ts full exercise to the imagination:
the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the niceties of chiselling,
wanders over its orbed field in endless fantasy; and, when generous as
well as powerful, repays the liberty which has been granted to it with
interest, by developing through the utmost wildness and fulness of its
thoughts, an order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of
the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is vaster.

[Illustration: Plate XVIII.
CAPITALS CONVEX GROUP.]

Sec. XL. And now the reader shall judge whether I had not reason to cast
aside the so-called Five orders of the Renaissance architects, with
their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that there were only two real
orders, and that there could never be more.[90] For we now find that
these two great and real orders are representative of the two great
influences which must for ever divide the heart of man: the one of
Lawful Discipline, with its perfection and order, but its danger of
degeneracy into Formalism; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor
and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness.

Sec. XLI. I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of the most
elaborate developments of either order; they will be better given on a
larger scale: but the examples in Plate XVII. and XVIII. represent the
two methods of ornament in their earliest appliance. The two lower
capitals in Plate XVII. are a pure type of the concave school; the two
in the centre of Plate XVIII., of the convex. At the top of Plate XVIII.
are two Lombardic capitals; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua,
that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan. They both
have the concave angle truncation; but being of date prior to the time
when the idea of the concave bell was developed, they are otherwise left
square, and decorated with the surface ornament characteristic of the
convex school. The relation of the designs to each other is interesting;
the cross being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly
relieved in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the
southern portico of St. Mark's; the shafts having been of different
lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally intended for their
present place, they have double abaci, of which the uppermost is the
cornice running round the whole facade. The zigzagged capital is highly
curious, and in its place very effective and beautif