64 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

it in sculpture. You like a hurried, broad, dashing manner of execution in a water-colour drawing, though that may be seen as near as you choose, and yet you refuse to admit the nobleness of a bold, simple, and dashing stroke of the chisel in work which is to be seen forty fathoms off. Be assured that “handling” is as great a thing in marble as in paint, and that the power of producing a masterly effect with few touches is as essential in an architect as in a draughtsman; though indeed that power is never perfectly attained except by those who possess the power of giving the highest finish when there is occasion.

41. But there is yet another and a weightier charge to be brought against our modern Pseudo-Greek ornamentation. It is, first, wrongly placed; secondly, wrongly finished; and, thirdly, utterly without meaning. Observe in these two Gothic ornaments, and in every other ornament that ever was carved in the great Gothic times, there is a definite aim at the representation of some natural object. In fig. 15 you have an exquisite group of rose-stems, with the flowers and buds; in fig. 16, various wild weeds, especially the Geranium pratense; in every case you have an approximation to a natural form, and an unceasing variety of suggestion. But how much of Nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the Mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise.¹ It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

¹ [“The Mound,” a raised causeway, connecting the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, was formed of the earth dug out for the foundations of the latter. The institution referred to is the Royal Institution (containing the National Museum

[Version 0.04: March 2008]