Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/146

122 followed by a smaller shaft and arch, in which he reverses his treatment of the outer order by cutting the shaft delicately and the arch deeply. Again, whereas in what is called the decorated construction of English Gothic, the pillars would have been left plain and the spandrels deep cut,—here, are we to call it decoration of the construction, when the pillars are carved and the spandrels left plain? Or when, finally, either these spandrel spaces on each side of the arch, or the corresponding slopes of the gable, are loaded with recumbent figures by the sculptors of the renaissance, are we to call, for instance, Michael Angelo's Dawn and Twilight, only the decorations of the sloping plinths of a tomb, or trace to a geometrical propriety the subsequent rule in Italy that no window could be properly complete for living people to look out of, without having two stone people sitting on the corners of it above? I have heard of charming young ladies occasionally, at very crowded balls, sitting on the stairs,—would you call them, in that case, only decorations of the construction of the staircase?

146. You will find, on consideration, the ultimate fact to be that to which I have just