t _studiously_ to conceal it is the error of vulgar painters,
who are afraid to show that their figures have bones; and studiously to
display it is the error of the base pupils of Michael Angelo, who turned
heroes' limbs into surgeons' diagrams,--but with less excuse than
theirs, for there is less interest in the anatomy displayed. Exhibited
masonry is in most cases the expedient of architects who do not know how
to fill up blank spaces, and many a building, which would have been
decent enough if let alone, has been scrawled over with straight lines,
as in Fig. III., on exactly the same principles, and with just the same
amount of intelligence as a boy's in scrawling his copy-book when he
cannot write. The device was thought ingenious at one period of
architectural history; St. Paul's and Whitehall are covered with it, and
it is in this I imagine that some of our modern architects suppose the
great merit of those buildings to consist. There is, however, no excuse
for errors in disposition of masonry, for there is but one law upon the
subject, and that easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and
all unnecessary expense, either in showing or concealing. Every one
knows a building is built of separate stones; nobody will ever object to
seeing that it is so, but nobody wants to count them. The divisions of a
church are much like the divisions of a sermon; they are always right so
long as they are necessary to edification, and always wrong when they
are thrust upon the attention as divisions only. There may be neatness
in carving when there is richness in feasting; but I have heard many a
discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all carving and
no meat.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] On the eastern side: violently contorted on the northern and
western.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WALL CORNICE.

Sec. I. We have lastly to consider the close of the wall's existence, or
its cornice. It was above stated, that a cornice has one of two offices:
if the wall have nothing to carry, the cornice is its roof, and defends
it from the weather; if there is weight to be carried above the wall,
the cornice is its hand, and is expanded to carry the said weight.

There are several ways of roofing or protecting independent walls,
according to the means nearest at hand: sometimes the wall has a true
roof all to itself; sometimes it terminates in a small gabled ridge,
made of bricks set slanting, as constantly in the suburb