And then we have helmets and lances, banners and swords,
sometimes with men to hold them, sometimes without; but always chiselled
with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery,--show helmets
of the stage, no Vulcan work on them, no heavy hammer strokes, no Etna
fire in the metal of them, nothing but pasteboard crests and high
feathers. And these, cast together in disorderly heaps, or grinning
vacantly over keystones, form one of the leading decorations of
Renaissance architecture, and that one of the best; for helmets and
lances, however loosely laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and
books of music, which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian
sources of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon
became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap of cast
clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of human figures,
the indolence of architects came to the aid of their affectation, until
by the moderns we find the practice carried out to its most interesting
results, and, as above noted, a large pair of boots occupying the
principal place in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Colonne Vendome.

Sec. VI. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example of the
abuse at its height, occurs in the Hotel des Invalides, where the dormer
windows are suits of armor down to the bottom of the corselet, crowned
by the helmet, and with the window in the middle of the breast.

Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent occurrence,
except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where they are not employed as
ornaments, but represented for the sake of accurate knowledge, or as
symbols. Wherever they have purpose of this kind, they are of course
perfectly right; but they are then part of the building's conversation,
not conducive to its beauty. The French have managed, with great
dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation of
their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base.

Sec. VII. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of introducing
drapery, as such, for ornament, in the "Seven Lamps." I may here note a
curious instance of the abuse in the church of the Jesuiti at Venice
(Renaissance). On first entering you suppose that the church, being in a
poor quarter of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy
green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer's pattern: on
looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble,