence at the same time; and secondly, a projection bold enough to enable the defenders to rake the bottom of the wall with falling bodies; a projection which, if the wall happened to slope inwards, required not to be small. The thoroughly magnificent forms of cornice thus developed by necessity in military buildings, were adopted, with more or less of boldness or distinctness, in domestic architecture, according to the temper of the times and the circumstances of the individual-decisively in the baron’s house, imperfectly in the burgher’s: gradually they found their way into ecclesiastical architecture, under wise modifications in the early cathedrals, with infinite absurdity in the imitations of them; diminishing in size as their original purpose sank into a decorative one, until we find battlements, two-and-a-quarter inches square, decorating the gates of the Philanthropic Society.¹

§ 9. There are, therefore, two distinct features in all cornices of this kind; first, the bracket, now become of enormous importance and of most serious practical service; the second, the parapet: and these two features we shall

¹ [The Industrial School of the Philanthropic Society for the Reformation of Criminal Boys, now removed to Red Hill, was for many years situated at 15 London Road, Southwark, near the Obelisk, and on Ruskin’s route between Denmark Hill and London. The building is now demolished.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]