96 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

we must not expect too much illumination at once; and as we are told that, in conclusion, Mr. Huggins glanced at “the error of architects in neglecting the fountain of wisdom thus open to them in nature,” we may expect in due time large results from the discovery of a source of wisdom so unimagined.

72. Proposition 5th.-Ornamentation should be thoughtful. That is to say, whenever you put a chisel or a pencil into a man’s hand for the purpose of enabling him to produce beauty, you are to expect of him that he will think about what he is doing, and feel something about it, and that the expression of this thought or feeling will be the most noble quality in what he produces with his chisel or brush, inasmuch as the power of thinking and feeling is the most noble thing in the man. It will hence follow that as men do not commonly think the same thoughts twice, you are not to require of them that they shall do the same thing twice. You are to expect another and a different thought of them, as soon as one thought has been well expressed.

73. Hence, therefore, it follows also that all noble ornamentation is perpetually varied ornamentation,¹ and that the moment you find ornamentation unchanging, you may know that it is of a degraded kind or degraded school. To this law, the only exceptions arise out of the uses of monotony, as a contrast to change. Many subordinate architectural mouldings are severely alike in their various parts (though never unless they are thoroughly subordinate, for monotony is always deathful according to the degree of it), in order to set off change in others; and a certain monotony or similarity must be introduced among the most changeful ornaments in order to enhance and exhibit their own changes.

The truth of this proposition is self-evident; for no art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not

¹ [This proposition is implied in Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 310), vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 261).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]