e cabbage-leaves
in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end.
Now I don't know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a
classical character;--it is eminently characteristic of Southern work;
and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would
have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in
one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or
bad element, I am not sure;--whether it is the last trace of Centaurism
and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative
purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has
been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working
of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law
in its members warring against the law of its mind.

Sec. XXV. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both
of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question
proposed in Sec. XIII., and observe the modifications of form of profile
which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to Sec.
XIII., we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in
the abstract;--the modes in which they have been derived from each other
in actual practice require to be followed in their turn. How the Greek
Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine,
and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediaeval
ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the
first type of the concave cornice _a_ in Plate XV.

[Illustration: Fig. LXIII.]

Sec. XXVI. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly pure, but
in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a meagreness in its
junction with the wall beneath it, where it was set as here at _a_, Fig.
LXIII., which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a
bar of shadow. There were two ways of getting this bar: one by a
projecting roll at the foot of the cornice (_b_, Fig. LXIII.), the other
by slipping the whole cornice a little forward (_c_. Fig. LXIII.). From
these two methods arise two groups of cornices and capitals, which we
shall pursue in succession.

Sec. XXVII. First group. With the roll at the base (_b_, Fig. LXIII.). The
chain of its succession is represented from 1 to 6, in Plate XV.: 1 and
2 are the steps already gained, as in Fig. LXIII.; and in them the
profi