Page:Ruskin - The Seven Lamps of Architecture.djvu/49

Rh roofs with wretched, half-worked, blunt-edged rosettes; do not let us flank our gates with rigid imitations of mediæval statuary. Such things are mere insults to common sense, and only unfit us for feeling the nobility of their prototypes. We have so much, suppose, to be spent in decoration; let us go to the Flaxman of his time, whoever he may be; and bid him carve for us a single statue, frieze, or capital, or as many as we can afford, compelling upon him the one condition, that they shall be the best he can do; place them where they will be of most value, and be content. Our other capitals may be mere blocks, and our other niches empty. No matter: better our work unfinished than all bad. It may be that we do not desire ornament of so high an order: choose, then, a less developed style, as also, if you will, rougher material; the law which we are enforcing requires only that what we pretend to do and to give, shall both be the best of their kind, choose, therefore, the Norman hatchet work instead of the Flaxman frieze and statue, but let it be the best hatchet work; and if you cannot afford marble, use Caen stone, but from the best bed; and if not stone, brick, but the best brick; preferring always what is good of a lower order of work or material, to what is bad of a higher; for this is not only the way to improve every kind of work, and to put every kind of material to better use; but it is more honest and unpretending, and is in harmony with other just, up-right, and manly principles, whose range we shall have presently to take into consideration.

XI. The other condition which we had to notice, was the value of the appearance of labour upon architecture. I have spoken of this before ; and it is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of pleasure which belong to the art, always, however, within certain somewhat remarkable limits. For it does not