pale yellow to purple, passing through orange, red, and brown, is
entirely at our command; nearly every kind of green and gray is also
attainable: and with these, and pure white, what harmonies might we not
achieve? Of stained and variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the
kinds innumerable; where brighter colors are required, let glass, and
gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic--a kind of work as durable as
the solid stone, and incapable of losing its lustre by time--and let the
painter's work be reserved for the shadowed _loggia_ and inner chamber.
This is the true and faithful way of building; where this cannot be, the
device of external coloring may, indeed, be employed without dishonor;
but it must be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when
such aids must pass away, and when the building will be judged in its
lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright,
more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato, and the
mosaics of St. Mark's, are more warmly filled, and more brightly
touched, by every return of morning and evening rays; while the hues of
our cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud; and the temples
whose azure and purple once flamed above the Grecian promontories, stand
in their faded whiteness, like snows which the sunset has left cold.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--(Page 55--Vol. V.)
PART OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LO, NORMANDY.]
XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be remembered we had to
deprecate, was the substitution of cast or machine work for that of the
hand, generally expressible as Operative Deceit.
There are two reasons, both weighty, against this practice; one, that
all cast and machine work is bad, as work; the other, that it is
dishonest. Of its badness, I shall speak in another place, that being
evidently no efficient reason against its use when other cannot be had.
Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is of the grossest kind, is,
I think, a sufficient reason to determine absolute and unconditional
rejection of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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