THE PRINCIPLES OF DECORATION. 395 



us that old Roman walls covered with this material were so hard, 

 so beautiful, and so finely polished, that in his time slabs of it 

 were cut out and used for table-tops. In speaking of plaster, I 

 did not mean compo, either Roman, Portland, or mastic, but that 

 plaster that is made workable for modeling, which the Italians 

 call gesso duro. It was once common in England ; the " Peter 

 Pindar," in Bishopsgate, is an example, or was an example a few 

 years ago, and many admirable specimens still exist in our coun- 

 try towns. Some of the vaulted ceilings of Hadrian's villa, at 

 Tivoli, now open to the air, are still adorned with it, the grace, 

 freedom, and delicacy of whose modeling we still admire, al- 

 though it was done at least seventeen hundred years ago. In few 

 things has England declined more than in plastering, from the 

 prevalence of casting, which allows the employment of the least 

 skilled mechanic. Most of us have seen the magnificent ceilings 

 of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I's time, on whose flowers, 

 fruit, etc., you can even now see the grain of the plasterer's hand, 

 and the holes made by his thumb to get shadow. Even in plas- 

 tered ceilings of Sir W. Chambers's time, who died in 1796, you 

 see beautiful work in high relief of fruit, flowers, and foliage, and 

 I believe the skill did not die out completely till the end of the 

 first quarter of this century. The infinite variety that hand- 

 stamping produces would to refined tastes be worth the expense, 

 for cast work is all alike. 



It is highly benevolent to encourage skilled handwork, for you 

 not only liberate the better sort from that mechanical work which 

 frets and eventually destroys a man by its unvarying and un- 

 thinking monotony, but you encourage higher skill, and you al- 

 low a man to put his soul instead of his fingers into the work. 



Do not suppose I am finding fault with those excellent mate- 

 rials, Roman and Portland cement, or even mastic ; all I mean is 

 that, as yet, we have found no way of using them ornamentally 

 in London, except as imitation of stone and stone carving. If we 

 had a pure atmosphere, the first two would be invaluable for in- 

 laying, but in a very short time stone and inlay are indistinguish- 

 able from the general grime, and that, too, even when the inlay 

 is black mastic. 



In the present day, most of our internal plaster- work of any 

 pretension is done in canvas plaster. A thin coat of fine plaster 

 of Paris is brushed into the mold, very thin open canvas in strips 

 is pressed into this, and brushed over with coarse stuff; the whole 

 is then stiffened with slips of wood, attached to the backing with 

 canvas and plaster ; it is then dried in a hot room, and screwed 

 up in its place, and can be painted on at once ; its greatest merit 

 is its lightness. The defects of canvas plaster are its want of flat- 

 ness in the larger panels and of straightness in the cornices. 



