268 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

noble in their sweep than almost any that I know:¹ but this fragment is seen at great disadvantage, because placed upside down in order that the reader may compare its curvatures with c d, e g, and i k, which are all mountain lines: e g, about five hundred feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; i k, the entire slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; l m is the line of the side of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper; n o, one of the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a paper Nautilus;² p, a spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula;³ q r, the leaf of the Alisma Plantago⁴ with its interior ribs, real size; s t, the side of a bay-leaf; u w, of a salvia leaf: and it is to be carefully noted that these last curves, being never intended by nature to be seen singly, are more heavy and less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen as independent lines. But all agree in their character of changeful curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the rest in delicacy and richness of transition.

§ 20. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavoured to show in the Modern Painters;⁵ but one point, there omitted, may be mentioned here,-that almost all these lines are expressive of action or force of some kind, while the circle is a line of limitation or support. In leafage they mark the forces of its growth and expansion, but some among the most beautiful of them are described by bodies variously in motion, or subjected to force; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by their satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be considered instead of its relation to the planet; by boats, or birds, turning in the water or air,

¹ [See above, p. 187 n.]

² [There is a study by Ruskin of the shell of the paper-Nautilus (or, argonauta) in the Drawing School at Oxford: Educational Series.]

³ [A genus of worms inhabiting cylindrical calcareous tubes, often massed together in heaps attached to rocks, shells, &c.]

⁴ [For Ruskin’s studies of this plant, see Seven Lamps, ch. iv. § 29, Vol. VIII. p. 168.]

⁵ [See reference in Note 1 on p. 267.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]