272 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

ornament repress still more forcibly the portraiture of the sea. Yet the constant necessity of introducing some representation of water in order to explain the scene of events, or as a sacred symbol, has forced the sculptors of all ages to the invention of some type or letter for it, if not an actual imitation. We find every degree of conventionalism or of naturalism in these types, the earlier being, for the most part, thoughtful symbols; the later, awkward attempts at portraiture.* The most conventional of all types is the Egyptian zigzag, preserved in the astronomical sign of Aquarius; but every nation with any capacities of thought, has given, in some of its work, the same great definition of open water, as “an undulatory thing with fish in it.” I say open water, because inland nations have a totally different conception of the element. Imagine for an instant the different feelings of an husbandman whose hut is built by the Rhine or the Po, and who sees, day by day, the same giddy succession of silent power, the same opaque, thick, whirling, irresistible, labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies, coiling themselves into serpentine race by the reedy banks, in omne volubilis ævum,¹-and the image of the sea in the mind of the fisher upon the rocks of Ithaca, or by the Straits of Sicily, who sees how, day by day, the morning winds come coursing to the shore, every breath of them with a green wave rearing before it; clear, crisp, ringing, merryminded waves, that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust of crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand.² Fancy the difference of the image of water in those two minds

* Appendix 21: “Ancient Representations of Water” [p. 460].

¹ [Horace: Epist. i. 2, 43.]

² [A comparision of the text with the MS. may here again be given (cf. p. 228 n. above) to illustrate Ruskin’s gradual arrival at his ultimate words. The MS. reads:-

“the same giddy succession of smooth, whirling, irresistible, labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies, coiling themselves into serpentine racing, ... and the thought of the sea ... by the Straits of Scylla, who sees day by day the morning winds come riding to the shore, every breath with a wild horse of a wave pawing before it; and bright, crisp, ringing, merry-minded waves, that fall over and over each other, as they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into a dust of crystal over the dazzling sand.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]