the
Bank. The lines on the Bank may, perhaps, be considered typical of
accounts; but in general the walls, if left destitute of them, would
have been as much fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of
white paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may have
free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two examples of the old
and the Renaissance ornament side by side on the opposite page. That on
the right is Romanesque, from St. Pietro of Pistoja; that on the left,
modern English, from the Arthur Club-house, St. James's Street.

Sec. III. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark the
division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled, and right when
they are marked by color? First, because the color separation is a
natural one. You build with different kinds of stone, of which,
probably, one is more costly than another; which latter, as you cannot
construct your building of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars.
But the chiselling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and
labor in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those
monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building is
_weaker_ than it was before, by just as much stone as has been cut away
from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I have repeatedly urged,
straight lines are ugly things as _lines_, but admirable as limits of
colored spaces; and the joints of the stones, which are painful in
proportion to their regularity, if drawn as lines, are perfectly
agreeable when marked by variations of hue.

Sec. IV. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling, is equally
true of divisions of bricks by pointing. Nor, of course, is the mere
horizontal bar the only arrangement in which the colors of brickwork or
masonry can be gracefully disposed. It is rather one which can only be
employed with advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold.
When the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into
chequered patterns. We shall have several interesting examples to study
in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal Palace. The town of
Moulins, in France, is one of the most remarkable on this side the Alps
for its chequered patterns in bricks. The church of Christchurch,
Streatham, lately built, though spoiled by many grievous errors (the
iron work in the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the
inhabitants of the district a means of obtaining some i