ng. On the contrary, the same laws govern
all manner of sculpturesque composition--scale or material making no
difference whatever. A sculptured marble frieze or a carved ivory
snuff-box may be equally censurable as being either so bare that they
verge on baldness and want of interest, or so elaborate that they look
like layers of fungus.

Do not imagine that I am urging any preference for a Byzantine treatment
in your work; to do so would be as foolish as to ask you to don
medieval costume while at work, or assume the speech and manners of the
tenth century. It would be just as ridiculous on your part to affect a
bias which was not natural to you. I am, however, strongly convinced
that in the choice of natural forms and their arrangement into orderly
masses (more particularly with regard to their appearance in silhouette
against the ground), and also in the matter of an economical use of
detail, we have much to learn from the carvers who preceded the
fourteenth century. They thoroughly understood and appreciated the value
of the light which fell upon their work, and in designing it arranged
every detail with the object of reflecting as much of it as possible. To
this end, their work was always calculated for its best effects to be
seen at a fairly distant point of view; and to make sure that it would
be both visible and coherent, seen from that point, they insisted upon
some easily understood pattern which gave the key to the whole at a
glance. To make a pattern of this kind is not such an easy matter as it
looks. The forms of the background spaces are the complementary parts of
the design, and are just as important as those of the solid portions;
it takes them both to make a good design.

Now I believe you must have had enough of this subject for the present,
more especially as you have not yet begun to feel the extraordinary
difficulty of making up your mind as to what is and what is not fit for
the carver's uses among the boundless examples of beauty spread out for
our choice by Dame Nature.

Meantime, I do not want you to run away with the impression that when
you have mastered the principles of economy in detail and an orderly
disposition of background, that you have therefore learned all that is
necessary in order to go on turning out design after design with the
ease of a cook making pancakes according to a recipe. You will find by
experience, I think, that all such principles are good for is to enforce
clear