hunting sculpture of the Lombards; but rudely treated (the most noble
examples of treatment being the lions of Egypt, the Ninevite bulls, and
the mediaeval griffins). Quadrupeds of course form the noblest subjects
of ornament next to the human form; this latter, the chief subject of
sculpture, being sometimes the end of architecture rather than its
decoration.

We have thus completed the list of the materials of architectural
decoration, and the reader may be assured that no effort has ever been
successful to draw elements of beauty from any other sources than
these. Such an effort was once resolutely made. It was contrary to the
religion of the Arab to introduce any animal form into his ornament; but
although all the radiance of color, all the refinements of proportion,
and all the intricacies of geometrical design were open to him, he could
not produce any noble work without an _abstraction_ of the forms of
leafage, to be used in his capitals, and made the ground plan of his
chased ornament. But I have above noted that coloring is an entirely
distinct and independent art; and in the "Seven Lamps" we saw that this
art had most power when practised in arrangements of simple geometrical
form: the Arab, therefore, lay under no disadvantage in coloring, and he
had all the noble elements of constructive and proportional beauty at
his command: he might not imitate the sea-shell, but he could build the
dome. The imitation of radiance by the variegated voussoir, the
expression of the sweep of the desert by the barred red lines upon the
wall, the starred inshedding of light through his vaulted roof, and all
the endless fantasy of abstract line,[69] were still in the power of his
ardent and fantastic spirit. Much he achieved; and yet in the effort of
his overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he made his
architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined enchantment, and
left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a startling dream, whose
beauty we may indeed feel, and whose instruction we may receive, but
must smile at its inconsistency, and mourn over its evanescence.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly
symptoms in the civilisation of the upper classes in the present
century.

[64] Thus above, I adduced for the architect's imitation the
appointed stories and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular
forms of crag or fissure.

[65] A