[42] I have before stated (“Modern Painters” vol. ii.) that the first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate truth.
[43] Note especially, in connexion with what was advanced in Vol. II. respecting our English neatness of execution, how the base workman has cut the lines of the architecture neatly and precisely round the abominable head: but the noble workman has used his chisel like a painter’s pencil, and sketched the glory with a few irregular lines, anything rather than circular; and struck out the whole head in the same frank and fearless way, leaving the sharp edges of the stone as they first broke, and flinging back the crest of hair from the forehead with half a dozen hammer-strokes, while the poor wretch who did the other was half a day in smoothing its vapid and vermicular curls.
[44] The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46.
[45] See [Appendix 9].
CHAPTER IV.
CONCLUSION.
§ I. I fear this chapter will be a rambling one, for it must be a kind of supplement to the preceding pages, and a general recapitulation of the things I have too imperfectly and feebly said.
The grotesques of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nature of which we examined in the last chapter, close the career of the architecture of Europe. They were the last evidences of any feeling consistent with itself, and capable of directing the efforts of the builder to the formation of anything worthy the name of a style or school. From that time to this, no resuscitation of energy has taken place, nor does any for the present appear possible. How long this impossibility may last, and in what direction with regard to art in general, as well as to our lifeless architecture, our immediate efforts may most profitably be directed, are the questions I would endeavor briefly to consider in the present chapter.