of any useful purpose, why do we not fill our cathedrals and churches with stands or vases solely for the purpose of sustaining beauty-of being exquisitely chiselled with tracery and flower-work in all manner of patterns and designs? Would they not enhance the artistic value of the place, and, by being totally unconnected with utility, present us with the purest and most unalloyed kind of beauty? The only answer to such a question, is that apart from utility the most exquisite sculpturing could not elicit our admiration. Even the details must be based on utility; for example:

Windows are useful; mullions and dripstones are well; but dripstones must be over a window, an arch, or a door, or something that seems to require a "hood." Place a hood moulding in the middle of a plain wall, and it will become grotesque. The like with regard to mullions; they must divide the face of a window, mitigate the glare, and support the superstructure, or seem to do so. To do the second they ought to be opaque, and to do the third they ought to be perpendicular. Artistically arranged, they suggest trees, with their branches above opening into “arched walks of twilight groves," and become very beautiful. Crockets, finials, and bosses are also very well, but they too must have their serviceable associations, and confine themselves to such. A boss must seem to tie the ribs of a groined roof, as it were, in a knot; crockets must sprout like buds or fruit on the branch of an arch or the angles of a pinnacle; a finial must grow like a shoot or tuft from the end or apex of some architectural twig or stem which does work—must be a feature of generosity on the "enough and to spare" principle. None of these ornaments can be scattered about a building capriciously or at random, for it is by their position more than by their form that they serve to impress us with a notion of utility. Sculptured capitals, especially Corinthian ones, are much admired, and well they may be; for do they not remind us of trees and forests, with the foliage above us and the

trunks around us-rural paths, shady spots, cool retreats, "places that pale passion loves "—while, with the sun declining and the birds retiring, and "all the air a solemn stillness" holding, we are transferred to times and scenes far off and fresh and lovely-scenes which have furnished poets with music and sentiments since ever they began to sing the great anthem of nature to the race of man? But once sever those ornamental objects from their business, post them up the aisle, and let them stand there supporting nothing, and they would very soon become insufferable. Buttresses are often beautiful features, but they are also useful ones. Take away their utility, place them at random outside a building merely for the sake of ornament, and they will become impertinent and contemptible. To those who never heard of "oblique pressure" or a "lateral thrust" they must indeed appear idle objects in any position, if such persons are capable of reflecting on the matter.

But, again, not only must architectural ornament attach to utility or grow out of something serviceable, as above described, the departmental disposition and order in which decoration is arranged and the amount of the same must obey similar laws of utility. We may cover a building, walls and pillars, without and within, with sculptured flowering, and make the place suggest a perfect bower, with ivy-covered lattice and thickets of woodbine and eglantine, and the effect, as many suburban cottages attest, may be enchanting. But then we must be impartial; we cannot have a wall half sculptured with flowering here and one wholly sculptured there, and a patch beyond, without anything to account for the disparity or explain its meaning, which is its use. Patches would never suggest a bower or a wood; they might suggest shrubs and verdure, but even to do this their disposition must in some respects conform itself to that observed by shrubs and verdure. A chancel or a choir that had one of its sides richly ornamented and the other side plain would

certainly evoke disapprobation; if every second pillar on one side of the nave were beautifully chiselled and every third pillar on the other side, the arrangement would assuredly call forth condemnation; if the pulpit, a couple of columns, or a window were lavishly adorned and the rest of the cathedral left unadorned, emotions of hostility would rise up as before. And wherefore the reason of all this? It is not because uniformity has any advantage over variety as an element of suggestiveness, for an unaccountable diversity may be more welcome than a slavish symmetry. It is because, in such cases as those just specified, one part of the building would suggest a forest or a shrubbery and another part would repudiate the suggestion; because one portion of the structure would make an assertion which the remaining portion contradicted; this feature would make a move which that feature failed to second. Hence we could not have any unanimous associations, whether recognised or latent; our suggestions would all be at variance and at strife; we should not know what to think, consequently we should be perplexed, bewildered, and unhappy; and since admiration depends upon a successful operation of the intellect, it is easy to see how none could be experienced.

Or, again, the floor of a building may be decorated, but if so, the decoration must resemble something level. It must suggest a carpet, or a beach, or a grating, or a lawn, a flower-strewn path, rush-covered ground-in short, something fit to walk upon. Provided this be the case, then the better the imitation the more it will be admired. But let the floor's decoration—the light and dark shading, the figures, or signs-represent steps, or ladders, fissures, mounds, spikes, rough stones, deep recesses, perpendicular projections-anything, in fact, not fit to walk upon, and its beauty is at an end, or is rather non-existent; we despise the whole performance and contemn the folly of the artist. Certain comely jugs are meant, when empty, to stand upside down; a foolish artist, to improve upon

their beauty, makes the handles project above the mouth; they can no longer stand upside down. We denounce the alteration; the utility has been impaired, and the vessels are consequently less comely. Certain farmhouse vessels, which are meant to stand upon the floor, have their handles at the side of a wide mouth; the next generation has these jugs with their handles crossed over the mouth to prevent the domestic animals from thrusting their heads into them. No one objects to the alteration; every one, in fact, approves it; the vessels have been made more comely; the change has removed a positive source of mischief.

Let us now enter an inferior department of beauty. Ornamentation is in many houses carried to the verge of inutility; and whenever it fully reaches this limit, beauty, and with it admiration, disappears. Artificial flowers may be called beautiful or not, according as the spectator is deceived or not-according as he finds his thoughts carried off to the originals, with their colour, perfume, organism, and development, or finds them baulked in their journey and thrown back upon the trap before his eyes. Precisely the same rule obtains in dramatic representations and the emotions they are intended to excite. Some persons can never overlook the unreality of such performances, and they consequently are scarcely affected at all by what they see; others, on the contrary, readily forget themselves, and are by consequence easily and largely worked into various emotions. I said before that the slightest apology for utility will serve to let the ornament pass muster, and it will almost always be found that this apology is present even in the jimcracks of the mantelpiece and the bric-à-bracs of the cabinet. These ornaments may be divided into two classes-(1.) those which are inherently useful, and (2.) those which have a lesson to teach or a moral to point, however trivial or curtailed the import. To the first class belong such things as fans, flower-holders, jardiniers, paper-holders, cardholders, match-holders, photo-stands, watchstands, ink

stands, mugs, bowls, cups, saucers, plates, pipes, caskets, scent-bottles, snuff boxes, &c. These are all intrinsically serviceable, and if not in actual use, they are surplusage utility, and a security for what is in use. To the second class belong miniatures, representations of men, women, children, dogs, deer, goats, birds, and other animals, butterflies, beetles, and other insects, fishes, reptiles, ships, boats, fruit, houses, obelisks, temples, idols, and other models, curious relics, or mementoes, such as pebbles, coins, bits of metal, ore, stone, marble, clay, porcelain, china, wood, and a thousand such commodities. Now, these articles may read a lesson in biology, zoology, geology, mineralogy, sociology, or in some other branch of science or speculation; or, if well executed, they may, like a good picture, tell a story, and indicate, first, design, and, secondly, the power of fulfilling that design. Some of these articles-those, for instance, whose value depends upon the fidelity of their resemblance to something else, and whose workmanship is bad-are devoid of utility and consequently of beauty. A few persons, gifted with a lively fancy but destitute of discrimination, may, no doubt, be decoyed now and again into an emotion of admiration at the suggestion, but to the majority of educated persons such things of inutility are a contempt for ever. There is an erection in London called the "Marble Arch," of which every comer from the country exclaims, "How very beautiful!" to which every dweller in the metropolis replies, "I cannot see it. What use is the building? It stands there for dumb show, serviceable neither as a gate nor as a barrier; it does no work and answers no purpose, unless it be for a landmark to omnibuses. I think it is a very meaningless structure, and I see nothing to admire in it." Make it do some work, however-place it before a palace, make it an entrance to a court or a garden—and it will at once appear in another light, regenerated and redeemed.

Again, if beauty be not confined to utility, why do we