372 THE STONES OF VENICE DECORATION

the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk’s dress,-Christianity before the Reformation. The cornice g has the Lombardic life element in its fulness, with only some colour and shape of Classicalism mingled with it-the good of Classicalism; as much method and Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root, the simplicity of the great profile,-all these are the healthy classical elements retained: the rest is reformation, new strength, and recovered liberty.

§ 24. There is one more point about it especially noticeable. The leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character, but they are of no particular species; and after being something like cabbage-leaves in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end. Now I don’t know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a classical character;-it is eminently characteristic of Southern work; and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in one. It is, I repeat, a clearly thing, nor two things in one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or bad element I am not sure;-whether it is the last trace of Centaurism and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law in its members warring against the law of its mind.¹

§ 25. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question proposed in § 13, and observe the modifications of form of profile which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to § 13, we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in the abstract;-the modes in which they have been derived from each other in actual practice require to be followed in

¹ [Romans vii. 27.]

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