ADDENDA TO LECTURES I. AND II 95

spots, points, twisted bands, abstract curves, and other such, owe their peculiar character to this conventionalism “by cause of inferiority.”

71. C. Conventionalism by cause of means.-In every branch of art, only so much imitation of nature is to be admitted as is consistent with the ease of the workman and the capacities of the material. Whatever shortcomings are appointed (for they are more than permitted, they are in such cases appointed, and meritorious) on account of the untractableness of the material, come under the head of “conventionalism by cause of means.”

These conventionalities, then, being duly understood and accepted, in modification of the general law, that law will be, that the glory of all ornamentation consists in the adoption or imitation of the beauties of natural objects, and that no work can be of high value which is not full of this beauty. To this fourth proposition, modern architects have not ventured to make any serious resistance. On the contrary, they seem to be, little by little, gliding into an obscure perception of the fact, that architecture, in most periods of the world, had sculpture upon it, and that the said sculpture generally did represent something intelligible. For instance, we find Mr. Huggins, of Liverpool,¹ lately lecturing upon architecture “in its relations to nature and the intellect,”* and gravely informing his hearers, that “in the Middle Ages angels were human figures;” that “some of the richest ornaments of Solomon’s temple were imitated from the palm and pomegranate,” and that “the Greeks followed the example of the Egyptians in selecting their ornaments from the plants of their own country.” It is to be presumed that the lecturer has never been in the Elgin or Egyptian room of the British Museum, or it might have occurred to him that the Egyptians and Greeks sometimes also selected their ornaments from the men of their own country. But

* See The Builder, for January 12, 1854.

¹ [Samuel Huggins (1811-1885), President of the Liverpool Architectural Society.]

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