The artist who forms a symmetrical design, is entirely ignorant of the effect till it is completed—and if the design is to be embodied in coloured materials, or in stone, or any other solid substance, he has no means of predicting the final effect which it is to produce. Every result, in short, is a matter of uncertainty: and when the work is completed, it must remain as it is. The art of forming designs, therefore, is in a state of extreme imperfection; and a more striking proof of this could not be obtained than from the servility with which we copy, at the present moment, the mouldings and ornaments of Greek and Gothic architecture, and the decorations which embellish the furniture, the dresses, and the utensils of the Romans. If the Kaleidoscope had been an instrument which merely enabled us to project upon a plane surface a variety of designs of the same character as those which the artist forms with his pencil, it would still have been an instrument of great utility. But it does much more than this. When properly constructed, and rightly applied, it exhibits the _final_ effect of the design, when executed in the best manner; and it does this, not only by embodying the very materials out of which the reality is to be produced; but by exhibiting, instead of lights and shades, the very eminences and depressions which necessarily exist in every design the parts of which lie in various planes. In proceeding to point out the practical methods of obtaining these effects from the Kaleidoscope, we take it for granted that the artist has one or other of the correct instruments described in the preceding chapters, and that they are mounted upon a stand, and furnished with Dr. Wollaston’s Camera Lucida, for enabling him to copy the designs which he wishes to perpetuate. 1. _Architectural Ornaments._