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270 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION
lines assembled on Plate 7, we shall do well to be content with two of the simplest. We will take one mountain line (e, g) and one leaf line (u, w), or rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not want them all. I will mark off from u w the little bit x y, and from e g the piece e f; both which appear to me likely to be serviceable: and if hereafter we need the help of any abstract lines, we will see what we can do with these only.1
§ 22. (2.) Forms of Earth (Crystals). It may be asked why I do not say rocks or mountains? Simply, because the nobility of these depends, first, on their scale, and, secondly, on accident. Their scale cannot be represented, nor their accident systematised. No sculptor can in the least imitate the peculiar character of accidental fracture: he can obey or exhibit the laws of nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labour of Nature, but not her disturbance; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained,* not what she has violently suffered, or strangely permitted. The only uses, therefore, of rock form which are wise in the architect, are its actual introduction (by leaving untouched such blocks as are meant for rough service), and that noble use of the general examples of mountain structure of which I have often heretofore spoken.2 Imitations of rock form have, for the most part, been confined to periods of degraded feeling and to architectural toys or pieces of dramatic effect,-the Calvaries and holy sepulchres of Romanism, or the grottoes and fountains of English gardens. They were, however, not
* Thus above [p. 85] I adduced for the architect’s imitation the appointed stories and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular forms of crag or fissure.
1 [See below, pp. 339, 360, 384.]
2 [See, for instance, above, ch. viii. § 1, and Seven Lamps, ch. iii. § 3 (Vol. VIII. p. 102.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
