308 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

and without preference of the nobler members, the ornament alternates between sickly luxuriance and sudden blankness. In many of our Scotch and English Abbeys, especially Melrose, this is painfully felt; but the worst instance I have ever seen is the window in the side of the arch under the Wellington statue, next St. George’s Hospital.¹ In the first place, a window has no business there at all; in the second, the bars of the window are not the proper place for decoration, especially wavy decoration, which one instantly fancies of cast iron; in the third, the richness of the ornament is a mere patch and eruption upon the wall, and one hardly knows whether to be most irritated at the affectation of severity in the rest, or at the vain luxuriance of the dissolute parallelogram.

§ 35. Finally, as regards quantity of ornament. I have already said, again and again,² you cannot have too much if it be good; that is, if it be thoroughly united and harmonised by the laws hitherto insisted upon. But you may easily have too much, if you have more than you have sense to manage. For with every added order of ornament increases the difficulty of discipline. It is exactly the same as in war; you cannot, as an abstract law, have too many soldiers, but you may easily have more than the country is able to sustain, or than your generalship is competent to command. And every regiment which you cannot manage will, on the day of battle, be in your way, and encumber the movements it is not in disposition to sustain.

§ 36. As an architect, therefore, you are modestly to measure your capacity of governing ornament. Remember, its essence,-its being ornament at all, consists in its being governed. Lose your authority over it, let it command you, or lead you, or dictate to you in any wise, and it is an offence, an incumbrance, and a dishonour. And it is

¹ [The Green Park Arch (by Decimus Burton), erected in 1846 immediately opposite Hyde Park Corner, was removed to its present site at the west end of Constitution Hill in 1883. The Wellington Statue (by Wyatt), which formerly surmounted it, was removed to Aldershot Camp.]

² [See, especially, Seven Lamps, ch. i. § 15, Vol. VIII. p. 52.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]