bordinate.

Sec. II. Now, so long as we were concerned principally with the outside of
buildings, we might with safety leave expressional character out of the
question for the time, because it is not to be expected that all persons
who pass the building, or see it from a distance, shall be in the temper
which the building is properly intended to induce; so that ornaments
somewhat at variance with this temper may often be employed externally
without painful effect. But these ornaments would be inadmissible in the
interior, for those who enter will for the most part either be in the
proper temper which the building requires, or desirous of acquiring it.
(The distinction is not rigidly observed by the mediaeval builders, and
grotesques, or profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in
bosses, crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor
ornament: but we do not find the interior wall covered with hunting and
battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.) And thus the interior
expression of the roof or ceiling becomes necessarily so various, and
the kind and degree of fitting decoration so dependent upon particular
circumstances, that it is nearly impossible to classify its methods, or
limit its application.

Sec. III. I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching rather
the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as regards
interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs are necessarily
divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams;--surfaces, flat or carved;
ribs, traversing these in the directions where main strength is
required; or beams, filling the hollow of the dark gable with the
intricate roof-tree, or supporting the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs
and beams are simply and unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty
about decoration; the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye
is satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in plain
waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when the ceiling is
flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their services may receive
ornamentation independent of their structure. I have never myself seen a
flat ceiling satisfactorily decorated, except by painting: there is much
good and fanciful panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it
always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceilings of
Venice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal Palace, have in their
vast panellings s