onic. We, considering that
there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think that this
also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition. Understanding,
therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, and no other,
and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we allow the
architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper form, in
such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care that the
legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forced
confidence that we are well housed.

Sec. XXVIII. But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no
pleasure in the building provided for us, resembling that which we take in
a new book or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in
its correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same
pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or a
skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the pleasure
that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of reading a
building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the same kind of
delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our minds
for a moment. And for good reason:--There is indeed rhythm in the
verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the architecture,
and a thousand times more beautiful, but there is something else than
rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor to match, as the
capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of pleasure in them other
than a sense of propriety. But it requires a strong effort of common
sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we have been taught for the
last two centuries, and wake to the perception of a truth just as simple
and certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in
words, colors, or stones, does _not_ say the same thing over and over
again; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists
in its saying new and different things; that to repeat itself is no more
a characteristic of genius in marble than it is of genius in print; and
that we may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an
architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct,
but entertaining.

Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many
other self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a great
work of art, for the production of which either rules or m