ADDENDA TO LECTURES I. AND II 89

that they know they dare not meet me on that ground. Being, as I have said, in reality not architects, but builders, they can indeed raise a large building, with copied ornaments, which, being huge and white, they hope the public may pronounce “handsome.” But they cannot design a cluster of oak-leaves-no, nor a single human figure-no, nor so much as a beast, or a bird, or a bird’s nest!¹ Let them first learn to invent as much as will fill a quatrefoil, or point a pinnacle, and then it will be time enough to reason with them on the principles of the sublime.

65. But farther. The things that I have dwelt upon in examining buildings, though often their least parts, are always in reality their principal parts. That is the principal part of a building in which its mind is contained, and that, as I have just shown, is its sculpture and painting. I do with a building as I do with a man, watch the eye and the lips: when they are bright and eloquent, the form of the body is of little consequence.

Whatever other objections have been made to this second proposition, arise, as far as I remember, merely from a confusion of the idea of essentialness or primariness with the idea of nobleness. The essential thing in a building,-its first virtue,-is that it be strongly built, and fit for its uses. The noblest thing in a building, and its highest virtue, is that it be nobly sculptured or painted.*

66. One or two important corollaries yet remain to be stated. It has just been said that to sacrifice the convenience of a building to its external appearance is a futility

* Of course I use the term painting as including every mode of applying colour.

¹ [Ruskin was here writing from particular observation, as the following passage in the MS. shows:-

“The other day I was talking to a very intelligent architect’s assistant, a young man who, I hope, may do much in his time. But, he inquiring whether I thought he had architectural ability, I asked him to draw me a bit of a leaf moulding out of his head. He said he had ‘never done such a thing.’ Never designed a bit of moulding? ‘No, I never designed anything.’ And this at one-and-twenty.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]