o with
modesty and _Equ_animity. Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or
singular, can be structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious of
the skies; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth; no
streets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that make pigmies
of the worshippers.

It is one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work that it was,
on the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly within reach of
sight, to its finest details. And, indeed, the best buildings that I
know are thus modest; and some of the best are minute jewel cases for
sweet sculpture. The Parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it were
set by the Charing Cross Railway Station: the Church of the Miracoli, at
Venice, the Chapel of the Rose, at Lucca, and the Chapel of the Thorn,
at Pisa, would not, I suppose, all three together, fill the tenth part,
cube, of a transept of the Crystal Palace. And they are better so.

146. In the chapter on Power in the "Seven Lamps of Architecture," I
have stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what I am saying now;
namely, that it is better to have one grand building than any number of
mean ones. And that is true, but you cannot command grandeur by size
till you can command grace in minuteness; and least of all, remember,
will you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the chief
exponent of folly and misery, co-ordinate in the fraternal enormities of
the Factory and Poorhouse,--the Barracks and Hospital. And the final law
in this matter is, that if you require edifices only for the grace and
health of mankind, and build them without pretence and without
chicanery, they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely with
little decoration.

147. From these principles of simplicity and temperance, two very
severely fixed laws of construction follow; namely, first, that our
structure, to be beautiful, must be produced with tools of men; and
secondly, that it must be composed of natural substances. First, I say,
produced with tools of men. All fine art requires the application of the
whole strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not
possible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of a
strong man's arm from the shoulder, as well as the delicatest touch of
his finger: and it is the evidence that this full and fine strength has
been spent on it which makes the art executively noble; so that no
instrument must be used, habitually, wh