146 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

that capitals of great excess must have steep slopes; but it does not say that capitals of small excess may not have steep slopes also, if we choose. And lastly Law 4 asserts the necessity of the thick abacus for the shallow bell; but the steep bell may have a thick abacus also.

§ 19. It will be found, however, that in practice some confession of these laws will always be useful, and especially of the two first. The eye always requires, on a slender shaft, a more spreading capital than it does on a massy one,¹ and a bolder mass of capital on a small scale than on a large. And in the application of the first rule it is to be noted that a shaft of height; that either mode of change presupposes the weight above it diminished, and requires an expansion of abacus. I know no mode of spoiling a noble building more frequent in actual practice than the imposition of flat and slightly expanded capitals on tall shafts.

§ 20. The reader must observe also that, in the demonstration of the four laws, I always assumed the weight above to be given. By the alteration of this weight, therefore, the architect has it in his power to relieve, and therefore alter, the forms of his capitals. By its various distribution on their centres or edges, the slope of their bells and thickness of abaci will be affected also; so that he has countless expedients at his command for the various treatment of his design. He can divide his weights among more shafts; he can throw them in different places and different directions on the abaci; he can alter slope of bells or diameter of shafts; he can use spurred or plain bells, thin or thick abaci; and all these changes admitting of infinity in their degrees, and infinity a thousand times told in their relations; and all this without reference to decoration, merely with the five forms of block capital!

§ 21. In the harmony of these arrangements, in their fitness, unity, and accuracy, lies the true proportion of every

¹ [See in Vol. VIII. p. xxxi. an extract from Ruskin’s diary at Coutances in 1848, giving his first notice of this principle, and compare St. Mark’s Rest, § 16.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]