e to its future application.

First: The material must be considered. Heavy and hard materials, such as
wood and stone, will not admit of as delicate curves and lines as textile
fabrics, such as cotton and woolen goods, laces, etc.

Second: The manner in which the article is to be made, whether by weaving,
cutting, carving, casting, etc.

Third: The position the object is to occupy. If elevated or otherwise
remote from the eye, elaborate finish and minute detail are useless.
Ornamental art, from time immemorial, has attained its greatest excellence
and exercised its greatest influence in connection with architecture.

In fact, the study of ornament is inseparable from that of architecture. It
is upon architectural forms that the greatest artists have in all ages
expended their greatest efforts and skill, and in a treatise on historic
ornament they are decidedly the most interesting and important object of
study.

IV. _Material of Ornament._--The two great sources of ornament are geometry
and nature. The latter includes the former; for not only must natural
forms, in order to be available as material for ornament, be first
conventionalized, or reduced to regular, symmetrical, geometric outlines,
but any and all designs, whether the unit of repetition be geometric or
conventional, must be founded upon geometric construction. This refers to
the regularity, repetition, and distribution of parts; so that every good
design, if reduced to its principal lines of construction, would exhibit
but a few geometric lines and inclosing spaces. Many designs are not only
geometric in their basis or plan, but make use of geometric figures as the
units or materials of design. Such designs, however, rank lower than those
in which natural forms conventionalized are taken as the subjects of
repetition; and as the ornament rises in the scale toward perfection, even
the geometric basis becomes less and less apparent, and sinks into a
decidedly subordinate position; so that in many of the most perfect
specimens it can be traced only in a few leading lines of the composition.
Its presence, however, is necessary, and is the foundation, if not the most
important element, of beauty in the design.

RELATION BETWEEN NATURE AND ORNAMENTAL ART.

While the natural world, including leaves, flowers, animals, etc., is the
greatest source of ornament, it is generally the opinion of the best
authorities, derived from the study of the best styles and