CHAPTER IV

THE WALL BASE

§ 1. OUR first business, then, is with Wall, and to find out wherein lies the true excellence of the “Wittiest Partition.”¹ For it is rather strange that, often as we speak of a “dead” wall, and that with considerable disgust, we have not often, since Snout’s time, heard of a living one. But the common epithet of opprobrium is justly bestowed, and marks a right feeling. A wall has no business to be dead. It ought to have members in its make, and purposes in its existence, like an organised creature, and to answer its ends in a living and energetic way; and it is only when we do not choose to put any strength nor organisation into it, that it offends us by its deadness. Every wall ought to be a “sweet and lovely wall.” I do not care about its having ears; but, for instruction and exhortation, I would often have it to “hold up its fingers.” What its necessary members and excellences are, it is our present business to discover.

§ 2. A wall has been defined² to be an even and united fence of wood, earth, stone, or metal. Metal fences, however, seldom, if ever, take the form of walls, but of railings; and, like all other metal constructions, must be left out of our present investigation; as may be also walls composed merely of light planks or laths for purposes of partition or enclosure. Substantial walls, whether of wood or earth (I use the word earth as including clay, baked or unbaked, and stone), have, in their perfect form, three distinct members;-the Foundation, Body or Veil, and Cornice.

¹ [A Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. 1, where also the other quotations in § 1 will be found.]

² [Above, ch. iii. § 3.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]