DECORATION XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT 307

never wearies, though their true meaning may never occur to the thoughts.

§ 34. The next question respecting the arrangement of ornament is one closely connected also with its quantity. The system of creation is one in which “God’s creatures leap not, but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, and nothing wants.”¹ It is also a feast where there is nothing redundant. So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must never be any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a single member, or fragment of a member, which could be spared. Whatever has nothing to do, whatever could go without being missed, is not ornament; it is deformity and encumbrance. Away with it. And, on the other hand, care must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we permit, in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate it, as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and curdled upon some points, and left the rest of the building whey. It is very difficult to give the rules, or analyse the feelings, which should direct us in this matter: for some shafts may be carved and others left unfinished, and that with advantage; some windows may be jewelled like Aladdin’s, and one left plain,² and still with advantage; the door or doors, or a single turret, or the whole western façade of a church, or the apse or transept, may be made special subjects of decoration, and the rest left plain, and still sometimes with advantage. But in all such cases there is either sign of that feeling which I advocated in the First Chapter of the Seven Lamps,³ the desire of rather doing some portion of the building as we would have it, and leaving the rest plain, than doing the whole imperfectly; or else there is choice made of some important feature, to which, as more honourable than the rest, the decoration is confined. The evil is when, without system,

¹ [This quotation from George Herbert (The Temple) is also given in Modern Painters, vol. ii.; see Vol. IV. p. 176.]

² [In the palace built by the Genius of the Lamp, there were, it will be remembered, twenty-four windows, all but one being set in frames of precious stones; the last was left unfinished, nor was even the Sultan able “to finish Aladdin’s window.”]

³ [§ 10, Vol. VIII. p. 44.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]