264 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

decorated with models of fortifications like those in the Repository at Woolwich,¹ or inlaid with mock arcades in pseudoperspective, copied from gardeners’ paintings at the ends of conservatories.

§ 15. I conclude, then, with the reader’s leave, that all ornament is base which takes for its subject human work, that it is utterly base,-painful to every rightly-toned mind, without perhaps immediate sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we do think of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for admiration, is a miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our own wretched doings, when we might have been looking at God’s doings. And all noble ornament is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work.²

§ 16. For observe, the function of ornament is to make you happy. Now in what are you rightly happy? Not in thinking of what you have done yourself; not in your own pride; not your own birth; not in your own being, or your own will, but in looking at God; watching what He does; what He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to His will.

You are to be made happy by ornaments; therefore they

round the upper part are so round as to look like apples or pomegranates, but their effect good. The pinnacles round are peculiarly vulgar; all of them approximating to chimney-post, being little temples of various design set on square pedestals, like models of large buildings. Shell canopies occur frequently and bits of morbid Gothic mixed with classic form, as in ... [reference to a sketch-book]. The most interesting portion is the row or column of detached pieces of carving on each pilaster all up the front; each subject seems full of character and interest, one of the lowest represents a little church, with steps up to it, on a rock, the rock cut away deep under the church, and the steps therefore singularly inaccessible; yet the story told, and large flowers on the rock, one bunch intended, I think, for pansies, the other as at c [reference to sketch], three on stalk ...”

For criticisms of the Certosa of Pavia, see Seven Lamps, ch. i. § 14, Vol. VIII. p. 50 and n.]

¹ [Within the Royal Military Repository on Woolwich Common is the Rotunda (built by Nash in 1814), containing a Military Museum with models of fortifications, etc.]

² [See also above, ch. ii. § 14, p. 70, and compare Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 68, where the statement is repeated and guarded against some possible misunderstanding: ornament need not be an exact imitation of natural forms, nor does the mere following of natural forms of itself make ornament good.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]