180 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

always by Him arranged in these simple or rude forms, and as certain that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and that we shall never mend by refining its arrangements. Experience teaches us the same thing. Infinite nonsense has been written about the union of perfect colour with perfect form. They never will, never can be united. Colour, to be perfect, must have a soft outline or a simple one: (it cannot have a refined one;)* and you will never produce a good painted window with good figure-drawing in it. You will lose perfection of colour as you give perfection of line. Try¹ to put in order and form the colours of a piece of opal.

§ 39. I conclude, then, that all arrangements of colour, for its own sake, in graceful forms, are barbarous; and that, to paint a colour pattern with the lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is an utterly savage procedure. I cannot find anything in natural colour like this: it is not in the bond.² I find it in all natural form-never in natural colour. If, then, our architectural colour is to be beautiful as its form was, by being imitative, we are limited to these conditions-to simple masses of it, to zones, as in the rainbow and the zebra; cloudings and flamings, as in marble shells and plumage, or spots of various shapes and dimensions. All these conditions are susceptible of various degrees of sharpness and delicacy, and of complication in arrangement. The zone may become a delicate line, and arrange itself in chequers and zig-zags. The flaming may be more or less defined, as on a tulip leaf, and may at last be represented by a triangle of colour, and arrange itself in stars or other shapes; the spot may be also graduated into a stain,

* Omit the sentence in parenthesis. I meant, a sharp or defined (not refined) edge; but even so understanding it, great part of the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth paragraphs must be received under much exception and protest, and might be omitted wholly with no harm to the book. [1880, when the words were first placed in parenthesis.]

¹ [For “Try” the MS. reads:-

“If you doubt this, ask yourself and answer candidly and thoughtfully whether the disposition of colour be really most perfect in the peacock’s tail or on the dove’s breast, or-which will answer the purpose as well-set yourself to put in order ...”]

² [Merchant of Venice, iv. 1.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]