, it is made a grave
charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament
interchangeably. I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one day,
will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to head his pages
thus:--"Beauty not dependent on ornament, _or superfluous_ features."
What right has he to assume that ornament, rightly so called, ever was,
or can be, superfluous? I have said before, and repeatedly in other
places, that the most beautiful things are the most useless; I never
said superfluous. I said useless in the well-understood and usual sense,
as meaning, inapplicable to the service of the body. Thus I called
peacocks and lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome
(taking Juvenal's word for it), and that dried lilies made bad hay: but
I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the world could get
on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer, I suppose the peacock's
blue eyes to be very useless to him; not dangerous indeed, as to their
first master, but of small service, yet I do not think there is a
superfluous eye in all his tail; and for lilies, though the great King
of Israel was not "arrayed" like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us
which are their superfluous leaves? Is there no Diogenes among lilies?
none to be found content to drink dew, but out of silver? The fact is, I
never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament meant a
thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off, at
architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little more
than many women do of the other kind of ornament--the only true
kind,--St. Peter's kind,--"Not that outward adorning, but the inner--of
the heart." I do not mean that architects cannot conceive this better
ornament, but they do not understand that it is the _only_ ornament;
that _all_ architectural ornament is this, and nothing but this; that a
noble building never has any extraneous or superfluous ornament; that
all its parts are necessary to its loveliness, and that no single atom
of them could be removed without harm to its life. You do not build a
temple and then dress it.[101] You create it in its loveliness, and
leave it, as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well
adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words ornament and
beauty interchangeably, in order that architects may understand this: I
assume that their building is to be a perfect creature capable of
nothing