VIII. THE STEM. I 5 3 



" Now, by this sacred sceptre hear me swear 

 Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear, 

 Which, severed from the trunk, (as I from thee,) 

 On the bare mountains left its parent tree ; 

 This sceptre, formed by tempered steel to prove 

 An ensign of the delegates of Jove, 

 From whom the power of laws and justice springs 

 (Tremendous oath, inviolate to Kings)." 



i 3. The supporting power in the tree itself is, I 

 doubt not, greatly increased by this spiral action ; 

 and the fine instinct of its being so, caused the 

 twisted pillar to be used in the Lombardic Gothic, 

 — at first, merely as a pleasant variety of form, 

 but at last constructively and universally, by Giotto, 

 and all the architects of his school. Not that the 

 spiral form actually adds to the strength of a 

 Lombardic pillar, by imitating contortions of wood, 

 any more than the fluting of a Doric shaft adds 

 to its strength by imitating the canaliculation of 

 a reed ; but the perfect action of the imagination, 

 which had adopted the encircling acanthus for the 

 capital, adopted the twining stemma for the shaft ; 

 the pure delight of the eye being the first condition 

 in either case : and it is inconceivable how much 

 of the pleasure taken both in ornament and in 

 natural form is founded elementarily on groups 



