; how far
eternally impossible.

There are two means of delight in all productions of art--color and
form.

The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art are those of
works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect. The best and
noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by the touch of the
human hand on an opaque surface, upon which it can command any tint
required, without subjection to alteration by fire or other mechanical
means. No color is so noble as the color of a good painting on canvas or
gesso.

This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most part, in
architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of the natural
colors of stones, which are far nobler than any abstract hues producible
by human art.

The delight which we receive from glass painting is one altogether
inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by over indulgence.
Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise some palaces like
Aladdin's with colored glass for jewels, which shall be new in the annals
of human splendor, and good in their place; but not if they superseded
nobler edifices.

Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent bodies: but
form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque bodies, without
lustre.

This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or refined
form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless matter. You cannot
see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfection, even of a cameo or
bronze. You cannot perfectly see the form of a humming-bird, on account
of its burnishing; but you can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble
work in form can ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous
glass or enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its
form: therefore you can never have any noble architecture in transparent
or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however, opaque; and both it and
opaque enamel may, perhaps, be rendered quite lustreless; and, therefore,
fit to receive noble form.

Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel made fine in
paste or grain, and you may have an architecture as noble as cast or
struck architecture even can be: as noble, therefore, as coins can be, or
common cast bronzes, and such other multiplicable things;[102]--eternally
separated from all good and great things by a gulph which not all the
tubular bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centu