I. ARCHITECTURE 31

beg of you particularly to observe that the level sill, although useful, and therefore admitted, does not therefore become beautiful; the eye does not like it so well as the top of the window, nor does the sculptor like to attract the eye to it; his richest mouldings, traceries, and sculptures are all reserved for the top of the window; they are sparingly granted to its horizontal base. And farther, observe, that when neither the convenience of the sill, nor the support of the structure, are any more of moment, as in small windows and traceries, you instantly have the point given to the bottom of the window. Do you recollect the west window of your own Dunblane Abbey?¹ If you look in any common guide-book, you will find it pointed out as peculiarly beautiful,-it is acknowledged to be beautiful by the most careless observer. And why beautiful? Look at it (fig. 7, Plate IV.). Simply because in its great contours it has the form of a forest leaf, and because in its decoration it has used nothing but forest leaves. The sharp and expressive moulding which surrounds it is a very interesting example of one used to an enormous extent by the builders of the early English Gothic, usually in the form seen in fig. 2, Plate II., composed of clusters of four sharp leaves each, originally produced by sculpturing the sides of a four-sided pyramid, and afterwards brought more or less into a true image of leaves, but deriving all its beauty from the botanical form. In the present instance only two leaves are set in each cluster; and the architect has been determined that the naturalism should be perfect. For he was no common man who designed that cathedral of Dunblane. I know not anything so perfect in its simplicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, in all the Gothic with which I am

¹ [See Lectures on Landscape, § 37, where Ruskin again refers to this window as “one of the prettiest pieces of thirteenth-century carving in the kingdom,” and goes on to discuss its imperfect rendering in Turner’s Liber Studiorum Plate, No. 497 in the National Gallery. Ruskin visited Dunblane shortly before delivering these lectures: see above, Introduction, p. xx. The Cathedral was founded by David I., circa 1140, but almost entirely rebuilt, in the pointed style, a century later. It has been repaired in recent years, and is thus used as the parish church of Dunblane.]

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