he accepted style. We
must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in
their authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are
to be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different forms
and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a
German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this
absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting
not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto,[171] or the
breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the
grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the
expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally,
and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to
every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license
might be permitted, and individual authority allowed to change or to
add to the received forms, always within certain limits; the
decorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and
enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. And
thus, in process of time and by a great national movement, it might
come to pass that a new style should arise, as language itself changes;
we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak
modern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entire
indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desire
could either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to
obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of
some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us
to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several
building, large or small, domestic, civil or ecclesiastical.

[169] Coleridge's _Ode to France_.

[170] Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440]. The great Flemish master.

[171] A hollowed moulding. [New Eng. Dict.]

SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART

Ruskin was first elected to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art in
Oxford in 1869, and held the chair continuously until 1878, when
he resigned because of ill-health, and again from 1883 to 1885.
The _Lectures on Art_ were announced in the _Oxford University
Gazette_ of January 28, 1870, the general subject of the course
being "The Limits and Elementary Practice of Art," with Leonardo's
_Trattato della Pittura_ as the tex