DECORATION XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT 293

which I thought the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation; a system which I afterwards found carried out in every building of the great times which I had opportunity of examining.

§ 16. There are two distinct modes in which this adaptation is effected. In the first, the same designs which are delicately worked when near the eye, are rudely cut, and have far fewer details when they are removed from it. In this method it is not always easy to distinguish economy from skill, or slovenliness from science. But, in the second method, a different kind of design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of simpler lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of purpose; but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both kinds when they are seen close: in the first, a bald execution of a perfect design; in the second, a baldness of design with perfect execution. And in these very imperfections lies the admirableness of the ornament.

§ 17. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adaptation to the distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of observance of natural law. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling. They were meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for their place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapour. Look at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden

find some of the capitals so utterly coarse and vile, while towards the angle they better gradually, as if the architect expected more people to look at them from the Piazzetta and from between the columns than from the sea. In fact the current of people might be considered as setting broad from the Ponte della Paglia as marked by the tidal lines opposite [reference to a diagram], and when they spread most, the upper columns would be most regarded.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]