TREES IN ARCHITECTURE 187 



the canopy of the tomb ". We have no quarrel, 

 that is to say, with the statement that sweet 

 monumental statues were set in the churches ; 

 only they were monuments not of dead flowers 

 trodden down in the battle-field, but of living 

 flowers. One ought not perhaps to find fault 

 with so pretty and pathetic a fancy as this ; yet 

 it is mere fancy ; and for the sake of it Ruskin 

 momentarily forgets that leaves are much more 

 freely used than flowers in Gothic ornament. 

 But here is a passage, valuable to us in more 

 ways than one, in which, undisturbed by fancy, 

 he literally yet beautifully describes the fact. 

 ** In rendering the various circumstances of 

 daily life, Egyptian and Ninevite sculpture is 

 as frank and as diffuse as the Gothic. From 

 the highest pomps of state or triumphs of battle, 

 to the most trivial domestic arts and amuse- 

 ments, all is taken advantage of to fill the field 

 of granite with the perpetual interest of a 

 crowded drama ; and the early Lombardic and 

 Romanesque sculpture is equally copious in its 

 description of the familiar circumstances of 

 war and the chase. But in all the scenes por- 

 trayed by the workmen of these nations, vegeta- 

 tion occurs only as an explanatory accessory ; 



