216 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Part II. 



objection applies to imitations of architecture, or any other 

 real object on a carpet; and the nearer the resemblance, the 

 more glaring the inconsistency of making you appear to crush 

 roses, or trip over the tracery of a Grothic window. 



Not so with patterns, which are what they pretend to be, 

 which aim at proper effect in form and colour, and which 

 answer their real purpose — ornament — without disturbing the 

 imagination, or proclaiming their own incompatibility. They 

 decorate instead of affecting to represent; and thus it is that the 

 graceful combinations in Saracenic and other patterns delight 

 the eye, while they perform most completely the object they 

 have in view. Nor are they limited in their colour, as when 

 nature is copied ; and they assume whatever hue may suit the 

 general harmony of the whole design without violence to 

 truth.] The endless variety in the patterns of the Arabs 

 shows an extraordinary talent for combination of forms, much 

 more varied than those of the Greeks ; and the prohibition 

 against imitating the human figure, or natural objects, was com- 

 pensated for by the stimulus given to the inventive talent. 



To obtain ideas for ornamental art, nature should be care- 

 fully studied, and the beauties she presents should be fully 

 understood; but she should not be directly copied in an 

 unsuitable material. It is the beauty of effect and the senti- 

 ment of natural objects that are to be there represented, 

 not the actual resemblance ; and though many extol the imi- 

 tation of real flowers and foliage in the mouldings of some 

 English and French cathedrals, it is rather the skill shown in 

 the resemblance, than the effect, which they really admire. 

 However good the copy, it has the fault already objected to, 

 of being an imperfect representation of what it vainly attempts 

 to imitate ; while it should have been satisfied with its proper 

 and humbler office of merely ornamenting. 



28. [The Greeks were fully alive to this. Their mouldings 

 were not servile copies of flowers or other natural objects: 



