ice with the submission and prostration of
those proper to the foundation.

Sec. XVII. This, then, is the first point needing general notice in the
designs in Plate XVI. The second is the difference between the freedom
of the Northern and the sophistication of the classical cornices, in
connection with what has been advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, _a_,
_d_, and _b_, are of the same date, but they show a singular difference
in the workman's temper: that at _b_ is a single copy of a classical
mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it, which are,
in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman egg and arrow
mouldings. But the cornices _a_ and _d_ are copies of nothing of the
kind: the idea of them has indeed been taken from the Greek honeysuckle
ornament, but the chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or
Byzantine, in temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists: this work is
as energetic as its original; energetic, not in the quantity of work,
but in the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil, may cover
large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or accumulate his
dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it is gathered weariness
still. The man who cut those two uppermost cornices had no time to
spare: did as much cornice as he could in half an hour; but would not
endure the slightest trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an
edge. His work is absolutely unreproveable; keen, and true, as Nature's
own; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every line of
it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in him: we shall see
something come of that cornice: The fellow who inlaid the other (_b_),
will stay where he is for ever; and when he has inlaid one leaf up, will
inlay another down,--and so undulate up and down to all eternity: but
the man of _a_ and _d_ will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in
handicrafts, nor stubbornness in stone.

Sec. XVIII. But there is something else noticeable in those two cornices,
besides the energy of them: as opposed either to _b_, or the Greek
honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are _natural_ designs. The Greek egg
and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in its lines, but
utterly absurd in meaning. Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at
least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows,
nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are
all conventiona