Accidental Beauty--Composition: Formal and
Informal--Power of Linear Expression--Relation of Masses and
Lines--Principles of Harmonious Composition.

We may take it, then, from the principles and examples I have
endeavoured to put before you in the previous chapters, that there are
three fundamental elements or essentials of Design--Line, Form, Space.

[Fundamental Essentials of Design]

Line we need, not only for our ground-plan and framework, but also to
define or express our forms. Form we need to give substance and mass,
interest and variety; and it is obvious that Space is required to
contain all these elements, while Space asserts its influence, as we
have seen, upon both Line and Form in combination upon it, whether
object or surface, by the shape of its boundary, the extension of its
plane, and the angle and position of its plane in regard to the eye, as
well as from the point of view of material and use.

Questions of the character of line and form, and their combination and
disposition in or over spaces, are questions of composition. They demand
the most careful solution, whatever our subject and purpose may be,
from the simplest linear border up to the most elaborate figure design.
But although the three essentials to composition must be always present,
it is always possible to rely more upon the qualities of one of them for
our main motive and interest, keeping the other two subsidiary. We might
centralize the chief interest of our composition upon _Line_, for
instance, and make harmonious relation or combination of lines our
principal object (as in line-design and ornament), or we might rather
dwell upon the contours, masses, and contrasts and relationships of
_Form_: as in pictorial design, figure compositions of all kinds, and
modelling and sculpture: or, again, we might choose that the peculiar
character given by the control of certain inclosing spaces should
determine the interest of our design, as the due filling of particular
panels and geometric shapes; or seek the interest of aerial perspective
in the pictorial and atmospheric expression of space.

Taking combinations of Line first, and bearing in mind what has been
said regarding its capacities for expression, whether of emotion,
direction of force, movement, rest, as well as of facts of structure and
surface, let us see if we can trace the principle of harmonious
composition, of which these thi