1 84 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



the column. It is what he suggests, the mim- 

 icry of trees in stone, that would have been 

 ''fragmentary, unmeaning, barbaric, because 

 unnatural ". What is natural is to treat stone 

 according to its nature, which is not that of a 

 living tree; and the forms of vegetable or 

 animal life, if used decoratively in connexion 

 with the structure of a building, must be treated 

 conventionally, not in the way of realistic imita- 

 tion, otherwise the impossible will be attempted 

 and disaster will ensue. 



Ruskin utters a warning against this danger. 

 He says, in the chapter of The Stones of 

 Venice^ already quoted, that designers fall 

 into error ''when the temptation of closely 

 imitating nature leads them to forget their own 

 proper ornamental function, and when they 

 lose the power of composition for the sake of 

 graphic truth ; as, for instance, in the hawthorn 

 moulding so often spoken of round the porch 

 of Bourges Cathedral, which, though very 

 lovely, might perhaps, as we saw above, have 

 been better, if the old builder, in his excessive 

 desire to make it look like hawthorn, had not 

 painted it green". Ruskin himself, we have 

 seen, parts company with this sound doctrine, 



