unison which
regulates the magnolia shoot, in Plate +42+, is formally expressed in
Fig. 97. Every line has its origin in the point p, and the curves
generally diminish in intensity towards the extremities of the leaves,
one or two, however, again increasing their sweep near the points. In
vulgar ornamentation, entirely rigid laws of line are always observed;
and the common Greek honeysuckle and other such formalisms are
attractive to uneducated eyes, owing to their manifest compliance with
the first conditions of unity and symmetry, being to really noble
ornamentation what the sing-song of a bad reader of poetry, laying
regular emphasis on every required syllable of every foot, is to the
varied, irregular, unexpected, inimitable cadence of the voice of a
person of sense and feeling reciting the same lines,--not incognisant of
the rhythm, but delicately bending it to the expression of passion, and
the natural sequence of the thought.

Sec. 19. In mechanically drawn patterns of dress, Alhambra and common
Moorish ornament, Greek mouldings, common flamboyant traceries, common
Corinthian and Ionic capitals, and such other work, lines of this
declared kind (generally to be classed under the head of "doggerel
ornamentation") may be seen in rich profusion; and they are necessarily
the only kind of lines which can be felt or enjoyed by persons who have
been educated without reference to natural forms; their instincts being
blunt, and their eyes actually incapable of perceiving the inflexion of
noble curves. But the moment the perceptions have been refined by
reference to natural form, the eye requires perpetual variation and
transgression of the formal law. Take the simplest possible condition of
thirteenth-century scroll-work, Fig. 98. The law or cadence established
is of a circling tendril, terminating in an ivy-leaf. In vulgar design,
the curves of the circling tendril would have been similar to each
other, and might have been drawn by a machine, or by some mathematical
formula. But in good design all imitation by machinery is impossible. No
curve is like another for an instant; no branch springs at an expected
point. A cadence is observed, as in the returning clauses of a beautiful
air in music; but every clause has its own change, its own surprises.
The enclosing form is here stiff and (nearly) straight-sided, in order
to oppose the circular scroll-work; but on looking close it will be
found that each of its sides is a port