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ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. 



Pakt II. 



to pictures ; and the same applies to wood and other materials, 

 where objects are carved upon them; nor should a landscape 

 be tolerated on a fictile vase, nor even as a coloured painting 

 on a porcelain cup. This is one of several faults in the sump- 

 tuous vases of Sevres manufacture ; which also not 

 uncommonly offend in proportion, and, in an extra- 

 vagant richness of decoration. There too we often 

 find a landscape, or a building ; and this is not 

 only disagreeably contrasted with the tawdry gilding, 

 or the heavy colour, of the surrounding groundwork, 

 but being placed in a square compartment, at the 

 front (or back), appears to be cut in half as you walk to 

 the side, and ceases then to form part of the orna- 

 mentation or general effect. A subject to decorate a vase 

 should be so placed that some equally interesting portion 

 of it should always be before the eye, like 

 those bas-reliefs so admirably introduced on the 

 best Greek vases. And when, which is some- 

 times the case, the Greeks placed figures as a cen- 

 tral picture, this may either find an excuse from 

 the vase having been intended to stand where it 

 could only have been seen in front, or may be 

 used as one of many arguments to show that 

 even they were not always right, and must not be blindly 

 imitated for their name alone. The same inadaptability of 

 material applies to the representations of pictures on tapestry, 

 worsted-work, and the like; which, after all, are only imper- 

 fect copies of copies ; and however well they may be executed, 

 they only excite our admiration in proportion to the difficulty 

 or the improbability of success on such unsuitable substances. 

 They aspire to what is out of their sphere, and they fail to 

 succeed in what they profess ; for, after all, the picture, be it 

 ever so good, is always inferior as a picture, and all the labour 

 has been spent to produce what is imperfect. To attempt 



