original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough
procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two
crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich
sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the
surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of
course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as
the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact
is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with
sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had
always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some
chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not
always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of
thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears
to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to
the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble
became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a
dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with
little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though
it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of
bluntness and rudeness of feeling,--we may perceive, upon reflection,
that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little
price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its
fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has
overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of
art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work
is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art
which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough
treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of
the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those
already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament