e law, out of
itself, but having reference to itself only (not to any upper order):
some law which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain.

In the tenth chapter of the second volume of "Modern Painters," the
reader will find that I traced one part of the beauty of God's creation
to the expression of a _self_-restrained liberty: that is to say, the
image of that perfection of _divine_ action, which, though free to work
in arbitrary methods, works always in consistent methods, called by us
Laws.

Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural objects are to
become subjects of the art of man, their perfect treatment is an image
of the perfection of _human_ action: a voluntary submission to divine
law.

It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose originality of
thought I have before expressed my obligations, Mr. Newton, that the
Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures, represented to the Greek
mind the law of Fate, confining human action within limits not to be
overpassed. I do not believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this;
but the instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in
some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessities of
good ornament.[72] And this expression is heightened, rather than
diminished, when some portion of the design slightly breaks the law to
which the rest is subjected; it is like expressing the use of miracles
in the divine government; or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing
of a law, generally imperative, in compliance with some more imperative
need--the hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringement of a
general law was sometimes sought by the mediaeval workmen, I shall be
frequently able to point out to the reader; but I remember just now a
most curious instance, in an archivolt of a house in the Corte del Remer
close to the Rialto at Venice. It is composed of a wreath of
flower-work--a constant Byzantine design--with an animal in each coil;
the whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or eating,
scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within its coil, and
between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not the tip of a tail,
overpasses this appointed line, through a series of some five-and-twenty
or thirty animals; until, on a sudden, and by mutual consent, two little
beasts (not looking, for the rest, more rampant than the others), one on
each side, lay their small paws a