DECORATION XXVII. CORNICE AND CAPITAL 371

the shapes of leaves, but not the functions; “having the form of knowledge, but denying the power thereof.”¹ What is the meaning of this?

§ 22. Look back to the 33rd paragraph of the first chapter, and you will see the meaning of it. Those cornices are the Venetian Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element struggling with the Formalism of the Papacy,-the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means Apostolic succession, and I don’t know how much more, and is already preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, and the Renaissance.*

§ 23. Now look to the last cornice (g). That is Protestantism,-a slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism, in those falling leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The forms all broken through, and sent heaven knows where, but the root held fast; and the strong sap in the branches; and, best of all, good fruit ripening and opening straight towards heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the leaves lie in the dust.

Now, observe. The cornice f represents Heathenism and Papistry, animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature. The good in it, the life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the Romanism of it. It is

* The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the one side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes, as here, I have to declare its lifelessness, at other times (Chap. XXV. § 17) its lasciviousness. There is, of course, no contradiction in this: but the reader might well ask how I knew the change from the base 11 to the base 12, in Plate 12, to be one from temperance to luxury; and that from the cornice f to the cornice g, in Plate 16, to be one from formalism to vitality. I know it, both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell at length hereafter,² and by the context of the works of the time. But the outward signs might in both ornaments be the same, distinguishable only as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of both. The blush of shame cannot always be told from the blush of indignation.

¹ [2 Timothy iii. 5.]

² [A general reference to the subsequent chapters (in vol. iii. of the work) on the Renaissance. It should be remembered, in these references forward, that vol. i. was written and published before the remainder of the book was written or even, in any detail, planned out.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]