70 THE STONES OF VENICE

It matters not so much what the thing is, as that the builder should really love it and enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral¹ liked hawthorns; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn,-it is a perfect Niobe² of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try to gather it forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects liked hunting; so they covered their work with horses and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards long. The base Renaissance architects of Venice liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their work with comic masks and musical instruments. Even that was better than our English way of liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs.

§ 14. But the second requirement in decoration, is that it should show we like the right thing. And the right thing to be liked is God’s work, which He made for our delight and contentment in this world. And all noble ornamentation is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work.³

§ 15. So, then, these are the two virtues of building: first, the signs of man’s own good work; secondly, the expression of man’s delight in better work than his own. And these are the two virtues of which I desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at least in some measure; to have a definite opinion up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point he cannot form one. When the science of the building is great, great science is of course required to comprehend it; and, therefore, of difficult bridges, and light-houses, and harbour walls, and river

¹ [Ruskin was at Bourges in 1850, and notes the hawthorn of the Cathedral in his diary:-

(April 10.)-... “It is curious to compare the Naturalism of this Gothic and of all frank early unimitative work, with the sophistication of Palladio. The dweller in the woods decorates the temple of God with a sculpture of his triumph over their savage beasts and with branches of hawthorn and oak and wild rose; the degraded noblesse of Venice decorated their houses also with the sources of their pleasures, with grinning masks and sculptured musical instruments.”

For other references to Bourges, see Vol. VIII. p. 12 n., and in this volume, pp. 126, 133, 208, 263, 274, 316, 323, 332, 336, 340, 352.]

² [Hamlet, i. 2.]

³ [See further below, ch. xx. (especially § 15), where this statement is repeated and reinforced; and compare Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. pp. 102, 141, and Laws of Fésole, ch. i., “All great Art is Praise.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]