Perplexed by his own rules, he will sometimes break loose from the entanglement in some such strange manner as this:--"I believe the right question to ask, with respect to all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment--_was the carver happy while he was about it_?" Happy art! where the workman is sure to give happiness if he is but happy at his work. Would that the same could be said of literature! How far _colour_ should be introduced into architecture is a question with men of taste, and a question which of late has been more than usually discussed. Mr Ruskin leans to the introduction of colour. His taste may be correct; but the fanciful reasoning which he brings to bear upon the subject will assist no one else in forming his own taste. Because there is no connection "between the spots of an animal's skin and its anatomical system," he lays it down as the first great principle which is to guide us in the use of colour in architecture-- "That it be _visibly independent of form_. Never paint a column with vertical lines, but always cross it. Never give separate mouldings separate colours," &c. "In certain places," he continues, "you may run your two systems closer, and here and there let them be parallel for a note or two, but see that the colours and the forms coincide only as two orders of mouldings do; the same for an instant, but each holding its own course. So single members may sometimes have single colours; _as a bird's head is sometimes of one colour, and its shoulders another, you may make your capital one colour, and your shaft another_; but, in general, the best place for colour is on broad surfaces, not on the points of interest in form. _An animal is mottled on its breast and back, and rarely on its paws and about its eyes_; so put your variegation boldly on the flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it on the capital and moulding."--(_Lamps of Architecture_, p. 127.) We do not quite see what we have to do at all with the "anatomical system" of the animal, which is kept out of sight; but, in general, we apprehend there is, both in the animal and vegetable kingdom, considerable harmony betwixt colour and external form. Such fantastic reasoning as this, it is evident, will do little towards establishing that one standard of taste, or that "one school of architecture," which Mr Ruskin so strenuously insists upon. All architects are to resign their individual tastes and predilections, and enrol themselves in one school, which shall adopt one style. We need not say that the very first question--what that style should be, Greek or Gothic--would never be decided. Mr Ruskin decides it in favour of the "earliest English decorated Gothic;" but seems, in this case, to suspect that his decision will not carry us far towards unanimity. The scheme is utterly impossible; but he does his duty, he tells us, by proposing the impossibility.