ority of workmanship, to suppose them posterior to those of the
lower arcade. It was not till I discovered that some of those which I
thought the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I
obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation; a system
which I afterwards found carried out in every building of the great
times which I had opportunity of examining.

Sec. XVI. There are two distinct modes in which this adaptation is
effected. In the first, the same designs which are delicately worked
when near the eye, are rudely cut, and have far fewer details when they
are removed from it. In this method it is not always easy to distinguish
economy from skill, or slovenliness from science. But, in the second
method, a different design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of
simpler lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of
course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of purpose;
but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both kinds when they are
seen close; in the first, a bald execution of a perfect design; the
second, a baldness of design with perfect execution. And in these very
imperfections lies the admirableness of the ornament.

Sec. XVII. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adaptation to the
distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of observance of natural
law. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far
away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture
of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent
rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for
their place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into
vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look
at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light
is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The
child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and
heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is
to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the
depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it
set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and
bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the
far-off sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away
about its foundations, and the tide of human lif