CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 143

again, by frequency I mean that limited and isolated frequency which is characteristic of all perfection; not mere multitude: as a rose is a common flower, but yet there are not so many roses on the tree as there are leaves. In this respect Nature is sparing of her highest, and lavish of her less, beauty; but I call the flower as frequent as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quantity, where the one is, there will ordinarily be the other.¹

§ 4. The first so-called ornament, then, which I would attack is that Greek fret,² now, I believe, usually known by the Italian name Guilloche,³ which is exactly a case in point. It so happens that in crystals of bismuth, formed by the unagitated cooling of the melted metal, there occurs a natural resemblance of it almost perfect. But crystals⁴ of bismuth not only are of unusual occurrence in every-day life, but their form is, as far as I know, unique among minerals; and not only unique, but only attainable by an artificial process, the metal itself never being found pure. I do not remember any other substance or arrangement which presents a resemblance to this Greek ornament; and I think that I may trust my remembrance as including most of the arrangements which occur in the outward forms of common and familiar things. On this ground, then, I allege that ornament to be ugly; or, in the literal sense of the word, monstrous; different from anything which it is the nature of man to admire: and I think an uncarved fillet or plinth infinitely preferable to one

¹ [See Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xiv. § 41, where this section is referred to, and various other passages in Ruskin’s books to a like purpose are “knit together.”]

² [Or “key pattern”; of Egyptian origin, and supposed to be symbolical of the labyrinthine temple on Lake Moeris (see an article on “The Lost Soul of Patterns” in Good Words, Sept. 1896; and for the use of the pattern on Greek vases (referred to in Ruskin’s note on the next page), see E. T. Cook’s Handbook to the ... British Museum, 1903, p. 294). Ruskin in Fors Clavigera, Letter 33, explains its labyrinthine meaning. He once held it, he says, “in especial dislike as the chief means by which bad architects tried to make their buildings look classical,” but it has “a deep meaning, which I did not then know.”]

³ [This is a mistake, as one at least of Ruskin’s critics pointed out at the time: see The Builder, May 19, 1849. The guilloche is the French (not Italian) name for the “cable” pattern, a plaited design forming a series of circular loops: for its history, see J. H. Middleton’s Ancient Gems, p. 15.]

⁴ [See above, ch. ii. § 27 n., p. 96.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]