we to call, for instance, Michael Angelo's Dawn and Twilight, only the decorations of the sloping plinths of a tomb, or trace to a geometrical propriety the subsequent rule in Italy that no window could be properly complete for living people to look out of, without having two stone people sitting on the corners of it above? I have heard of charming young ladies occasionally, at very crowded balls, sitting on the stairs,--would you call them, in that case, only decorations of the construction of the staircase? [Footnote 1: Plate 5 is from the photograph itself; the enlarged drawing showed the arrangement of parts more clearly, but necessarily omitted detail which it is better here to retain.] 146. You will find, on consideration, the ultimate fact to be that to which I have just referred you;--my statement in "Aratra," that the idea of a construction originally useful is retained in good architecture, through all the amusement of its ornamentation; as the idea of the proper function of any piece of dress ought to be retained through its changes in form or embroidery. A good spire or porch retains the first idea of a roof usefully covering a space, as a Norman high cap or elongated Quaker's bonnet retains the original idea of a simple covering for the head; and any extravagance of subsequent fancy may be permitted, so long as the notion of use is not altogether lost. A girl begins by wearing a plain round hat to shade her from the sun; she ties it down over her ears on a windy day; presently she decorates the edge of it, so bent, with flowers in front, or the riband that ties it with a bouquet at the side, and it becomes a bonnet. This decorated construction may be discreetly changed, by endless fashion, so long as it does not become a clearly useless riband round the middle of the head, or a clearly useless saucer on the top of it. 147. Again, a Norman peasant may throw up the top of her cap into a peak, or a Bernese one put gauze wings at the side of it, and still be dressed with propriety, so long as her hair is modestly confined, and her ears healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real construction. She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the material becomes too flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the flaunting pendants or ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or ostentation. Similarly, an architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic exaggeration, his original Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his original square roof into Coventry spire; but he must not put within his splendid porch, a little door where two persons cannot together get in, nor cut his spire away into hollow filigree, and mere ornamental perviousness to wind and rain.