§21. 



IMPORTANCE OF PROPORTION. 203 



perform the office of buttresses to the dome of Santa Maria 

 della Salute, at Venice, but the beautiful proportion of that 

 part of the building itself ? 



It is certainly remarkable (as I have already shown in p. 183), 

 that the modern Italians should be so superior to their Roman 

 predecessors in the perception of true proportion. One of 

 many instances of this may be seen in the figures, and other 

 accessories, crowning the Antonine and Trajan columns, given 

 by Piranesi ; and the beautiful fountains before St. Peter's, at 

 Home, by an injudicious alteration of their proportions, [might 

 easily be made to assume the graceless and unmeaning charac- 

 ter of our dumb-waiters. This too may be observed of foun- 

 tains, that the column of water is almost as much connected 

 with the maintenance of proportion as the basins into which 

 it falls ; and arbitrary or incongruous combinations should be 

 avoided, whatever the character of a fountain may be. Thus 

 an elephant spouting forth water is unnatural and monstrous ; 

 and water running down stairs is objectionable; for though the 

 caprice was adopted by the Arabs and by the Italians, as well as 

 at Pompeii, it is the result of bad taste and poverty of invention. 

 Nor should a fountain obtain any merit for throwing up a 

 column of water to an immense height, beyond that of being 

 the largest of squirts ; and its claims for precedence should 

 be laid among hydraulic machines, instead of works of 

 taste.] 



The importance of proportion was fully appreciated by the 

 ancients, and the first chapter of Vitruvius begins by pointing 

 out how necessary it is " for the existence of symmetry ;" and 

 if the Romans did not really comprehend it to the same ex- 

 tent as the Greeks, or the later Italians, they at least admitted 

 its value. Symmetry, in one sense, may be called the har- 

 mony of proportion ; but there is really a difference between 

 proportion and symmetry, and the latter applies to the con- 

 cord of the different parts with each other as well as with the 



