There are three great arts which, under circumstances of high civilization, become ornamental, namely, landscape-gardening, architecture, and dress—the particular arts by which our persons are more or less closely invested;[14] and all of them, then, require beauty of the second kind, that which belongs particularly to vegetable beings, and is characterized by delicate, bending varied, and contrasted forms.
All these, regarded as ornamental arts, have chiefly bodily and sensual pleasures for their purpose; and this I consider as distinguishing them from the intellectual arts, which have a higher purpose.
Of landscape-gardening, the materials are plants, and therefore its beauty is evidently dependant on, or rather composed of, theirs.
The same kind of beauty will be found in every ornamental art. Hence, Alison says: “The greater part of beautiful forms in nature, are to be found in the vegetable kingdom, in the forms of flowers, of foliage, of shrubs, and in those assumed by the young shoots of trees. It is from them, accordingly, that almost all those forms have been imitated, which have been employed by artists for the purposes of ornament and elegance.”
On this kind of beauty, mistaking it for the only one, Hogarth founded his peculiar doctrine. “He adopts two lines, on which, according to him, the beauty of figure principally depends. One is the waving line, or a curve bending gently in opposite directions. This he calls the line of beauty; and he shows how often it is found in flowers, shells, and various works of nature; while it is common also in the figures designed by painters and sculptors, for the purpose of decoration. The other line, which he calls the line of grace, is the former waving line, twisted round some solid body. Twisted pillars and twisted horns exhibit it. In all the instances which he mentions, variety plainly appears to be so important an element of this kind of beauty, that he states a portion of the truth, when he defines the art of drawing pleasing forms to be the art of varying well; for the curve line, so much the favorite of painters, derives much of its beauty from its perpetual bending and variation from the stiff regularity of the straight line.” It is evident, however, that in this, he mistakes one kind of beauty for all.
Of architecture, considered as a fine art, much of the beauty depends on the imitation of vegetable forms. Employing materials which require the best characteristics of the first kind of beauty, it, in its choicest and ornamented parts, imitates both the rigid trunks, and the delicate and bending forms of plants. Its columns, tapering upward, are copied from the trunks of trees; and their decorations are suited with consummate art to their dimensions, and the weight they support. The simple Doric has little ornament; the elegant Ionic has more; the light Corinthian has most.
On the subject of these finely-calculated ornaments, some observations have struck me, which I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. The Doric presents only columns, without any other ornament than that of which their mere form admits. The Ionic expresses increased lightness, by the interposition of its volute, as if the superincumbent weight had but gently pressed a soft solid into a scroll. The Corinthian expresses the utmost lightness, by forming its capitals of foliage, as if the weight above them could not crush even a leaf. The Composite expresses gayety, by adding flowers to the foliage. It is from imperfect views of this, that the meaning and effect of caryatides have been mistaken: instead of being oppressed by weight, they seem, when well employed, to have no weight to support.
In nearly all internal architectural decorations, it is the delicate, bending, varied, and contrasted vegetable forms which are imitated.
“There is scarce a room, in any house whatever,” says Hogarth, “where one does not see the waving line employed in some way or other. How inelegant would the shapes of all our moveables be without it? how very plain and unornamental the mouldings of cornices and chimney-pieces, without the variety introduced by the ogee member, which is entirely composed of waving lines.”
The distinctions I have here made, are farther illustrated by the remarks of Alison, who says: “These ornaments being executed in a very hard and durable substance, are in fact only beautiful when they appear but as minute parts of the whole. The great constituent parts of every building require direct and angular lines, because in such parts we require the expression of stability and strength. It is only in the minute and delicate parts of the work, that any kind of ornament is attempted with propriety; and whenever ornaments exceed in size, in their quantity of matter, or in the prominence of their relief, that proportion which, in point of lightness or delicacy, we expect them to hold with respect to the whole of the building, the imitation of the most beautiful vegetable forms does not preserve them from the censure of clumsiness and deformity.”