THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” 285

Another sheet has the following fragment:-

“I believe, therefore, that we may broadly assume, that a building, if it have merit at all, will have one of these two characters distinctively developed; and that by fixing our attention upon one or other of them, and striving to realise it alone in our designs, we shall succeed better than by endeavouring to unite the two in a perfect splendour; and this not only because in the work of nature herself they have different places and functions, but because Architecture has herself two forms of energy: one imitative, in which she copies natural organic forms as being able to imagine none fairer; the other disposing and modifying such forms to her own will; and it is this last action which gives to her work that spirituality which seems to me its most awful attribute. Without, therefore, entering into any question of the nature of the sublime or beautiful, but assuming those natural appearances and forms to be such which are generally so esteemed, let us observe what peculiar conditions of both these characters result in architecture from its governing power on the one hand, and imitative choice on the other.

“When this modifying power is displayed together with a choice of the natural forms or resemblances which most harmonize with it, we have a majesty nearly as great” [here this passage breaks off].

CHAPTER IV

The following paragraph in the MS. was omitted from the printed text of chapter iv. §§ 1, 2 (see above, p. 140):-

“This incapability of human invention to advance without aid from natural form is especially shown, it seems to me, in the failures which attend any attempt to ornament features of a size larger than those of which nature furnishes decorated examples. We may find a striking instance in the difficulty, noticed already in the third chapter, of ornamenting large curvilinear surfaces. Of small masses, spherical or oval or cylindrical, or otherwise bounded by curved superficies, nature has furnished us with innumerable examples decorated with the most lavish richness: and for his ball or boss or rosette, or finial or column, the architect has ready to his hand millions of models in the family of the Radiata¹ and Molluscs, and in starry and globular vegetables, in the star fishes, the echini, the sea anemones, the crabs and sponges, in all the genera of the rose, in the pine cone and apple, in the artichoke, thistle, and thousands more, together with every forest stem which ivy clasps or briony climbs; there is not a sea wave but casts on shore, not a ray of light but colours and opens for him, some new model of perfect form. But let him beware how he magnifies these from their ordained proportion. I do not know any mistakes so common or so fatal as that unhappy idea (which I have combated in another place²)

¹ [See Vol. IV. p. 95 n.]

² [Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. chap. vi. § 10 n., Vol. IV. p. 103.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]