ltogether
unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations afford
means of expressing, either symbolically or literally, all that need be
known of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed,
be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much,
even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of
fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national
bearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere
surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which
the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in important
features--capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of
course in all confessed has-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells
a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There
should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without
some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in
modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast;
that of unmanageable costume: nevertheless, by a sufficiently bold
imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may
be vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture
in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become
a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for
example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice.
History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior,
but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning. The large
one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to
the symbolization of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the
Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its
treatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had
been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted the
line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and therefore
in the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed
actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises
the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the
shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the
whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of
Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle "che die legge,"
and one or two other su