DECORATION XX. MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT 279

to consider these as separated from the stems; not only, as above noted, because their separate use marks another school of architecture, but because they are the only organic structures which are capable of being so treated, and intended to be so, without strong effort of imagination. To pull animals to pieces, and use their paws for feet of furniture, or their heads for terminations of rods and shafts, is usually the characteristic of feelingless schools; the greatest men like their animals whole. The head may, indeed, be so managed as to look emergent from the stone, rather than fastened to it; and wherever there is throughout the architecture any expression of sternness or severity (severity in its literal sense, as in Romans xi. 22), such divisions of the living form may be permitted; still, you cannot cut an animal to pieces as you can gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our gathering, and for our constant delight: wherever men exist in a perfectly civilized and healthy state, they have vegetation around them; wherever their state approaches that of innocence or perfectness, it approaches that of Paradise,-it is a dressing of garden.¹ And, therefore, where nothing else can be used for ornament, vegetation may; vegetation in any form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A single leaf laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or framework of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost of the leaf,-the hollow “foil” cut out of it,-possesses a charm which nothing else can replace; a charm not exciting, nor demanding laborious thought or sympathy, but perfectly simple, peaceful, and satisfying.

§ 33. The full recognition of leaf forms, as the general source of subordinate decoration, is one of the chief characteristics of Christian architecture; but the two roots of leaf ornament are the Greek acanthus,² and the Egyptian lotus.*

* Vide Wilkinson, vol. v., woodcut, No. 478, fig. 8.³ The tamarisk appears afterwards to have given the idea of a subdivision of leaf more pure and quaint

¹ [Cf. Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. vi. ch. i.]

² [For the acanthus, see further Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. ii. § 6.]

³ [Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, by J. G. Wilkinson, first series 1837, second series 1841, 6 vols.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]