essary to the dignity of every form, and
that by the removal of it we shall render the other elements of beauty
comparatively ineffectual: though, on the other hand, it is to be
observed that it is rather a mode of arrangement of qualities than a
quality itself; and hence symmetry has little power over the mind,
unless all the other constituents of beauty be found together with it. A
form may be symmetrical and ugly, as many Elizabethan ornaments, and yet
not so ugly as it had been if unsymmetrical, but bettered always by
increasing degrees of symmetry; as in star figures, wherein there is a
circular symmetry of many like members, whence their frequent use for
the plan and ground of ornamental designs; so also it is observable that
foliage in which the leaves are concentrically grouped, as in the
chestnuts, and many shrubs--rhododendrons for instance--(whence the
perfect beauty of the Alpine rose)--is far nobler in its effect than any
other, so that the sweet chestnut of all trees most fondly and
frequently occurs in the landscape of Tintoret and Titian, beside which
all other landscape grandeur vanishes: and even in the meanest things
the rule holds, as in the kaleidoscope, wherein agreeableness is given
to forms altogether accidental merely by their repetition and reciprocal
opposition; which orderly balance and arrangement are essential to the
perfect operation of the more earnest and solemn qualities of the
beautiful, as being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the
violence and disorganization of sin, so that the seeking of them and
submission to them is always marked in minds that have been subjected to
high moral discipline, constant in all the great religious painters, to
the degree of being an offence and a scorn to men of less tuned and
tranquil feeling. Equal ranks of saints are placed on each side of the
picture, if there be a kneeling figure on one side, there is a
corresponding one on the other, the attendant angels beneath and above
are arranged in like order. The Raffaelle at Blenheim, the Madonna di
St. Sisto, the St. Cicilia, and all the works of Perugino, Francia, and
John Bellini present some such form, and the balance at least is
preserved even in pictures of action necessitating variety of grouping,
as always by Giotto; and by Ghirlandajo in the introduction of his
chorus-like side figures, and by Tintoret most eminently in his noblest
work, the Crucifixion, where not only the grouping but the