power is, to a certain point, emancipated and independent, having a will of its
own, yet confessing its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;
and (3) Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted
at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat greater
length. Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and
Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek master-workman
was far advanced in knowledge and power above the Assyrian or Egyptian.
Neither he nor those for whom he worked could endure the appearance of
imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what ornament he appointed to be
done by those beneath him was composed of mere geometrical forms?balls,
ridges, and perfectly symmetrical foliage?which could be executed with abso
lute precision by line and rule, and were as perfect in their way, when com
pleted, as his own figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the
contrary, less cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow
their figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the
method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, and
then trained him by discipline so rigid that there was no chance of his falling
beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the lower workman no
subject which he could not perfectly execute. The Assyrian gave him subjects
which he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for his
imperfection. The workman was, in both systems, a slave.
6. Imbued with as an animating force.
.
THE STONES OF VENICE / 1327
But in the medieval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this slavery
is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things
as well as great, the individual value of every soul. But it not only recognizes
its value; it confesses its imperfection, in only bestowing dignity upon the
acknowledgment of unworthiness. That admission of lost power and fallen
nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as
might be, altogether refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly, contem
plating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory.
Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, her
exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are unable to
do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession
silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the principal admirableness of
the Gothic schools of architecture, that they thus receive the results of the
labor of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betray
ing that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness of the lower nature to the imper
fection of the higher; not considering that as, judged by such a rule, all the
brute animals would be preferable to man, because more perfect in their func
tions and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of
man, those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those
which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For the
finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and
it is a law of this universe that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their
best form. The wild grass grows well and strongly, one year with another; but
