ADDENDA TO LECTURES I. AND II 93

the top; but it is on a scale of perfect power and effectiveness; while in the base modern Gothic of Milan Cathedral the statues are cut delicately everywhere, and the builders think it a merit that the visitor must climb to the roof before he can see them; and our modern Greek and Italian architecture reaches the utmost pitch of absurdity by placing its fine work at the top only. So that the general condition of the thing may be stated boldly, as in the text; the principal ornaments of Gothic buildings being in their porches, and of modern buildings, in their parapets.

68. Proposition 4th.-Ornamentation should be natural,-that is to say, should in some degree express or adopt the beauty of natural objects. This law, together with its ultimate reason, is expressed in the statement given in the Stones of Venice:¹ “All noble ornament is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work.”

Observe, it does not hence follow that it should be an exact imitation of, or endeavour in anywise to supersede, God’s work. It may consist only in a partial adoption of, and compliance with, the usual forms of natural things, without at all going to the point of imitation; and it is possible that the point of imitation may be closely reached by ornaments, which nevertheless are entirely unfit for their place, and are the signs only of a degraded ambition and an ignorant dexterity. Bad decorators err as easily on the side of imitating nature, as of forgetting her; and the question of the exact degree in which imitation should be attempted under given circumstances, is one of the most subtle and difficult in the whole range of criticism. I have elsewhere examined it at some length, and have yet much to say about it;² but here I can only state briefly that the modes in which ornamentation ought to fall short of

¹ [The reference in the original text was to “vol. i. p. 213”; in this edition, Vol. IX. p. 264.]

² [See Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. pp. 169-174, and Stones of Venice, Vol. X. pp. 257-258. Those passages refer to the limits of imitation and abstraction in sculpture. To the general subject Ruskin returned in the third volume of Modern Painters.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]