Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/69

first, because, where smoke is beautiful, decoration is unsuited to the building; and, secondly, because, where smoke is ugly, decoration directs attention to its ugliness. It is unfortunately a prevailing idea with some of our architects, that what is a disagreeable object in itself may be relieved or concealed by lavish ornament; and there never was a greater mistake. It should be a general principle, that what is intrinsically ugly should be utterly destitute of ornament, that the eye may not be drawn to it. The pretended skulls of the three Magi at Cologne are set in gold, and have a diamond in each eye; and are a thousand times more ghastly than if their brown bones had been left in peace. Such an error as this ought never to be committed in architecture. If any part of the building has disagreeable associations connected with it, let it alone: do not ornament it; keep it subdued, and simply adapted to its use; and the eye will not go to it, nor quarrel with it. It would have been well if this principle had been kept in view in the renewal of some of the public buildings in Oxford. In All Souls College, for instance, the architect has carried his chimneys half as high as all the rest of the building, and fretted them with Gothic. The eye is instantly caught by the plated-candlestick-like columns, and runs with some complacency up the groining and fretwork, and alights finally and fatally on a red chimney top. He might as well have built a Gothic aisle at an entrance to a coal wharf. We have no scruple in saying that the man who could desecrate the Gothic trefoil into an orna-