that gets clear and brittle as it cools,
and metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. Indeed, the
true use of gold in this world is only as a very pretty and very ductile
clay, which you can spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you
like, and which will neither crack, nor tarnish.

All the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under the word
"Plastic," and all of those in stone, under the word "Glyptic."

153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brick-work,
pottery, and tile-work[128]--a somewhat important branch of human skill.
Next to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass,
enamel, and metal; everything, that is to say, playful and familiar in
design, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or
gold, most precious and permanent.

154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we
accurately use the general term "glyptic" for it, may be thought of
with, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word "engraving."
For, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in the
triglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts
of bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected
with each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the
arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves.

155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I have
enunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embracing the
greatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion; strong to repress
the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, but gentle to approve
the efforts of children, made in accordance with the visible intention
of the Maker of all flesh, and the Giver of all Intelligence. These
laws, therefore, I now repeat, and beg of you to observe them as
irrefragable.

1. That the work is to be with tools of men.

2. That it is to be in natural materials.

3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no
quality inconsistent with them.

4. That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with common
needs, and in consent to common intelligence.

We will now observe the bearing of these laws on the elementary
conditions of the art at present under discussion.

156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts as it dries,
and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no work into it
requiring niceness in dimension, nor any