es,
in nearly every case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should
not admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a
nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid; but by the
Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life, we need not fear
being led astray: the visions of a distempered fancy are not indeed
permitted to replace the truth, or set aside the laws of science: but
the imagination which is thoroughly under the command of the intelligent
will,[81] has a dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by
law; and we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons in
the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry an excuse
for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to be called upon, in other
cases, to admire a systemless architecture, because it may happen to
have sprung from an irrational religion.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and
value of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of
the single or double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested
by the writer of the Essay on the Aesthetics of Gothic Architecture
in the British Quarterly for August, 1849:--"The Attic base
_recedes_ at the point where, if it suffered from superincumbent
weight, it would bulge out."

[79] I have put in Appendix 24, "Renaissance Bases," my memorandum
written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had
better delay referring to it, until we have completed our
examination of ornaments in shafts and capitals.

[80] Appendix 25, "Romanist Decoration of Bases."

[81] In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in
Appendix 8), this command of the will over its action is as distinct
as it is stern. The fancy is, in the early work of the nation,
visibly diseased; but never the will, nor the reason.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT.

Sec. I. No subject has been more open ground of dispute among architects
than the decoration of the wall veil, because no decoration appeared
naturally to grow out of its construction; nor could any curvatures be
given to its surface large enough to produce much impression on the eye.
It has become, therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of
various effects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned to
the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may pe