id, they are associated with the more
important element.

You have already discovered by practise that wood has a grain which sets
bounds to the possibilities of technique. You have yet to learn that it
has also an inordinate capacity for swallowing light. Now, as it is by
the aid of light that we see the results of our labor, it follows that
we should do everything in our power to take full advantage of that
helpful agency. It is obvious that work which can not be seen is only so
much labor thrown away. There is approximately a right relative distance
from which to view all manner of carvings, and if from this position the
work is not both distinct and coherent, its result is valueless.

Then what is the quality which makes all the difference between a
telling piece of carving, and one which looks, at a moderate distance,
like crumpled paper or the cork bark which decorates a suburban
summer-house? The answer is, attention to _strict economy in detail_.
Without economy there can be no arrangement, and without the latter no
general effect. We are practically dealing, not with so much mere wood,
but unconsciously we are directing our efforts to a manipulation of the
light of day--playing with the lamps of the sky--and if we do not
understand this, the result must be undoubtedly failure, with a piece of
wood left on our hands, cut into unintelligible ruts.

But what, you will say, has all this to do with copying the infinite
variety of nature's detail; surely it can not be wrong to imitate what
is really beautiful in itself? You will find the best answer to this in
the technical difficulties of your task. You have the grain of the wood
to think of, and now you have this other difficulty in managing the
light which is to display your design. The obstinacy of the wood may be
to some extent conquered, and indeed has been almost entirely so, by the
technical resources of Grinling Gibbons, but the treatment demanded by
the laws of light and vision is quite another question, and if our work
is to have its due effect, there is no other solution of the problem
than by finding a way of complying with those laws.

If I want to represent a rose and make it intelligible at a glance from
such and such a point of view, and I find after taking infinite pains to
reproduce as many as I can of its numerous petals, and as much as
possible of its complicated foliage, that I had not reckoned with the
light which was to illuminate it, and t