is food, pleasant to his sight, and
suitable for the subjects of his ingenuity;--the stone, metal, and clay
of the earth he walks upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for
all manner of workmanship.

150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire creation is
shown by his making the most of what he can get most easily; and there
is no virtue of art, nor application of common sense, more sacredly
necessary than this respect to the beauty of natural substance, and the
ease of local use; neither are there any other precepts of construction
so vital as these--that you show all the strength of your material,
tempt none of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and
permanently done.

151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, or burnt
clay, but with no artificial compound; all good painting with common
oils and pigments on common canvas, paper, plaster, or wood,--admitting
sometimes, for precious work, precious things, but all applied in a
simple and visible way. The highest imitative art should not, indeed, at
first sight, call attention to the means of it; but even that, at
length, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take
pleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of the
particular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a
substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting, its unctuous
quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass,
its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in
porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one
should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten
together into rugged walls. In a marble country, one should be always
more and more astonished at the exquisite color and structure of
marble; in a slate country, one should feel as if every rock cleft
itself only for the sake of being built with conveniently.

152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials--Clay, and
Stone; for glass is only a clay 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 t