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am sure at the Exposition they would win the great gold medal tor pain I f ^ X ^^^ cn&Z to see Se ! BeSoz is always original ! ' - But in the very last coming to > see me h . ^ of a new frien d a young iadv of ^^ IntellecLaJ povrers ? ' and it is touching to read his notes to her some ^ f which Herr Meissner has been permitted to pubhsh . We will quote one ^ -and it must be our last quotation—written at the beginning of January , 18 D ^ t Mouche f I am very suffering , and vexed to death , and the lid of my right eve falls , so that I can hardly write any more . But I love you and think of you , sweetest one ! The novel has not bored me . and it gives good hopes for the futurevou are not so stupid as you look ! Charming you are beyond all measure , and therein my soul delights . Shall I see you to-morrow ? A sort of weeping malmse overpowers me . My heart gapes spasmodically . These battlements are intolerable . I wish I were dead ! Deepest anguish , thy name is—Heinrich Heine .
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ANALYSIS OF ORNAMENT . The Characteristics of Styles : an Introduction to ike Study of the History of Ornamental Art . By Ralph N . Wornum . Chapman and Hall . Whoever glances , critically , at the interior of certain well-appointed modern houses—of the middle order = —will be struck by the absence of style from the furniture and decorations . He will have been prepared , perhaps , by the external disposition of stone , brick , and slate in a sort of deformed composite—a Gothic door , an Italian balustrade , spiked g lobes upon the coping , windows with Greek lintels , and above , a dull mass of sloping slate , in contrast with the white stucco of the substructure . Inside , a large Italian hall , lined—to the eye—with blocks of yellow marble , and pavedto the eye also—with blocks of black and white stone , leads to a saloon in which all nature is caricatured under the p ea of furnishing and adorning . If the owner have a brilliant taste you step across kingfishers , convolutions
of nameless flowers , tropical verdure bursting from Etruscan vases , to a rug , on which a Bengal tiger blinks at the fire everlastingly . A pagan boy , painfully suspended from a gold zenith in the ceiling , swings m an ormolu hand a cluster of white glass globes ; the walls are hung in imitation of blue damascened silk—not draped , however ; birds , fruit , flowers , foliage , Cupids cling along the upper line ; a base , uncoloured wainscot edges the floor ; there are sweetly-shaped Carians upholding iniddle-age grotesques , curtains on which nameless parasites climb , and miscellaneous decorations which typify the ruin of art—fragments of all ages being thrown together to produce the burnished fantasinagoria . This , which is not an imaginative description , but a reminiscence of a grand citizen villa , represents a large class of the habitations of the wealthy . In certain directions a purer taste is found ; but who that has observed the awkward attempts of the English manufacturer at the invention of " novelties , " will deny that a vast
proportion of the designs thus produced are chimerical and barbarous ? Even when the form is tasteful , the idea is frequently absurd . Mr . Wornura points out some examples of art-manufacture , beautifully executed , yet in conception utterly vile—a flower intended to emit a ^ et of flame , a bell made of leaves , a basket on an animal ' s head to hold a liquid . Here the idea of beauty was not wanting ; the objects were not eccentric or rude : what was wanting , was artistic education . A similar degree of ignorance prevails with many carpet-manufacturers , who deal with a floor as though it should appear as an uneven surface , as though every step should break some arching stem , or crush some full-leaved rose . Diaper patterns for carpets of the commoner sort are seldom employed , the design usually including a Brazilian multiplicity of red , yellow , and purple flowers , the bolder artists introducing occasional pieces of parquetterie and tessellation . To be bold , however—even in varying the forms of ugliness—has not been the hereditary sin of the English manufacturer . When did we first hear of the willow-pattern , and when shall we hear the last of its supremely repulsive formality ?
Mr . Wornum is doing something as a teacher in ornamental art . The substance of his long course of lectures at Maryborough House has been condensed into a treatise , which should become a designer ' s manual—not of specimens to be copied , but of lessons to be understood . It contains an outline of the history of decorative styles , with some analysis of the architectural orders , so far as their ornamentation varied . Two classes of styles are presented—the symbolic and the aesthetic , the imitative and the ideal . These are traced , in their several modifications , as by genealogy , the links being found where possible , or , where only probable , suggested . Mr . Wornum very emphatically argues that no richness of material , no perfection of scientific processes—not even the highest skill—will place the manufacturer on a level with the ancient artificers , unless the inspiration of real art gives beauty to his forms , colours , nnd designs . Why were the variegated crystals of Egypt , the figured cups of Sidon , the shawls of
Miletus , the Corinthian bronzes prized ? What made Ghiberti great r and what Cellini ? Other men have worked in bronze and gold . They , however , were aided by the use of natural objects , as copies , exact imitations being introduced in bunches nnd groups . But what could assist the Byzantine artists , who raised for the Arabian caliphs and generals the domed mosques and palaces of Damascus , Cairo , and Cordova ? They dared not represent , in their moat elaborate and infinitely complex designs , a single living thing , a -vegetable , an animal , an angel , a chimera . Many species , oven of the anciont symbolism ; were excluded . Yet , from mere curves and interlacings , traceries , scrolls , labyrinths , the disguised forms of flowers , wonderful surface patterns were originated , which have never been rivalled . As the Egyptian decorator , by more symmetrical urrangemont , con verted _ even his hieroglyph into conspicuous and admirable ornaments—an ingenuity exercised alflo by the Chinese—bo the Saracens elaborated inscriptions into their designs , and the beautiful Arabic character became a typ ical decoration . And , as Mr . Wornum says , although flowers wore not palpably introduced ,
the great mass of the minor details of Saracenic designs are composed of floral forms more than conventionalized , the very inscriptions being sometimes grouped as flowers . All races have chosen these for use in decoration—not as is the English habit , to weave their outlines and colours confu sedl y into carpets and tapestries , to paint them on cups , and arrange them , in unm eaning festoons , on roofs and walls , but to convert them into ideas , as ancient nations converted the lotus , the lily , the tulip , the papyrus , palm-trees , stars , the flow of water , the zodiacal signs , and the almond and pomegranate of the Jews . That the Greeks were not mere copyists is proved by the existence of the ornament called the Honeysuckle , which was onl y one out of a thousand varieties from the same suggestion , though " half the classical buildings of modern times are covered with honeysuckles , bringiner tho .
whole art of Greece into disgrace for its monotony and formality . " As Quintilian , though he had never dreamed of shilling volumes , complained of the " innumerable authors" of his time , so Vitruvius , who had never seen a Londoner ' s gorgeous villa , was exasperated by the degraded stucco-work of his generation . " What the ancients accomplished by art , we attempt to effect by gaudy colouring . Expense is substituted for skill . Who , in former times , used vermillion , except for physic ? We now cover our walls with it . " What would Vitruvius , who abhorred vermillion , have said of whitewash ? Pliny also denounced the man " who cares nothing for art , provided he has his walls well covered with purple , or dragon ' s blood from India . "
A Gothic church , Mr . Wornum says , looks like a fortification against the weather , with its high-pitched roof , solid buttresses , and narrow doors and windows , recessed in the massive walls : — In ornamental art generally , then , as in architecture , it is geometrical tracery -which will stamp a design with a Gothic character : decorate it with natural flowers . only , it will be still Gothic ; it -would be necessarily made much more characteristic by the introduction of some of the historic ornaments of the period , —as the Tudor flower , fleur-de-lis , crocket-leaf , trefoil or Early-English leaf , vine-scroll , or any other of the more familiar ornaments of the style . As , however , the Gothic is a style which has flourished exclusively in cold countries , its ornaments of a natural class to be characteristic should be from such plants as are native to Gothic latitudes ; tropical plants would be inconsistent . Throughout we should prefer the wild plants of the north to the more exuberant flowers of the south . All exotics , in fact , that are not symbols , should be unconditionally excluded . The characteristic Norman ornaments are not admissible in the Gothic , with the exception of the tooth , and that is peculiarly rendered .
Classical ornaments , likewise , are of course excluded ; even the scroll occurs only in the Gothic as a serpentine . Gothic ornaments independent of the tracery are nearly exclusively fruit , flowers , or leaves ; and as a general rule , their execution is extremely rude . One practical remark by Mr . Wornum is well worth quoting : — The designer , like the poet , has his licence with regard to possibilities or probabilities . A mere natural improbability , where natural imitation is in no degree essential , is the privilege of the fancy ; but mechanical disproportions and impossibilities , violations of the most palpable laws of gravity , cannot be otherwise than offensive . Nothing can bring them within the range of good taste , as they are essentially obnoxious to aesthetic sensibility , which is the truest test of propriety in art , the effect being analogous to a discord in music . We may be extremely grotesque or fanciful without being ridiculous .
There need be no limit to our chimeras , for nature is not their test ; but if we combine monsters in our scrolls , or place animals upon the tendrils of plants , we should at least proportion them in size to the strength of the stem or tendril upon which they are placed . This is not observed in many of the Vatican arabesques , and it is occasionally disregarded , also , in the later works of Mantua ; yet these are , in other respects , the standard types of the cinquecento arabesques , as developed in painting . We commend this very useful volume to the attention of all elementary students of ornamental art .
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AN EDUCATOR . Contributions to the Cause of Education . By James Pillans , Esq ., Professor of Humanity in the University of Edinburgh . Longman , Brown , Green , and Longmans . When some one was objecting to the dogmatic Doctor , that if everybody were taught to read and write we should have no servants , "Sir , " replied Johnson , " while learning to read and write is a distinction , the few who have that distinction may be less inclined to work ; but when everybody learns to read and write it is no longer a distinction . " The Doctor then proceeds to illustrate his remark by observing that if every man wore a laced waistcoat the singularity of the dress would be lost in the universality of the custom , and the underling still retain * his position . This is but another proof of tho Doctor ' s dogmatism being stronger than his logic , and of the fatal facility with which he strove , by a rotund and pompous sentence , delivered , as he delivered his , ex cathedra , to throw dust in the eyes of his
audience , and gull their reason . It is true it was a pious fraud , intended to conceal the obvious consequence and break down the barrier of foolish prejudice which then existed against general education , and which has onljr recently been removed . But we may now , after a struggle of a quarter ot a century , view the case from a far higher elevation ; we may pursue its real issues to tho end ; we may consider its acquisition as the acquisition of a new power , we might almost say a new faculty ; and if education is not something more than the wearing of a lace waistcoat , it is nothing . My lord may wear a lace waistcoat , and my lord's valet and my lord's ploughboy , but as long as my lord receives the best education so long shall »» y l ° ^ superior to his valet , who , with little learning ' , is still superior to tho ploughboy , liut education is a weapon which will render him who has the wit to usu it best , whether prince or peasant , master , and then the weakest goes to tho wall—the least intellectually capable will bo tho handicraftsman and the delver .
Amongst the most earnest nnd liberal promoters of national education , Mr . Pillans , whose literary contributions to this cause are" now collected in one volume , must bo cordially recognized . It having been admitted that education was a good thing , it was next to bo discovered what kind of education is best nnd how it ought to be administered . We might particularly
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THE LEADER , [ TSTo . 335 , Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 23, 1856, page 812, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2155/page/20/
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