Ornament should be wrought with more regard than is generally 

 shewn to the fact, that it is to harmonize with, while it softens, the severe 

 lines of architectural features. The Oreeks knew this, and therefore 

 they generalized their forms from natural types ; and I was lately much 

 struck, amid the overflowings of retiaissatice ornament in the French, 

 and of Elizabethan in the English department of the Exhibition in 

 Hyde Park, by the rest and refreshment to the eye afforded by the 

 exquisitely designed decorations of an ebony table by Hancock, which, 

 inlaid in silver with an ornament of chaste Etruscan character, formed 

 one of the gems of that wonderful assemblage, and to my mind the best 

 example and lesson on ornamentation any where to be found there. 



The gothic architects felt this necessity of generalizing ornament in 

 their best days, and exquisitely life-like as is much of their foliage enrich- 

 ment, there never appears to have been a point in which the character 

 to be preserved was forgotten, but a crisp conventional contoiu: was 

 ever preserved, which adapted it to its office, and kept it to its work. 



Lastly, with respect to ornament, I would observe, that in whatever 

 style, it should be derived in all its leading characters from nature, and, 

 however ingeniously adapted to the necessities of its position and asso- 

 ciations, its natural origin should still appear; while, as professedly 

 ornament, it should never aspire to the character which belongs to 

 sculpture and painting as fine arts ; and for this reason, that these being 

 kindred arts with architecture, and their place ever most appropriate 

 when associated with her, an injurious and false effect would certainly 

 arise by a competition in value between their productions and the mere 

 accessories of their architectural accompaniments. 



It is remarkable, that among the numerous and elaborate works on 

 fine art criticism which have in late years been produced, none has 

 been so just in treating on its higher principles as the concise but 

 profound treatise of Burke ; and I never take up that book without 

 feeling how much more of truth there is in his direct appeals to human 

 emotions, and the manner in which art affects them, than in the fine- 

 spun though ingenious speculations of later writers ; and I confess that 

 even Allison, with all his refinement and acuteness, has never enlisted 

 my sympathies in his views of the metaphysics of art, in the manner in 

 which I find them engrossed by Burke. One reason of this, I think, 

 is, that Burke s knowledge of human nature, and great power of reason- 

 ing on its tendencies, prevented his enlarging upon those minor details of 

 feeling into which men generally never enquire, and into which, if they 

 make research, they find themselves, I believe, little the wiser ; and I 

 believe that more will be done by inculcating broad principles, generally 

 applicable to the arts, than by any attempt to lay down dogmatically a 

 code of laws, I should rather say rules, for the practice of any one. 



