DECORATION XXVII. CORNICE AND CAPITAL 369

is in it, and fixed on seeing that every line of it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in him: we shall see something come of that cornice. The fellow who inlaid the other (b), will stay where he is for ever; and when he has inlaid one leaf up, will inlay another down,-and so undulate up and down to all eternity: but the man of a and d will cut his way forward or there is no truth in handicrafts, nor stubbornness in stone.¹

§ 18. But there is something else noticeable in those two cornices, besides the energy of them: as opposed either to b, or the Greek honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are natural designs. The Greek egg and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in its lines, but utterly absurd in meaning.² Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at least since Leda’s time³), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows, nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness of nothing,-pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far as that work will go, it has consistent intention; with the fewest possible incisions, and those of the easiest shape, they suggest the true image of clusters of leaves, each leaf with its central depression from root to point, and that distinctly visible at almost any distance from the eye, and in almost any light.

§ 19. Here, then, are two great new elements visible; energy and naturalism:-Life, with submission to the laws of God, and love of His works; this is Christianity, dealing with her classical models. Now look back to what I said in Chap. I. § 20 of this dealing of hers, and invention of the

¹ [With this passage may be compared the poem entitled “The Palace,” in Rudyard Kipling’s The Five Nations (1903), with its refrain “After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known.”]

² [For a possible explanation, see E. T. Cook’s Popular Handbook to the ... British Museum, p. 197. For Ruskin’s remarks on his failure at this time to appreciate the full significance of Greek symbolism in design, see below, p. 408 n.]

³ [It seems probable that Ruskin was here confusing Leda and Leto, for neither Castor nor Pollux, who sprung from Leda’s eggs, were archers, but Leto’s children (Apollo and Diana) were.]

IX. 2 A

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