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 ARBOR VIT^E
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
 
 Arbor Vit^e 
 
 A BOOK ON THE 
 NATURE & DEVELOPMENT 
 OF IMAGINATIVE DESIGN 
 FOR THE USE OF TEACHERS 
 HANDICRAFTSMEN & OTHERS 
 
 By Godfrey Blount, B.A. 
 
 Designer to The 'Peasant Jlris Society, The Haslemere 
 Hand-weaving & 'Peasant Tapestry Industries, &c. 
 
 Third Edition 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 A. C FIFIELD, J3, Clifford's Inn, E.C 
 
 i9l0
 
 Dedication. 
 
 r 
 
 TO ALL LOVERS OF HANDICRAFT, 
 
 AND ESPECIALLY TO 
 
 MY FRIEND 
 
 JAMES ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL 
 
 OF B ARBRECK, 
 
 WHO FIRST TAUGHT ME TO FEEL THE WIDER LIFE OF ART, 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK. 
 
 2^ 71
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE SPIRAL 
 
 FIRST PATTERNS 
 
 ON LEAVES AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION 
 
 THE BUDDING AND FRUITING OF THE SPIRAL 
 
 ENDS AND CORNERS 
 
 THE SPIRAL Continued 
 
 ARCADES 
 
 TRIGLYPH AND METOPE 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE FRIEZE 
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE. I. THE DIAPER 
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE. II. THE SEME 
 
 15 
 
 26 
 
 44 
 
 57 
 
 72 
 
 80 
 
 104 
 
 117 
 
 127 
 
 140 
 
 *S7
 
 Vlll 
 
 LIST OF CONTENTS. 
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE. III. ARABESQUES 
 
 FRAMES 
 
 THE FILLING OF FRAMES 
 
 THE BORDER 
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE 
 
 . 169 
 
 . 187 
 
 . 200 
 
 . 211 
 
 • 22J
 
 THE 
 
 INTRO- 
 DUCTION 
 
 THE aim of this book is to supply a traditional basis of design 
 for the use of those who are engaged in practising or teaching 
 ornamental handicrafts. Very few people who embroider, or 
 carve, or work in metal or leather, can invent their own patterns ; 
 and, although they know how necessary a good design is to the 
 success of their work, they are obliged to select something which, they 
 confess, has little interest for themselves, and therefore fails to make 
 their work interesting to others. 
 
 The same result is only too evident in the work that is done 
 in the schools and classes for handicrafts which have been lately 
 founded in many of our towns and villages. These efforts to revive 
 national industries are nevertheless the strongest, though the most 
 silent, proofs of a reaction from the current ideas of art. It is because 
 the movement has instinctively preferred to teach its followers to 
 carve wooden bowls, beat brazen plates, and weave honest cloth and 
 linen, instead of setting them to paint pictures, that we are justified 
 in believing that a real renaissance is possible ; for the first principle 
 of all art is to create and decorate useful things instead of useless 
 ones. We have forgotten this principle for a long time, and have 
 been busy instead in making useless and expensive things, or in 
 inventing labour-saving machines to take the place of human heads 
 and hands when we wish to make necessary ones. 
 
 This neglect has brought about a separation between the artist 
 and the artisan which is fatal to both ; for the artist has lost that 
 connection with the everyday necessities of life which keeps art
 
 2 ARBOR VIT.-E. 
 
 vigorous, and the artisan has lost that touch with culture which 
 alone can make his work beautiful. There should really be no 
 divorce between these two, but that intimate relation which we find 
 in all great periods of art. So long as the artist was also a craftsman 
 his genius was occupied with the implements of everyday life, and 
 in making them as beautiful as possible. A varied experience stirred 
 his imagination, while the technical conditions and difficulties under 
 which different things had to be made led slowly, but necessarily, to 
 the selection of certain types and methods, and so to the inevitable 
 formation of noble and permanent traditions, which must at last 
 happily reassert themselves. But when the artist began to despise 
 his necessary dependence on handicraft, he lost that hold on tradition 
 which only the practice of handicraft had discovered, and took to 
 painting pictures instead. 
 
 The aim of picture-painting is to realise — to make the copy look 
 as much like the thing copied as possible. On the other hand, the 
 decorator or designer is governed by the thing he has to design or 
 decorate, and his object is accordingly to conventionalise or idealise 
 nature. These two influences — the desire to realise and the necessity 
 for idealising — are two factors that enter into all art ; for you cannot 
 invent the simplest pattern without some reference to nature, and 
 even the most advanced realist is bound by the conventional limits 
 of his frame. The greatest art has always confessed the necessity for 
 convention in its subordination to use ; it is only the modern art of 
 painting pictures which claims a right to exist on its own merits. 
 As its aim is to escape the control of tradition it cannot claim to 
 have had any share in bringing about the revival of handicrafts — 
 arts which, by their nature, are bound to obey the authority of 
 convention. 
 
 We must not, however, suppose that handicrafts are uninspired 
 and dull because they are tied to tradition, or that modern pictures 
 are imaginative because they boast of freedom from tradition. 
 Granting that the imagination is an important factor in the execution 
 of a work of art, the power of producing deceptive likenesses of 
 things is not evidence of it till the artist has introduced some feeling
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 of his own into his copy of the fact. The province of true tradition 
 is to order the limits within which the imagination is free to act ; 
 it sets, so to speak, the subject, and leaves the artist to treat it in 
 the way that suits him best. Its supreme value consists in its power 
 of giving this freedom to every degree of imagination. In the present 
 condition of things the purest imaginations often die unexpressed 
 because they have never received the right sort of encouragement, 
 and the strongest are driven to commit eccentric solecisms for want 
 of the proper sort of guidance and restraint. 
 
 Everybody possesses some degree of imagination, which it is his 
 natural right, as well as his greatest pleasure, to express ; and it is 
 the special business of tradition to direct the bent of the imagination 
 that each one of us calls his own. The imagination of man — the 
 greatest gift of God ! — do not think of it as the stock-in-trade of 
 the few professions which decorate our walls, and sing to us when 
 the weightier matters of life have been duly attended to. Art is 
 more than this. What is there, indeed, between the nakedness of 
 our birth and that of our burial — from the first convention our 
 parents wrapped us in to the inevitable ritual of our return to the 
 dust — that is not the conventional expression, wise or foolish, of our 
 imagination, that is not, in fact, Art, and the material from which 
 Art, in the narrower and more specialised sense of the word, draws 
 its inspiration ? Art is the impartial censor and current epitome 
 of our lives ; approving, despairing, scornful, or full of pity, but 
 condemned by inevitable necessity to change its fashions with the 
 fashion of the world it echoes. 
 
 Without our imagination we are only as the beasts that perish. 
 It is the working capital of the world — the " ability " which is always 
 finding new fields for our enterprise and improvement ; it is wealth 
 constantly spent in evoking new interest of wealth. Everything has 
 to be imagined before it becomes a fact ; Columbus imagined America 
 before he found it, and Pheidias saw the frieze of the Parthenon on 
 its walls while the stones were still unquarried. We probe, with 
 sensitive antennae, before we trust ourselves on any road. 
 
 The significance and importance of the revival of handicrafts
 
 4 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 depends on how we regard it. We must not think of it as a novel 
 occupation for idle hours, or even as a philanthropic trick to entice 
 the labourer from the public-house and his hard bargain of beer, 
 but as the dawning of nobler conceptions of the charm of labour and 
 of the unity of life. It is an evidence of the healthy desire to escape 
 from the monotonous tyranny of machinery ; but let us take care 
 to understand why we dislike that tyranny before we jump at the 
 conclusion that a return to handicraft is in itself an unmitigated 
 benefit. 
 
 Machinery makes a great many copies of one thing very rapidly, 
 and all of them exactly alike ; handicraft makes fewer things, more 
 slowly, and no two of them exactly alike. There is no inherent 
 virtue in either the presence or absence of these qualities. A thing 
 is not necessarily bad because it has been made often, quickly, or 
 in the same way ; nor necessarily good because it has been made 
 seldom, slowly, and differently every time. The conditions of the 
 manufacture are only important when they affect the quality of the 
 things made and the happiness of the people who make them, as 
 well as of the people who use them. The happiness of the maker 
 depends on his being able to impress what he is making with his 
 own feeling ; in other words, the value of a thing depends on our 
 power of appreciating the imagination that made it. The tendency 
 of machinery is to reduce the importance of the imagination, and the 
 triumph of handicraft is to extol it. But that does not mean that if 
 anything is made by hand it must necessarily be good, but only that 
 to make a really noble thing well, you must make it by hand. 
 
 Machinery has exercised tyranny over our lives because we have 
 despised our imagination ; and no revival of handicraft is possible 
 till we determine to follow it with all our hearts, as a sacred charge, 
 and not as a temporary relief and passing fancy. If we undertake 
 it in this spirit we shall find that tradition does not prevent the 
 legitimate exercise of the imagination, but fosters and encourages it. 
 Nevertheless, while it leads it forward by unerring steps, it keeps 
 a stern check on any attempt at lawlessness, which is apt to be 
 occasionally mistaken for it.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 It is usual to think of the imagination as an entirely original 
 and creative power ; but for one person who can invent, a thousand 
 can appreciate, and appreciation is none the less a form of imagination, 
 and capable of expression — though the unseemly haste which swept 
 away tradition left our appreciative power without the means of 
 expressing itself. We must keep these two forms of the imagination 
 very clearly distinct. The first and rarest is original and creative ; 
 the second appreciative and spontaneous. One man composes a new 
 melody ; that is creative and original Art. Another man sings it 
 with passion and enthusiasm ; that is appreciative and spontaneous 
 Art. The imagination of many people is engrossed and satisfied by 
 the part they take in a beautiful ritual. Their united action constitutes 
 a work of art, though none of them invented the form of it. Shake- 
 speare has written plays, and generations of actors have rendered 
 them ; but we praise the actor for the spontaneity with which he plays 
 his part, for that genius of appreciation and sympathy which lets him 
 give us the poet's originality second-hand. We never question the just 
 preponderance of the appreciative kind of imagination in music and the 
 drama, but the anomalous conditions of modern Art demand that every 
 artist should display power of original qualities, or starve. A large 
 class of men, in consequence, whose peculiar talents could easily be 
 spent in making the whole of life more beautiful and interesting, 
 prefer to waste their time in useless and aimless rivalry, because they 
 are ignorant of humbler possibilities, and greedy of the success and 
 fame that can only fall to the lot of a few. There is nothing new 
 under the sun, and the genius of the most original artist rather 
 extends the limits of preceding traditions than invents new ones. He 
 shows us how to cultivate old fields in new ways. His career is that 
 of a pioneer or an explorer. He cannot alone exploit the whole of 
 the treasure he has brought to light, but all who care to follow in 
 his steps can find ample room for enterprise and ambition. Indeed, in 
 the first flush of our enthusiasm, we are apt to believe at such times 
 that a new revelation has been vouchsafed us, and seize on every 
 novel characteristic to develop it to an unprecedented extent. This 
 is the way in which link by link the chain of tradition is forged.
 
 6 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 As the world grows older we are constantly obliged to find 
 new expressions for new feelings. We shall realise ourselves most 
 completely when we recognise that our pulse is meant to beat in 
 time with the larger pulses of a growing world ; that a subtle 
 sympathy exists between what happens to us and the way we express 
 our feelings, and that the whole Art of the present is dependent on 
 that of the past. If this is true, the original artist or poet is not 
 only specially gifted to give voice to the emotional needs of his own 
 time, but in order to give that expression a permanent character, he 
 must be a man capable of moulding it into harmony with the Art of 
 all time, by virtue of his sympathy with the feelings of the past. 
 
 Spontaneous Art is not necessarily original, but all original Art 
 must be spontaneous. Spontaneity is a necessary quality of all Art. 
 To speak, write, play, or paint, out of our hearts, easily or with effort, 
 joyfully or sadly — that is Art, because that is the only thing that 
 men care to treasure through all change of style and oscillation of 
 fashion. We are obliged just now to distinguish carefully between 
 what is done with the heart and what is done without it, because 
 students of Art are taught to-day how to analyse the body of past 
 tradition, and not how to sympathise with its spirit. Every age 
 mistakes itself for the last. We make our boast of eclecticism. We 
 pick and choose and judge, but the verdict of Time is only mindful 
 of action, and will depend, not on what we thought of other people's 
 work, but on what sort of work we did ourselves. Men write 
 in books what they think, not always what they feel. In Art, men 
 can only express what they feel. It is the irrevocable confession of 
 our hearts. Truest of all methods of speech, it is impossible for 
 Art to say one thing and mean another. It is obliged to tell you 
 unmistakably if it is the work of an honest and wise man, or of a 
 rogue and fool. This wonderful language of truth has its alphabet 
 and grammar like any other language, its mysteries into which you 
 must be initiated before you can read or write its secrets. The 
 accumulated lore of art, the sacred books of its Tradition, are still 
 to be seen in archaic Greek vase and tapestry of early Christian 
 Egypt, on Sicilian embroideries and rough Italian majolica, in
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 Scandinavian fibula and Irish missal : wherever, in fact, men have 
 had a faith that made them happy, or love for Life has inspired 
 the craftsman. 
 
 To every generation an uncompromising Sibyl brings fewer 
 volumes back, for the work of destruction and neglect proceeds 
 apace, and offers them to us for the same price. To-day we are 
 beginning to haggle with her for what remains of that unerring 
 script which tells how man thought and felt, how men may still 
 learn to express their thoughts and feelings. Its language is the 
 universal one of Tradition, the common tongue in which Greek, 
 Egyptian, Italian, Teuton, and Celt tells his own tale, gives us his 
 own view of things, and the particular feelings that made him Greek 
 or Barbarian. And if we are to acquire the same authority for 
 ourselves, or any claim to the respect of future ages, it will not be 
 by posing as Greek or Latin, Egyptian or German, but by learning 
 to express our own feelings in this common language. 
 
 Though it has many dialects, Art has only two styles — the 
 good style, and the bad style. We are not Greeks, or Egyptians, 
 or Persians, or Germans, or Celts, still less Japanese or Polynesian ; 
 we live in the present day, and in no other century before or after 
 Christ ; and we can neither build nor paint in the style or time of any 
 other nation or school, for the very simple reason that the conditions 
 under which we happen to live, whether favourable to Art or not, are 
 those of the present day and not of any other. Other times may 
 have important lessons for us, may indeed become our schoolmasters, 
 but we must not mistake our school studies for original compositions, 
 or limit our horizon to the pages of an exercise book. 
 
 Art is the language and the expression of the heart, as opposed 
 to the intellect. If it is a literature, we must take care that it is not 
 literary. It is a total misconception of the first use and purpose of 
 Art to think of it as merely a convenient adjunct to a written 
 description, for its peculiar quality as distinct from literature lies in 
 the fact that its message cannot be written in any other words than 
 its own. It may illustrate the same feeling, or the same fact, as an 
 accompanying text describes ; but it must illustrate it from an entirely
 
 8 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 different point of view, and must be able to stand by itself as a work 
 of Art, quite independently of the letterpress. 
 
 The page of a twelfth-century Missal, or Richter's illustrations 
 to the Lord's Prayer, are each perfect specimens of illustrative Art, 
 because each is independent of the words it pretends to illustrate. 
 We can gloat over the delicate tact of the mediaeval scribe without 
 knowing a word of Latin, and appreciate the subtle tenderness of the 
 great German master without necessarily following him to church. 
 But as soon as your picture requires words to explain its meaning, 
 you may be sure that as a work of art it is worthless, whatever the 
 quality and correctness of the draughtsmanship. 
 
 Art is indeed a system of symbols, but it is a poor art that 
 requires labelling like the samples in a chemist's shop. It ought to 
 have a mysterious charm of its own, and to give you a certain feeling 
 in a way nothing else can. An allegorical figure of " Chastity," for 
 instance, must be essentially chaste, and no mere change of label on 
 waistband or fillet should be able to change her into "Justice" or 
 " Ireland." The label is the epitome of all you have to avoid in 
 imaginative art. When you feel the necessity for one in your work 
 it is time to distrust your imagination. Do not label your figures 
 " Youth," " Spring," " Love," but let your design teem with love, 
 spring, and youth, and nobody will ask for your index. 
 
 One of the worst results of the separation between artist and 
 workman is seen in the popular misconception of what is really 
 classical art. The single statues of post-Pheidian times are quoted as 
 the culminating triumphs of Greek art, the goal towards which all 
 her earlier efforts aimed ; and the affected and exclusive admiration 
 of these examples has bitten deeply into our system of thought and 
 teaching, and has corrupted popular taste to such a degree that we 
 have learnt to admire and even to cultivate a certain regularity of 
 feature and inanity of expression under the impression that they 
 resemble the specially Greek virtues of dignity and restraint, with 
 which we are told these works of art are peculiarly endowed. But 
 whether the Apollos, Venuses, Athletes, and Hermaphrodites of later 
 Greek art are dignified or not, they cannot be said to illustrate the
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 same feelings which inspired the artists of earlier and more archaic 
 days. Both are Greek, but the earlier work exhibits the qualities 
 that made Greece great, and is therefore classical ; the latter reveals 
 the vices that ruined her. The restraint and dignity of true classical 
 art is the representation of the victory of a restrained mind over an 
 unrestrained one, and it illustrates this victory, not by the selection 
 of types of beauty, but by using the simplest types of expression, 
 and the stern refusal of all redundant accessories. The profuse 
 worship of languid and self-conscious sensuality, or of ideals which 
 are only athletic, is neither restrained nor dignified. We ought to 
 learn to distinguish between the early and more vigorous style of Art, 
 and the later and more effete one, if we wish to realise for ourselves, 
 as we often say we do, that wider citizenship of which Greek life 
 remains such a brilliant example. 
 
 All Art is the expression of the life of its time, and the best 
 art of Greece, as of all civilisations that are essentially democratic, 
 must be that which illustrates the coherence of a community instead 
 of the isolated independence of its members. There are, it is true, 
 single figures and simple groups in early Greek art, but they 
 are primarily dominated by a religious spirit, and an essentially 
 didactic intention rather than an aesthetic one ; and no sooner is this 
 pious and preliminary duty satisfied than the "play instinct" of the 
 nation asserts itself, and seizes at once on a corporate view of life 
 as the proper subject for it to delight in and perpetuate ; a duty 
 which it achieves most successfully in the processional length of the 
 frieze, and the endless girdle of the vase. When a nation prefers 
 to carve or paint single and self-satisfied figures, instead of groups 
 of interdependent and mutually helpful ones, its sense of a corporate 
 patriotism is evidently dulled or dead, and the old enthusiastic and 
 imaginative standard of criticism has to give way to theoretical and 
 realistic ones. All Art arises in sensation, in the delight of feeling 
 alive, then in the feeling of community and the impulse to express 
 an orderly relation between living things. Its greatest triumph is to 
 create a harmony out of the infinite and subtle discords of Nature, 
 as each age apprehends them, and to establish a connection between
 
 io ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 the soul of things and the body of them, where no connection was 
 previously seen to exist. Though we must necessarily derive out- 
 laws of Art from Nature, it is from our guesses at her gathered 
 intention and not from her immediate instances. Nature herself 
 seldom, if ever, presents us with a satisfactory example of the laws 
 of Art. She neither tames the lion nor bridles the steed. Her beauty 
 is that of a tropical forest — savage, anarchic, competitive ; a place 
 where the weakest must inevitably go to the wall. But the loving 
 humanity of a truly "artistic temperament" links first things and 
 last things together ; it releases us from our confusion in the vast 
 and incomprehensible presence of Nature, and creates for us a 
 harmonious little world which enables us to enter into the heart of 
 the larger one. 
 
 There seems nothing in Nature, outside man himself, that regards 
 the welfare of the community ; and though there are a few things that 
 excite our admiration, such as an " occasional sunset," or the constant 
 repetition of one phrase in the blackbird's song, it is on account of 
 its resemblance to our own orderly systems of arrangement that we 
 justify them. So that this power of ordering and arranging is the 
 element of Art that differentiates man from the rest of Nature. His 
 mission is to turn^the wild forest into a garden, and to tame and 
 name the wild beasts in it. 
 
 Our delight in the sense of order and relation, of bringing 
 different things together in unexpected fashions, is infinitely more 
 precious to us than the pleasure we get from merely noting facts 
 and emphasising occurrences, which is the scientific estimate of 
 the whole duty of an artist. Every effort to compete with Nature 
 on her own terms must result in disappointment, because Nature's 
 scale in light, colour, and detail is so much more extended than 
 ours is. If, however, we work from our own imagination, we do so 
 with a reasonable chance of success, because we aim at a standard 
 of perfection which is our own. 
 
 The decorative or imaginative faculty in us is innate and 
 instinctive, while the power to represent external facts in pictorial 
 form is an intellectual accomplishment that can only be acquired
 
 INTRODUCTION. II 
 
 with long practice. All Art, as we have said, comprises both in 
 varying proportions ; but it is not necessary to wait till we have 
 gained great power of realisation before we can do delightful things. 
 Art is good, whenever the artist's knowledge of facts, however limited, 
 is controlled, and fully displayed by his sense of design. The frieze 
 of the Parthenon is good, not because the figures are accurately 
 carved, or ideally conceived, but because an unbroken rhythm runs 
 through the whole of it. The horse-race on an archaic vase two 
 hundred years earlier is also good for the same reason, even if 
 horses and riders are alike absurdly untrue to Nature. 
 
 Great Art is not necessarily accurate. Its first characteristic, 
 whether Greek or Gothic, is not a sense of proportion, or a knowledge 
 of anatomy and perspective, but width and depth of vision, insight 
 into application, and courage in facing and compromising with 
 technical difficulties ; and we, if we are to train ourselves to be 
 artists, must learn to imitate, not so much the greatest achievements 
 of past Art, as the processes, or rather traditions, by the help of 
 which these achievements were attained. See what hope there is in 
 the careless confidence of that archaic work before the critic's advent ! 
 What easy assurance ! Qualities which are only too apt to be wanting 
 in maturer work, when the intention of the whole is often sacrificed 
 to the elaboration of details, and the artist forgets, in his picture of 
 Hercules, that the hero's heart is stronger than his muscles. 
 
 The true meanings of Naturalism and Realism, as applied to Art, 
 must not be, as they too often are, confounded. They are really 
 very distinct. Realistic Art aims at reproducing the delusion of 
 Nature, external, physical Nature, as far as possible. Naturalistic Art 
 infers a deliberate selection of certain characteristics or conditions in 
 Nature, for their reduction to an intentional and decorative purpose, 
 and Tradition is the history of the best ways of doing this. 
 
 When the leaves are falling in autumn the realist makes a 
 " picture " of the scene : brown leaves fluttering across the grey sky, 
 and lying helpless on the greensward. The picture may be pretty, 
 but to the mind of the decorator it does not sufficiently emphasise 
 the essential fact, and all the feelings it conjures up for him. The
 
 12 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 realist must paint what he sees, and no more than he sees. In doing 
 so, he exercises no more remarkable virtue than fidelity to the task 
 he has set himself. But the naturalist or decorator will tell at other 
 times, and in different ways, with greater freedom because with 
 more concentrated feeling, how the trees wept, and the rooks sailed 
 home ; and perhaps in prim diaper paint a sad semd of despondent 
 leaves on a forlorn ground. The labour of the realist may be 
 valuable as a record, and perhaps useful occasionally to the artist 
 himself in the light of practice and experience, but it is seldom Art. 
 He has no monopoly of Nature, and has only heralded the coming of 
 greater conventions and wider traditions. He has perhaps enlarged 
 our field of experience and sown a rich crop, but he has not harvested 
 it. That remains for us to do ; and when we feel overwhelmed by 
 the technical triumphs of past great periods we must remember that 
 their conditions differed from our own, and cannot be repeated, and 
 that the new experiences which are ours entail new problems and 
 new chances of excellence. But immediate proficiency is impossible, 
 because we have no traditions to build on. 
 
 A great work of Art is never accomplished by the unaided efforts 
 of a single artist. No one alone, by virtue of his own strength, can 
 ever wrest from the chaos of the universe even a temporary solution 
 of its mysteries. Slowly, and with extreme care, men have collected 
 a few ideas in the past, and founded some sort of tradition or working 
 hypothesis to save us from despair. However scanty the hypothesis 
 may eventually prove, it would be madness to neglect it, even if it 
 were possible to do so, because it is all we have to go upon ; but 
 if we obey tradition, though our beginnings may be crude and 
 archaic, like all noble beginnings, our work will be strong and lasting. 
 The invention of the steam-engine, with its effect on civilisation, 
 was, without doubt, the final cause of the suppression of genuine 
 wtf/w/facture ; and design as a fine art, in its dependence on handicraft, 
 yielded to pictorial or imitative art. But neither mechanical symmetry 
 nor resemblance to nature makes art good, but only the artist's 
 realisation of what his imagination bodies forth ; and though that is 
 necessarily the greatest art which has the greatest knowledge of
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 things, it is not the knowledge of their forms which makes it great, 
 but insight into the part in life those forms can be made to play. 
 To draw a flower well we must love flowers ; to draw birds we 
 must feel their flight, and long to fly ; to draw a lion we must 
 understand the dignity of his irresistible strength ; and to draw a 
 man we must know a little, perhaps, of human nature ; and so we 
 shall never succeed in teaching Art till we insist on its utter 
 dependence on our imaginative affection, and the elaborate technical 
 education given to students is wasted so long as we presume to 
 teach the principles of Art as if they were dogmas of religion, or the 
 theories of exact sciences. 
 
 We cannot learn to draw till we have learned to feel. That, 
 perhaps, cannot be taught in any school, but its absolute importance 
 should never be forgotten there. All talk and teaching of Art is 
 useless whilst it echoes the prevailing folly of the time — the insane 
 effort to discover salvation in scientific theories. Talk of a change 
 of style ! It is only a change of heart that will save us. The mere 
 revival of handicraft cannot redeem Art, any more than diplomatic 
 policy and ingenious economy can pull a nation out of its decline : 
 it only shelves the question. Nothing is really done till it is done 
 with enthusiasm ; nothing in Art unless it is spontaneous, unless 
 its tradition or style is the unmistakable symbol of feeling. If a 
 renaissance of Art is still possible for us, it must not only be in 
 spite of, and in protest against, the habit of thought which is 
 exclusively intellectual ; it must not only struggle in direct opposition 
 to machinery, which is the outward expression of that habit ; but 
 it must be besides the carrier of a message and an angel of good 
 tidings. 
 
 It is popular to deny that Art can have any mission. The 
 a-morality of Art has become a catchword and commonplace — the last 
 stronghold of a prevalent anarchy. Art nevertheless has a message 
 which it will only tell to those who, daring to trust in the sacredness 
 of sense, can see through sense to where body and soul are reconciled. 
 The traditions of Art have been lost because the traditions of 
 humanity have been neglected, and the significance of its legends
 
 14 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 despised. No tree has borne for us apples of knowledge we might 
 dare to pick ; no hero with a deathless pain steals fire from heaven 
 and beckons us back to Eden. The new art and the new criticism 
 know better than that ! Their motto is " Vanity," and they prefer 
 honest dirt to passing sunshine. But our traditions and legends are 
 not really dead and done for, but are eternal and the only facts 
 for us. They do not blink the dirt, but transform it into gold by 
 alchemy of Art. The traditional methods of Art are the steps by 
 which we finally climb to the proper representations of human 
 traditions — those fables which turn children into philosophers and 
 philosophers into children. As children and philosophers we shall 
 once again begin to feel their influence, and open our hearts to 
 their wisdom. 
 
 The following essay is a humble attempt to arrange in some sort 
 of sequence the methods I have myself found fruitful of significance 
 and development. It will not help any student of art to compete 
 successfully with designers of wall-papers, printed calicoes, or any 
 other machine-aided and incongruous compromise ; nor will it assist 
 him to prostitute his talent for manufacturers whose appreciation of 
 Art is limited to its power of advertising themselves. My object is 
 to assert that the art of designing is not based on the physical 
 analysis of Nature, but follows a classification of its own, none the 
 less exact because it is synthetic and imaginative. 
 
 Nor would I venture to put forward any scheme which was not 
 confirmed by the practice of the past, and ratified by the judgment 
 and appreciation of friends ; and the utmost I can hope for is 
 that some abler hand will prune away the dead wood from my 
 little tree, and transplant its heart into a nobler garden and more 
 fruitful soil.
 
 ^^Lo CHAPTER OME 
 
 ^* THE SPIRAL 
 
 THE waving line, or zigzag, is a form of ornament that occurs, 
 openly or in disguise, in the arts of all nations and of all 
 times. It appears to be a mode of motion, a gesture or an 
 expression in every kingdom and scale of life. The wind, the waves, 
 and the clouds take its form ; so does the very grass under our feet. 
 Science can demonstrate it. History repeats it. It is illustrated by 
 the lowest forms of matter, and the highest forms of thought : as 
 much in the poet's metre as in the worm's coil. Instinctively, or 
 with conscious intent, the tide of life rises and ebbs, advances and 
 recoils, hopes and despairs. 
 
 Nature offers us forces and facts. As we watch the waves by 
 the seashore, we cannot help noticing the regularity of their advance, 
 the ordered furrows they plough in the sand, and the " engrailed 
 ordinary" of foam and weed they leave behind. The print of our 
 footsteps repeats the same pattern, and echoes the hesitation of our 
 march along the sands of time. The position of the buds on every 
 twig we gather from the hedge follows the same law, and yields 
 abundant evidence that all life is controlled by the same force. So 
 that not alone the facts, but the force which is behind the facts, 
 constitute the materials on which Art is based. 
 
 This line, which henceforward we shall call the spiral, is the 
 simplest representation of the force that not only governs the huge 
 ordering of the elements, but weaves itself inextricably into the
 
 16 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 actual shape of the humblest and the noblest possessors of life. It 
 is, in consequence, the first and most common symbol of energy and 
 life, and therefore the clue to all true design. 
 
 If we may symbolise energy or force by a waving line or zigzag, 
 a spot will best stand for the actual fact, considered apart from its 
 vital principle. A curved line and a spot, the former the symbol 
 of force, the latter the symbol of fact! They correspond to the ideal 
 and real, to poetry and prose, to dynamic and stationary. They 
 mix, in greater or less proportion, in all art of any importance. The 
 spiral is the trunk of the tree of life, dead without its facts of leaves 
 and fruit ; and the leaves themselves cannot live if they lose the 
 trunk's support, but fall to the ground in yellow and sapless decay. 
 
 Though the spiral is itself, as we shall see, an enormous factor 
 in the course of the tradition we are going to pursue, it is often 
 apparently absent from a design, in the same way as the trunk of 
 
 Fig. i. 
 
 the tree may be completely hidden under the mass of the foliage, 
 or as the linen ground of a piece of embroidery is lost behind the 
 needlework that covers it, but it is none the less present in intention 
 and spirit, disposing and regulating all. Here, for instance (fig. i), 
 is an elementary form of ornament, but one that will sufficiently 
 illustrate my meaning. It is little more than a random row of spots, 
 or blobs, whose decorative value depends almost entirely on the 
 order in which they are placed, and the relative sizes of the intervals 
 between them. If you could change these meaningless blobs into 
 the men and horses of a Greek frieze, you would at once understand 
 the value and necessity of that order and relation. But the laws 
 that govern the disposition of the members in the noblest work of 
 Art, are the same that set these spots in their proper order. This 
 order and relation are the spiral in disguise ; so that it is necessary, 
 before we do anything else, to understand the spiral, and the nature 
 of its application.
 
 THE SPIRAL. 17 
 
 The idea of a spiral is usually associated with the involved coil 
 of a shell, or the volute of an Ionic capital ; but the term applies 
 to any aspect of the curve familiarly known to us as the screw, 
 of which a zigzag with rounded corners is, perhaps, the simplest 
 example ; and I prefer to take this curved line instead of the more 
 rigid zigzag, because the transitions of Nature are generally more 
 gradated than sudden, and because, as Ruskin has said, curves 
 are to straight lines what gradations are to colour, so that the first 
 necessity of beauty in line is curvature. There is no such thing as a 
 straight line in Nature. All really straight-line work has to be done 
 with rulers, and is therefore geometrical, unnatural and inartistic. 
 The zigzag moulding of a Norman arch owes its charm to a naive 
 rejection of all mathematical assistance, and becomes hopefully curved 
 at the angles. It is consequently more an example of an extreme form 
 of spiral than a demonstration of the aesthetic value of straight lines. 
 
 So let us at once hand over our rulers to the carpenters and 
 engineers, and remember that we are dealing with the facts of Art 
 and not with the problems of arithmetic. It may be a fine thing to 
 be able to draw a straight line, but all the books of Euclid will not 
 help us to paint with greater expression. The necessary control of 
 the pencil may be quite satisfactorily acquired by practising the hand 
 in the work it will finally have to delight in. 
 
 A mathematical pattern is always a bad pattern ; bad because 
 uninteresting. Let us rid our minds of the idea that there is any 
 abstract virtue in Art apart from expression. Expression is the all- 
 in-all of every kind of Art, patterns included. If your pattern is not 
 interesting, have nothing to do with it. You can only blunt your 
 own feelings, and add to the confusion of others, by retaining it. 
 
 There are some patterns which at first sight seem to depend on 
 straight lines, and which we should be sorry to entirely neglect. 
 Many handicrafts and trades — such as bricklaying, basket-making, 
 and chair-caning — suggest a large number of varied and interesting 
 patterns necessarily constructed on straight lines ; but the delightful 
 results that can be obtained with vari-coloured bricks depend on their 
 being treated en masse as a large kind of mosaic, when an approximate
 
 i8 
 
 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 resemblance to curved form can be obtained. In basket-making and 
 its kindred handicrafts the charm is found in the constant, though 
 slight, deviation from the straight, and in that feeling of interlacing 
 which finds its final and completest realisation in the mysteries of 
 the loom. 
 
 We will now get to know the simplest form of the spiral 
 thoroughly well, and learn how to distinguish it from the falsely 
 accurate spiral of modern manufacture. 
 
 Here (fig. 2) are two spirals. You will think at first that the 
 top one is eminently more satisfactoiy than the one below it, which 
 looks like a weak and badly drawn imitation of it. The former is 
 measured with compasses, and is sufficiently accurate to be quite 
 uninteresting, and artistically bad. Of the second one, you will notice 
 at once that it might have been drawn in a hundred different ways, 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 each one of which would have suited our purpose equally well. The 
 number of spirals that may be drawn with circle and ellipse is large, 
 but necessarily limited ; the number that can be drawn by the hand 
 alone infinite ; and the most precious ones are those which it would be 
 the most difficult to imitate with mathematical instruments. Hence, 
 to acquire a mathematical habit of hand is to acquire the least 
 desirable attainment for drawing a good spiral. 
 
 The great point of difference between these two spirals is, that 
 while in the "accurate" one the variations from the straight are 
 identically the same, in the other no two curves are alike. It is 
 important to notice this, because if the irregular one were in any way 
 meant to be based on a mathematical ideal, these inaccuracies would 
 sufficiently condemn it. But on what basis is this wayward spiral 
 of ours, which we have taken in some sort as a type, established ?
 
 THE SPIRAL. 19 
 
 What does it represent ? Of what is it a copy ? Of any particular 
 spiral anywhere ? No ; but of all spirals everywhere, none of which 
 are mathematically correct. So that the ideal or typical spiral must 
 not be a mathematical one, because mathematical accuracy is not 
 a common quality of spirals, but one which they all unite in 
 contradicting. Our typical spiral, therefore, must be inaccurate in the 
 same sense that Nature is inaccurate, with the feeling or instinct that 
 all growth or motion is varied or uncertain ; and with the confession 
 that we understand that uncertainty, and sympathise with it. 
 
 If you look again at these two spirals, you will see that there 
 is no marked tendency in either to get thick at one end, so that it 
 is impossible to determine in which direction they are intended to 
 run, if they are meant to run at all. But while in the one the 
 same thickness is retained throughout, I have tried to make the other 
 more robust in some parts than in others ; not with undue emphasis, 
 but varying, as Nature and character vary. 
 
 There is certainly more in this crooked line than we were at 
 first sight inclined to suppose. Wayward and uneven as it is, is it 
 not a fairer picture of life than a thing drilled and cramped, without 
 vitality, ambition, or hope ? Let us then throw our compasses after 
 the rulers, and learn to trust to our own instincts, and that finest 
 achievement of mechanism, the human arm. 
 
 I will recapitulate the salient characteristics of the true spiral, 
 because they necessarily relate to all that follows. They are mainly 
 negative. You are not to draw the spiral with mathematical instru- 
 ments. You are not to try and draw any two curves of it exactly 
 alike. You are not to try and make it of the same thickness 
 throughout ; but you are to make it vigorous, subtle, and living. 
 That is to say, you are not to try to make a machine of yourself; 
 and you are to try to express as much feeling in a line as you can 
 put into one. In learning to draw, you can be told what to avoid. 
 What to do, or rather how to do it, everyone must learn for himself. 
 
 I would not detain you so long over this elementary stage in 
 design, if I did not feel how necessary it is to assert that decoration, 
 or design, is based on an emotional, and not on a merely intellectual,
 
 20 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 convention. Your text-books invariably suppose that ornament is 
 natural fact, arranged on geometrical principles to suit rapid and 
 repetitive manufacture. It is nothing of the kind. If your natural 
 facts are arranged with feeling, your design will be a good one ; but 
 they cannot be arranged with feeling if they are arranged geometrically. 
 There is a noble convention, and an ignoble convention. The nature 
 of the former is that it constantly disobeys, and gives the lie to, 
 geometry ; of the latter, that it tamely obeys it. There is one rigid 
 law, however, that every spiral must obey : up and down it must go ; 
 right, left, right, left, — no marching can be done otherwise. It would 
 spoil our little pattern to break off anywhere, and to go off on strike, 
 for an inch or so, before we returned to the ranks ; but within this 
 broad, but strict rule, considerable latitude is allowed. And so long 
 as we march in step, we may march as we please, with earnest 
 conversation, or lusty light-hearted song. 
 
 The spiral I have drawn above is, in spite of its shortcomings, 
 the central type of all spirals. The tradition of Art constitutes a 
 chain of links, and each link in the chain is not only the descendant 
 and heir of all the previous links, but is the parent of all that 
 follow. Each link is also the centre of a large group of dependent 
 links, of which it is the type. Each member of each group shares 
 in the privileges of the central type, so that at every step we take 
 the advantage or knowledge we have already gained increases in 
 geometrical ratio. Here, for instance, is our original spiral, our 
 Aaron's rod, which we shall see bud in various ways. If we can 
 make it do so in ten different ways, we shall possess a fund of ten 
 different patterns ; but if we first determine ten different sorts of 
 spiral, instead of only one, our fund is increased ten times ten, and 
 we shall have a hundred different patterns at our disposal ; at the 
 next step a thousand, and so on. 
 
 That is the main idea of the development and evolution of 
 traditional ornament ; but no science, especially one based on the 
 imagination, is capable of being restrained within rigid boundaries, 
 and our law will often, consequently, be more honoured in the breach 
 than in the observance. The dogmas of tradition are flexible ones,
 
 THE SPIRAL. 21 
 
 and must be enforced as lightly and delicately as possible, or the 
 chain will either imprison us or break in our endeavours to be free; 
 and though I lay special stress on the initial value of the spiral, you 
 must not imagine I want to assert infallibility for my selection of it. 
 It is a clue to much, not necessarily to all, nor is it indeed the only 
 clue. Others will occur to us, which will be serviceable in their 
 own place and time. 
 
 Systems for teaching Art, or anything else for the matter of 
 that, are only convenient makeshifts, or temporary explanations for 
 practical purposes of phenomena that for ever remain insoluble. 
 Nature is wider than any system. She is a drama, and your petty 
 system nothing more than a ticket to view the performance. Some 
 seats are better than others, but wherever we are, we can at best 
 obtain only a partial view of the stage. At this point, however, the 
 analogy ceases, for the play-goer watches the piece from beginning to 
 end ; but what can we, who have come late and must go early, tell, 
 from the short glimpse that is allowed us, of the plot of the universe ? 
 And if we discover that the Art of the present day is worse than it 
 was two thousand years ago, what is that but a proof of the inade- 
 quacy of a system based on either scientific or historical researches ? 
 For proficiency in Art is quite irrespective of proficiency in these 
 matters, and can only be got by methods and examples that will 
 appeal to the imagination of every race and time. Our feelings, 
 instincts, affections, passions, as we may choose to call them, do not 
 alter, or only imperceptibly. They are infallible guides in matters of 
 Art, and no system will succeed that is not based on their justice, 
 and does not appeal to their verdict. 
 
 The first link in our chain of tradition, the staple on which all 
 the rest hangs, is the spiral — a line bent into more or less regular 
 and similar curves. We will conceive it as a single line drawn with 
 pencil or brush ; as thin or as thick as you please, and in any way 
 you like, but essentially a line, and not a curved space enclosed by 
 lines. It is also to stand as a type ; that is to say, we must not 
 associate it with any particular degree of curvature. It is not like 
 a circle, which ceases to be a circle if you alter the relation of any
 
 22 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 one part to another. It is, on the contrary, capable of being pulled 
 out or contracted without in the least losing its prime character as 
 spiral ; and since we can define it as the effect of more or less 
 parallel forces, acting alternately in an up-and-down direction, and 
 more or less vertically on a straight line, we shall be able to produce 
 other kinds of spirals according to the direction and strength of the 
 forces, and their distances apart (Plate I.). Thus, besides the two 
 extremes of elongation into a scroll and compression into a zigzag, 
 we have our typical spiral, which we may consider symbolical of 
 the vegetable world from its suggestion of vegetable growth ; a 
 second more suggestive of waves than vegetables ; a third which 
 has been taken by the heralds, and called " Nebulae," and is therefore 
 emblematical of sky, clouds, and air ; and a fourth, which seems at 
 first sight more of a zigzag than a spiral, for it has a sharp angle 
 in it, but you will see that its charm depends on the double curve 
 in each up-and-down stroke, so that it became a line of flames, and 
 will typify for us the touching of formal design with the sacred fire 
 of emotion, and properly complete our series, so that we are able to 
 base our four primary spirals on the four elements of earth, water, 
 air, and fire. 
 
 The second, or wave spiral, is unfortunately better known to us 
 in its common and square form. It is known then as the Greek fret 
 or key pattern, and when it is drawn sensitively becomes a noble 
 and venerable symbol ; but in the modern and architectural form in 
 which we meet it so often to-day, it means nothing at all except the 
 vulgarity of cheap building and cheaper ornament, and the lasting 
 difference between the rigid and stencilled dogmatism of an art which 
 is only intellectual, and the freedom of what is natural and instinctive. 
 
 You will see at a glance that the examples in Plate I. are but a 
 few of the many spirals that we can invent, and that a vast number 
 of patterns can be derived from them. It is not within the scope of 
 my present intention to more than suggest the possibility of simple 
 and yet pleasant designs that the different arrangement of these lines 
 alone will make ; you will find plenty of examples of their use, not only 
 in museums, but in many of the necessary handicrafts that still exist.
 
 AAAAAA 
 
 '1/2/T/Z/? 
 
 4. 
 
 WWWW 
 
 i. Earth Spirals. 2 
 
 , a ip Spirals 4- Fire Spirals. 
 
 . Water Spirals. 3- AiR spirals.
 
 24 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 Your own observation and ingenuity will now easily invent many more, 
 and if you add the charm of colour, a vast field of somewhat archaic 
 ornament is in your possession. But it is best not to lay too much 
 stress on forms of decoration that may tend to become too abstract. 
 A child's mind will delight in instances of linear repetition and 
 complexity before it is capable of appreciating the artistic use of such 
 a natural form as a leaf, and we must therefore allow him free scope 
 to exercise his ingenuity and fancy in this direction as much as he 
 likes, for which his subsequent work will be all the richer. But the 
 practice should not be made obligatory, because as a final form of 
 decorative pattern, except in very subordinate places, such a primitive 
 form of Art as mere intricacy of lines must fail to satisfy us. 
 
 The savage has little more sense of the decorative application 
 of natural objects than the child. His lines of linear ornament 
 may be charming in their way, but can hardly serve as exemplary 
 patterns to us, who, whatever our artistic short-comings may be, have 
 learnt to expect larger sympathies and wider acquaintance with 
 Nature. But as the groundwork on which most, if not all, of 
 subsequent ornament is built, the study of pure line, and simple and 
 innocent examples of its exclusively decorative treatment, is eminently 
 necessary ; and though as we become more observant of natural 
 forms, and more desirous of representing them, we run the risk of 
 losing this sense of delight in the decorative power of a mere line, 
 as also in the crude division and contrast of masses of colour merely 
 for their own sake, still it remains certain that if our art does not 
 contain this more or less abstract and arbitrary element, it has lost 
 its backbone and its main claim to the name of design. The noblest 
 Art exhibits the finest union of the abstract and the concrete. It is 
 because we must base our facts on fancy, our realisms on unreality, 
 that the study of convention becomes of vital importance. 
 
 The popular mistake consists in supposing that this element of 
 unreality can be adequately represented by geometrical figures, on 
 the ground that the more archaic and abstract forms of Art bear 
 some resemblance to a geometrical arrangement. If these primitive 
 forms of Art, however, possess any aesthetic value — and they are not
 
 THE SPIRAL. 25 
 
 supposed to be entirely deficient in that quality — it is just because 
 they refuse to obey geometrical exactness, and differ from it in the 
 same way that our spiral differs from the mathematical one. It is 
 the unreal, the conventional basis of Art, which is the imaginative 
 and valuable part of it. What sort of a national and traditional 
 design, do you think, could possibly spring from the laws of arithmetic, 
 and steam-engines? Children and nations in progressive stages of 
 civilisation delight in a form of Art that is little more than the 
 intricacies of pure lines, but the pleasure it gives has nothing in 
 common with figures or logic. The early Art of the Scandinavians 
 affords an instance of this, for in spite of good examples of quite 
 matured and naturalistic Art, in the coins of the Roman Empire, 
 which were in their possession, they preferred to alter the sedate 
 portraits and effigies of classical civilisation into coils of twisted 
 dragon and rope ; and a somewhat similar, though less marked change, 
 took place over the whole of Europe during its dark ages, and is 
 proof, not of the absence of imaginative power, but of its presence, 
 and intensely significant of the fact that we must judge all Art 
 primarily by the virility of the imagination it displays, and not by 
 its knowledge of fact. In the Scandinavian imagination twisted 
 dragons and involved ropes were more potent facts than portraits of 
 Consuls and Emperors. And therefore, as completely illustrating 
 their state of mind, the decoration on Scandinavian buckles and 
 fibulae, and the intricacies of Irish illumination, are perfect Art, but 
 by no means, except in a subordinate position, perfect for us. 
 Interesting, and characteristic of strong feeling as they are, we must 
 look askance on the examples of them in our possession. They 
 represent, as it were, the North Pole of Art, an excess of abstraction 
 with a minimum of fact. We must be careful to avoid the frost of 
 its fascination. It has no direct outlet, or further evolution. It is, 
 after all, a cul de sac, a catacomb, which it is exciting to enter and 
 instructive to trace, but as it has no especial exit, we must return 
 to the entrance if we wish to continue our road.
 
 WHEN Ariadne gave Theseus a clue to escape the confusion 
 of the Cretan labyrinth, the direction it took exactly 
 reproduced the windings of the maze and solved the deadly 
 riddle of its intricacy. The myth had intense significance for the 
 Greek, and wide influence on his art ; and with or without a 
 contemporaneous analogy in literature, the same feelings that this 
 story tells still inspire the artist who follows his craft for the 
 expression of his deeper thoughts and more mysterious instincts. But 
 not to go too deep for our reasons, the mere delight in tracing and 
 twisting ropes and ribbons, the manufacture of nets and snares, the 
 rigging of ships, the mechanism of the loom, the coiling and arrange- 
 ment of the hair, the following of unknown paths and winding ways, 
 have all a symbolical interest for us, and always find a ready echo in 
 an instinctive form of decoration. 
 
 The spiral, as we discussed it in the last chapter, is sternly 
 simple for the sake of its subsequent developments, but there is 
 another form of it which is released from such responsibility, and 
 delights in many forms of complexity. In this form it is useful and 
 invigorating so long as it expresses that delight, not in a puppy-like 
 way for the sake of boisterous confusion, but for a human and orderly 
 pride in tracing a difficulty to its source, or in carrying an arduous 
 enterprise to its end. 
 
 The principle on which this class of pattern is based is the 
 
 26
 
 FIRST PATTERNS. 27 
 
 involution of one or more lines in a more or less elaborate or 
 puzzling fashion, but a fashion that shows evidence of intention 
 and purpose, or, in other words, of design. If we want to make a 
 labyrinth we must never lose sight of the clue, or else our design 
 and ourselves may be lost. The condition of excellence in this class 
 of decoration, as indeed of excellence in all Art, is to produce the 
 greatest result, or impression, with the least evidence of laborious 
 effort. Plate II. sufficiently illustrates the character of this class of 
 ornament. If you enjoy tracing the involution of these examples, you 
 will be able to make other labyrinths of the same kind, and get 
 pleasantly involved and extricated. But do not attempt to invent 
 them unless you thoroughly enjoy the exercise. Your enjoyment of 
 them is essential to their success. Conscientiousness is fatal to Art 
 if it is allowed to usurp the place of irresponsible spontaneity. 
 
 When there is an evident continuity of line we may call these 
 spirals rope spirals. There are chain spirals too. These consist of 
 distinct but connected links, and do not, as a form of flat decoration, 
 possess an equal charm, though in the special arts of the smith, mason, 
 and wood-carver their possible variations attain tremendous importance. 
 As a final form of decorative pattern a chain spiral has distinct limits 
 of interest for us. Much later on in the unfolding of our tradition 
 we shall find it immensely serviceable ; its links will then become 
 the ordered and united frames of inserted symbols instead of the fetters 
 which at present they suggest. 
 
 These rope and chain patterns constitute a group about our first 
 spiral. Their charm springs, as we have seen, from their success in 
 realising a particular set of feelings. But the state of mind they 
 represent is a puzzled and introspective one. There is little evidence 
 of that intimate sympathy with the shapes of actual things and 
 animals which has become rightly associated in our minds with 
 Art of any high excellence. By themselves they cannot long satisfy 
 us as final forms of decoration. But without their help little of 
 the human and vigorous ornament would be possible. With this in 
 our minds we can return to the direct chain of tradition, and the 
 development of our first spiral.
 
 28 ARBOR VIT/E. 
 
 While this is still little more than a waving line representative 
 merely of a sense of passionate feeling or sensitive arrangement, let 
 us connect it with that other primitive factor of Art in our possession, 
 the spot or blot ; and here (fig. 3) is, you see, their first and evident 
 connection. Much of our later work is only the tracing of the 
 variation, and the possible development, of this simple and innocent 
 theme. 
 
 In the example before us, if we take it as a type, we can vary 
 the curve and thickness of the spiral, as well as the size and shape 
 of the spots. But if the line of life is strong in ourselves, we cannot 
 proceed far without feeling how unsatisfactory it is to deal with 
 abstractions only, and that so long as the spiral is only a line, though 
 a thick one, and the spot only a blot, however black, their reference 
 to the homely body and soul of nature is vague and incomplete. 
 And as soon as the spiral becomes too broad, and the spots too large 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 to be manageably represented by one stroke or touch, of however 
 broad and sensitive a tool, it will become necessary to enforce their 
 now apparent solidity with an outline. 
 
 This is a more important change than at first sight appears. It 
 involves the conception of a superficies, of two dimensions instead 
 of only one. For so long as a system of decoration is based on 
 only lines and dots, it is necessarily savage and metaphysical ; but 
 as soon as a line is drawn with the intention of enclosing a space — 
 as soon, in fact, as it is an outline — it becomes a natural instead of 
 an artificial symbol, and opens the whole of Nature to the use of Art. 
 If we now proceed to cautiously trace this change, we shall first 
 see the spiral itself thickening at regular intervals into excrescences 
 of conscious shape, though at present obtaining them by mere 
 thickness of single lines, and giving us a new series of ornamental 
 borders (Plate III.) of varying value and interest. And in the same
 
 II. 
 
 Rope and Chain Spirals.
 
 30 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 way we shall see the spot next become a self-conscious mass, or 
 solid space, the potential symbol of anything in heaven above or in 
 the earth and water below. Crude symbol enough, no doubt, at 
 first, while we are still children, but growing in power and significance, 
 as we grow ourselves in observation and intelligence. 
 
 Here, indeed, begins what is generally understood by the Art of 
 drawing : the Art, namely, of representing things, degraded now 
 into the business of copying them. Even the true representation of 
 a thing is not in itself worthy of the name of Art till we have 
 learned to subordinate it to some rhythmical intention, or scheme 
 of design, of which the spiral is the simplest type. No doubt the 
 tendency at the present time is to cultivate this power of drawing 
 things, that is to say, of imitating their appearance, too exclusively, 
 and without sufficient reference to that instinct of rhythmical relation 
 which alone can make them decorative and useful. But so long as 
 that necessary subordination is insisted on, every approximation to 
 greater natural truth of external outline is an advantage, and should 
 be cultivated. So that at this stage in our tradition a vast field of 
 pattern is opened to us, by drawing lines of all sorts of things in 
 simple sequence, or by placing them sensitively in the intervals of a 
 spiral. But the objects thus placed must necessarily, at present, be 
 simple ones. Nothing can be more beautiful than the frank innocence 
 of a line of animals, if a Greek has drawn them ; but we must not 
 forget that it is one thing to draw animals with fair accuracy, and 
 quite another to arrange and draw a line of them as harmoniously as 
 a Greek could. Any one of average talent may learn to do the former ; 
 but it wants a Greek training to manage the latter comfortably. 
 
 Without anticipating such a proficiency, we ought to notice here 
 how the consciousness of this new power of representing things 
 instead of thoughts — or, rather, spaces instead of lines — first expresses 
 itself, and the importance and the legitimacy of the patterns and 
 borders in which it exercises its new-found gifts. The feeling that 
 inspires these patterns is still innocent of resemblance to forms of 
 known things, but is evidently groping after them, often with a naive 
 simplicity that is almost amusing. For instance, the last pattern but
 
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 9 
 
 (^(^(^^(^^<^^?@^(^?^? 
 
 ####$##### 
 
 III. 
 
 Independent Developments of the Spiral and the Spot.
 
 32 ARBOR V17JE. 
 
 one on Plate III. is taken from an early Greek vase, and represents 
 more or less vaguely in the artist's mind who did it a phalanx of 
 Greek warriors. He had no particular desire or intention of copying 
 the soldiers ; all he felt was that they and his pattern had somehow 
 or other to obey the same marching orders if they wished to satisfy 
 the requirements of their position. In many cases it is difficult to say 
 whether these patterns are spirals derived from the undulatory line, 
 or friezes derived from the original row of spots, or from a natural 
 sliding of one into the other ; nor is it necessary to decide such a 
 minor point of tradition when their decorative character is so obvious. 
 The Greek artist had a supreme sense of order and relation, and 
 therefore we find his art a development of the frieze more than the 
 spiral. The spiral in a Greek frieze may be said to be latent. But 
 the Greek artist can draw the spiral by itself as well, and draw it 
 perfectly, so perfectly that it is almost mechanical, and certainly 
 uninteresting. That is only too often the characteristic of subordinate 
 Greek decoration. It is too perfect. It lacks the naive uncouthness 
 of the Christian spiral. The Christian inherited the spiral from the 
 Greek, but he conceived it in an entirely different way. A new 
 aspiration had entered the world, and it became impossible to regard 
 anything from a purely abstract and impersonal point of view. The 
 spiral itself was treated as a thing of life, and entered integrally into 
 the whole conception of Art. This welding of the abstract with the 
 concrete, of higher with lower life, of imaginative order with material 
 fact, is the basis of Christian Art, and forms its necessary tradition. 
 It is therefore as imprudent to study individual forms at the sacrifice 
 of their conventional arrangement, as it is to lose ourselves exclusively 
 in the labyrinths of Scandinavian imagination. A really progressive 
 tradition maintains the just balance between both points of view. 
 Great powers and a keen sense of rhythm tempted the Greek artist 
 to neglect the visible sign of conventional treatment. He despised 
 the spiral, and finally fell because of his neglect. He got it into 
 his head that painting and sculpture were fine arts to be pursued 
 for their own sake. We have made the same disastrous mistake. 
 For the aim of Art is to make a useful thing beautiful as well as
 
 FIRST PATTERNS. 33 
 
 useful ; and the use of tradition is to teach us the best way of doing 
 it. And here (Plate IV.) are some examples to illustrate what I have 
 been saying. The first is a specimen of the purely abstract Greek 
 spiral, which, whatever its origin, cannot now be said to resemble 
 any natural foliage whatever. The second and third are Greek friezes 
 of high quality. In the second only a few noughts and crosses 
 remain of the spiral, which the artist is already learning to despise. 
 The third is entirely naturalistic. The fourth is late Gothic, but 
 shows well enough for our purpose the union of the two motives, 
 though the Christian artist has neither the facility nor the education 
 of the Greek. 
 
 You remember what I said in the last chapter, that a pattern 
 must be interesting, and you probably thought it at the time a 
 somewhat unnecessary truism ; but can you point to many examples 
 of everyday art of modern manufacture that you treasure on account 
 of the imaginative delight their patterns give you ? And yet the most 
 effective decoration is generally the simplest, as the articles it decorates 
 should be the least expensive. What manufacturers delude you into 
 paying for is elaboration, but you must never mistake this for Art. 
 The praise of elaboration is merely an excuse for creating a fictitious 
 value in things where the imagination is conspicuously absent. The 
 greatest works of art are remarkable for careless ease and rapid 
 simplicity. All evidence of trouble is painful. The timid and laborious 
 insipidity of modern decoration has so atrophied our instinct for 
 really pretty things that many of us who ought to know better are 
 apt to be startled into disapprobation of strong idiosyncrasy, and 
 prefer to shelter ourselves behind orthodox commonplace rather 
 than run any risk of being considered guilty of bad taste. This is 
 unpatriotic, because it is our duty, as far as we can, to encourage 
 original work, and to try to understand it, even if it strikes us as 
 uncommon ; for genius is after all only the expression of strong 
 individuality. 
 
 There is a quality which the popular idea of tradition never 
 credits it with, to which we must nevertheless call attention here, 
 because it is a very salient one. This is the quality of unexpectedness. 
 
 3
 
 34 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 People think that tradition is a collection of cut and dried rules, 
 instead of a storehouse for every recognised method of giving delight. 
 We are all of us essentially children, to be kept out of mischief by 
 new toys. Art is the great minister to the pleasures of innocence, 
 and if it forgets to please, if its traditions have lost the faculty of 
 originality, or the power of constantly giving us new impressions, 
 it can no longer be the living, efficient influence in our lives that it 
 ought to be, but a tool in the hands of interested persons, a bogey 
 for the priest and a fetish for the theorist. There are few dangers 
 more insidious than that of treating Art from too serious a point of 
 view, so that I should like to give you a few examples, even at this 
 early stage, of what I have called unexpectedness. To lead the mind 
 to expect an ordinary sequence — a natural climax, to interrupt the 
 anticipated development, and to continue with a motive which has no 
 apparent connection with the plot, to maintain the integrity of the 
 whole nevertheless, is a manoeuvre that has undeniable claims on 
 popularity, and is what every real artist wishes to do sometimes. 
 
 In our own art of decoration perhaps the simplest method of 
 producing such an effect is to treat an outline which is naturally 
 associated in our minds with one inevitable set of ideas, not as the 
 vehicle of those ideas at all, but of others, which at first sight seem 
 to have no connection with them. There are, for instance, certain 
 shapes which have become traditionally capable of being used inde- 
 pendently of the facts they were originally intended to represent. 
 Such traditional shapes occur in the cross, the shield, and the vase. 
 You may take certain traditional shapes of these symbols and use 
 them as backgrounds to draw things on which at first sight present 
 no features in common with enjoyment, defence, or self-sacrifice. The 
 ultimate value of your use of them, however, depends on the subtlety 
 of their implied connection. 
 
 In a subsequent chapter we will treat more systematically of some 
 of the most important of these traditional shapes. But there is one 
 manner of achieving the quality of unexpectedness which occurs at 
 this early stage in the traditions of Art, and is one which I am glad 
 to illustrate here, because it will help us to understand a little more
 
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 IV. 
 
 Greek and Gothic Tradition.
 
 36 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 clearly the real meaning of conventionalism in Art, and how it involves 
 the use of a natural, spontaneous or poetic symbolism of far wider 
 extent and greater influence than the rigid and ecclesiastical one. 
 For instance, in rightly conventional Art the outline or picture of a 
 dog is not intended to represent either your terrier or my greyhound, 
 but to stand for the qualities that make both our pets faithful and 
 gluttonous. The great artist or seer never loses sight of this natural 
 symbolism. He is therefore primarily an outliner and colourist, and 
 does not particularly trouble himself about little tricks of tones and 
 shadows and textures, which merely emphasise the peculiarities of 
 individuals and the accidents of transitory effects. In the same 
 way the spiral is at heart only a symbol of feeling, though it has 
 become by now associated, however vaguely, with the idea of a 
 distinct thing, and it will be an instance of this quality of unexpected- 
 ness to treat it in a way that is really quite consistent with the 
 character we have given it. Thus, by indefinitely increasing its 
 width without altering its direction, we shall be able to draw things 
 inside the spiral, whose meaning must be considerably influenced by 
 their extraordinary position (Plate V.). In fact, there is sure to be 
 here some connecting feeling in the artist's mind between the spiral 
 and the things he draws inside it, which will enhance the spectators' 
 pleasure, but which it is not necessary he should understand. That 
 connection may at times appear vague — it can hardly, perhaps, be put 
 into words ; but when it occurs in a happily spontaneous manner, it 
 gives us a sensation or an atmosphere which no rigid symbol can by 
 itself ever effect. 
 
 There is this difference between the old-fashioned or rigid 
 symbolism, and the new or poetic : the former, by time-honoured 
 association with certain feelings or ideas, may have become a useful 
 medium for putting us en rapport with those feelings or ideas, but 
 unless we were accustomed to such association would probably no 
 more affect us than the gnostic symbols affect the person of average 
 common sense. Poetic symbolism, on the other hand, is based on 
 analogies between different things which our senses — those inlets into 
 eternity, as Blake calls them — our senses of sound, sight, touch, taste,
 
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 38 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 and smell can alone recognise. Consequently, while the old symbols 
 are limited in number and arbitrary in nature, and must naturally 
 tend to lose all value except a purely dogmatic one, the new symbols 
 are infinite and everlasting, because they are based on an imaginative 
 insight which has always been, and will always be, instinctive in 
 every one who possesses it. There are, of course, some symbols, 
 such as the Heart and the Cross, which will probably endure as 
 fixed symbols ; but even in instances of this sort, unless they are 
 represented in a more suggestive manner than they are usually met 
 with, their effect will be more to obscure than to open our suscepti- 
 bilities to the emotions they are supposed to represent (fig. 4). 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 We have seen how Christian Art differs from Greek Art. By 
 Christian Art I do not at all mean ecclesiastical or religious art, 
 but art influenced by that feeling of imaginative affection which is 
 associated with the best periods of our era. In this sense I prefer 
 to call that feeling, when it is expressed in Art, Christian and not 
 Gothic, because the qualities and characteristics of what is called 
 Gothic art have been so thoroughly analysed that its spontaneous 
 revival is now almost impossible; but few, I think, will maintain 
 that the imaginative resources of Christianity have been entirely 
 exhausted by the art of the middle ages, or even by the enlightened 
 revelations of our own times. The principles of modern art, indeed,
 
 FIRST PATTERNS. 39 
 
 whether academic or impressionistic, appear but slightly connected 
 with what we have called Christian tradition ; they appeal to little 
 beyond an objective or realistic standard. If the bones and muscles 
 are all in their right places, and the tone of the twilight is exact, 
 you ought to be satisfied, they think. But in the tradition of 
 Christian art the imaginative includes the materialistic, and is not 
 included by it, as the moderns would like us to suppose. No amount 
 of anatomy, classical lore, or photography — however much you put 
 the camera out of focus — can for a moment take the place of that 
 imagination which is the all-in-all of Art. And do not by a mock 
 modesty and subservience to Nature belie the powers of your own 
 soul. There is no poetry in Nature ; poetry only exists in the 
 human mind that comprehends Nature, and if our imagination is 
 greater than Nature, should we not obey it? Before we leave this 
 part of our subject, let us review the three kinds of Art we have 
 been engaged in considering. The Greek separates the unreal from 
 the real, the spiral from the filling of its intervals. The former 
 becomes in his hands graceful, mechanical, and uninteresting ; the 
 latter, so long as his decorative instinct is vivid, is unequalled in its 
 own way in any time or art, and then falls into a mania of muscles 
 and a delirium of drapery. Secondly, the Christian revives the 
 spiral, as the symbol of his controlling imagination, and welds it into 
 his science or knowledge of material facts. This is the only possible 
 condition of a permanent tradition of Art. Thirdly, the modern or 
 scientific school denies the pre-eminence of the decorative or imaginative 
 faculty, and supposes that Art means picture-painting. Of course it 
 is more or less arbitrary to draw any sharp distinctions between 
 these three schools. A great many pictures make fine decoration ; 
 a great deal of decoration is as innocent of feeling as a photograph. 
 The Greek is always right so long as he goes along Christian lines ; 
 that is to say, so long as his art is influenced by genuine feeling. 
 We should recognise his real power better if a straddling gladiator, a 
 weak-kneed Apollo, or an indecent Venus were not always in the way. 
 Portraiture, which is an excellent and honourable accomplishment, 
 invariably accompanies the final stages of a national art. It is the
 
 4 o ARBOR VIT.E. 
 
 furthest removed from imaginative ideals, while the effort of this book 
 is to establish the foundation, and not to put the coping-stone on 
 tradition. It is wrong to draw any distinction between Art and 
 Decoration. Decoration is Art. Great periods of art are those which 
 can boast of great decorators ; poor periods have poor decorators. 
 The true history of Art follows the craftsman in his workshop, and 
 shuns the fashionable studio. 
 
 We must now leave the spiral for a little time, and follow an 
 independent and subordinate source of ornament. This is the charm 
 derived from a spotted or broken surface as opposed to a flat or 
 smooth one. Putting aside the effect obtained by colour, any surface 
 may be pleasantly broken by covering it, at more or less regular 
 intervals, with some sort of spot or line. The pleasure obtained by 
 this means is a very instinctive one, and a very natural one, if we 
 are obliged to find a natural reason for everything we enjoy. 
 
 A starlit sky is a miracle of amazement still. A lawn sprinkled 
 with crocuses, a copse starred with anemones, are homely instances 
 of Nature decorated in this way. The charm of flowers and animals 
 largely consists in the way in which they are spotted, flecked, or barred. 
 Night alternates with day, winter with summer. The sky and the 
 land are alike cross-hatched, — our country is a network of fields. 
 Villages and hamlets sprinkle the spaces between the blots of larger 
 towns. Each season as it comes blazons its coat with emblematic 
 motley : the spring with blossom, the summer with rosebuds, the 
 autumn with leaves of gold, the winter with flakes of snow. 
 
 I will class the various ways in which we recognise these 
 phenomena and express our appreciation of them in Art under the 
 name of Semd, because on the whole the instances of spotted or 
 flecked things are more frequent and more interesting than striped 
 and barred ones. Seme", or as some call it, Fleure", may be considered 
 as the extension of a line of spots to cover any given space. A space 
 is well semS when it is delightfully dotted with a limited number of 
 beautiful objects. You cannot anyhow make a good semd out of 
 skulls and scarecrows, and twenty rosebuds are generally more 
 effective than ten thousand.
 
 * it- # * 
 
 ****** 
 
 * 
 
 VI. 
 
 Seme.
 
 42 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 Next time the snow is falling look at it through one of your 
 window-panes ; the flakes only, against the leaden sky. Then take 
 a piece of paper, and try and cover it with spots of any shape and 
 size, at about the same distance from each other and as evenly 
 as the snow-flakes. You must take care to avoid any mathematical 
 arrangement, or your spots will run into lines and lozenges, and 
 distress you like most wall-papers do. If you can cover your ground 
 so satisfactorily that it would be difficult to take away a single spot 
 without missing it, you will have made great progress in one of the 
 most charming methods of decoration. 
 
 Let us suppose such a delicately spotted ground ; only instead 
 of spots or snow-flakes let us imagine a field semd properly with seeds 
 (Plate VI.). Now, if you are a real magician, and can wield your 
 pencil like a fairy's wand, you will be able to quicken this field of 
 seeds into one of verdant leaves, or anon, into a garden of flowers. 
 
 If you want to see beautiful examples of meadows semd with 
 flowers, go to South Kensington Museum and look at the Flemish 
 tapestries there. They were woven at a time which may well be called 
 civilised (if civilisation means a practical grip of what tends to make 
 life full of beautiful interest), and illustrate, in an innocently pagan 
 fashion, the consolations of Fame, and its triumph over Death, against 
 which even "chastity" has proved unavailing. This it does by a 
 series of processions embellished by the whole quaint profusion of 
 Mediaeval tradition. Into their merits as pictures we need not enter, 
 but the fields through which these pageants pass must claim our 
 utmost admiration. Here, unmoved by the temporary victory of 
 any human ideal, springs every beautiful flower; and the Flemish 
 master himself supplies the only possible commentary to his text, 
 when he crowds the meadows with artfullest botany, and calls the 
 careless grass to laugh at Fame from under the very chariot wheels 
 of death. You may let your seeds grow into what you will, and so 
 long as you keep them innocently small the effect will be charming. 
 But if you have sown dragons' teeth, you may find considerable 
 difficulty in marshalling your harvest. We shall have much more 
 to say on this topic in a later chapter. The subject is a fascinating
 
 FIRST PATTERNS. 43 
 
 one, and has tempted me to anticipate. But we must not allow the 
 strong stream of tradition to carry us out of our depth. It is enough 
 now to realise that the greatest Art is often no more than the noble 
 expansion of a simple theme. The first use of Semd, the important one 
 to us at present, is to show how to change a fiat and uninteresting 
 surface into a broken and interesting one, and to turn the empty 
 ghosts of our newly discovered outlines into living and quaint-coated 
 creatures. For with the outline of a thing before us, instead of as it 
 were its silhouette in solid black, we shall naturally feel tempted to 
 aim at a greater realisation of the thing it contains. And this temptation 
 we must at present resist, and learn to cover our spaces in this new 
 method we have learnt, as conventionally and evenly as possible, with 
 only a clue in the selection of the pattern to the real thing it is a 
 symbol of. For instance, the conventionalised outline of a bird, full 
 of airy eyes, is an unmistakable and useful symbol of all spotted 
 birds, and is surely better Art than the bad copy of a stuffed starling, 
 over which we may have wasted many weary hours. Decorative Art 
 classifies Nature in a way of her own ; she will not let us see the full 
 force of the fiery stripes on the tiger's flank, and forget the freaked jet 
 on the pansy's cheek. Her classifications may appear capricious, but 
 if she makes the lion lie down with the lamb, we may depend on 
 it that there is a great truth in the partnership. 
 
 The tints of heraldry are represented by shading a white shield 
 in different ways. Or is a seme" of spots ; sable, a diaper of crossed 
 lines ; and though no compromise can give the charm of colour, the 
 constant gradation which is one of its qualities can be approximately 
 rendered in this way. But we must never confuse colour with design. 
 The utmost that colour can do is to enhance the feeling that the 
 design creates. The art of designing, which is our immediate business, 
 can only deal with lines and masses, and the feelings which lines and 
 masses, and their different arrangements, will suggest.
 
 d*-> 
 
 CHAPTER- THREE ■ 
 
 OIS-L E AVE^- AND THEIR 
 CLASSIFICATION 
 
 IN this chapter we shall continue to follow the further development 
 of the spiral. We left it in potential infancy, already swelling 
 
 like spring twigs at ruddy joints, ready to burst into verdant 
 bud. We will let it do so, only noticing that for the present the 
 spiral necessarily adopts a vegetable and earthy character in preference 
 to one suggestive of sea or sky. This is not to be wondered 
 at when we consider the greater variety and permanence of the 
 experience we gather from our life on the soil, and the greater 
 acquaintance and friendship with things which, like ourselves, claim 
 a common and final home in the dust. To us the phenomena of 
 sea and sky, if occasionally more stupendous, are less fixed and 
 reliable than those of the land, and are consequently more apt to 
 colour certain aspects of our Art than to direct its main tendency. 
 The innocent but keenly marked zigzag of the young shoots of the 
 thorn is happily of more frequent occurrence than the crooked fork 
 of the lightning or the jagged edge of an angry wave. But if the 
 spiral now gravely assumes the role of a tree or plant, it only does so 
 to adopt what laws of vegetable growth will suit its more ubiquitous 
 character, and blandly ignores what will not. 
 
 The first step of any importance that it takes is due to an equal 
 development of the spiral line and of its interval spot, the two factors 
 of the first spiral as illustrated in fig. 3. Let us take each of these 
 separately. We have already seen the spiral showing a tendency to 
 
 44
 
 ON LEAVES AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 45 
 
 swell at distinct points in its course (Plate III.). Its next action 
 would evidently be to divide at those places and throw off separate 
 shoots or subordinate spirals (fig. 5). A number of distinct patterns 
 can be obtained in this way, but like the rope and the chain spirals 
 they would soon show a tendency to become too abstract and too 
 mechanical. We can appreciate them, but are probably too sophisti- 
 cated to reproduce them ourselves. In undoubted Celtic hands they 
 might be revived, but it seems to me questionable whether it is 
 advisable to restore what would inevitably degenerate into an affected 
 copy of past tradition, or possible to do so now, when the most 
 disastrous instances of all sorts of realistic work find their way (in 
 the shape of advertisements) into the remotest parts of the country, 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 and poison the native imagination there. The carved tombstones of 
 the western Highlands are beautiful and fascinating ; they display 
 original genius of high quality, but it is original because it is 
 untainted by the influence or example of foreign art, and springs 
 direct from the people's own passionate heart. To revive it, we 
 should first have to revive the religion or sentiment that gave it 
 birth, and then build secluded monasteries for its practice. 
 
 And now we will turn to the independent action of the interval 
 filling or spot. The first organic form that a spot or blot will 
 naturally take is a leaf; the most common, the most varied, and yet 
 the most simple of all forms. One adroit stroke of a good paint- 
 brush will often produce the tolerable image of a leaf; it will, at 
 any rate, so often suggest such a shape that a second stroke, to
 
 46 
 
 ARBOR VVSJE. 
 
 more completely round its outline, with a final touch for the stalk, 
 will confirm the likeness. Such a shape, at any rate, we will accept 
 for the present as our type of leaf (fig. 6), and hasten to connect it 
 with the simplest form of our sprouting spiral, and so get at once 
 the first fully formed and completely satisfactory idea of a design, 
 and one that contains the elements of reality and imagination, of 
 
 Fig. 6. 
 
 line and spot in duly balanced proportion (fig. 7). This is a most 
 invaluable link in our chain of tradition, and the centre of a large 
 group of examples. 
 
 Perhaps you thought the creation of our leaf trivial and childish. 
 Childlike I hope it is. No traditional art can grow otherwise than 
 in childlike fashion. Perhaps you think it would be more scientific 
 to select from Nature what looks like a typical leaf and copy that 
 
 Fig. 7. 
 
 for our purpose ; but that would contradict all our premises, if it 
 did not simply beg the whole question. No natural fact becomes a 
 type till we find its shape coincides with a previous idea in our own 
 minds, or with some contour that the hand prefers instinctively to 
 follow. In either case Nature does but ratify our choice. The typical 
 leaf of one craft, however, is not necessarily the typical leaf of another ; 
 but in the basal art of designing, the greatest possible latitude is
 
 ON LEAVES AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION. 47 
 
 given to the imagination, because its implements, pencil or brush, 
 are the easiest to control. For this reason, designing holds the same 
 relation to the various handicrafts that chemistry does to the natural 
 sciences. It is the grammar of the Arts, and gives the broad laws 
 or traditions which the others may vary but cannot alter. And this, 
 if you will follow the matter home, is the only possible way of 
 explaining how artistic types are selected. There is always an 
 instinctive preference to be obeyed. The mind recognises and 
 emphasises what the hand is most inclined to do. The hand 
 performs most easily, most instinctively, what is most often in the 
 imagination. The whole system of traditional draughtsmanship is 
 founded on this principle, and invites investigation ; but at present 
 we must treat more with how things can be arranged, than with 
 how they are to be drawn. 
 
 With the deliberate acceptance of a leaf as the occupant of the 
 spiral interval, I need not point out what an important point we 
 have reached. For as soon as we touch nature with its immense 
 fund of examples, the desire to elaborate and add to our repertory 
 will prove irresistible, and some sort of classification useful if not 
 necessary. A primer of scientific botany will not supply us with 
 exactly the sort of classification we want. Science as yet has little 
 respect for the sensuous and homely qualities of the things it attempts 
 to describe. Their influence on the imagination, however, is supreme, 
 and must be fully recognised in any system we adopt to further the 
 cause of Art, for the object of Art is to appeal to the imagination. 
 In such a system it is the most familiar things which will become 
 the most important. The lark shall become our eagle, the daisy our 
 lotus. Symbols cannot affect people to whom they are not native, 
 nor any system or science interest us which does not ultimately 
 rest on facts which we can all verify for ourselves. This will 
 help us to understand why leaves take such a prominent position 
 in every ornamental handicraft that is dependent on design. They 
 commend themselves to us for their variety as well as their 
 quantity. Their shapes glide smoothly into the interstices of out- 
 lines of feeling, and are always close at hand ready to clothe our
 
 48 ARBOR VITM. 
 
 thoughts and hide the nakedness of our invention with primitive 
 aprons of Art. 
 
 There is another great reason why leaves are so suitable for 
 design. The earliest form of Art shows a perception of only one 
 dimension — that of length, and expresses itself in little more than 
 mere lines. The next step, as we saw, rose to the appreciation of a 
 superficies, and we began to have glimmerings of breadth as well as 
 length. Very few people can express, or care to express, more than 
 these ; and though nothing in Nature has less than three, the third 
 dimension is, perhaps, less marked in leaves than in any other class 
 of things. Their charm, in fact, lies in their thinness ; a thick leaf 
 would be intolerable. They are in consequence peculiarly well adapted 
 to be the first things chosen by an art which is limited to the same 
 conditions. Sculpture deals properly with the three dimensions ; 
 design with but two. Chiaroscuro, or light and shade, is only a 
 trick to make a flat thing look round ; excessive admiration of it 
 has invariably ruined Art, because it is an intellectual and not an 
 imaginative accomplishment. So, then, the conditions of decorative or 
 non-realistic art allow greater realisation to leaves than to anything 
 else. Flowers, for instance, cannot be so easily drawn, because they 
 present greater difficulties than even more solid objects. Almost 
 anything can be represented more easily than a flower, which besides 
 having an extremely difficult outline and delicacy of texture and 
 colour, is almost always based on the scheme of a bell or funnel ; 
 so that while a sufficiently distinctive idea of a man, or a horse, or 
 a bird — things of a comparatively high organisation — can be given 
 by an absolute outline of them, or, by what demonstrates the case 
 more readily still, by silhouettes, the characteristic hollowness of so 
 many flowers is entirely lost by the same process. In fact the flowers 
 which are most easily represented are those that display this feature 
 least : flowers with quaint shapes, like the dielytra, snapdragon, and 
 sweet pea, or those whose open faces hide no secrets, like the daisy, 
 violet, and wild rose. No disparagement to flowers is here intended, 
 no preference for the leaf " whose lusty greene may not appraised 
 be " ; on the contrary, I can only think of flowers as individuals of
 
 ON LEAVES AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION. 49 
 
 too strong a personality to be adequately expressed by our spiral in 
 its present form, while the greater simplicity of leaves peculiarly fits 
 them for it. 
 
 Plate VII. illustrates a classification of leaves based on that form 
 of leaf in fig. 6 which gave us the central type of all leaves. It is 
 more or less in the shape of a heart, capable of being lengthened into 
 a shaft or pulled out laterally into a bow. These are extreme shapes, 
 between which all the leaves of the first class will naturally fall ; 
 and as we shall find it very convenient in practice and in teaching 
 to call these types of leaves by their Christian names, we will 
 christen this cordial one a poplar leaf. First in the series, however, 
 we must place a leaf of the laurel tribe, on account of its classical 
 and undying fame. Next, an apple leaf, which in curvature comes 
 half way between the laurel and poplar. Thirdly, an oak leaf, for the 
 sake of its undulating outline. The elm comes next in increase of 
 curvature and for an example of serrated edge. Then the poplar, 
 the heart of the whole series, which is appropriately represented 
 by the heraldic form of that organ. It is very difficult to select a 
 typically English plant to give its name to the sixth and last member 
 of our first division ; we want one that will include the singularly 
 beautiful shape of the horned leaf that occurs so effectively in the 
 Christian-Egyptian tapestries, as well as that scientifically known as 
 sagittate, of which the sorrel leaf is a good instance. Perhaps the 
 best example we can find is the leaf of the convolvulus or bindweed, 
 which, weed as it is, might claim the honour of the position if it 
 were only for the vivid and persistent way in which its growth recalls 
 the serpentine character of the spiral. 
 
 The leaves of this first division have only one main rib, a central 
 one. They are all contained in a simple and large outline, and are 
 therefore the easiest to draw, as well as the most familiar of leaves. 
 The serrations which finish the edges of the elm, and the undulations 
 of the oak do not really interfere with the main direction of their 
 simple contours ; so a great distinction must be drawn between such 
 subordinate irregularities of outline, and those which are dependent 
 on the constructive anatomy of the leaf itself. 
 
 4
 
 5 o ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 Our second division consists of leaves whose stalk divides into 
 three ribs, a central one, with a subordinate one on each side, or of 
 leaves that are divided into three distinct parts or leaflets. The 
 strawberry is a fair type of those that are composed of three distinct 
 leaflets ; but I cannot think of a typical example to stand for those 
 that are not so completely divided. It is not a favourite form among 
 the better known leaves : perhaps the youngest leaves of the thorn, 
 those that grow at the tips of its new shoots, fulfil pretty well the 
 desired conditions ; so we will call this decoratively useful leaf a 
 thorn, though its older leaves are so serrated that they lose the 
 characteristics of the class. 
 
 The third division consists of leaves of five ribs, or five parts. 
 The ivy with its simple statement of this feature, the vine with its 
 sharp serrations, the fig with its blunt lobes, and the bramble with 
 its completely separate leaflets, constitute the members of this division. 
 
 The fourth class consists of leaves which have seven or more 
 distinct ribs. The thistle (acanthus) is the central type. The rose 
 leaf stands for all that are composed of separate leaflets set along 
 a common stem, and the horse-chestnut for cases where they radiate 
 from a common centre. 
 
 These fifteen samples of leaves, laurel, apple, oak, elm, poplar, 
 and bindweed, of the first class ; strawberry and thorn, of the 
 second ; ivy, vine, fig, and bramble, of the third ; rose, thistle, and 
 chestnut, of the fourth, will supply an easy and fairly comprehensive 
 classification of leaves for the purposes of design. Such a classification 
 is of course only suggestive, and never pretends to be exhaustive 
 or completely satisfactory. Almost all leaves will be found to fall 
 into one or other of its classes ; but I do not think it is necessary 
 to increase the feeling of dogmatic pedantry which is apt to haunt 
 all attempts at analysis by trying to find places for such eccentric 
 specimens as the leaves of the cabbage, nasturtium, or dandelion. 
 Brevity is no less the soul of wise classification than of wit, and as 
 this analysis of ours is an aesthetic, and not a scientific one, it does 
 not forbid the selection of any leaf which happens to appeal to 
 individual taste. One of its objects is to draw attention to those
 
 Class I. 
 
 Class II. 
 
 t»4 
 
 Class III. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A Classification of Leaves.
 
 52 
 
 ARBOR V1TVE. 
 
 simple leaves of our own country with which we are sure to be 
 more or less acquainted, and to insist on the necessity for learning 
 to apply them in our Art, before rioting in that glut of abstract 
 foliage which is allowed to pass unquestioned under the mask of 
 Acanthus. The various and involved forms of our own thistle and 
 poppy-leaves present us with quite as serious difficulties, and as 
 many suggestions of ingenious harlequinade as ever satisfied the 
 soul of a cinque-cento ornamentalist. 
 
 The outline of every leaf is only a modification of one of the 
 first class. We can prove this by drawing a line round its principal 
 extremities (fig. 8). The thistle is the only exception. Though 
 necessary to our classification, its broad base and peculiar insertion 
 
 Fig. 8. 
 
 prevent its being put to the same use as other leaves. It suggests 
 the possibility of that radiation of pipes and ribs which belongs to 
 the acanthus, and which it is the aim of the acanthus to display, a 
 function we have no intention of following at present. 
 
 We have already given a poplar leaf its place in the spiral ; we 
 can now please ourselves with drawing a number of other spirals 
 with a different leaf in each (Plate VIII.). It will certainly increase 
 our respect for a traditional system to find our resources multiplied 
 so generously. With a little love of leaves, and a large sense of 
 proportion, you will find infinite material in the familiar world of 
 green things around us ; and if you want to introduce more than 
 one sort of leaf into your spiral, there is no objection to your doing 
 so, so long as your stalks and leaves are not too much like real
 
 ON LEAVES AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 53 
 
 stalks and real leaves. We should certainly be shocked if we 
 found figs and thistles growing on the same bough, because we 
 know they grow on different plants. If we do not want the gardener 
 to criticise our design we must plant trees that never grew in 
 his garden ; then perhaps he may learn to admire even if he cannot 
 understand. 
 
 Our progress is now become too rapid and too varied to allow 
 us to illustrate all the changes the spiral can undergo. We already 
 have almost endless opportunities of ringing changes on the original 
 
 2. 
 
 4. 
 
 Fig. 9. 
 
 theme, and shall, naturally enough, feel tempted to put what we have 
 learned to the test, and elaborate its details. But as we have not time 
 here to carry out such an extensive plan, I will try to select, as we 
 proceed, examples of patterns to illustrate possibilities of development 
 which we are not always at liberty to investigate as much as they 
 may seem to deserve. If you will look again at the spirals in 
 Plate VIII. you will see that the leaf-stalks or petioles spring from 
 different positions, and have different lengths in each example ; and 
 you will remember that a little time ago we saw how the spiral 
 might subdivide and throw off lateral and almost independent 
 branches : so that our resources are multiplied by exactly the number
 
 54 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 of ways in which we can vary such conditions as these. Fig. 9 
 shows the four main positions of the petiole in regard to the spiral, 
 and they apply equally well to most kinds of spiral and almost any 
 form of leaf. In i, the petiole springs from the extreme outside of 
 each bend ; in 2, from the extreme inside ; in 3, forwards, from a 
 point halfway between the top of one bend and the bottom of the 
 next; in 4, backwards from the same point. I need not suggest, I 
 should certainly fail to enumerate, how many delightful varieties of 
 pattern can be based on these four methods ; and even if we limited 
 ourselves to the narrowest paths that tradition allows, and refused 
 to exercise any independent imagination, with our fifteen leaves and 
 our four methods of insertion we should be able to supply our friends 
 with a choice of at least sixty patterns if they happened to want to 
 carve a lintel or embroider a table-cloth. 
 
 Once more let me warn you to avoid falling into any mechanical 
 or methodical habit. Remember that your original spiral may be 
 gracefully Greek, or stiffly Gothic — as open as a tidal stream, or 
 as sinuous as a mountain torrent. Keep an open mind, too, in the 
 matter of colour. Every leaf is not green in Nature, nor every stalk 
 brown. Much may happen to the petiole itself before it reaches the 
 leaf. It may indulge itself in an extra twist or two to make up for 
 a lack of agility in its parent stalk, or to show its own lightheaded- 
 ness ; or else it may become a minor and subordinate spiral, dividing 
 itself and throwing off two or more leaves instead of one. This is 
 an important modification, and in itself the origin of a large class 
 of patterns which depends on the varying length and directions of 
 the subordinate stems or petioles. But however diverse and replete 
 our patterns become, we must always maintain their conventional 
 arrangement ; and however much we borrow ideas from Nature, we 
 must never, except for purposes of study, copy her examples. To 
 do that, and call it Art, is rank blasphemy. With such restrictions 
 as these, the deeper our acquaintance with Nature is, the more 
 interesting our patterns will become ; but our knowledge must pass 
 through the alembic of our imagination before it becomes Art. Our 
 humanity grows with the increasing strength of our individual
 
 "*,* 
 
 &' 
 
 0S. 
 
 VIII. 
 Leaf Spirals.
 
 56 
 
 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 sympathies, more than by a vague and wordy expansion over the 
 world at large. A wider and more wonderful infinity lies within 
 us than without. Even if there is evidence of reasonable design in 
 Nature, at present it is beyond our comprehension to grasp it, while 
 Nature overwhelms us with the number of her facts. Even the 
 microscope on the material plane reveals more monsters than ever 
 peopled prehistoric deserts. Wonders, indeed, for such as care for 
 them ; for us, a greater miracle claims our worship while we can 
 watch the daisies grow and hear the birds sing.
 
 THIS method of working side by side with Nature, but more 
 under the guidance of traditional and imaginative methods 
 than by an obsequious copying of her processes, will necessarily 
 introduce many new elements into the spiral. The leaf is not the 
 only factor of the plant that can be conventionalised, and though 
 we are at present obliged to reject the flower, because it is generally 
 too complicated for our purposes, the bud and the fruit are simple 
 enough to be used with great effect. 
 
 The first appearance of the bud is a knobby protuberance on 
 the side of the spiral (Plate IX.). Its first duty is to balance a 
 leaf on the opposite side, or humbly help to fill an empty interstice 
 whenever it may occur, rather than to pose as itself the main feature 
 of an interval ; so that in the illustrations I give you, it will necessarily 
 hold only a subordinate position. The ideas the bud has suggested 
 have evidently had immense influence on the traditions of Christian 
 art. It would indeed be instructive and entertaining to read the 
 history of ornament from a mythical point of view alone, by tracing 
 the growth of the bud from its spontaneous birth to when it 
 burgeons into full significance as the paradisiacal tree. Here, however, 
 we have more to trace the actual shapes that artists have given it, 
 than to follow so fanciful a chronicle. First, then, we must feel the 
 charm of budding things in the world about us : in April watch 
 
 57
 
 58 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 along the hedgerows how they struggle to escape their swaddling 
 bands, to rise and stretch their arms, and toss their heads in the 
 new air; or notice in the garden how, when it has burst its shell, 
 the silent and erect axis gropes through the earth's dark body, pushes 
 the clods aside, and springs into lusty life. If you mark how stiff 
 and strong and quaint these babes of the field are, you will learn 
 more art, more of the essential feeling that underlies all renaissance, 
 than all the systems and the teaching of all the schools of Art can 
 ever tell you. Much of what is overlooked, or ridiculed as archaic 
 or crude in mediaeval Art is, in fact, an intentional effort to convey 
 this feeling. Such work is Gothic art, not Greek, and prefers strength, 
 even savage strength, to gracefulness or effeminacy. It is the sturdy 
 instinct of young nations bidding us rejoice in the advent of spring. 
 I wish I could analyse these things, but their occurrence is so 
 unexpected, so naive, so brimful of virility, that they defy definition, 
 and laugh at all idea of order. You cannot classify them any more 
 than you can drill a troop of babies into a regiment of soldiers. 
 Their influence on us is a purely moral one. Look at that 
 indescribable bract which the young shoot of the walnut erects for 
 no apparent purpose except for show ; the clasped crosier of springing 
 bracken ; the apex bud on a branch of horse-chestnut ; or watch how 
 beans and peas push themselves up through the soil, or how the 
 precocious blossom of the Japonica swells in an incomprehensible 
 way till it bursts in rapturous bubbles. We cannot notice and admire 
 these things too much ; they are the very soul of spontaneity and 
 freshness, and will always give us a standard of form and gesture. 
 
 Buds are peculiarly the property of the decorative and symbolic 
 artist for this reason as well : they seldom occur in conditions that 
 appeal to the realist. The realist is more attracted to Nature's 
 results than to her means, to the flower more than the leaf or bud, 
 to the satisfaction of desire more than to the anticipation of it. The 
 bud is perhaps not so much represented in art as that its spirit 
 permeates the whole of Christian tradition. It seems to hide in its 
 little fist all the nervous possibilities of Spring, and as soon as it 
 has unfolded or thrown off one or two lateral branches it becomes
 
 The Spiral with Buds.
 
 6o 
 
 ARBOR VIT^E. 
 
 in anticipation a tree, and in early forms of Art is recognised as the 
 symbol of one (fig. 10). What a poor sort of compromise with 
 Nature your modern artist thinks of such trees, with their stiff stem, 
 their pair of stubborn branches, and half a dozen leaves ! It is 
 however no more a compromise than his own, and an infinitely 
 more decorative one. The modern tree of our landscape art is the 
 symbol of only the external and aerial aspect of a tree. The tree of 
 tradition is a powerful and quite conscious epitome of its character 
 and growth. At present our bud is innocent enough of such a 
 future, and can only little by little unfold its destinies. Nor must 
 we forget to include in our idea of the bud the stipule and bract, 
 
 Fig. io. 
 
 and all those immature parts of the plant which are replete with 
 promise, and dare to lend themselves with supreme insouciance to 
 any service (Plate X.). Remember, then, how many unscientific 
 shapes the bud can be made to take, figuring now as a stipule, 
 again as a half leaf, and now as a curled and inconsequent thing, but 
 always with a sense of frank innocence and almost ridiculous gravity. 
 Some buds — especially those of large trees, such as the horse-chestnut, 
 lime, and sycamore — develop into crosses of variously graceful shape, 
 and are for that reason particularly valuable and suggestive. We 
 shall have to deal with this subject in a later stage of our tradition. 
 But there is another traditional form of bud to which we must call 
 attention here. The young fronds of ferns are the best illustrations
 
 Buds in Nature anl> Art.
 
 62 ARBOR VITi^. 
 
 of it in the vegetable world, when the stark vigour of the young 
 bracken pushes a crosiered head through the short turf of the 
 common, just as if it had made a mistake and come up in the wrong 
 place, so little does its artificial quaintness seem in keeping with the 
 crooked gorse and ragged heather which are natural there. But 
 when it begins to unfold its arms in a pretty architectural way, and 
 clutch at the air about it, could anything better symbolise our delight 
 in the funny gestures of newborn things ? In its earliest appearance 
 too, while it is still curled in profound sleep, its shape is echoed in 
 many a shell we gather on the shore, and noticeably too, in that 
 of the common snail. This is the shape that the Doric capital and 
 the Gothic crocket have immortalised. It is a mysterious curve, this 
 line ever returning on itself to hug its treasures of coiled meaning. 
 We have used it already often enough, though I dare say unwittingly. 
 Take this spiral (fig. n), for instance, and you will see that with 
 
 Fig. ii. 
 
 very little alteration it consists of nothing but a row of snail-shells. 
 This curious relationship is by no means an entirely accidental one ; 
 it is only another proof of the synthetic character of traditional art. 
 The consciousness of this character, and the constant desire and 
 expectation of finding fresh analogies, is a most important feature in 
 all conventional work that is earnestly vital. Again, the double curve 
 of the unfolding and aspiring bracken repeats the line of beauty and 
 of life — the main line, it seems to me, if sensitively drawn, in the 
 construction of every creature ; while if it is continued it becomes 
 our own spiral, which is in consequence the logical symbol of an 
 untiring energy and growth. When the folded frond is uncurled, 
 it discovers a serried avenue of smaller but similarly curled fronds, 
 which in their turn consist of still others. How could we find a 
 better natural illustration of that characteristic of traditional Art on 
 which I like to lay so much stress : that infinity within finite limits : 
 that tree of ancient pedigree whose every branch is rooted in the
 
 THE BUDDING AND FRUITING OF THE SPIRAL. 63 
 
 centre of the universe, and carries a host of leaves and the seeds of 
 a thousand generations ! 
 
 The art of design is the art of giving us pleasant sensations 
 by the means primarily of form. Any attempt to systematise its 
 principles must give precedence to those objects whose form is their 
 main characteristic, and will necessarily treat of those objects first 
 which possess the simplest forms. We have seen how the complex 
 shape of most flowers prevents their use in the simpler kinds of 
 spiral ; but another reason is that their most obvious charm lies in 
 colour more than form, so that they will be most valuable where 
 that quality of colour is displayed to the greatest advantage. The 
 spiral does not always supply that amount of contrasting sobriety of 
 background which is essential for any decoration in which flowers 
 take a prominent position. Those conditions are amply fulfilled by 
 the conventions of a Seme\ where the background, or field, can very 
 easily be made to represent those olive greys, and quiet emeralds, 
 so necessary for the proper vision of flowers, and which, to the eyes 
 of simple people, make the homeliness of cottage gardens lovelier 
 than the exotic barbarism of the glass-house. The flower too is 
 really the apex of the tree, the crowning glory of the plant. Shorn 
 of stalk and leaf, like the prize blossoms in a flower show, it is 
 only a surfeit of luxury, and a sin against good taste. Such reasons 
 as these prevent the flower from often taking the place of the leaf in 
 the spiral. But where the flower fails, the fruit succeeds admirably, 
 either as an occasional alternative to the leaf, or even, as we shall 
 see, entirely as a substitute for it. The strawberry is an immense 
 favourite here, but almost all fruits are ripe for service : the gooseberry, 
 mulberry, blackberry, and raspberry, with their homely and quiet 
 colours ; the clustered currant and grape, and all our orchard fruits 
 with their sober citrines and russets ; those substantial vegetables 
 too, of culinary purport, with which Crivelli decks the shrines of 
 his Madonnas — netted melons and pimpled cucumbers, and peas in 
 rattling pods. Here too, the squirrel's harvest of homely nuts, with 
 all the rustic fruits of our forest trees, acorns and chestnuts, beech 
 masts and pine cones, will have their place. Think of the nomad
 
 64 ARBOR VIT^fi. 
 
 thistledown, and those quaint " bunches of keys " that dangle from every 
 maple! How cleverly the seeds of the iris, poppy, and snapdragon 
 are packed, and in what ingenious cabinets ! Surely here, if anywhere, 
 is the clasp of Nature's necklace ; here at once her beginning and her 
 end. Fuller than the leaf, simpler than the flower, the seed and 
 the fruit are the first palpably solid forms we must learn to use. 
 
 * 
 
 Full of mystery; dead, but how living! Inert, but how active! A 
 grain of mustard seed to-day, but to-morrow the birds of the air 
 shall make a town of it ! 
 
 The outline of most seeds is simple enough, and not unlike 
 many leaves of the first class. Their quiet tints, too, unlike the 
 positive colours of flowers, harmonise with alternate leaves and 
 enrich the monotony of the spiral. The implication of mystery 
 involved in the use of the seed gives rise to a peculiar but suggestive 
 use of it, and one that shows the conscious symbolism instinctively 
 introduced into noble and spontaneous design. The glorious hue 
 of the flesh in which the seeds of the pomegranate lie, added to their 
 traditional value as symbols of prolificity, have often led artists to 
 display the fruit disclosing the seed, and the exquisite ingenuity of 
 many seedpods has often tempted him to paint them in undisguised 
 section. The seed in its bed is typical of latent powers in all of us, 
 and only waits for sunny encouragement to sprout and shake out 
 its leaves. It is a source of myth and a motive of decoration, as true 
 now as it ever was, and one that cannot fail to excite our keenest 
 interest while the mystery of life remains, as may it ever, unsolved. 
 
 So now the fruit takes its place in the spiral, and alternates 
 in an occasional fashion with the leaf (Plate XI.) ; but while a 
 strawberry or robust apple here and there would hardly affect the 
 spiral's normal curve, if we took to hanging nothing but fruit on our 
 bough, the combined weight of it might tend to pull the spiral out 
 of shape, and we should have to tighten it into very nearly a straight 
 line before we should feel that it was safe. Such might be a not 
 altogether improbable origin for the use of a straight stem instead 
 of a curving one, as in some of our instances in this plate. Sometimes 
 the spiral, not to be so easily ousted, winds ivy-fashion round it ;
 
 The Spiral with Fruit and Straightened Stem.
 
 66 
 
 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 and even when it is absent its character must be maintained by a 
 compensating frivolity in the petioles, or in closer and more sensitive 
 arrangement of tributary leaves, or only, and as I think most effectively, 
 by merely a tempting sequence of erect or pendent fruit. 
 
 Tendrils and thorns are the few remaining organs of the plant 
 to notice in connection with these simple and generally regular spirals. 
 The tendril itself in connection with the vine is of immense importance, 
 
 Fig. 12. 
 
 and can of course be amply illustrated. The way in which he treats 
 the tendril always gives us a clue to the imaginative faculty of the 
 artist, because the tendril is the engineer of the vine, and has to carry 
 out its plans with a forethought and calculation which altogether exceed 
 the skill of a vegetable intellect. You may feel tempted to treat 
 it exclusively as a slender and twisted stalk ; but in the first of these 
 three instances (fig. 12) it is straight and narrow, and in the second 
 and third it is twisted and thick. The reason for this difference is 
 that in the first case the tendril is contrasted with the comparatively
 
 a 
 
 f 
 
 XII. 
 
 Irregular Spirals.
 
 68 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 solid masses of main stalk and leaf, and has no room to curl about 
 in, while in the other instances it has to take the place of these masses, 
 and behave like one itself to the best of its ability. 
 
 Before we bring this part of our investigation to an end, it will 
 be best to look at some characteristic spirals which are not strictly 
 within the direct lines of traditional development. They insist on 
 distinct features derived from fanciful or accidental exaggerations of 
 eccentricities in the normal spiral. For instance, the spiral stem will 
 often adopt a squarer or more angular form, to better adapt itself to 
 the same irregularity in the leaf. I have given instances of this in 
 Plate XL, a, b, and so long as their usual proportion is maintained, 
 these slight variations need not call for any special comment. But 
 as soon as this habit extends to the gradual subordination of the 
 spiral to the leaf, and its final almost extinction, it gives rise to a 
 class of spirals which insists on this irregularity and rejoices in it 
 (Plate XII., a, b). This class of irregular spirals, though a very 
 beautiful one, by reducing the function of the stalk to a mere 
 compromise, destroys that balance between it and the leaf which is 
 so important to their mutual development, and therefore stands by 
 itself outside the main course of tradition. 
 
 But these irregular spirals are not on this account to be 
 neglected. On the contrary, they are the exceptions that not only 
 prove the rule, but are essential to the integrity and usefulness of 
 the whole system of tradition, which would otherwise become dead 
 and insipid. They teach us, at any rate, the value of accident. 
 Where perfect accuracy is demanded, variety is impossible, and 
 variety we know is charming. The practice of Art should teach 
 us to emphasise our eccentricities with grace, not to conceal them as 
 deformities. Conformity to public opinion, which deifies the average, 
 is ever the enemy of personality, which is the soul of Art. Our 
 greatest achievements are often little more than the frank acceptance 
 of a blunder, the wise submission to a disappointment, or the still 
 wiser imposition of a limit to our efforts. 
 
 Another irregularity, if we may call it so, owes its origin to the 
 natural thickening of the stalk of a plant at the nodes (Plate XII., c).
 
 / 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Irregular Spirals.
 
 70 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 The exaggeration of this natural feature in the spiral results in a 
 series of trumpet-shaped funnels, and rapidly becomes associated in 
 our minds with cornucopias disgorging all sorts of good things. 
 There are delightful instances of this convention among the Byzantine 
 ivory carvings. Our illustration is only a free rendering of one 
 of them. 
 
 A third class is obtained by surrounding the leaf, or whatever 
 the occupant of the spiral interval may be, with a margin of white. 
 This practice is frequently met with in illuminated missals and 
 ornamented letterings. Its value is best appreciated when colour is 
 employed, because the purity of all colours is put to the greatest 
 test when they are compared with white. The whole spiral runs the 
 risk of becoming confused or indistinct if its colour or tone resembles 
 too closely that of the background, and then the insertion of a white 
 border will often effect the necessary relief. The same method is 
 advisable if you wish to insert a very delicately shaped leaf or other 
 object into your spiral. Such a palmatisect leaf as the monkshood, 
 for example, should be painted on a white ground. The shape of 
 this ground must be that of a plain unserrated leaf of the first class, 
 corresponding to the monkshood, but a size or so larger. The 
 presence of this argent shield protects and displays the frail aconite, 
 and supplies that simplicity of outline which always makes the 
 simplest ornaments the most effective ones. This method may of 
 course be reversed (Plate XII., d), and a white leaf may be planted 
 on a black ground, or on one of any suitable tone or tint. 
 
 The acanthine is a fourth form of these irregular spirals 
 (Plate XII., e, f). It consists of a charming amalgamation of leaf 
 and stalk, the natural outcome of adapting the leaf of the thistle or 
 acanthus to the spiral, and if it is treated in a quiet and simple 
 fashion it makes a delightful form of ornament. There are some 
 exquisite examples of its use among the Egyptian tapestries, where 
 it is made to bear marvellously strange and beautiful fruit. It wants 
 fresh and gay colour to enable it to look its best, then it is one of 
 the prettiest spirals I know. 
 
 Another class of irregular spirals we may mention here is an
 
 THE BUDDING AND FRUITING OF THE SPIRAL. 71 
 
 instance of the effect obtained by introducing what we may call the 
 frieze-motive into the spiral (Plate XIII., a, b). It consists, as far as 
 the design goes, of any spiral ; but its whole course is broken up 
 into alternating passages of light on dark and dark on light. These 
 contrasting passages illustrate perhaps the simplest form of frieze ; 
 and if it were not for the continuous pattern which runs through it 
 all, would not be included here. The simplest method of producing 
 this effect is to keep reversing the tones or colours of the spiral and 
 its background, and the peculiar pleasure which is obtainable by 
 mingling two distinct decorative principles is well worth noting. 
 
 The student of patterns will doubtless discover for himself many 
 other kinds of irregular spirals : they are as numerous as irregularities 
 are world-wide. I shall give instances of others later on, but the last 
 I need ask you to observe now, we will call upright spirals, because 
 they are more suited to a vertical than a horizontal attitude 
 (Plate XIII. c, d). I would assign them a similar origin with that 
 class in which the idea of the thickened node or cornucopia was 
 dominant. That idea is, however, secondary to the idea of a somewhat 
 spasmodically upright stem ; while the conventional or traditional 
 character of the spiral is maintained by the regularity with which 
 its progress is broken by whorls of leaves, flowers or fruit. Their 
 tendency to relapse into Renaissance arabesque must be guarded 
 against. 
 
 I will end this chapter with two other examples of irregularity, 
 which can hardly however be considered typical of any class of spiral 
 (Plate XIII., e,f). The first of these is a delightfully naive example 
 of unscientific innocence, in which each interval is filled by two leaves 
 side by side on separate stalks. The other illustrates a useful method 
 of breaking the monotony that is sometimes caused by all the leaves 
 of the spiral running in one direction. This is effected by boldly 
 reversing the direction of an occasional leaf. Nothing could show 
 more clearly than this how loosely a dependence on natural law is 
 held in the spiritual or imaginative world.
 
 THE use of the pure spiral probably originates in, and is 
 perhaps most effectively illustrated by, a waving line painted 
 or scratched round the body of a vase. As soon as the 
 artist has contrived to make the two ends of the spiral meet, without 
 interrupting the rhythm of the line, he has a continuous spiral, and 
 a symbol of perpetual vigour. This is easiest seen when the spiral 
 is drawn round the inside brim of a plate, which is only a vase or 
 basin conveniently flattened to show the whole spiral at once, while 
 in the deeper utensil it must be always half lost to view. In this 
 circular and continuous form its symbolism is evident enough, but 
 when we wish to use it for other than circular decoration without 
 losing sight of its meaning, some appropriate method of terminating 
 it will be necessary. Such a necessity would arise, for instance, in 
 a frieze round only part of a room, or over the head of a window, 
 or in a border across a curtain or table-cloth. 
 
 The first and simplest method is to cut the spiral off abruptly, 
 wherever you want it to end, as in most of the examples I have 
 given so far. No one will ever find fault with what is after all 
 the most honest compromise with the really continuous character of 
 the spiral (Plate XIV., a). 
 
 A second and more usual method, when the spiral is a vegetable 
 one, is to bring it to a natural ending, with a terminal leaf, fruit, 
 
 72
 
 XIV. 
 
 Spiral Ends.
 
 74 ARBOR VITZS. 
 
 or other organ of the plant (Plate XIV., b). Such a method, of 
 course, must only be adopted at one end of the pattern, or it will 
 give the spiral a weak and indecisive appearance, unless we make 
 it spring from one of the sides, rather near either end in preference 
 to the middle (Plate XIV., c). This will restore an organic strength 
 to the spiral, and allow us at the same time to treat both ends of 
 it in this, or in any other method. But if in this method both 
 branches are terminated in a normal manner, that is to say, with 
 a leaf, bud, or flower, the whole spiral will give an organic idea of 
 a tree, though certainly a very elongated one, and connect itself at 
 once with those traditions which properly belong to the tree, and 
 which we shall study later on. 
 
 A fourth plan is to reverse the tones, and set a dark spiral on 
 a light ground, or vice versa, for about an internode and a quarter 
 at the end (Plate XIV., d). This is most effective when used in 
 combination with the first or with the last method we shall have 
 to treat of here, and is of course only an adaptation of the frieze- 
 motive we noticed in the last chapter. 
 
 The last method of ending, or rather beginning, the spiral, is 
 to make it spring from a bowl, basket, or vase ; or in grotesque 
 symbolism from the mouth of some sacred or profane monster, a 
 dragon or a sphinx (Plate XIV., e). In time we shall learn to 
 draw such things as these, and to introduce them in their proper 
 relation to the spiral. A tradition loses all its force as soon as it 
 ceases to lead from one thing to another, and to connect the most 
 complex subjects by the simplest means ; nor would the study of 
 the spiral itself be so important, if we did not feel it to be a symbol 
 which is capable of wide-spread application. For instance, the 
 traditional artist who understood its greater meaning, would want 
 before long to introduce some reference to his own life into the 
 spiral, such as the pots and baskets of daily labour ; and his use of 
 them while it was a novelty, would be all the more significant for 
 their being of human construction and not Nature's. With their 
 mythical meaning uppermost in his mind, he would certainly incline 
 to disregard ideas of such minor importance as the laws of gravity,
 
 ENDS AND CORNERS. 75 
 
 or considerations of probability and proportion, when they interfered 
 with his desire to introduce some special meaning into his work 
 of Art. A vase, for instance, loses nothing of its intentional value 
 as a symbol by being placed on its side, or even turned upside 
 down, so long as the pattern of which it is a part does not lose 
 any decorative value by harmless vagaries of this sort. As for that 
 traditionally confirmed habit of making the spiral issue from the 
 mouth of some possible beast, or impossible monster, the custom is 
 more excusable than at first sight appears. If the Tree of Life carries 
 a fruitful message for us, a light may be thrown on its meaning 
 when we see it flowing in artful speech from the tongues of dumb 
 animals, or the mysterious creatures of our own imaginations. 
 
 It would be easy enough to account for these unrealities of design 
 by a Russian scandal theory, and call them the outcome of a sequence 
 of efforts to copy an original and serious design. People who hold 
 this theory always think that the aim of Art is to hold a mirror up 
 to Nature, and forget that its history climbs from the abstract to the 
 imaginative, and falls from that to the realistic. Myths spring from 
 ruder forms of myth, and not direct from natural origins. If Art 
 means for us the creation of a mood by imaginative means, we shall 
 easily believe that artists would be more inclined to emphasise, than 
 correct, such unrealities, as soon as they discovered a sly suggestion 
 in their use. We can at any rate recognise that in spite of their 
 impossibility these chimaeras are interwoven in a very subtle way 
 among the chief pleasures of the arts of fiction. 
 
 The liberty we may take with the normal attitude or position of 
 anything, that is to say, whether we may put a thing in a position 
 or attitude it cannot maintain in Nature, depends on its relative 
 importance to the whole design, and the use that design is to be 
 put to. It would be absurd to plant an image of the Tree of Life 
 upside down in the centre of a design, but we may allow some 
 eccentricity of shape and attitude in the more conventional border 
 round it ; and so long as the freaks of our fancy remain subordinate 
 to the whole scheme of decoration, we must not criticise them too 
 scientifically. As yet we are dealing almost entirely with such
 
 76 ARBOR V1TM. 
 
 conventional and subordinate forms of ornament as borders, for the 
 spiral, to the extent we have carried it at present, is little more than 
 that. There can be, properly speaking, no top or bottom to a design 
 on a plate, carpet, or shawl ; and this fact has had its inevitable 
 influence on the whole of the principles of design, so that in proportion 
 as the thing he has to decorate is likely to be used in varying positions, 
 an artist is justified in disregarding the natural position of the things 
 that help to make up his design ; and with the confidence that no one 
 will expect him to tell the scientific truth when he has only simple 
 things to decorate, will allow himself to make all the charming 
 mistakes, and create all the irreproachable monsters that people his 
 fancy. But if he knows that his work is to be rigidly fixed, and 
 pitilessly exposed to everybody's opinion, he will be careful to gild 
 his pill with sufficient truth to cover its imaginative iniquities, and 
 will at any rate count his chimaera's legs, and moderate the length 
 of his lion's tail before he turns them loose on a practical world. 
 
 It is not very difficult to modify the spiral when the pattern 
 has merely to curve ; but if we want it to turn a sharp corner its 
 actual construction must evidently undergo a change. We had better 
 instance a few possible ways in which this change may be effected. 
 The simplest way, as in the first method of ending the spiral, is to 
 make a compromise of the whole matter, and put one complete spiral 
 at right angles to the end of another (Plate XV., a). Like all simple 
 ways of getting over a difficulty this contrivance has a very special 
 charm, and in certain instances, as when there is no central design, 
 or only an unimportant one, a sense of largeness and freedom is 
 gained which we miss in designs with more elaborate corners. The 
 charm of construction is often most pleasing when it is most obvious. 
 The spirals that are used for this sort of border may end in any way 
 which does not diminish or increase their breadth, but they ought all 
 to end in somewhat the same way. For the rest, if the space to be 
 included is an oblong, the longer sides should stand on the shorter. 
 Another method (Plate XV., b, c) is to place some object at the corner, 
 such as a vase or a medallion, which will either fill the gap which 
 the spirals make when they meet without overlapping, or act as a
 
 XV. 
 
 Spiral Corners.
 
 78 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 common source from which both the spirals could flow. This would 
 lead naturally enough to the idea of making them spring from a 
 common stem (Plate XV., d). And, lastly, we must learn to make 
 the spiral turn a corner without any break in its continuity (Plate 
 XV., e,/,g). The last figure in this plate is an extremely ingenious 
 example of the way a rope spiral overcomes the difficulty, and is 
 well worth study and respect. I have taken this spiral from an old 
 stone font, and you might at first think it crude and barbaric ; but 
 the ingenuity of interwoven line, and the deliberate placing of main 
 masses, proclaim a very high pitch of artistic perception in the artist 
 who invented and carved it. 
 
 We have now reached a very important point in the development 
 of our tradition ; and before we turn the next corner ourselves, and 
 pursue new roads, we ought to rest and rapidly review our situation. 
 We have followed the spiral from its simplest and most inorganic 
 forms to a point where it reaches an obvious resemblance to vegetable 
 life ; and there can be no doubt that these later developments, with 
 their particular appeal to our knowledge and love of natural things, 
 are the more interesting, though the earlier ones touch us strangely 
 with their simple method and unclothed sentiment. From the first 
 to the last, however, the essential conditions have been maintained, 
 and whatever change the spiral has undergone, however real its 
 dependent forms have become, the tree that bore them has remained 
 obstinately, unnaturally conventional. If now, in our pause here, we 
 choose to predicate that the aim of Art is to imitate Nature, and, 
 carried away by the successful introduction of natural objects into 
 the spiral, declare the conventions with which we have limited its 
 freedom to be unjust, and the paths we have travelled so far little 
 better than blind gropings in the dark, we might begin all over 
 again by reforming or restoring the spiral into a natural bough. If 
 we did this, and followed our new clue consistently, we should find 
 a vast field opened to us — the whole concrete universe of material 
 facts, and the shifting phenomena of light and shade. I do not 
 know whether it is the belief that they are painting real things, or 
 merely the fascination of recording an ephemeral impression, that
 
 ENDS AND CORNERS. 79 
 
 induces modern artists of the realistic school to desert the traditions 
 of the past and aim more and more at the exclusive imitation of 
 Nature ; but whatever the cause may be, signs are not wanting 
 to-day to show that Art, and the happiness and peace that Art 
 brings, can no more be found in the exclusive investigation and 
 record of natural facts than the secret of life can be discovered by 
 sacrificing the lives of innocent animals that we have made dependent 
 on our kindness. Art that is based solely on the imitation of Nature 
 is unprincipled Art, because principles do not exist in Nature but 
 only in the human imagination. Traditional art is delightful and 
 permanent, because it is an imaginative statement of the laws of 
 Nature. To copy Nature is at best only to give an instance of the 
 working of those laws, never to state them. A picture is valuable as 
 a work of art precisely for the amount of imagination it embodies, 
 for the amount of untruth it contains ; for the nonsense of it, not 
 the sense. All systems of tradition regard the imaginative expression 
 as of the primary importance, and only admit natural facts so long 
 as they do not interfere with that expression. The study of Nature 
 is indeed a valuable one, but not as a final form of Art. Its object 
 is only to increase our experience and feed our imagination. Later 
 on we shall, as I have already suggested, see the sapling we have 
 planted grow to become a noble tree, but it will always be the type 
 of a tree, never a real one ; and conventional not from ignorance, but 
 from direct intention and purpose. 
 
 Conventional, fanciful, imaginative, traditional : such words as 
 these are among the most despised and rejected of epithets. They 
 hide, however, valuable truths, and must again become honoured and 
 approved.
 
 CHAPTERS1X 
 
 THE- 5 P 1 R'A L 
 
 • CONTINUED ■ 
 
 IN the last chapter we saw some of the ways in which the spiral 
 might turn corners and become a consciously broad ornament 
 
 as well as a long one, and in the face of this development we 
 felt it advisable to pause and review our situation. On the one hand 
 we felt that an exclusive association of the spiral with vegetable life 
 might lead to an uncompromising realism and put an end to any 
 principle of tradition ; on the other hand there was a danger lest 
 the tradition we had already successfully pursued might, for want of 
 a fresh outlet and further application, become hopelessly stereotyped. 
 
 Tradition, however, possesses a quality which it is not usually 
 credited with — the power, namely, to go on developing in the future 
 as it has already developed in the past ; and the further development 
 of the spiral itself will only seem difficult if we have forgotten its 
 passionate origin, and the wider meanings of which it is the symbol, 
 and have come instead to think of it as only the stem of a plant 
 conveniently twisted for decorative purposes. After picking the fruit 
 from one branch of our tree we must return to the trunk before 
 we invade another. All true conventions are primarily expressions 
 of feeling, and only subordinately representations of fact ; and this 
 vegetable form of the spiral is only one of many kinds of spiral. 
 It predominates because its simplicity has made it a constant 
 favourite ; and as its curves are found in so many manifestations of 
 
 so
 
 THE SPIRAL. 81 
 
 life, it has earned the right to vitalise the whole of Art, and point 
 the way to more delicate expressions of human imagination. I have 
 tried to suggest, for only suggestion is possible, that Art is feeling 
 expressed in a practical manner, and that Tradition which helps us 
 to express our feelings in this wise way does not act in an irregular 
 and spasmodic fashion, but with a circumspect propriety and method 
 of its own. I have compared this tradition to the course of a river 
 or the growth of a tree with a central trunk or channel and lateral 
 branches, which again divide into ramifications as extended as our 
 experience. So it will be necessary in future, as our need for 
 expression grows, not to strangle our tradition by too firm a grip on 
 it, but to be somewhat careless of detail so long as its gist is not 
 imperilled. We must learn to recognise the spirit of the spiral in 
 other guises than we are accustomed to, and to guess its presence 
 from a footprint here and there, or a hint dropped, as it always will 
 be, if the design is a good one, and the artist knows his business. 
 
 This book does not pretend to teach people how to draw ; and 
 though I have shown a way of drawing leaves in the simpler 
 spirals, it was to insist on the necessity of a spontaneous method 
 before an imitative one, a necessity that applies to drawing not only 
 leaves, but everything. This opens up a subject of great extent 
 and enormous interest, but one which is outside our immediate 
 purposes, and I must be content to assure you here that in all final 
 and classical Art, this spontaneous element is the prominent one, 
 and that in all work of confessedly decorative aim the forms are 
 built up in the same way as this leaf was, that is to say, by a 
 subjective and not by an imitative method. A thing is well drawn 
 from this point of view when it fits its environment ; such a round 
 blob filling such a square hole in a convenient and comfortable way. 
 I am fond of referring to the outlines on the Greek vases as the 
 best models for our guidance in the matter of drawing things ; because 
 in their gradual mastery, through the course of centuries, over all 
 animal forms, we shall almost always find at any period a patient 
 respect for the traditional type, and a jealous supervision over any 
 alteration in its severity. Archaic Art is entirely misunderstood if 
 
 6
 
 82 
 
 ARBOR VIT^. 
 
 it is taken to be nothing more than a child's attempt to copy the 
 things that please him most. The Greek artist was not afflicted 
 with the desire of competing with Nature. He never attempted to 
 be real, till the general relaxation of principles tempted him to cater 
 to the demand for novelty and exhibit his own cleverness. When 
 he did take to copying Nature instead of inventing types, he paid 
 for his popularity with the loss of his inherited tradition. Here 
 (fig. 13) are two fishes, the first of which is the sort of fish or typical 
 dolphin a Greek artist of the central time, with his tradition at his 
 
 Fig. 13. 
 
 finger ends, would deliberately draw with a sweep or two of his 
 brush, and half a dozen scratches of his graver. The second is a 
 good illustration of what his ideals are worth after he has " learnt 
 to draw," but has unfortunately forgotten to call for his model at 
 the fishmonger's. 
 
 Perfect ideals will of course exhibit great knowledge of the realities 
 they idealise, but it takes ages to determine which features are the 
 most suitable to commemorate. This is tradition's hardest task, and 
 in Greek art was only acquired by centuries of restraint, and lost as 
 soon as that restraint was removed. It is foolish to regret what was 
 inevitable, and to leap now and at once to the possession of complete
 
 THE SPIRAL. 83 
 
 and noble types would be beyond our powers. We can do little 
 more at present than protest at our miserable inadequacy to cope 
 with the immense variety of modern knowledge, and point to the 
 change of feeling that must precede any attempt to establish Art on 
 a permanent footing. Our students are too often set to copy Greek 
 art in ignorance of the very conditions under which it was executed. 
 Greek artists did not copy, they invented in the best sense of the 
 word. If Greek art is our aim we ought to pursue Greek methods 
 of study. Our museums could supply the requisite information to 
 make this possible, but so far they seem to suggest that when we 
 have ticketed our specimens and locked them up in glass cases, we 
 have got all the good out of them we can. The very light these 
 treasures have thrown on the past hinders the future from benefiting 
 by them. They have become too exclusively associated with matters 
 of history, and research has proved prejudicial to reconstruction. 
 
 This subject touches us closely, for no spontaneity is possible while 
 shallow accuracy and blind subservience to dead ideals is made a 
 sine qud non in Art. Every instance of spontaneity is unique. To 
 produce a masterpiece you must shut your eyes to all previous 
 achievements, and draw on your own capital of inborn energy. 
 Do not trouble your head yet about accuracy. Mistakes are fatal to 
 mathematics, and anachronisms to history, but Art does not hold 
 truth with so tight a hand. What is in touch with its sentiment 
 is, for it, true, what is not in touch with it is false. Some hope of 
 better perceptions may be gleaned in these days from the attempted 
 revival of handicrafts, and an instinctive and popular appreciation 
 of what is called quaintness ; but the very use of such a term shows 
 how far we are from recognising the peculiar character of imaginative 
 work, when we suppose that its quality can be rendered by the 
 affectation of a particular style. Let us assert, once for all, that 
 you can no more draw in an imaginative way by pretending to 
 be innocently simple, than you can think in a mediaeval manner by 
 writing "y e " for "the." The best art is the directest way of saying 
 what you have to say in the easiest way you can. The affectation 
 of mediaevalism is not the acceptance of mediaeval tradition ; it is
 
 84 ARBOR VITJZ. 
 
 only saying you believe a thing which you don't, and is evidence 
 not of imaginative feeling but of the want of it. There are always 
 talented people who can draw delightfully, but for whom creative 
 imagination is a Bluebeard's chamber they enter at their peril. These 
 are the people who will be helped by a tradition more than any 
 others, because it will give them subjects which their own acknowledged 
 skill and personal peculiarities will embellish. No one can be a law 
 to himself in Art, and the genius is not born who can afford to 
 neglect the humblest processes that prolonged custom has sanctified. 
 It is only with the decay of faith, and the loss of tradition, with 
 the corresponding growth of the delusion that we can find out 
 the reason of everything, and go anywhere by the help of steam 
 and chemical analysis, that Art stooped to chronicle obvious and 
 uninteresting facts, or tried to escape the ennui of them by futile 
 efforts to resuscitate the past. When the sun was a visible god, 
 and his royal progress through the constellations was fraught with 
 significance, when every cluster of stars was linked to a world's 
 story and a hero's name, Art was indeed a potent factor in Life, and 
 at times her inspired interpreter. And now though perhaps we do 
 know how far the stars are and what they are made of, that is no 
 reason for climbing down from the zenith to the dunghill. Instead 
 of banishing spirit from Art let us bring it from beyond the sky 
 triumphantly home. If we are materialists, let it be because we 
 believe that matter is inseparable from spirit. But matter as the 
 inevitable expression of spirit is quite a different thing from matter 
 as its barrier and prison. 
 
 Our tradition's main line is marked by a gradual change into 
 forms of ornament that often appear at first sight to have little in 
 common with the types from which they spring. To trace this central 
 motive, and keep it distinct from the various tributaries that flow 
 into and out of it, without neglecting them, is necessary if we 
 want our tradition to be consistent. Tradition is eminently feudal, 
 and any attempt to treat its examples as isolated patterns based on 
 natural forms is unscientific, and can only issue in hopeless confusion. 
 In view of later and more organic conventions, the spiral, as we
 
 XVI. 
 Interlacing Spirals.
 
 86 ARBOR VIT^. 
 
 left it, will very likely appear a somewhat unambitious form of 
 ornament, and we shall naturally enough feel anxious to push on to 
 opportunities of larger expression ; but there are a few forms of it 
 that we ought to notice before we do so, subordinate types and 
 heads of families grouped round their traditional chiefs. 
 
 The first of these to occur is a spiral with interlacing branches 
 (Plate XVI.), which is capable of being varied in many different 
 ways ; and still greater variety is obtained when the pattern consists 
 of two parallel spirals. The whole succession of them from the 
 simpler examples to the more complex make a delightful and 
 instructive series. We may call these " Interlacing Spirals." 
 
 Plate XVII., a, b, illustrates a type of spiral which is worth 
 noticing because its characteristic squareness deserts the suavity of 
 the usual form for a more abstract one, and allows at the same 
 time greater liberty to the filling of the intervals of it. This spiral 
 tends to develop into a line of more or less connected frames or 
 links ; a change of immense importance, as we shall discover by- 
 and-by. At present we must not break the integrity of the spiral 
 as a continuous line. The advance to greater freedom is evidenced 
 by the insertion of animals, who fit into the spiral but are not part 
 of it. They introduce the idea of the frieze into the spiral : that is 
 to say, of a line of isolated figures, such as a row of buttons, for 
 example. We shall discuss the frieze in a later chapter. 
 
 In close alliance with the simple interlacing spiral is another of a 
 distinctly arabesque character (Plate XVII., c, d). Our first example 
 of it is in fact adapted or borrowed from a plate of Spanish manu- 
 facture. In the original the quality of the leaves and their connection 
 with the stalks is, if I remember rightly, rather incoherent, and like 
 much of Eastern patterning, more abstract than Western or even 
 Celtic minds admit. We love a natural sequence and a consistent 
 plot in our fairy tales, however impossible the characters themselves 
 may be ; so that when we want to acclimatise a foreign fancy we 
 must often trim it into some semblance of respect for the prejudices 
 it has come to live with. Our second example of this type is much 
 more Teutonic in feeling, with its shields and suggestion of serviceable
 
 XVII. 
 
 Square Chambered and Arabesque Spirals.
 
 88 ARBOR VITAL. 
 
 trees. We may reasonably call these spirals Arabesque Spirals for 
 this reason as well — that they show a natural tendency to escape the 
 linear determination of a spiral and cover spaces instead, which is 
 the more legitimate office of an arabesque. Thus in the first instance 
 the height of the branches is quite arbitrary, and if elongated would 
 soon deprive the pattern of any right to be called a spiral at all. 
 
 Next to these and connected with them by inherent slenderness 
 of line, though far nearer to us in actual construction, come many 
 spirals from archaic Greek sources (Plate XVIII., a, b,c, d). These are 
 quite innocent and simple, as we should expect the early efforts of a 
 nation with great artistic instincts to be, before natural ingenuousness 
 has yielded to a recognised style. Indeed, their Art, as every nation's 
 at such a time, is essentially Gothic in its absence of prejudice, 
 instant obedience to happy impulse, and disregard of symmetry so 
 long as it gets its feelings expressed. There is consequently 
 every reason for not refusing these spirals a place in our tradition, 
 and no fear of their relapsing again into the mechanical inanity of 
 classical Greek ornament. It is worth remembering, while we are 
 on classical ground, that Gothic artists could not, or intentionally 
 did not, try to attain the technical standard of the old classical 
 work. This makes their Art so charming. The models were before 
 their eyes — they could not fail to try to imitate them as children 
 would ; but like children they were incapable of comparison, or too 
 delighted with their own sensation of achievement, too full of new 
 ideas, to see any particular advantage in making patterns symmetrical 
 instead of rugged, or dead instead of living. 
 
 We have already seen a vase introduced as a convenient method 
 of overcoming the difficulty of turning a corner. Among the 
 Christian Egyptian tapestries we find it also used in the place of 
 the leaf or spot in every interval of the spiral, and sometimes in 
 lines without any spiral at all except what is suggested by the 
 crossing of the branches which grow from the mouths of the vases 
 themselves (Plate XVIII., e, /). Whether the mythical significance 
 of a vase led to this favourite employment of it, or whether the 
 similarity of its outline to a leaf's was the reason, it is difficult and
 
 
 
 t 
 
 / 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Greek and Vase Spirals.
 
 go ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 unimportant to determine ; but in the latter and more probable case, 
 we have an analogous pattern of the same date consisting of a row 
 or frieze of hearts which undoubtedly bears a still closer resemblance 
 to a row of heart-shaped leaves. The sort of symbolism a row of 
 hearts would imply is, perhaps, not quite in accordance with the 
 dogmatic and somewhat Athanasian feeling of that time. In early 
 forms of Art a symbol is used more in a religious than an artistic 
 sense, and consequently would occur alone, while a whole row of 
 hearts implies an almost embarrassing philanthropy which even the 
 culture of the present day has scarcely attained. 
 
 The question of the origin of the shapes that occur in some patterns 
 is an interesting one, because, in trying to find out what they 
 mean, we shall come across a number of patterns consisting of 
 forms which are more unreal than real, which may suggest but 
 never realise (Plate XIX.). These patterns hold somewhat the same 
 relation that the Scandinavian rope and chain spirals do to more 
 organic spirals, and set us an example of simplicity, — for to be 
 effective they must be simple, — which we are glad to meet with 
 when we are tempted to indulge in too much detail. Some of a 
 very primitive type we have already drawn attention to. I do not 
 think they should be much insisted on, but they cannot altogether 
 escape notice. Some are doubtless traditional descendants of more 
 organic patterns, and some are the result of the legitimate exercise 
 of an imagination which does not care to embody itself in a more 
 direct manner. When we come to study friezes and their kindred 
 patterns we shall find this tendency to inorganic form taking a 
 much more prominent place. 
 
 Closely allied with these inorganic patterns are others either 
 derived from heraldic sources or animated by an heraldic sentiment 
 (Plate XIXa). Society is too complicated in these days to tolerate 
 the exclusive right of a few people to assume the proud distinction 
 of personal emblems. Heraldry, as an aristocratic fetish, is no longer 
 protected by law ; its glamour is greatly a mirage of the past, regretted 
 only by the sentimental advocates of reaction. But the spirit of 
 Heraldry is far from dead, and must rise to brighter resurrection
 
 XIX. 
 Inorganic Spiral Patterns.
 
 92 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 from the dry husks among which it still pretends to linger. The 
 old Heraldry was doubtless with sufficient truth rooted in personal 
 egotism. The new Heraldry must be based on wider reasons than 
 mere pride of descent or prowess in battle. What forms it will take 
 it would be foolish to predict ; but it is easy to see how the conditions 
 have altered, when the very shield, which was the unquestioned 
 medium of this self-advertisement, is no longer a necessary part of 
 a gentleman's equipment, but has become itself a traditional symbol, 
 and a mere form of ornament that anybody can appropriate. What, 
 so to speak, was once the binding has become part of the book. And 
 those Quixotes who hunger in regretful dreams for the old days, 
 would do well sometimes to remember to whom the beauty of the 
 past was in the main due. It was the unrecorded tailors, smiths, 
 and limners who produced the pageant, and wrapped the tournament 
 in charm. The gentlemen only supplied the bloodshed. The Heraldry 
 of the future will be the nucleus of its Art, the laboratory where 
 essentials are filtered from dross, and Nature's real meanings precipi- 
 tated by cunning chemistry from the confusion of her facts. 
 
 We are sometimes asked to believe that as the world gets older 
 and wiser we shall do without Art, which is after all only a kind of 
 child's play and make-believe, and learn instead to express our ideas 
 and feelings in exact terms. But we cannot escape from Art, because 
 in our evolution truth first looms through a haze of guess before its 
 outline crystallises into fact. The indefinite must always precede the 
 definite, faith anticipate knowledge and poetry prose. So far from doing 
 without any more Art, the use of symbols, of hyperbole in speech 
 and gesture in action, is bound to increase with the progress of 
 our own intelligence. An atmosphereless certainty would bring us no 
 joy or peace ; we must learn to accept the riddle of our existence, and 
 in every mystery discover a revelation. How glad, then, we ought to 
 be when so infinite a science as this of heraldry ceases to possess a 
 limited interest, and enters on a wider field of usefulness ! Instead of 
 discarding it we have hardly begun to imagine the magnitude of its 
 scope. The destiny of every force is to exert wider and wider influence. 
 Once the kettle only sat on the fire and boiled ; now it has gotten
 
 XIXa. 
 
 Heraldic Spirals.
 
 94 
 
 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 itself wings and wheels, and carries us round the world. Already an 
 increasing interest in matters of Art shows that the public is beginning 
 to recognise that artists and craftsmen have a special and almost 
 levitical duty to fulfil : to promulgate, if only by example, the old 
 truth that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every act of his 
 imagination. 
 
 The student of decoration cannot afford to neglect the study of 
 ancient heraldry, for not only are several of the elementary spirals 
 among its simplest conventions, but there are many other valuable 
 suggestions to be gleaned from its pages. Its methods are entirely 
 conventional and symbolic, like our own ; but eminently practical as 
 well, for in the successful application of its principles to every sort 
 of material from silk to steel, it has laid down rules which we also 
 can profit by when we want to apply our own designs. Here, however, 
 I only wish to suggest the inclusion among our patterns of some 
 with a real or affected heraldic sentiment, and to remind you that 
 the science has immense claims on our respect, because it is the 
 custodian of ancient and valuable tradition. 
 
 A spiral which constantly occurs in Christian Egyptian eccle- 
 siastical tapestry, and of which Plate XX., a, b, gives a rough idea, 
 exhibits that mixture of innocence and daring which invariably attends 
 the inception of a new era in Art. It is probably nothing more 
 than the irregular insertion at several places along the spiral of 
 an ornament intended at first to come only at the end. There is 
 nothing original in such a scheme as this, but somehow in Gothic 
 hands, backed by Gothic imagination, the pleasant surprise of these 
 interruptions constitutes a pattern which is quite unlike the formal 
 classicism of previous types. Compare it, for instance, with the 
 monotonous alternation of triglyph and metope in a Greek frieze : 
 whether the metopes are carved or not, the principle of the whole 
 pattern is mathematical and unimaginative. It is reared in honour 
 of a god — not of flesh and blood, but of stone : it may be sublime, 
 but it is not living. Here, on the other hand, is a pattern from a 
 Christian priest's vestment, which is quite typical of the new religion 
 it illustrates : a religion dangerously subversive of symmetrical
 
 d 
 
 XX. 
 
 Egyptian and other Spirals.
 
 96 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 respectability of all sorts, but homely and warm for all that. Perhaps 
 you think I exaggerate the importance of such a simple pattern 
 as this ; certainly it is only typical of the change in Art which 
 accompanied Christianity. Nevertheless, if you are sceptical about 
 symbols being as intensely significant as I infer them to be, see if 
 you can invent one that is entirely new. You could as easily invent 
 a new chair, a new bed or table, new material to take the place of 
 paper, a new alphabet, a new letter, or a new word. Our patterns 
 are in their way as precise a means of saying what they mean as 
 our language is. The traditional or original ones constitute the 
 fixed alphabet of Art. A thousand years may alter the shape of 
 a letter here and there, but seldom adds a new one. We may 
 combine them in a million new ways, and must do so if we have 
 anything to say for ourselves. Art is the combination of traditional 
 symbols, as speech is the combination of traditional sounds. You 
 may talk gibberish so long as you find it mistaken for an oracle, 
 but if you want to make yourself understood it will be wiser to 
 adopt the current sounds that sane men have always accepted. 
 
 These " interrupted " patterns, as I call them, are based, as 
 we have said, on the irregular interruption of the spiral. In the 
 living or Christian type of this pattern, these interruptions are 
 caused by the insertion of recognised forms such as the square, 
 diamond, circle, oval, or other shapes. We shall have to make a 
 closer acquaintance later on with these traditional forms. This is 
 almost our first introduction to them. 
 
 There is a marked tendency, in many of the examples in this 
 chapter, to keep the spiral more understood than actually expressed. 
 The final claim that tradition makes on Art, even if it discards all 
 other shackles, is the confession that the artist does not want you 
 to mistake his work for Nature's. It is no compliment to the 
 counterfeit to mistake it for the reality. Next to this limitation, 
 which admits the greatest possible amount of freedom, and which 
 therefore very few artists can do justice to, comes the Art which 
 obeys a traditional convention in the arrangement of its subject. 
 Plate XX., c, d, e, gives examples of this class. The leaves, birds,
 
 THE SPIRAL. 97 
 
 and fishes of patterns like these are arranged in evident obedience 
 to a formal scheme. They are pictures with the idea or feeling of 
 the spiral prominent, but without its being actually present. Such 
 patterns possess a peculiarly modern sentiment. They illustrate 
 action instead of rest, and consequently require considerable assurance 
 and spontaneity in the artist. Following this clue, we may remember 
 how instinctively free the decoration is that occurs on the pages of 
 Blake's " Songs of Innocence and Experience," where it supplements 
 the text with imaginary note and fanciful commentary. Compared to 
 much recent imitation of mediaeval borders, Blake's efforts in this style 
 appear at first singularly weak and unlearned. But though his 
 art often relapses into mannerisms, as his prose into metaphysics, 
 the astonishing wonder is that this apostle of imagination, at a 
 time when nobody cared for Gothic Art, instinctively selected a 
 Gothic method of expression. Deficient as his expression is in 
 many respects, Blake's work on those lines joins with Ludwig 
 Richter's in healthy protest against the conscious imitation of old 
 work. " Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the 
 dead," is a proverb of his we ought to remember. Use the past, — 
 yes ! but as a field from which the crop has long been taken, and 
 the reapers called to rest. 
 
 We are probably justified in assuming that the characteristic 
 intricacy of Celtic Art is due in great measure to certain habits and 
 feelings among the people who practised it ; but there is no reason 
 for refusing something of the same character for evasive and 
 roundabout expressions to individuals of other nationalities as well. 
 A spiral form of ornament whose curves recall a rope or cable 
 should be popular with a seafaring folk, and appeal to a larger public 
 as well, since the same feeling of twist is involved in other things 
 besides ropes, as, for instance, in plaited hair and wreaths for festal 
 or religious purposes. There is an obvious value in believing that 
 patterns were invented to express the same feelings they excite in 
 us. The public will accept such an Art as instinctively as they 
 accept the feelings of which it is an echo ; and artists, who should 
 be people of exceptional susceptibility, will continue to find in the 
 
 7
 
 98 ARBOR VIT-ff-. 
 
 conscious expression of their own feelings a fertile source of further 
 inspiration. I assume, then, that a class of actions which culminates 
 in the making of wreaths for festal and religious purposes excites a 
 pleasurable sensation in most people, and is immortalised in a special 
 form of Art which we may call the " Wreath " pattern. Art is 
 merely a name for those things we do or make in which the spiritual 
 or imaginary predominates. A creed of practical kindness, a poem in 
 praise of the plough, a chant in time to the oars, or lullaby to rock 
 the baby over the sea of sleep, such carving round the cup as may 
 enhance the gift if only of cold water — all this is Art. And to make 
 a wreath is Art too, and to my mind nobler in perishable bay than 
 in permanent gold. The imitation of the natural wreath in leaves of 
 thin gold, however warranted by classic use, is typical of essentially 
 vulgar art. In making a wreath of real leaves the imagination is 
 entirely and rightly occupied in the arrangement of them. This is 
 genuine Art, because Nature does not show us how to do it. To go 
 to the trouble of first making the leaves, when Nature has always 
 a store of quite suitable ones, is to throw labour away. In the spirit 
 of fun you may build a paper boat or a gingerbread cottage, but 
 you must not waste precious time and precious material in elaborate 
 shams. A boat, for instance, is a symbol of time, and as such is 
 a legitimate ornament on a clock, and the more impossibly seaworthy 
 it is, the better symbol probably, and the better Art ; but to build 
 models of great ships, with hull, rigging, masts, and sails out of 
 solid metal, as one has seen, with a clock, of all things, hidden 
 somewhere in the hold, is ridiculous. A symbol must never pretend 
 to be more important than what it decorates, and to place a wreath 
 of gold round a man's brow is practically to suggest that he is too 
 good for this world. 
 
 But think, on the other hand, of all the feelings and gestures 
 of which making a wreath is only one outcome, and you have the 
 key to a series of patterns applicable to every handicraft (Plate XXI., 
 i — 7), of which the simplest is no more than the lines which mark 
 the twisting of the strands in a rope, or the ribbons round a maypole. 
 They are as numerous as there are possible twistings and plaitings.
 
 ?&%$T 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Wreath and Invecked Patterns.
 
 ioo ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 In plain outline they are not very interesting, and only useful where 
 narrow borders are wanted. But their somewhat uninteresting regu- 
 larity offers a capital opportunity for elementary practice in the use 
 of colour. Children, for instance, might be taught to tint every 
 alternate space, or, better still, to twist a coloured ribbon round a 
 white pole, leaving the ground to show equally with the ribbon. 
 This practice could be made to extend indefinitely, and would develope 
 the best sort of artistic feeling in children before any grown-up theories 
 of Art could enter their heads. How this might gradually lead to the 
 keeping of festivals with beautiful ritual, procession and song, makes 
 one feel how meagre our revivals of Art, Gothic and other, are. They 
 only seem to touch the outside, and leave the heart of things still 
 bare and cold. The difficulty of instilling into the average mind any 
 conception of the wider sense of Art, as the Sacrament of the whole 
 of life, is almost insuperable ; but if people who are fond of children 
 could be induced to revive, or failing the memory of any tradition, 
 to inaugurate, innocent festivals accompanied with dance and song in 
 honour of season, saint, or hero, a new era of Art would dawn in the 
 wisest and happiest way. 
 
 But to return to more immediately practical ideals, our next step 
 in artistic education would be to cut a wand of sprouting thorn, or 
 wild cherry, or other lusty bough out of an April hedge, and wind 
 our gaudy ribbons round it, between the springing blossoms or buds. 
 In this way we shall get a prototype for further developments, and 
 from this our progress to many artifices of wreath and festoon is 
 clear enough, till the more rarely recurrent ribbon gives place to 
 shields and cherubs' heads, or even — which the scientific Renaissance 
 prefers — to bullocks' skulls. There are a hundred beautiful types of 
 these patterns to be met with in early Italian Renaissance sculpture ; 
 nor would it be right to leave the subject without appreciative 
 recollection of the gay wreaths of della Robbia's majolica. The 
 festoon in itself is a genuine source of pattern, and introduces the 
 " invecked " line which is an heraldic variation of the zigzag. I give 
 a few examples here of invecked patterns (Plate XXL, 8, 9, 10, 11). 
 Most of them are very simple, and of hardly sufficient interest to
 
 XXII. 
 Development of Scroll and Linen Patterns.
 
 102 ARBOR VIT^E. 
 
 stand alone. They consequently appear to greater advantage when 
 they are used as borders to more important designs, especially when 
 those designs are circular ones. Their more developed forms are 
 very artificial, and often consist of somewhat paltry ribbons and 
 bows ; and as the idea of festooning gets prominent they become 
 immensely popular with the later Renaissance decorators, in whose 
 hands they degenerate quickly enough into meaningless Arabesques. 
 
 One of the most noticeable instances of this invecked line occurs 
 along the top edge of hanging tapestry ; so that from patterns based 
 on the idea of the festoon we glide naturally enough into those which 
 are based on the lines of drapery. If you will take a strip of material 
 that falls easily into folds, and pin it by its longer edge against the 
 wall at intervals about equal to half as much again as the piece is 
 broad, you will be able to study the laws of drapery sufficiently well 
 for our immediate purposes. Every time you readjust the pins, or 
 shake the stuff, it will fall into different folds ; but no disposition of 
 them will alter the essential fact that the top line remains an invecked 
 one, and the bottom convex between the pins and concave directly 
 below them (Plate XXII., i, 2, 3). The curvature of this bottom line 
 increases in proportion to the sagging of the material between the 
 pins. When the stuff is rather taut the bottom line becomes a flattened 
 spiral; when it sags the spiral tends to the "nebulas" type. Then 
 by cutting the material into large Vandykes so that the points fall 
 between the pins, we shall get a complex form of nebulas which is a 
 very favourite one with Greek artists on account of the nice vertical 
 zigzags that are got in this way. But within these outlines the main 
 disposal of the folds is simple enough, though in more complicated 
 arrangements it would considerably tax our ingenuity. All we have 
 to notice here is that the lines which represent these folds radiate 
 from each pin or point of suspension, and that the lines which radiate 
 from one centre rarely run into those which radiate from the next, 
 except near the top edge, but interlace with them in a way that has 
 made the study of drapery as fascinating — I was almost saying as 
 fatal — as that of the Acanthus. Into the ethics of the use of drapery 
 in Art we need not enter now at any length. Whether we adopt the
 
 THE SPIRAL. 103 
 
 Florentine convention of flowing and inflated folds, or the Roman 
 with stiff and ponderous ones, or the Flemish with its bony- 
 angularities, matters little, so long as its sentiment is in keeping with 
 the meaning of our picture. What matters a great deal is, that too 
 much attention should not be paid to a thing of secondary importance ; 
 and it must be confessed that an excessive use of drapery has been 
 a marked sign of decadence in Christian as well as ancient Art, both 
 in sculpture and painting. To paint the soul it is not always necessary 
 to hide the body. There is nothing indecent in the naked body. 
 Only that is indecent which conceals a nobler thing than itself. When 
 the office is greater than the man who fills it we may delight in his 
 clothes, and such a delight is legitimate. But when the man himself 
 interests us, it matters less how he happens to be dressed. 
 
 To return, however, to our model drapery, let us see what more, 
 without the necessity of any sacrifice, it can be made to suggest. 
 Firstly, if we take the line of its lower edge and repeat it at greater 
 or less distance, we shall get an infinite variety of scroll patterns 
 (Plate XXII., 3, 4, 5). And, secondly, if we turn two of these lines 
 back to back, we shall discover how all those patterns are made 
 which are called "linen" patterns (Plate XXII., 6). These scroll 
 and linen patterns are available for inscriptions and other decorations, 
 just as the value of the material on which they are based is enhanced 
 by the addition of embroidery ; and, indeed, they are not often 
 interesting enough unless they carry some such attraction. The linen 
 patterns are at present almost entirely confined to wood work, 
 but there is no reason why they should not enjoy a much wider 
 application. 

 
 WE have seen how soon Greek artists deserted the direct guidance 
 of the spiral, and threw their strength into developing the 
 more naturalistic art of the frieze. The line of spots or 
 blobs, which is the earliest form of this method of decoration, became 
 in their hands a powerful source of tradition, and one which, though 
 we were at first obliged to set it aside, we may now follow with 
 advantage. For though we are perhaps naturally attracted to the 
 spiral more than to other forms of ornament, it would be wrong 
 to-day to shut our eyes to the value of any tradition which embodies 
 feelings we have learned to appreciate ; besides which, the Greek 
 element is so subtly interwoven into the civilised art of all subsequent 
 times, that it would be impossible to altogether ignore its influence. 
 The Greeks were none the less great masters because their pupils 
 have had sufficient character to strike out original lines for themselves ; 
 and we must not let ourselves be discouraged by the partial failure 
 of other efforts to incorporate what they considered the peculiar bent 
 of the Greek genius. So long as a school is faithful to its own 
 inspiration first of all, it can get nothing but good from its study of 
 previous styles. It is only when Christian Art forgets its Christianity, 
 and pretends to be muscularly Grecian, that discredit falls on master 
 and pupils alike. And though the pre-Raphaelite movement affected 
 the body of the thirteenth century more than its spirit, its outcome, 
 in a marked improvement in the public appreciation of pretty things, 
 
 has proved the value of an attempted renaissance, or, at any rate, 
 
 104
 
 ARCADES. 105 
 
 paved the way for a fuller acceptance of all traditions based on strength 
 of feeling, wherever they may be found. 
 
 I called Greek Art naturalistic in contrast to the more obvious 
 conventionalism of the spiral, but we must not imagine for that reason 
 that the Greek artists were actuated by realistic motives. That they 
 were great naturalists we will readily admit ; that naturalism and 
 realism are the same things we must strenuously deny. We say, 
 rather, that Greek Art is great only so long as it is conventional — 
 not in the sense that the subjects it deals with are conventional or 
 mythical, but because it treats everything in a conventional way ; nor 
 must we think that its own convention is less binding on Greek Art 
 than the presence of the spiral has been on our own, merely because 
 it may be less easy to detect there. 
 
 Though, at root, the frieze is only an irregular row of spots, 
 dots, or blobs, its finer developments are by no means so simple ; 
 and I have therefore put the spiral first, because it is easier to make 
 a satisfactory pattern by filling the intervals of a zigzag with pleasant 
 objects, than to put the same objects, sensitively, in a row by 
 themselves. The zigzag or spiral determines their position in the 
 former case, in the latter we have to learn to do without it. I think 
 we shall understand this better as we proceed ; and in the meantime 
 the more sensitively we can learn to fill the intervals in a spiral the 
 sooner we shall be able to draw a frieze ; so that the spiral may be 
 called the nurse of the frieze, because it carries its charges in its arms 
 till they are old enough to walk alone. 
 
 Advocates of a mechanical art will derive the frieze from a line 
 of equal objects placed at equal distances from each other, just as 
 they would derive the spiral from a line composed of equal segments 
 of a circle. Unfortunately for such a plausible theory, as soon as the 
 objects began to vary in size and shape the necessary calculations 
 would take up too much time, and would end by robbing the pattern 
 of all its spontaneity and vigour, qualities which are indispensable 
 in ornament, and which depend, like certain sweet discords, on 
 delicate infringements of arithmetic law. The composition of beautiful 
 ornament may be analysed in the same way as music can, but the
 
 106 ARBOR VITAL. 
 
 carefullest and most elaborate dissection of his art will never make 
 a musician. 
 
 Now, though the frieze is but another form of linear decoration, 
 we cannot make one out of a spiral by merely taking away the 
 winding line or zigzag which lies at its root, for that would still 
 leave its charges in an obviously zigzag position. The result might 
 be quite harmonious, but could not be strictly defined as a frieze, 
 nor would our object be gained by pushing some up and others 
 down till a straight line of them was formed. We must therefore 
 take a frieze on its own conditions ; but there are, nevertheless, some 
 patterns which are neither quite friezes nor spirals, but which we 
 may derive more immediately from the latter. Of these patterns the 
 arcade comes first in order, because its connection with the spiral is 
 the most obvious. It is a justly popular form of Art, as its constant 
 and inevitable use in architecture of all sorts proves. If we wished 
 to find an origin in nature for its popularity, the first avenue or 
 clump of trees will suggest one. In the alternation of column and 
 arch there is enough material for thousands of designs. But I think 
 it will be better to base our arcades, as we have the rest of our 
 tradition, on forms which our own feelings first and our material 
 wants in the second place have suggested, and which are none the 
 less true though they may be more abstract than others that Nature 
 has planted round us. It is perhaps impossible to say how far our 
 observation of nature has helped our imagination ; but my own 
 feeling is that the aisle of a Gothic cathedral is as original an 
 invention on the part of its builders as the trunk is on the part of the 
 tree. The same idea is indigenous in both, and neither has probably 
 copied from the other. As soon as our imagination, egged on by 
 our needs, has "discovered" a labour-saving instrument, we are apt 
 to see its analogies all around us, and call in Art to heighten the 
 resemblance. In the same way there are probably things which 
 happen every day before our eyes, which seeing we see not : forces 
 which would revolutionise all our industries if our eyes were only 
 opened to see them lurking in places we never suspect because we 
 have grown so used to them there.
 
 ARCADES. 107 
 
 We will return to our original spiral, then, and by a quite 
 natural and easy emphasis on the down-strokes turn it into the 
 pothooks of any child's school copy-book (fig. 14). Here, you see, we 
 get an arcade without much trouble ; but what a pity it is that our 
 schoolmasters appear so blindly ignorant that the child's copy-book 
 has anything to do with art! Our children learn to write and read 
 with difficulty and pain because our alphabet in its present condition 
 is so ugly. If it were treated in a beautiful and delicate way, 
 caligraphy might again become an accomplishment. As it is, with 
 our modern Moloch fetish of competitive examinations, the greater 
 education that learning to write might involve is out of the question. 
 
 yrwm m 
 
 Fig. 14.— Pothooks and Hangers. 
 
 Now, the arcades we shall get in this way will often be as 
 irregular as those in the wood, and will require some drilling before 
 they can be turned into proper patterns (Plate XXIII.); and though 
 the arcade depends on repetitions even more than the spiral does, 
 we must take care not to let the repetition be mechanical. In a 
 steam-engine paradise all the cast-iron trees are exactly alike, but 
 we must avoid that sort of perfection as deliberately as Nature does. 
 An architect is forced to calculate the strain and distribute the 
 weight of his materials, and is therefore, I dare say, often obliged 
 to be monotonous ; but we must not therefore allow him to tell us 
 that virtue resides in symmetry when the question is not one of 
 construction. If the laws of gravity are neglected they will prove 
 dangerous, but at present we are building with fancies and not with
 
 108 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 bricks. We are not just now building churches ; and if we want to 
 paint arcades on our parlour walls it won't hurt anybody if a column 
 here and there leans a little to one side. 
 
 Nor must we be tempted at this place to give a lengthy or even 
 a short analysis of the different forms of arch. The student of 
 architecture can find them easily enough. It is rather their heresies, 
 their ///applicability to construction, and suitability to surface ornament 
 instead, that ought to specially interest us. The feeling of construction 
 and strength they give us is very important too, but it must 
 be given in a decorative and imaginative way, and not in a 
 mathematical one. 
 
 The arcade is such a favourite source of pattern that I am loth 
 to leave it without some attempt to lay a stress on the feelings of 
 which it is in great measure the expression. All undertakings which 
 are firmly rooted in deep soils of security and truth become trees 
 of life, pillars of strength and support, and issue in wide-spreading 
 shelter of praise and aspiration. The tree, with its ubiquitous 
 illustration of these thoughts, has naturally become their lasting 
 symbol. Nor is the essential force of a symbol lost when it is 
 repeated again and again in a pattern like the arcade. In many 
 patterns, however, this inevitable repetition might become uninteresting 
 if it did not give rise to an additional charm by unexpectedly 
 creating an additional form. In Art two and two often make more 
 than four : for instance, if we place two columns with their spandrils, 
 or two trees with their branches, side by side, we make an arch 
 between them which has quite a different character from a column 
 or a tree, and so by raising a long row of columns with their 
 spandrils we get a row of arches, and by planting a lot of trees 
 together a grove. 
 
 This bit of witchcraft is especially characteristic of the arcade and 
 the class of ornament to which it gives its name. It is not such 
 a noticeable feature in the spiral, because it is difficult to say what 
 the repeating part of the spiral exactly is ; nor in the frieze, where 
 the conditions are quite different. No wonder, then, that mystery 
 envelops the places where this occurs in a marked manner in nature,
 
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 XXIII. 
 
 Arcades which Emphasise the Column.
 
 HO ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 and enhances the eerie charm that wraps our entry into the deepening 
 gloom of a wood. The eclipse of noisy day by silent shade, the 
 change from the vulgar heat and dust of the high road to cool 
 carpets of elastic moss, and the impression of awful, half-seen com- 
 panionship, amply explain the time-honoured sanctity of groves and 
 the lovely paganism that always clings to them. What harm attends 
 our innocent if superstitious reverence for such temples as these, not 
 made with hands, for those "groves, and streams, and mountain 
 summits which bring the unseen close to man by waving mystery, or 
 by rushing murmur, or by nearness to the height of heaven " ? To 
 reject sentiments of this sort, however pantheistic, is to despise the 
 subtlest sources of our inspiration. What may once have been 
 superstition is none the less wonderful and valuable for us when it 
 has consciously become a prolific source of poetry. Art can never be 
 based on enlightened scepticism ; nor any science, I trust, expel the 
 lurking ghosts which haunt our fields and teach us to be grateful for 
 their beauty, and kind to the animals and flowers that grow there. 
 
 This creation of another form by the juxtaposition of two similar 
 ones, changes the arcade from a line of columns to a row of arches, 
 and suggests greater stress on the decoration of the arch-space than 
 of the columns and spandrils (Plate XXIV.). Other patterns will 
 spring from utilising both spaces, and with this clue the student can 
 well be left to amplify examples for himself. The distinctive quality 
 of the arcade, however, begins to disappear as soon as neither arch- 
 space nor column is predominant, and when lines that were meant at 
 first to express lightness combined with strength, or aspiration rooted 
 in knowledge, fade into meandering divisions between ornamental 
 borders which dovetail more or less into each other. The patterns 
 which result from this degradation of the arcade are not, however, 
 necessarily debased ; but may serve, so long as they are unaffected, 
 to mark a return to simpler forms of ornament, and illustrate the 
 inevitable sunset of all vital tradition from time to time into 
 the more primitive obscurity of cruder shapes and less tangible 
 expression. In this condition it can compensate for the loss of the 
 maturer thought which an arcade embodies by patterns which show
 
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 XXIV. 
 
 Arcades which Emphasise the Arch.
 
 H2 ARBOR VIT4E. 
 
 contrasts of bright colour, and bold, if somewhat inorganic, forms. 
 It would be somewhat retrogressive to attempt any analysis here of 
 these simpler arcades. The first two patterns in Plate XXV. are 
 sufficient to show their general inclination, and other instances might 
 be quoted from former illustrations ; but while the temptation to 
 classify is always a great one, excess of it is apt to aggravate the 
 ever-present difficulties of learning, and only tends to destroy that 
 very simplification which is the aim of all analysis. 
 
 From this relapse into archaic simplicity tradition rises like the 
 sun to renewed efforts. Other patterns besides the arcade can be 
 derived from accidental or intentional emphasis on certain curves of 
 the spiral. We saw in Chapter I. that this was a possible source 
 of design, though we were not allowed to draw any patterns then 
 which included organic or animal forms. Now, however, that we 
 are more advanced, let us turn our knowledge into new account. 
 The strange creatures in Plate XXV. are born in this way; and 
 whether they show that the spiral line underlies much of Nature's 
 composition, or that Art is Nature bent into the spiral, does not 
 much matter, for at any rate they afford a clue to the shapes animals 
 take in traditional ornament, a text of which the best efforts of Greek 
 Art are an able exposition. But in these examples, though the animals 
 have made away with the spiral by swallowing it whole, they are still 
 far from possessing the freedom and spontaneity of a true frieze ; they are 
 forced to follow each other with the slavish regularity of an university 
 boat crew ; they have even less freedom than the leaves in a spiral. 
 But that is because they are the spiral itself metamorphosed, and 
 with its whole soul bent on becoming a frieze as soon as ever it can. 
 
 To get into the way of drawing such patterns as these, it will 
 be wiser to begin by drawing the spiral underneath, and building 
 up the forms upon it. That will not only ensure a uniformity in 
 the crew, but will give each member of it his own distinct action 
 and character, in proportion as each up and down stroke of the 
 spiral varies from the next. When this method has been thoroughly 
 assimilated, we may perhaps find it unnecessary to draw the underlying 
 spiral before we settle what sort of creature it is to change into.
 
 WSSSaSSBSSSSBSSSaaSSSBBISSSSSSSS^^B^SSSSSESSESS^SBSSS^ . 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Decadent Arcades and Friezes derived from the Spiral. 
 
 8
 
 H4 ARBOR VIT/E. 
 
 All animal forms appear to illustrate that double curve whose repetition 
 constitutes the spiral of our tradition. Fishes, birds, quadrupeds, and 
 man himself, stand and move by subtle balancings of corresponding 
 curves, and things are well drawn when they obey this aesthetic law 
 and bend their differing characteristics to illustrate it. Look, for 
 instance, at this picture of a hare painted on the body of an archaic 
 Greek bowl, round which it is supposed to be careering (fig. 15); and 
 notice how entirely the man who drew it felt the music of moving 
 lines, and knew how to make the creature's body harmonise with 
 them. What was not wanted to enforce the feeling of harmonious 
 
 Fig. 15.— A Running Hare. 
 
 speed he was content to leave out of his picture. He has learnt no 
 anatomy, no foreshortening, and does not want to ; he cannot draw 
 half as well as an Academy student, and his chance of benefiting 
 by the patronage of that body would certainly be small ; but, for 
 all that, the purpose and power displayed in the drawing of this 
 little beast are worth all the laboured accuracy spent yearly on 
 cumbering the walls of our exhibitions with a lifeless art. Nor does 
 a Greek artist of the period when this hare was painted patronise 
 one type of aesthetic construction in animal life more than another. 
 If he delights in the legs of a hare or deer because they are long 
 and graceful, he is equally sensitive to the short and delicate ones
 
 ARCADES 115 
 
 of the hog, or the short and clumsy ones of a bull. An Aberdeen 
 terrier has stumpy legs, and a greyhound slender ones ; both kinds are 
 beautiful, because both are equally fitted to carry the body above 
 them where it wants to go. It is a great pity that Greek artists, 
 in their devotion to the human form, sacrificed so much in its behalf. 
 That is the worst danger of a too exclusive study of the human 
 form— it seems to quench interest in other things. A frieze of leaves 
 may be as perfect, in its way, as the Parthenon frieze, and is much 
 easier ; but in Greek Art earlier interests only appear to lead to 
 later developments without being incorporated in them. That is why 
 the earlier and more varied Art possesses a fascination that is lacking 
 in the later. In the beginning they took the keenest interest in 
 everything they could draw, if only snaky dreams of cuttle-fish and 
 flights of emblematic birds. Then, as their power grew, every animal 
 was made to take its place in their designs, and behave itself obediently 
 to their will. Their picture-books were cups and plates, whose brittle 
 clay determined their style, and made it a rapid and decisive one. 
 In such manner, and with such material, they drew every animal they 
 saw or heard of, bird and beast and fowl, in untiring progression, 
 and the promise of a world-wide sympathy seemed theirs. Herakles 
 wrestling with the lion is one of the earliest appearances of the 
 human figure in Greek Art ; or perhaps it was the horse which called 
 for his rider. Even then, and for long afterwards — so long, indeed, 
 as the gods and not himself were the chief intelligences — the Greek 
 artist only drew man as one of many actors on a mythical stage, a 
 creature introspectively unconscious, merely a superior sort of animal. 
 But as his faith departs, the animals also fade into prehistoric silence, 
 and he alone holds the whole stage. 
 
 This deficiency in his art is still more noticeable in his early 
 rendering of vegetable life, which is such a strong characteristic of all 
 Christian Art from early Gothic to modern landscape. The Greek 
 idea of a tree is far from happy, and reveals a curious blindness to 
 some sides of nature, which is difficult to understand in face of the 
 subsequent success with which it has been conventionally treated. 
 From this point of view alone, without having recourse to their
 
 n6 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 architecture for further argument, the arcade is peculiarly a Christian 
 form of ornament, and shows that, however immense the scope of 
 Greek Art may be, it is still a limited one. With less power, our 
 horizon is a wider one because our sympathies are wider also. We 
 have learnt that nothing is despicable — that everything should be duly 
 recognised that affects our lives. Greek artists remain our masters. 
 They followed a quite scientific instinct ; and, mastering each difficulty 
 as they came to it, left us in most things a heritage of perfect types. 
 But while they were specialists, we are universalists, and must make 
 use of their discoveries in formulating the expression of our larger 
 creed. If Greek Art could have told us more than it has, it would 
 have been spared to do so. It did its work and died, and we must 
 reap the fuller harvest. We cannot aim at the same ideals, because 
 we have different ones ; nor exactly copy their methods, because the 
 way we can say a thing is inseparable from what we have to say. 
 With all love and reverence for the relics of what has passed away, 
 a new art, like a new religion, puts new feelings into new words. Its 
 founders must never allow a prejudice in favour of what is considered 
 classical to prevent even the most immature expression of new thoughts. 
 That is why reformers are generally people of little education and great 
 susceptibility. Culture is essentially conservative, and its persecution 
 of novelty is actuated as often by the bitterness of insulted sentiment 
 as in defence of vested interests. 
 
 The greatest reformers are those who combine the appreciation 
 of old traditions with a recognition of the need of new ones ; and 
 in such material for revolution the world, at present, is happily rich. 
 No other time has shown such affectionate research side by side with 
 a determination to hazard all, if need be, for the sake of the future. 
 Such a sacrifice as this is happily uncalled for. The eternal, ever- 
 changing serpent of civilisation and progress is not writhing in the 
 throes of a premature dissolution, but is only casting his skin, as 
 he has often cast it before. Art flourishes best in a soil that is at 
 the same time cruel and cultivated. The juice of its grape must 
 yield more than mere sparkle and aroma ; it must intoxicate us as 
 well with the ecstacy of a new revelation.
 
 CHAPTER- EIGHT 
 
 TRIGLYPH& METOPE 
 
 YOU will not have forgotten that the two factors of the first 
 fully realised spiral pattern were a waving line and a spot. 
 Under the guidance of this waving line we developed all kinds 
 of spirals, till in the last chapter we felt the evidence of its presence 
 diminish in the evolution of the arcade and its kindred patterns. 
 
 Without neglecting the spiral, but rather keeping its vibration 
 more intimately before our imaginations, we will now take up that 
 other factor, the spot, or rather row of spots, and discover what sort 
 of patterns it is the parent of. 
 
 In its primitive form, the spots which constitute this pattern 
 must evidently be more" or less circular in form, and placed at more 
 or less equal distances from each other. Such an elementary theme 
 has undoubtedly enjoyed a wide popularity, not only on account of 
 its extreme simplicity, but because, like the field of seeds in our 
 first semd, it is pregnant with immense possibilities. Let us see in 
 what way. 
 
 In the first place, though all the spots are about the same size, 
 they may be as small as peas or as large as pumpkins. Then, though 
 they are at about equal distances apart, that distance may be a great 
 or a small one. Again, they may be oval or angular, and so long 
 as the harmony between them remains unbroken, they may be split 
 up into families or groups of spots. In fact, their possible variations 
 are very numerous, and though we need not stay to investigate them 
 
 117
 
 u8 ARBOR VITVE. 
 
 here, we ought to bear them in mind for convenient reference when 
 we are limited to simple designs. The actual shapes the spots assume 
 calls for attention first, the more because the crafts of wood and stone 
 carving, though they by no means refuse other forms of ornament, 
 have a special interest in simple patterns of this nature. 
 
 To explain the reason of this, we must remember that the charm 
 a piece of carving gives us is due, first of all, to its shadows. In 
 this respect the art of carving is in curious contrast with the art of 
 painting. In painting we don't make a real thing, but only the 
 deceptive likeness of one : in carving we make a real thing, but 
 except for Nature, with her lights and shadows, our labour would be 
 thrown away. With a box of colours we can produce something 
 which is quite independent of Nature's help, and that is the great 
 argument for insisting on the importance of a colourist school ; but 
 our best efforts in light and shade are poor compared to what Nature 
 can do in that way. She is the great chiaroscurist, and to spend 
 trouble in imitating her easily achieved inimitable results appears to 
 my mind a waste of time. 
 
 Such a theory as this, so entirely opposed to modern art teaching, 
 requires a little explanation. Colour has always been the medium 
 of the more imaginative branch of art, while the realists have 
 emphasised the importance of light and shade. It would be impossible, 
 as it would probably be unjust, to condemn a fashion which has been 
 popular for some centuries, nor is it easy to draw a hard-and-fast 
 line between the two schools. A portrait in red chalk, for instance, 
 may be as true to Nature's chiaroscuro as one in black chalk ; but it 
 is already, by virtue of the unreality of its colour, ranked in the colour 
 school. What is done for the pleasure that colour gives is of the 
 colour school ; what is done for the pleasure an appearance of reality 
 gives belongs to the shadow school. Let us notice, in passing, that 
 the rise of this realistic school is contemporaneous with the decline 
 of handicraft and decoration as fine arts ; so that the decorator, whose 
 business it is to reveal dreams and not facts, undoes what he wants 
 to do by trying to make them look solid. His principles ought to 
 coincide with Queen Elizabeth's, who objected to shadows in her
 
 TRIGLYPH AND METOPE. 
 
 119 
 
 portraits. But the ornamentalist or man of imagination has no 
 objection to carve a sphinx or to model an enigma, if Nature will 
 make them real for him ; only we must remember that it is she who 
 fills his corners with gloom and paints the prominences with light. 
 And so if you are a decorator and want chiaroscuro in a pattern, you 
 must carve it. In doing so you will have a legitimate pleasure in 
 the shadows, because they are the result and not the object of your 
 labour. And you will have this advantage also over the pictorial 
 shadow-monger, that your work will have a different effect wherever 
 you put it, while his can never have more than one. 
 
 Sculpture, then, is the decorator's chiaroscuro, and the simplest 
 patterns you can carve are often merely variations of a row of spots, 
 and depend on sculpture to add emphasis and interest of shadow to 
 their severe simplicity. They are quite humble patterns, and never 
 venture to take away our attention from the lines of construction, 
 which they are meant to soften and embellish. Everybody knows 
 that when we have to make a thing we must think of construction 
 before ornament, and that when the surface is a large one and the 
 material difficult, we must put up with what will give us the best 
 result for the least trouble. Architecture has been called the mother 
 of the arts, because we first run to her for shelter, and afterwards, 
 in gratitude, try to make her dignified. So patterns like the dogtooth, 
 billet, and ballflower, all instances of very simple friezes, though of 
 no very exalted imaginative order, are full of dignity, because time 
 and experience have approved them, and because they are the first- 
 fruits of a laudable desire to make our homes more than mere roofs 
 over our heads. 
 
 I do not intend to stray from our subject, which is the examina- 
 tion of the roots of all design, into such specialised branches as the 
 carving crafts, more than to assign a place in our traditions to these 
 architectural patterns, and to point out how the increasing desire for 
 greater naturalism and more detail is held in healthy check in these 
 professions by the necessity of economy and use — a necessity which 
 is obvious enough when our own comfort is at stake, but which 
 applies with equal force to all the other arts. When its cover
 
 120 
 
 ARBOR VIT^. 
 
 protects the book we are reading without interfering by its weight or 
 costliness with our pleasure, the probabilities are that the book is 
 well bound ; and some such obedience to purely material convenience 
 is the first condition of every art. That is an ethical condition. The 
 second is a technical one, that the nature of the material should 
 regulate the nature of the ornament. Here, for instance (fig. 16), is a 
 rough sketch of the first pattern a wood-carver, carving on traditional 
 lines, must learn, because it lies at the root of all his subsequent 
 work. It consists, as you see, of a row of notches like inflated 
 crescents, each one of which ought to be finished in two cuts of a 
 
 Fig. 16. — First Pattern in Wood-Carving. 
 
 " quick " gouge. It is surprising what a number of patterns can be 
 made out of different combinations of this sort of notch alone, which 
 teachers of carving should set their pupils to do before anything else, 
 because, while it involves no previous knowledge of design, it teaches 
 them to distinguish what patterns are suitable for their craft and 
 what are not ; while even in so elementary a stage as this the 
 pleasure such patterns can be made to give depends, as it should, 
 on how much sympathy the pupil has with his material, and how 
 much control he has acquired over his tools. 
 
 It always seems strange to me that the builders of our great 
 churches here in England were content for so long with the repetition 
 of a few simple, well tried and proven patterns. Perhaps tradition
 
 TRIGLYPH AND METOPE. 121 
 
 is better established by such cautious means, and waits the return of 
 a golden age when every artisan shall be an artist and every artist 
 an artisan. Then I have no doubt every village will boast its 
 traditional and characteristic decoration, and its architecture, public 
 and private, become the open witness of local as well as national 
 imagination. The direction the revival of wood-carving now in vogue 
 has taken is disappointing. A wiser renaissance would point out, 
 first of all, the constructive value of wood, and direct itself to 
 emphasise and praise this function of it ; but instead of trying to 
 reform the deadly rule-of-thumb insipidity of carpenters' gothic and 
 carpenters' classic by rough incisive sculpture on barge-boards, lintels, 
 beams, balusters, and newels, or in more delicate patterns in intaglio 
 or light relief on solid furniture, the ingenuity of the teacher and the 
 patience of the pupil are spent on the elaboration of realistic and 
 arabesque designs, which show no signs of that moral enthusiasm 
 which we look for in any real renaissance. Such carving robs the 
 timber of its strength, and at best can only be made up into 
 bric-a-brac , of which every one who is in earnest is profoundly sick. 
 Art is but a chapter, though a large one, of economics. The 
 manufacture of useless articles, with never so much skill, is savage 
 and uncivilised, and prophesies inevitable catastrophe. If sometimes 
 we are inclined to regret the loss of accumulated treasure at the 
 Reformation or during any outburst of religious enthusiasm, we should 
 console ourselves with learning the lessons these ebullitions of strong 
 sentiment enforce, and pay greater attention to the not unsacred 
 claims of domestic art. When the chalice and reliquary are sacrificed 
 to religious fanaticism, the tankard and cupboard are spared ; and 
 though all things in everyday use are liable to be broken and worn 
 out, their death is but a natural one, and their decay full of beauty 
 and honour. But a work of high art, which demands service instead 
 of rendering it, naturally excites the cupidity of the conqueror or the 
 wrath of the iconoclast, and we cannot help regarding its fate more 
 in the light of a massacre than a martyrdom. 
 
 The main characteristic of these architectural patterns is the 
 repetition at even distances of a boss, incision, or simple ornament,
 
 122 ARBOR VITVE. 
 
 which redeems its monotony by the addition of shadow. It does 
 not at all follow that the most beautiful objects are the most 
 suitable for repetition. As in the case of designing diapers or 
 stencils, the law holds good that the more dignified a thing is, the 
 more ridiculous its repetition will, as a rule, become. So that it 
 follows that simple friezes of this kind, including those which are 
 suitable for carving, are best composed of some such simple themes 
 as occur in Plates XXVI. and XXVII., which break the surface 
 pleasantly, and interest the worker without committing him to any 
 intellectual responsibility. If you want to carve or paint more 
 important friezes of this kind, you must constantly and very con- 
 siderably alter the details in the object you repeat ; but that is a part 
 of the subject we shall presently come to. 
 
 Of course, a characteristic of most friezes, especially in these 
 earlier architectural ones, is the blank space between each member 
 which emphasises the shadow of it. Very often an inferior decorator, 
 to avoid the difficulty of having to draw or carve the same thing 
 differently every time, will exactly repeat one factor of his pattern 
 at such a distance from its first occurrence that he hopes you won't 
 notice his repetition. This is, of course, as much as to say that he 
 does not think his pattern worth looking at carefully. The humblest 
 pattern in the world is dignified if it varies throughout ; the most 
 ambitious is spoilt if two inches of it are identical. 
 
 Where we cannot be original throughout, it is better to adopt 
 an unpretentious pattern, where the repetition is obvious and excusable, 
 as in most of the examples in Plates XXVI. and XXVII. These 
 themes are all very simple, and seldom attempt any greater variation 
 than the accidents of drawing admit. Under the conditions of Gothic 
 architecture they tend to crystallise into various forms of rosette, but 
 we need not limit the scope of this form of ornament to such 
 a narrow destination. In pottery, weaving, and many other arts, 
 such simple patterns have of course no pretence of relief, and 
 depend for their effect on colour or quaintness of design. As our 
 illustrations have neither the charm of colour nor of shadow, they 
 cannot do these patterns justice ; but I let them stand in the hope
 
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 XXVI. 
 Variations of the First Frieze or Row of Spots.
 
 124 ARBOR VIT/2. 
 
 that they may suggest other applications than the ones I have 
 taken them from. The regular sequence of plain triglyph and carved 
 metope in a Greek frieze is the highest pitch to which a pattern of 
 this kind can climb. The excellence or elaboration of the carving 
 in each metope must not prevent us from seeing the simplicity of the 
 whole scheme of pattern of which each metope is only a dependent 
 factor. If the subject in every panel were a different one, this 
 simplicity would be greatly marred ; but where, as pre-eminently in 
 the Parthenon, Centaur crushes Lapith, and Lapith conquers Centaur, 
 the vibration of a real pattern is maintained, and the spirit of the 
 spiral preserved intact. In spite of any individual excellence in their 
 workmanship or intention, these intermittent friezes, as we might call 
 them, must not be confused with the final form of frieze the study 
 of them leads us to. The principle of these depends on the alternation 
 of a plain, or nearly plain, factor with a more ornamented one, or 
 even with the alternation of two different factors of which it might 
 be difficult to say which is the more important. 
 
 The fundamental composition of almost every good pattern is 
 really very simple ; and nothing illustrates this better than the row 
 of metopes and tryglyphs which compose the frieze of the Parthenon. 
 Here is perhaps the finest sculpture in the world, though it is only, 
 after all, an exercise on the simplest theme in existence ; and I make 
 bold to say that its excellence is due first of all to its being entirely 
 subservient to the structural tradition or necessity of its position. 
 The artist is a mason under the orders of the architect before he 
 is anything else. The infinity of his imagination is circumscribed 
 by inexorable limits. That is why his work is delightful, useful, 
 and comprehensible. This simplicity and service underlies all Art. 
 " Here is your metope — sculpture it ; your box — carve it; your plate — 
 paint it ; your curtain — embroider it ; your house — make it homely." 
 In doing so you will find your spiritual needs have also been catered 
 for, unconsciously, which is perhaps the only condition on which 
 you can get them really satisfied ; but to teach people to paint and 
 carve as an end in itself is to give carte blanche to original sin. 
 The beginning of all education is obedience ; the end of it, it seems
 
 €? OO 0OO 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Early Inorganic Friezes.
 
 126 
 
 ARBOR VIT.E. 
 
 to me, is still obedience. Without the support of principle every 
 effort is limp. Tradition is principle, and the study of it discloses 
 the foundations on which all real Art rests. Here (fig. 17), for 
 
 •ft 
 
 Fig. 17.— Ancestors of the Parthenon Frieze. 
 
 instance, are some of the actual ancestors of the Parthenon metopes ; 
 and though none of us, now-a-days, will think them very interesting, 
 we must learn to value the lesson they can teach us if we are 
 anxious to emulate Greek proficiency, or establish our own friezes on 
 eternal stones.
 
 THERE is a squareness about classical decoration as shown by 
 the metopes in a Greek frieze, the Perpendicular style in our 
 own architecture, and the ultimate reduction of modern Art 
 into the picture, which appears somehow incompatible with any further 
 evolution. Crystallisations assume an angularity which continuous 
 motion abhors. The planets revolve in ellipses, but freeze into fixed 
 stars. Anyhow, a tradition of Art which is on the move prefers 
 rounded forms to rectangular ones, and if we want to find a principle 
 of growth in our friezes for to-day, we must take as our basis a 
 row of curved spots rather than square ones. 
 
 But this is not all. Your curved forms will not budge till 
 they are unsymmetrical, as even your straight lines can be made to 
 move by placing them all awry (fig. 18). And this awryness cannot 
 properly be taught, for however crooked your lines are they ought 
 to balance each other, and while you are weighing them the restless 
 spirit has flown. ■ That is why I say that all good Art must be 
 spontaneous. Its business is to transmit motion. A Gothic cathedral 
 flames its soul into the sky, while Salem chapel grovels in bricks 
 and mortar. Each affects the quality of its day to aspiration or 
 depression. 
 
 Now, in itself, a row of spots or buttons is not a style of 
 ornament of high emotional value, and very few of the friezes in our 
 last chapter have any but a static and contentedly placid expression ; 
 
 127
 
 128 
 
 ARBOR VIT.E. 
 
 nor does a line of Greek metopes, nor Gothic moulding of rosettes, 
 nor parapet of English battlements, leave us with that unsatisfied 
 desire which accompanies progressive art. These forms of decoration 
 have a mission, and fulfil it, and there is another sort of Greek frieze 
 which is less monotonous, and other Gothic ornaments besides rosettes ; 
 so in this chapter we will take up our row of spots once more, but 
 
 
 
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 Fig. 18. — Dynamic, Static, and Estatic. 
 
 this time on the condition that they shall pass before us like a 
 regiment on the march, and not like a line of soldiers standing 
 at ease. There is, however, a sort of frieze which comes half-way 
 between the entirely free one and that restricted kind which we have 
 already studied. In Plate XXVIII. I have tried to show how it may 
 be derived from the primary row of circles. The wheels, rosettes, and 
 stars of the elementary architectural friezes are only modifications of 
 the circle itself, but in these patterns the ornament is planted like a
 
 ®® @ @® @@ ® 
 
 XXVIII. 
 Evolution of the Frieze from a Line of Circles.
 
 130 ARBOR VITVE. 
 
 picture inside its frame, as a god or monarch's head is relieved on a 
 coin instead of being cut out of the solid metal. This difference 
 allows us, of course, a far greater scope of subject, and in the later 
 stages of its evolution the picture may be sufficiently complex and 
 globular to dispense with the frame altogether. We shall not reach 
 this goal without considerable practice, because it is much more 
 difficult to draw a picture that will look more or less circular when 
 it is finished, than to put two or three things together into a circular 
 frame, and fill up the background with black. The function of the 
 frame must remain even after it has been taken away ; and however 
 rampant the figures may be, they must remain distinctly independent 
 and separate from each other. We must make them harmonise as 
 simple masses with simple outlines before we look to see what they 
 are made up of. This is, of course, more or less true of all friezes ; 
 but while in the earlier and simpler kinds the masses are kept 
 conventionally and rigidly distinct, in the latter more delicate relations 
 are introduced, and instead of each member of the frieze standing 
 alone, it is so nervously sensitive to the others that it affects the 
 attitudes of all. 
 
 These are the friezes that must interest us now. They are free 
 from such rigid conventions as affected those we have just studied, 
 or the architectural ones of the last chapter, of which we took the 
 Greek frieze of metope and triglyph as a type. They must therefore 
 obey all the more faithfully those unwritten traditions of harmony 
 which it appears to be the aim of the neo-idealists, with their Japanese 
 and Javanese tendencies, to outrage. In other words, they must 
 satisfy our Christian prejudices for a proper adjustment of weight 
 and shadow, or of colour and form, over the whole surface : must, in 
 fact, make for peace and righteousness instead of discord and anarchy. 
 The first step we must take in this direction is to give a semblance 
 of motion to the whole row of spots, instead of leaving them placidly 
 inert. From this point of view they will appear as a line of irregular 
 and lopsided ovals (fig. 19). Then we must bring them nearer 
 together, in order to get rid of that blank space, which has hitherto 
 been necessary to alternate with the recurrent ornament and give
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE FRIEZE. 131 
 
 It due relief and prominence. These ovals must for the present all 
 point in the same direction. We may sometimes finish off a frieze, 
 as we ended a spiral, with a figure or leaf turned the other way, 
 but in the frieze it has a special value, and emphasises the direction 
 in which the procession has gone ; as children will draw a ship 
 scudding before the wind, and think to emphasise the motion by 
 streaming an impossible pennon windward in the teeth of the gale. 
 
 Now these ovals are, so to speak, eggs from which in ingenious 
 incubators we may hatch any animal we choose. It is a shape that 
 underlies the construction of every creature, and helps us very materially 
 to draw them. It will be best to set about it in the solidest manner 
 we can, with a stump brush or a quill pen that has seen better days. 
 When that is done, you can modify and add to it the special 
 characteristic of the animal you want, and as far as possible in the 
 
 Fig. 19. 
 
 same solid way ; thinking of the head as another and smaller oval, 
 and the neck, legs, wings and tail as isthmuses and peninsulas. 
 
 It is wonderful, too, what a feeling of vigour and reality this 
 method of drawing is capable of giving, if it is only adopted in a 
 courageous manner. Our greatest difficulty in producing typical forms 
 is to make them simple enough, for it is only simple things that 
 novices can remember easily enough to reproduce. What we want 
 to see are the broad masses and simple actions of things. What, 
 as a matter of fact, nine out of ten of us do see are only their 
 details. The eye is ever flying to points. We take the broad masses 
 of things for granted, as we learn to walk and eat without question ; 
 but when we come to abstract them from their thousand minor 
 points of interest, the task is not an easy one. I should double my 
 undertaking if I were to try and analyse this process of elimination, 
 and discover the essential types underlying the varieties of every 
 genus. The Greeks did it : did it more or less in their childhood,
 
 I 3 2 ARBOR VITJZ. 
 
 before they began to draw. You cannot do better than study their 
 methods. Their process was the opposite of the present popular 
 one. The modern method is to construct the whole from the parts. 
 They began with a generalisation, and only admitted details that 
 agreed with their conception of what the whole should be like. 
 
 Our way is, of course, the scientific one. We learn a great 
 number of more or less interesting facts ; but our deductions from 
 them are not necessarily true, and are certainly more often candid 
 than poetical. After all, they are more portraits and specimens than 
 types. A type is neither the least nor the greatest common measure 
 of many instances, but an ideal from which each instance varies in 
 a greater or less degree. This ideal cannot be discovered any more 
 than truth can, — it can only be guessed. The Greeks made capital 
 guesses : true ones, so far as they have been of excellent service 
 ever since ; so if you only want to design good patterns, and not 
 to exhibit at the Royal Academy, nor spend time and money over 
 elaborate works on anatomy, which are falsely called "artistic," but 
 are really only horrid, remember Professor Ruskin's advice to a 
 portrait painter, never to look at a skull but to see how unlike 
 a head it is, and believe that Nature has repeated in her creatures 
 the balance and proportion which the artist's instinct demands. The 
 oval or egg-shaped form corresponds as a rule to the chest or thorax 
 of every animal, while the neck and head, the fore and hinder limbs 
 and the tail are secondary offshoots, which harmonise and contrast 
 in their curves with its mass, realising its activity and conscience 
 (fig. 20). We are so far behind the Greeks in the elementary principles 
 of decoration that it is impossible to comprehend the many feelings 
 which combine to constitute their style. As in all traditions, it is 
 easy to trace in their art evidences of realistic as well as ideal 
 tendencies : the most conservative fidelity to received types often 
 occurs hand-in-hand with minute observation of detail. We discover 
 a lion with legs as slender as an antelope's ; and yet the artist will 
 take care to mark the wrinkles in his forehead when the monarch 
 of the desert frowns. He notices the clumsy hoofs, the ponderous 
 neck, the corrugated dewlap, and the angry bent in the tail of the
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Types of Animals from Greek Vases.
 
 134 
 
 ARBOR VIT;£. 
 
 bull ; and yet, with all this appreciation of their individualities, not 
 only does every animal behave itself in a decorous or decorative 
 way, but the artist will draw you as many of them as you like, and 
 in any position, without losing his head or degrading his type. 
 
 Here (Plate XXIX.) is a selection of Greek animals from the vases 
 in the British Museum, to which source I would send all students 
 of decorative art for careful and prolonged study. As it is, you 
 will rarely find anybody stopping to look at them but frankly amused 
 boys and girls from the streets or conscientious foreigners with 
 their Baedekers in their hands. 
 
 I have already in a previous chapter drawn your attention to 
 
 Fig. 20. — The Oval in Animal Form. 
 
 the excellence of Greek Art in this direction, and reproduced two 
 typical friezes which will illustrate their careless command of animal 
 forms while their Art was still young ; and here (Plate XXX.) are some 
 equally crude friezes, not from Greek sources, but which may help 
 in some small degree to point out the direction I think the evolution 
 of our friezes might take while our hands are still fresh to the task, 
 and will illustrate as palpably their descent from the primitive and 
 more simple line of energised spots. In them, as in the earlier 
 Greek examples, the objects in the friezes do not overlap, and are 
 consequently better examples for us to copy at present, because, so 
 long as they remain separated, the purely decorative or unreal motive 
 is evidently stronger than the realistic one ; while in the Greek artist's
 
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 Friezes.
 
 136 ARBOR VITAL. 
 
 clever and more ambitious hands they soon become more entangled, 
 to show how skilfully he can manage the perspective of his horses 
 four abreast, or regiments of soldiers with long lines of overlapping 
 shields creeping in stealthy ambuscade, or stern in vigilant defence. 
 I need not illustrate such technical triumphs as these. The student 
 who has reached sufficient proficiency to attempt such achievement 
 will not come to me for any help. Where the palpable signs of 
 traditional regulations cease, our task ends too ; but if we want to 
 climb to giddy heights let us never forget to confess in what we do 
 the underlying links which bind our work to the past, and fit it to 
 help the Art that is to come. The feelings which the spiral expresses 
 must be more prominent now than they ever were — the frieze must 
 live from end to end, the heroes in it merged in the battle or lost 
 in the rush of the race. 
 
 With the enfranchised frieze we have reached the end of one 
 of the main branches of the traditional tree. The ultimate goal of 
 tradition will always elude us, but this is one of those culminations 
 which Fate allows a favourite era. For us, too, who hold a 
 creed of "all for each, and each for all," the frieze in these days 
 should claim to be adopted as a significant form of decoration, 
 because at bottom that is its meaning. It is not the only form of 
 Art, any more than democracy is the only form of government, but it 
 is as true a principle of ornament, in its way, as that other which 
 groups its members round a central figure. All forms of Art reflect 
 one facet or another of our life and aspirations. 
 
 The subjects most suitable for a frieze are, from its nature and 
 shape, mainly processional. The flight of birds, the solemn march 
 of geese, the light gallop of deer, or stampede of horses : the triumph, 
 the march, the battle. Such ideas as these flash at once into our 
 minds and throw a gleam of insight on the connection between our 
 Art and our life. Here is a fleet of fishing-boats creeping in the 
 dusk silently out of the harbour's mouth, lanthorns lighted and 
 hanging from the bows ; now they return on the top of the tide, 
 with a broader gleam on their glistening sails. In the meadows a 
 line of reapers sway to the scythe, and the flowers of the field fall
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE FRIEZE. 137 
 
 before the deputies of death. There are festivals with stately ritual, 
 civic as well as religious. Ceremony still lingers where strong 
 interests or emotions are involved, and we cannot be baptised, 
 married, or buried without paying some public tribute to general 
 sentiment. Wherever, in fact, several people have to share the same 
 feelings in any of the functions, duties, or pleasures of life, there lie 
 suggestions for that sort of artistic expression which is commonly 
 called the frieze. 
 
 The simpler forms of Art, spiral and arcade, reflect little more 
 than what we may all see, or echo in our dreams, of the wide world 
 of Nature around us ; but when this external vision, with its happy 
 irresponsibility, fails to satisfy us completely ; when, after naming every 
 beast in his paradise, man's eye is turned inwards on himself, and 
 all he sees is coloured by this new point of view ; still more when 
 his eyes are opened to the claims of society, and he finds his own 
 interests merged in that of others ; then the question arises how his 
 Art is to reflect this change. And I think I am justified in believing 
 that it is answered by that conventional and artificial way of treating 
 and arranging things which in every branch of human energy and 
 science is called Tradition, a way which has now become strangely 
 discredited and, in the fine arts, only lingers in poor repute under 
 the name of " composition," and is rapidly yielding to a fashion that 
 denies any obligation to the customs of the past. Such a change is 
 of course inevitable, and hardly to be regretted, if the tradition is 
 too weak to assert itself; and yet when the composition fades from 
 the picture, unless there is something stronger to take its place, the 
 house of Art must fall in ruins. No return to Nature alone can 
 build up Art again. Nature is not Art. I have never seen the 
 original of that celebrated picture of a reindeer, scratched by a pre- 
 historic cave-man of the bone age on a mammoth's tusk ; but judging 
 by the admiration that every text-book on Art has for this relic, 
 which it thinks it necessary to reproduce for our edification and 
 benefit, it is evident that a precocious genius was born before his 
 time, or else that history strangely repeats itself, and that the artistic 
 ideals of our end of the nineteenth century and of this unknown
 
 138 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 impressionist coincide in a wonderful v/ay. Both are untrammelled 
 by any conservative interference, and both are exceedingly clever ; 
 but for the sentiment that centuries of thought and feeling ought 
 to give, we may look to either in vain. Surely it is, after all, when 
 you drive the question home, the power of giving us civilised 
 feelings, and noble and kindly thoughts, that distinguishes good 
 work, however immature, from barbarous work, however clever and 
 modern. 
 
 The frieze, as one of the final forms of Art, is necessarily the 
 exponent of many ideas which have become inseparable from our 
 ideas of civilised life. All men, whether they will or no, are meta- 
 physicians, and write their religion or their philosophy in everything 
 they do. Since Art starts with being a compromise, there must be 
 a grain of subjectivity in the most objective examples of it. On the 
 other hand, we must never think that a work of art is great because 
 its meaning is misty. Truths which are so obscure that they are 
 called mysteries, have necessarily to be clothed in occult — that is to 
 say, special and unusual language ; and advocates are not wanting 
 to-day to claim virtue for vagueness and privilege for impertinence. 
 But when a wise man who has had an experience, or found some- 
 thing out which he thinks may interest or benefit his fellow-creatures, 
 wants to tell it to them, he tries to say it in the clearest possible 
 way. If it has never been said before, he is obliged to coin new 
 words to say it in, and if only a few people can understand what 
 he says, the fault is not always to be laid to his door. That is the 
 only occultism under the sun. Truth cannot harm any one who can 
 understand it. Indeed, it is in the way of evolution that what is 
 magical to-day is the common-place of to-morrow. Tradition is the 
 mint where the exact symbols are struck to meet the wants of our 
 deeper thoughts, that they may haply pass into current coin. In 
 despising tradition our art and science has robbed the world of many 
 symbols that once were useful to it, but it cannot alter the essential 
 conditions of our life, and we shall find ourselves, after all, driven 
 to reclothe the statements of its mysteries in words and colours 
 that will dignify their subject. We cannot endure life and shirk all
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE FRIEZE 139 
 
 mention of its mysteries. If the awful things of life only happened 
 to a person here and there, the bullying majority might enforce 
 a general silence ; but we have all been born and have all got 
 to die, and so we ought all to share in what will help to make 
 death's approach more kindly and less terrible. We must, unless 
 we sink into isolated insensitiveness, celebrate in some way our 
 entry into the frieze of life and our exit at its end, our arrival 
 from the unknown and our return there. Shall that celebration be 
 dignified and lovely, or hopelessly sad and insignificant? Here we 
 wait, not without curiosity, till the veil is lifted again, and we can 
 step behind the scenes, in the hope of wider knowledge and larger 
 life. In the meantime we sow in sad soil with pomp of decorous 
 deception the husks of our dead friends, in symbolical parody of 
 more fruitful grain. Could the absolute solution of this immortal 
 mystery be couched in mortal words, its use and fascination would 
 be lost. Who could live through one day without hope in the 
 morrow, or face life if he knew death ? But truth, for us, does not 
 consist in exact knowledge of things unknowable ; nor yet in their 
 evasion because we cannot find the key. Truth, or let us rather say 
 our happiness, lies far more in trusting our fate implicitly, and in 
 meeting it fearlessly with light hearts and gifts in our hands, to 
 show that we would gladly exchange the best the world can give 
 for the benefits it will bring. And Art can help us to do this. 
 
 *r3l VVtJE. -S*CV-<OlV WIK J.EBEIV^ VfVT^E^R, XWE. ^EBE/V i^Jg-af**'.
 
 UP till now we have treated all our patterns as lines of ornament, 
 whose main characteristic is length and not breadth. Such 
 a style of decoration would precede any other, even from an 
 historical point of view, because we conceive of lines before areas, and 
 flat spaces before solid ones. But as soon as the line has learned 
 to turn a corner, which we saw it do in Chapter V., it will repeat 
 the action till it has returned to where it started from and enclosed 
 a space, and we shall have to consider how to fill a square as well 
 as draw a line, and how to plant a park as well as an avenue. And 
 though we shall have to come back again and again to the spiral as 
 a border, we must now consider what different ways there are of 
 decorating a space which may happen to be as broad as it is long. 
 
 There could evidently be no greater contrast to a definite line 
 of connected things, than an indefinite space of disconnected ones ; 
 and at the end of the second chapter we touched on this contrast, 
 and saw how flat surfaces could be broken up or variegated in 
 simple and pretty ways, and even before that we hinted at 
 possibilities of pattern in brick and basket work, based on the 
 meeting and crossing of straight lines, and helped by the judicious 
 use of colour. The ornamental use of bricks would naturally find 
 its outcome in mosaic, and the mysteries of interlacing osiers lead 
 to the intricacies of the loom. How closely these two are allied, 
 
 we shall find if we examine any piece of woven fabric, and see 
 
 140
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE DIAPER. 141 
 
 how it consists of a mosaic of rectangular tesserae with their sides 
 
 parallel to the warp and woof. All patterns in textiles must be 
 
 constructed in this arbitrary and laborious manner, on a rectangular 
 
 basis. You cannot weave a real curve, any more than you can 
 
 take a circular drive through the streets of New York. You must 
 
 approximate to the direction you want to go, by the nearest zigzag. 
 
 That is to say, we must often conform to necessarily geometrical 
 
 conditions, but the value of our pattern will finally depend on making 
 
 the best possible use of those conditions, or on transcending them 
 
 at the same time that we admit them. Here, as always, the best 
 
 design is the one that shows the greatest intelligence. The former of 
 
 the two examples (Plate XXXI.) is entirely limited by its conditions. 
 
 It is not in consequence a bad pattern, but is quite innocent and 
 
 useful so long as it is kept in subordinate positions, and doesn't 
 
 pretend to be anything else. But the other, on the contrary, has 
 
 evidently something it wants and tries to say, in spite of a natural 
 
 impediment, so that we can put it where it is more likely to be seen, 
 
 because the prominence that is given to a pattern should be in 
 
 proportion to its beauty, or, which is the same thing, to the amount 
 
 of intelligence it displays. A geometrical pattern is generally out of 
 
 place in an important position, because with not much more labour 
 
 better results are possible, and if the eye is attracted to one spot, it 
 
 likes to be amused and not wearied there. There are certain patterns 
 
 with delightfully traditional names, such as Munkabalte and Ophemta, 
 
 well known to the revivers of hand-woven linen, which, though entirely 
 
 geometrical, are perfectly legitimate, because they are only variations 
 
 of the ordinary weaving on a hand-loom. When the proper adjustment 
 
 of treadles and headle-sticks has once been made, these patterns come, 
 
 so to speak, of themselves, and require very little more attention 
 
 from the hand-weaver than what is wanted for the plainest web. It 
 
 is only when time is wasted on producing uninteresting instead of 
 
 interesting effects, that we are justified in condemning the pattern. 
 
 The most complicated mechanical contrivances are justifiable if they 
 
 will reproduce a good design ; none, to help us make machines of 
 
 of our own souls. In that dreadfully geometrical chip-carving,
 
 I 4 2 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 for instance, the most finished labour produces exactly the worst, 
 because the most mechanical, result. Who wants to attune his music 
 to the beat of a piston? The artist ought always to aim higher than 
 he can execute. And not only the artist. If you can teach a plough- 
 boy such technical patience that he can drive his gouge with the 
 precision of a plough, you can also teach him to follow finer furrows 
 in the oak. The very best art must always be technically imperfect ; 
 but such a mechanical ideal as this of chip-carving can be realised 
 as completely as the five-finger exercise, and be every bit as dead. 
 Remember, then, that geometrical patterns are occasionally useful 
 when they are not to take important positions, and that machinery 
 is only important when it will help our imaginations. 
 
 The spiral, itself the embodiment of artistic, that is to say of 
 imaginative endeavour, taught us first to vivify lines while we are 
 limited to lines, and then to fill their curves and corners with suitable 
 occupants ; and what we have to learn to do now is to fill flat spaces 
 in the same way with interesting lines or objects. 
 
 That is the problem before us, — how to make an indefinite space 
 beautiful and not blank ; and this problem is at once complicated by 
 the possibility of our being obliged to divide it into arbitrary and 
 geometrical partitions for the easier manufacture of the pattern on 
 it ; so that the first question we have to settle is, whether in cases 
 of this sort it is better to conceal such divisions or show them, — 
 a question which very seriously affects the arts of designing repeating 
 patterns for such things as wall-papers, tapestry, printed cottons, and 
 carpets, which are generally made by machines. 
 
 Let us take care not to confuse all machines in one sweeping 
 condemnation. Some machines are always necessary — such as carts, 
 ploughs, wheelbarrows, clocks, and scissors ; others are, at any rate, 
 convenient and not degrading, such as sewing-machines, tramcars, 
 and bicycles. All these depend, of course, on animal force to set 
 them in motion. Then there is a class of machine which depends 
 on the powers of the elements, such as windmills and water-mills ; 
 and others, again, which depend on steam and electricity ; and I 
 dare say these are not the only imprisoned jinns we shall find capable
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Patterns for Weaving on the Hand-Loom.
 
 144 ARBOR VITVE. 
 
 of becoming our slaves in time. So we must pause before we 
 associate the idea of a machine with an exclusive worship of mammon, 
 or even with a tall chimney above and a thumping clatter below. 
 
 Machines are only bad when they do more harm than good ; 
 and it is not always easy to see what good some machines may do, 
 nor to realise the amount of evil they are capable of. At any rate, 
 the conditions of civilisation, and the growth of our control over 
 external energy, are so complicated and so formidable, that it would 
 be impossible to check them all at once by the mere expression of 
 disapprobation. All inventions and institutions are natural outcomes 
 of certain states of mind : it is not the thing invented which is to 
 be praised or blamed, but the quality of thought which called it into 
 existence. Let us find out which factor in machinery it is that is 
 possibly detrimental to our greater happiness, and address ourselves 
 to counteract the causes of it. Now, what has made machinery 
 of the tall-chimney type especially obnoxious to sensitively artistic 
 constitutions is not its money-making propensity — for even artists 
 have no objection to making money when they can — but the monoto- 
 nously regular and dead-alive standard of perfection it continually 
 strives to produce. 
 
 Such an ideal must always be opposed to the artistic one ; but 
 artists have no one to blame but themselves if they have allowed 
 machinery to become associated with what is practical, and their 
 own work with what is only aesthetic. How can we blame the 
 Philistines for adopting what we have deserted? and if we really 
 possess superior taste, which is the knowledge of what is right and 
 what is wrong in these matters, it is we who ought first of all to 
 understand, and then to prove by that example which is so much 
 better than precept, what things hands can do better than machines, 
 and whether, finally, the machine is to obey the brain, or every- 
 body's intelligence, except the inventor's, to work as the machine 
 directs them. 
 
 Let us take the subject of wall-papers, for example, because they 
 have a wide-spread use, and apparently supply a want most of us 
 feel, or have been persuaded into thinking we feel. Wall-papers
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE DIAPER. 145 
 
 have passed through curious fashions, reflecting, naturally enough, 
 since they surround us so closely and intimately, all the moods we 
 have travelled through ourselves. There are the French and the 
 classical moods, the Pompeian and the sham-marble moods ; and 
 later the fairy-tale, the severe and chaste, and the flamboyant and 
 rococo moods. Just at present varieties of a parrot tulip pattern 
 hold the field ; and the designers who invent them do their best 
 to conceal the necessary repetition of the design — a pure waste of 
 their ingenuity, for we all know now that the pattern has to be 
 repeated, and are only worried till we find out where and how it 
 does so. 
 
 The more like Nature a design is, the less, as a rule, it ought to 
 
 be repeated. It does not affect the commercial value of a celebrated 
 
 picture to be accurately copied, but if you put the original picture 
 
 and a copy of it side by side on the wall of your drawing-room, 
 
 you destroy the aesthetic value of both. If you were to cover your 
 
 walls with copies of one picture your friends would think you 
 
 were mad, but if you choose the latest thing in artistic wall-papers 
 
 they will applaud your taste. And yet the design has been repeated 
 
 in the wall-paper just as much as it would have been in the case 
 
 of the picture. The reduplication of the latter is patently ridiculous, 
 
 because a picture is supposed to resemble Nature, and we know 
 
 that Nature never repeats herself; while the truth is that we excuse 
 
 the same thing in the wall-paper simply because we don't think the 
 
 design interesting enough to be noticeable : if the design were a really 
 
 good one I am sure the artist would not wish to conceal it, but 
 
 would prefer its obvious repetition. The reasons for the present 
 
 strange state of things are, firstly, that the designer having taken 
 
 service under a machine is obliged to repeat his design ; and, 
 
 secondly, that he can only base his designs on Nature, and knowing 
 
 that Nature never repeats herself, he tries, vainly as we see, to make 
 
 you think it does not repeat. His excuse is, of course, the usual 
 
 plea for " breadth and general effect." Now there are only two ways 
 
 of obtaining a "general effect": one is to shut your eyes, and keep 
 
 them shut ; and the other is to whitewash your walls. You cannot 
 
 10
 
 146 ARBOR VITAL. 
 
 anyhow design an " effect " ; you can only produce one by designing 
 several things and putting them together. The " general effect " of 
 South Kensington Museum, for example, is one of intense oppression 
 and ennui, got by collecting a lot of very ugly things and some very 
 beautiful ones under the same roof. 
 
 Since, to-day, we are to a great extent the slaves of machines, 
 we shall have to put up with mechanical repetitions of designs, 
 though we must always be ready to rebel against this tyranny by 
 substituting repetition by hand ; but while it is wrong to repeat a 
 picture which is meant to resemble Nature, it is not wrong, but 
 quite right, to repeat designs which are based on the imagination of 
 the artist, — only their repetition in that case must be obvious and 
 straightforward. 
 
 In repetition itself, then, there is no great harm : the mischief 
 lies in trying to hide the repetition when, as is often the case, it is 
 necessary or advisable. Sometimes, in spite of an obvious repetition, 
 it is difficult to discover where the design actually leaves off and 
 begins again. This is noticeably the case in some exquisite Italian 
 brocades and silk tissues of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 exhibited at South Kensington Museum, and which on a very fine 
 day you may be able to find if you have good eyes and plenty of 
 patience. In many of these examples a "general effect" is obtained 
 by covering the whole ground with the design, repeating it in the 
 same way that I condemn in our modern floral wall-papers ; only 
 in these it is legitimate, because there is no attempt to hide 
 the existence of a very marked design, while somehow or other it 
 seems that the modern designer has no central idea which he wishes 
 to show, but is only bent on muddling half a dozen inanities 
 together. I think our inability to compete with the repeating designs 
 of those earlier days is partly owing to our incapacity for under- 
 standing what a really serious thing " grotesque " art is. Perhaps 
 our imaginations are weak ; anyhow, we have got it into our heads 
 that all serious art must be naturalistic, and all grotesque art comic. 
 In this latter and purely frivolous sort we are clever enough, but 
 it is popular because no one for a moment supposes it is meant to
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE DIAPER. 147 
 
 be serious. And this fallacious distinction prevents our producing 
 any great decorative art, because all great decorative work must be 
 grotesque in a large sense — that is to say, it must be non-natural 
 and imaginative. The unfortunate British public defines the imagina- 
 tion as something it can " shriek with laughter at," and so long 
 as we teach our artists that their duty is to imitate Nature, our 
 appreciation of the grotesque will be regulated by the annals of Ally 
 Sloper, and the divine comedy of Art remain a sealed book for us. 
 Nor can its place be taken by the empty-headed and empty-hearted 
 twirligigs of late Renaissance ornament, which only flatter our skill 
 to make us forget the beauty of simple forms, and prevent us taking 
 any real steps towards a genuine reformation of design by disgusting 
 us with what an unbridled imagination can perpetrate. The cheap 
 machine-facture of printed stuffs, and the hopeless profusion of them, 
 has pandered to our frantic haste to cover everything we have or 
 make with something else, and that something with a pattern. We 
 are so accustomed to seeing patterns on everything about us that 
 you will often meet people who say that it is surely better for poor 
 people, who cannot afford to buy hand-made things, to have machine- 
 made patterns rather than none at all. Now, we have admitted that 
 there are plenty of patterns, and quite harmless ones too, that a 
 machine can turn out quite nicely, and that are within the means 
 of most people ; and, for the rest, we can only answer that plain 
 surfaces are infinitely superior to badly decorated ones. No revival 
 of good ornament is possible, machine or no machine, till the value 
 of simplicity has been thoroughly learnt ; and the rapid output of 
 machine-made patterns is mainly responsible for our lack of taste, 
 because it first persuades us that bombastic decoration is sublime, 
 and then supplies us with the wretched stuff. Nothing could be in 
 really better taste, because nothing could be in happier answer to 
 acknowledged want, than a row of burnished dish-covers on the 
 kitchen wall. When " nine and twenty knights of fame hung their 
 shields in Branksome Hall " the effect must have been very similar, 
 and as useful to the needs of the day. Now, our taste is better 
 shown in the kitchen, where we sternly subordinate ornament to use,
 
 148 ARBOR VIT\ffi. 
 
 than in the parlour, which we blight with a plague of bric-a-brac. 
 It is better, if you cannot make a picture of your wall, to keep it 
 severely chaste ; but if you must have a wall-paper, at any rate 
 choose an old-fashioned one, where nursery associations plead for 
 a not harmful diaper of little bouquets of flowers and ribbons, with 
 a butterfly or two, and by good chance a bird. This cannot compete 
 with the grandiloquence of modern design, but may still sprinkle our 
 thoughts with innocent memories and suggestions. 
 
 The necessity for a frank confession of the extent of the design 
 applies equally to patterns that are suitable for tapestries and carpets, 
 or anything which is to be looked at in an extended position. No 
 attempt should be made to conceal the repetition in them, and the 
 artist should concentrate his strength on the centre of his design, 
 instead of smearing it over the edges in the futile endeavour to 
 deceive the eye. Indeed, I think it will be better, as a rule, to keep 
 the design entirely distinct from its repeat where the surface is to be 
 covered with figures only, and not complicated by lines as well. This 
 is especially the case with drapery, where, as it is intended to fall into 
 folds, the design will seldom be seen entire, and consequently its 
 repetition will run less risk of appearing irksome. 
 
 Now, there are three main divisions into which the decoration 
 of a surface of indefinite extent can fall. The first is the diaper, 
 in which the ground is entirely netted over with intersecting lines or 
 geometrical figures which, with the ornaments inside them, may be 
 more or less involved and elaborate. The second is the seme\ in 
 which the ground is spotted, at more or less regular intervals, with 
 isolated ornaments. The third is the arabesque, where the ground is 
 neither netted nor spotted, but chased with gracefully curving lines 
 often symmetrically, but seldom geometrically disposed. A diaper 
 is like a chessboard with a piece on each square, or the map of a 
 new country divided into formal provinces, with the chief town of 
 each in the middle of it ; a seme is like a Sahara studded with 
 island oases ; and an arabesque winds over its ground like a great 
 and sinuous river. If the diaper is our friend the line and the spot, 
 multiplied and adapted in order to decorate a surface, then the seme"
 
 XXXII. 
 
 ErEMENTARY DIAPERS.
 
 150 
 
 ARBOR VIT^:. 
 
 is the freer adaptation of the spot without the line, and the arabesque 
 the freer adaptation of the line without the spot (fig. 21). 
 
 I place the diaper first, because although it is capable of wonderful 
 elaboration and freedom, its beginnings are of the simplest nature, 
 and its most ambitious aims always and visibly limited by geometrical 
 conditions, while the other two begin by revolting against geometry, 
 and lose themselves in infinite possibilities. Indeed, it is difficult, 
 as I have suggested, to define the content of possible arabesque, 
 which, commencing with and always retaining the dominant note of 
 a sinuous line, recruits itself from every possible quarter, and bids 
 defiance to every possible law. 
 
 It is, of course, absurd to draw a hard and fast line between 
 
 Fig. 21. 
 
 
 Seme. 
 
 Arabesque. 
 
 Diaper. 
 
 these three divisions ; but the above classification will, I hope, be 
 sufficiently radical to help us to some insight into the vast and 
 complicated mass of material this aspect of our subject brings us 
 into touch with. 
 
 These three forms of ornament, the diaper, seme, and arabesque, 
 have one characteristic in common : they all tend to cover the ground 
 evenly — that is to say, no great part of it is unduly emphasised at 
 the expense of the rest ; and we must treat of them at this stage in 
 our tradition, because later developments of the spiral abandon this 
 principle and aim at a more centralised or pictorial effect. 
 
 Since diapers and seme's have both a geometrical foundation, they 
 have been easily captured by modern methods of cheap manufacture, 
 with the usual result of blinding and balking the real exercise of
 
 XXXIII. 
 Typical Diapers.
 
 152 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 the imagination, because competing manufacturers must make the 
 figures of their diapers and the sizes and distances of their seme's 
 mathematically accurate, while in the best examples of both the 
 details would constantly vary in every repetition. 
 
 In arranging a diaper or a seme for mechanical repetition these 
 mathematical restrictions must be obeyed ; but what I want to point 
 out is that the machine did not invent the pattern, but is only a 
 means of imitating it ; and that the real exercise of the imagination 
 is always opposed to any mechanical practice, and is always trying 
 to achieve something you did not expect, instead of, like a machine, 
 something you do. 
 
 Though a diaper is converted into a semd by the removal of 
 its lines, it does not follow that this is a usual or advisable method. 
 On the contrary, perhaps the greatest difference between these two 
 forms of decoration lies in the character of the ornaments which 
 compose them. The geometrical divisions of a diaper often admit 
 a more organic, or at least a more elaborate and complicated form 
 of ornament than is suitable for a semd. A diaper frames the 
 pictures of which it is composed. But you must not therefore 
 think that the best diaper is composed of the most elaborate figures ; 
 because a very rigid relation should exist between the importance of 
 the design and the number of times it may be repeated. A picture 
 gallery, for example, is a very good instance of a badly decorated 
 room. If you have a large space to cover, your ornaments should 
 be humble in proportion to their number. The simplest method of 
 covering a space is generally the most effective one, for the same 
 reason that where no decoration at all is wanted every sort of 
 ornament is out of place. But at present all we need remember 
 is that a diaper tends to frame its members, and a seme" to set them 
 free. Each method has its own special duty and value; the one of 
 a carefully picked and arranged bouquet, the other of a field full 
 of wild flowers. 
 
 The range of legitimate diapers extends from the merely pleasant 
 fretting of a surface with figures made by the intersection of lines 
 and curves, to the introduction of isolated ornaments into these
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE DIAPER 153 
 
 figures, and finally to patterns which consist of designs without 
 indeed any dividing lines, but which touch and repeat each other 
 on every side. 
 
 As with the first forms of frieze, the first kind of diaper is 
 perhaps best illustrated in the carved fretting of broad surfaces of 
 stone, where, especially because the surface by its mere size must 
 attract attention, it is well to recollect that a geometrical basis does 
 not involve a mechanical execution. The fret should vary over all 
 its extent, if it is to please our eyes, with here a deeper or shallower 
 notch, and there a thinner or broader line : not that this is to be 
 achieved on purpose, so to speak, but with the " careful carelessness " 
 of a hand that is happy at its labour. Plate XXXII. is sufficiently 
 illustrative of diapers of this class composed entirely of lines. I do 
 not want to dwell on them here. Their name is legion, and their 
 invention more ingenious than imaginative. It is quite easy to find 
 out how to do them, or you will find them amply illustrated in 
 Japanese and other handbooks that deal with the dry bones of 
 ornament. They are fascinating in their way, though the best of 
 them are generally the simplest, and are mechanically useful if we do 
 not let them blind us to more vital forms of ornament. If we draw 
 these diapers by hand, instead of with ruler and compasses, the 
 natural thickening of the downstrokes here and there will often 
 suggest solid forms, which the imagination will soon begin to enforce 
 and lead us on to do diapers composed of solid forms as well as of 
 lines. We reach the same result by filling some of the interstices 
 between the intersecting lines with colour, and the student will 
 profitably discover what entirely dissimilar effects can be obtained in 
 this way from a single original. So that next to these fretted 
 diapers come those composed of spots as well as lines, of conventional 
 ornaments as well as figures, which I consider especially typical of 
 the whole class of diapers, of which the two in Plate XXXIII. 
 are very simple examples. It would, of course, be quite hopeless to 
 attempt any review of their infinite varieties ; the simplest are very 
 often the most satisfactory, but that of course depends on what you 
 want to decorate.
 
 154 ARBOR VIT/E. 
 
 Lastly, there are the diapers in which the ground is covered 
 with contiguous ornaments alone, while the lines themselves are 
 absent. It was in connection with these that we discussed the 
 question of "repeats" at the beginning of this chapter; and though 
 I have advised students to begin by concentrating their invention 
 on the centre of the design they intend to be repeated, in order 
 to avoid the danger of losing all intensity in their pattern, I must 
 add that good effects are often obtained by reversing the half of a 
 design instead of repeating it. The second example of a weaving 
 pattern in Plate XXXI. is an instance of this method. It is, of 
 course, a principle of economy, and the symmetry it entails would 
 be out of place if the design were to stand entirely by itself; but 
 where it is meant to be indefinitely repeated the plan is excusable, 
 because when the two halves are placed back to back you are charmed 
 by an apparently different design from that in which they are placed 
 face to face. Another example of a reversed design is one we have 
 all been familiar with when, as children, we wrote our names in 
 ink and doubled the piece of paper inwards, before it was dry, to 
 see what sort of goblin our autograph would change into. 
 
 The sheepfold in Plate XXXIV. is an instance of a simple 
 repeating design based on a more or less hexagonal scheme. The 
 repetition throughout is obvious, but every detail belongs to the 
 central idea, and is not introduced merely to facilitate the task of 
 repetition. The vineyard in the same plate is an example of a free 
 diaper — that is to say, a diaper based on the repetition of a geometrical 
 figure, but varying in the details of every repeat. Such a design as 
 this can, of course, only be drawn by hand from beginning to end, 
 and is a type of this form of ornament which is independent of 
 mechanical assistance in its production. Though it is usual to think 
 of a diaper as an " all over " pattern, in which the design is repeated 
 not only from side to side, but up and down as well, many beautiful 
 instances occur which are composed of bands of rich ornament, with 
 wider or narrower intervals. These bands may consist of the same 
 or different patterns, and those patterns may be composed of spirals 
 or friezes, or a repeating design. They are, of course, easier than the
 
 XXXIV. 
 Elaborate Diapers.
 
 156 ARBOR VIT^. 
 
 more ambitious ones we have just been looking at, and can hardly 
 be called diapers so much as methods of covering a surface with 
 linear decorations. 
 
 I hardly expect that many amateurs will attempt the more complex 
 forms of the diaper. To do them justice requires the time and 
 experience which is almost entirely devoted to the practice of Art. 
 As in the final forms of the frieze, the diaper, beyond the point 
 we have carried it to, passes beyond the scope of this essay. Its 
 geometrical basis will, however, always give it an atmosphere of 
 passivity, as if the constructive boundaries kept their occupants 
 prisoners. The removal of those lines, and the fresh conventions 
 opened up in this way, will constitute the tradition of the seme' 
 which we shall treat of in the next chapter. But if the function 
 of a seme" is to express freedom, growth, and motion, the diaper 
 will still have its proper mysteries and special triumphs. The charm 
 of quiet things is seen there to greater advantage, just as enforced 
 service evokes unforeseen virtues. It is consequently a preferable 
 form of decoration in places where we prefer a restful state of mind 
 to an ecstatic and impulsive one. It is as inartistic to possess too 
 many examples of one style of Art, as it is unfortunate to possess 
 none of any. No church has more than one High Altar, and the 
 supreme connoisseur values his treasures for the relation they bear 
 to each other, and the unity they all combine to create.
 
 WE saw in the last chapter how one kind of diaper changes 
 into another. The first is nothing else than a cage, made 
 by the meeting, crossing, or interlacing of lines or ribbons ; 
 the second kind shuts up pretty objects between the bars of the 
 cage ; the third tears the bars away, but the prisoners are still too 
 dizzy to move ; and, lastly, in the seme - our captivity is quite 
 forgotten, and we may sing and dance in freedom and safety — 
 
 " He who bends to himself a joy, 
 Does the winged life destroy ; 
 But he who kisses the joy as it flies 
 Lives in eternity's sunrise." 
 
 A seme might occasionally result from the confusion of a diaper, 
 but as a rule the sentiment involved in each leads to the employ- 
 ment of different kinds of ornaments. Fig. 22 illustrates a diaper 
 and its apparently resultant semd, but you will observe that something 
 more than a haphazard upheaval of the leaves has effected the 
 change. Their very character has altered. If a disturbance was the 
 cause, the feeling of disturbance remains, and the leaves have learnt 
 to dance, if only a dance of death. There is a beautiful instance 
 of a seme of leaves in mosaic, on the walls of one of the staircases 
 in the British Museum. It conveys an indescribable charm, because 
 the artist has made a mood for us, and has created an atmosphere 
 of falling leaves. He has reproduced not so much the incident as 
 
 '57
 
 158 
 
 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 the sentiment ; not so much the facts as the forces behind the facts. 
 That is the characteristic of the seme* and the secret of its peculiar 
 fascination. It seizes hold of the life as it passes ; it is a picture 
 of forces rather than facts, of suggestions, passions, motives, fact- 
 creative and fact-impelling. The tendency of a diaper is materialistic. 
 It is obliged to lay stress on the body because its actions are 
 restricted within rigid limits. The seme shows its soul. It is a 
 reformed diaper ; it chafes at restraint and is careless of accuracy. 
 So long as we can guess what the things are meant to be, it is not 
 at first particular as to how they are drawn ; what it wants to tell 
 us is how they move and what they mean. 
 
 Fig. 22. 
 
 mm 
 
 a. DiArER. 
 
 The range of diapers increases of course with the extent of our 
 sympathies, from simple abstract or heraldic symbols to the promise
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE SEME. 159 
 
 *** 
 
 b. Semk. 
 
 of a wider naturalism. But the more passionate method of a seme 
 revolutionises the fundamental construction itself by twisting a rigid 
 convention into a living motive. It is this that makes the principles 
 of a seme" appeal to us so strongly while we are trying to nurse 
 some renaissance of spontaneous Art through the present dark ages of 
 insensitive mechanism, when our touch with vital traditions is perilously 
 feeble, and theories about Art usurp its instinctive development. 
 
 If you can only draw a single leaf you can still draw it with 
 feeling, and learn what a seme - means. You may even make a 
 charming design out of it ; and please us with some insight into 
 Nature where before we had eyes that saw not. It is in such a 
 sense as this that Art interprets Nature, but it is by telling the 
 story in your own way, by introducing your feelings into Nature's 
 accidents, and not by trying to make her tell the story for you. 
 So long as the diaper remains geometrical it can give no imaginative 
 explanation of phenomena with irregular characteristics. But the
 
 160 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 value of a semd is that it seizes at once on this very irregularity 
 and makes a feature of it. 
 
 The old conventions of decorative Art, which we are obliged 
 to honour and obey, were drawn from a wide but necessarily more 
 limited experience than our own. They consisted mainly of two 
 ideas or principles — the idea of continuity and the idea of separate- 
 ness ; of being held together and of being kept apart. The spiral 
 and the diaper, which respectively illustrate these principles, are the 
 instinctive expressions of our own wavering lives and chequered 
 fortunes, and echo the gestures which we share in common with 
 all creation. As the Christian spiral is the energised form of the 
 Pagan or mathematical one, so the seme - is the inspired re-incarnation 
 of the conventionally heraldic diaper. The ideas of continuity or 
 separateness still remain the underlying principles of our Art, but 
 we must make them mean more now than they used to, and fulfil 
 nearer and more domestic service than we are apt to suppose they 
 were intended for. Unfortunately the cheap machine-fact are of useful 
 things, and the corresponding waste of intelligence spent in the 
 manu-f act tire of mere ornaments, has produced a slovenly confusion 
 in our mind as to the real purposes of Art. While we patronise a 
 form of art that only aims at imitating Nature, we neglect what is 
 of primary importance to our actual civilisation. We buy pictures 
 and discuss their "tone," and "breadth," and "quality," but forget 
 to ask for simplicity of design in the shape of things like our cups 
 and saucers, for example, which we are always handling and looking 
 at, or to be particularly anxious about how they are ornamented. 
 If we are really anxious to be patrons of Art let us remember that 
 there are very few pictures which are worth buying, and those few 
 generally out of the reach of our pockets, while we can further the 
 real progress of Art with far less expense to ourselves, and infinitely 
 greater benefit to the community, by insisting that what we use 
 and wear should be strong and simple, and what we admire easy 
 and innocent. But I fear we have got grand ideas into our heads. 
 We " go to Nature for our Art " as we go to the seaside for a 
 change of air, and take it in doses as we do our medicine. In the
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE SEME. 161 
 
 days of the greatest art the pulse of one tradition beat through the 
 veins of all production, and no distinction in character was drawn 
 between the humblest utensils and the most ambitious work of 
 art. The skilfullest draughtsman intrusted his serenest thought to 
 perishable clay, and perfect powers could be purchased for pence ; but 
 who of the artists you patronise to-day could decorate your teacup 
 for you, or even not consider himself insulted by the request ? 
 
 That little or no public recognition attends the mere designer 
 of manufactured ware, only proves into what an apathy of wooden 
 tradition our decoration has fallen, and how little we really care 
 about it. The question is, nevertheless, one of the gravest, for if 
 there is to be any resurrection of Art from its deadly respectability 
 and uselessness, it must get itself connected once more with honest 
 and necessary labour, and supplement its endeavour to be original 
 with that obedience to tradition which the making of useful things 
 requires ; or if, from the other point of view, the people who are 
 responsible for our modern decoration wish to regain our respect, 
 they must rescue their art from the contempt the introduction of 
 machinery has thrown it into, and prove themselves our benefactors 
 by making what we shall be proud to possess, and by displaying a 
 kindlier feeling in their art, and a deeper touch with nature. On 
 this account there is every reason to hope that the rise of our 
 landscape art is indicative, in its appreciation of rural things, of some 
 desire to return to simpler methods of living, which must always 
 be associated with the country, and so produce an effect on the 
 traditions of decorative art. People are beginning to discover that 
 pictures of cows and cottages do not satisfy all our sentiments about 
 country life. Is it possible to suspect that what artists have done with 
 so much affection and care is, after all, not the finished art they have 
 imagined it, but the immature and archaic source from which far- 
 reaching issues may spring, and traditions rise that may revolutionise 
 the future of all our art? It is curious to remember how it was the 
 fashion, quite recently, to demand great literalness in works of art, 
 and severe adherence to local truth ; but happily this invasion of 
 antiquarian conscientiousness has died a natural death, and left us 
 
 1 1
 
 162 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 free to adopt saner methods. Is it too much to expect, that out of 
 a pre-Raphaelite love of detail devoted to an imaginative ideal on 
 the one hand, and an impressionistic preference for broad effects in 
 painting things that we all can see on the other hand, a combination 
 might ensue which would be based on an imaginative view of nature, 
 and devoted to a practical end ? Art is not an ephemeral veneer on 
 the life of the upper classes, but ought to be the natural possession 
 of everybody. So long as we shut it out of the workshop we are 
 still barbarians — nay, worse than barbarians — and our schools of art 
 only tempt the clever ones among the workers to leave the labour 
 they might redeem, to follow ambitious, false, and unavailing efforts. 
 Great artists are born, and not made; what is more, they are born 
 very seldom, two or three, perhaps, in a century, and no amount of 
 schools of art will help to teach them their business, for they have 
 been sent into the world to teach us. A man like John Pearson, 
 the coppersmith, who with exceptional powers and a real insight into 
 the scope and natural symbolism of design, has clung to his class 
 and his handicraft, has chosen not only the happiest portion, but the 
 one that will bring him the more enduring fame. 
 
 The old forms of diaper and spiral will always remain ; we cannot 
 evolve new principles of design, till we create new worlds to evolve 
 them from. Our mission is to pour fresh life into the arts of design, 
 and evoke a more general interest in the practice of them. Why 
 should we always think of ourselves as dragging dispiritedly through 
 the end of an era, instead of joyfully inaugurating a new one, when 
 our wider experience and ambition make it our duty to open men's 
 eyes to the imaginative wealth that they can make their own, and a 
 world where everything that lives is a symbol of life, and may again 
 become sacred for us ? Daisies will make as beautiful a seme* as 
 flear-de-lys. A shield is still a shield if a lamb is its charge instead 
 of a leopard. Out in the highways and hedges lies the designer's 
 school of art. He must love the larger Nature though he cannot 
 tell a blackbird from a thrush, or an alder from a willow. The sun 
 must chequer his poem with gold, or cross it with bars of grey and 
 silver. On such a stage the facts of Nature, her vocal and dumb
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE SEME. 163 
 
 animals, shall play their parts. What a stage, and everything on it 
 bursting with infinite suggestions, if we could only take note of them 
 fast enough ! Indeed, the very stones cry out loud, and in the spring 
 the whole world aspires in pointed praise of budding leaf, and ritual 
 of passionate appeal. Yes ! However much we admire a thing, tree, 
 flower, mountain, meadow, or cloud, it is not from copying individual 
 instances of them that we shall create a work of art. Let us study 
 them by all means, we cannot do so enough, but it is the aggregate 
 sentiment of their kind that Art must finally reach and give us. 
 
 " Love, free love cannot be bound 
 To any tree that grows on ground." 
 
 That is Blake's message to us, and he, par excellence, is our prophet, 
 not a mad, but a very sane one. The type and not the instance is 
 the artist's love. Not the cold-blooded abstraction we generally mean 
 by a type, which ends by robbing a thing of its personality and all 
 those pet failings which make it interesting and lovable. Not that, 
 but the ageless ghost we see the shadow of and are bound to follow, 
 if it is only the will-o'-the-wisp of our own reflections dancing in 
 Nature's inconstant glass. 
 
 Machinery, when it takes the place of Art, is tradition's death- 
 warrant. Who can sing in chains? But the cant "truth" of modern 
 Art is a mental mechanism of equally obstructive character. While 
 the art student is learning to copy accurately what is put in front 
 of him, he is drawing the bolts on his imagination. To give an 
 example of what I mean, there are few things that prick us to the 
 joyful quick more than the discovery of a colony of daffodils in the 
 corner of some field. Such a meinie of pensive heads and questioning 
 eyes ! We enjoy a scene of this sort in an ecstasy, a mood which 
 no artist, conscientiously copying what he sees, can reproduce for 
 us. He can certainly put a great deal into his picture which you 
 never saw there, and never wanted to see ; but will conscientiously 
 leave out what you did feel, and wanted to catch and keep. 
 
 And painting as he has learned to paint, how can the modern 
 realistic artist help himself! Six hundred years ago the profession
 
 164 ARBOR VIT^,. 
 
 went mildly mad over the discovery of perspective. Art then entered 
 on its first scientific stage, and the first check was given to spontaneity. 
 Then came Anatomy, the Classics, and Chiaroscuro. Great artists 
 became courtiers, and kings connoisseurs of their own portraits. 
 Lastly, here in England we discovered atmosphere, and the limits of 
 objective realism were reached. Art transcends all conditions, and 
 Turner paints his Polyphemus in spite of them. Perhaps such con- 
 ditions were necessary to prove what a genius Turner was ; but 
 what I wish to point out is, that at each fresh scientific imposition, 
 anatomy, light and shade, perspective and atmosphere, more people 
 are prevented from becoming artists, because they have to overcome 
 such a number of intellectual accomplishments before they can put 
 their real feelings into oil-paint, and our chance of getting Turners 
 to transcend these conditions becomes rarer and rarer. 
 
 These conditions are really the credentials of modern Art. And 
 though nothing can ever be done by wishing one could do it, many 
 people must lose sight of their original object altogether when it is 
 hidden under such a number of tests. And after all the examina- 
 tions are passed, what has our learning taught us? No picture can 
 adequately echo our feelings when we see a lawn sprinkled with 
 crocus, or a copse full of wild wind-flowers. These are visions of 
 fairyland, and must be painted in a fairylike and unreal way, by 
 a field vert seme with flowers, argent, or, and purpure. Which is 
 the more truthful method we must decide for ourselves. To me, 
 that is the truer Art which gives me the impression I love best. 
 
 And what, after all, is this Art which we think so real, and 
 which has fascinated us, not only to the exclusion of handicraft, but 
 seemingly to all power of imaginative design ? What are most 
 pictures but portraits of particular things taken at a particular time 
 from a particular point of view? Can that be called the expression 
 of the imagination, which at best is a gross libel on fact? Facts 
 are not fancies but their gaolers. No one can compose a poem from 
 a page of statistics ; and a work of real imagination is " like Nature " 
 for other reasons. It goes to the heart at once, because it is the 
 heart it appeals to ; and is the essence of a thousand thoughts and
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— THE SEME. 165 
 
 memories caught at all times, and from many points of view. And 
 I say this, not from want of appreciation of many exquisite poems 
 that have been painted during the Picture-age of Art, but from 
 intense sympathy with them, and the conviction that their authors 
 were as truly called to that work as were any prophets. But the 
 number of modern pictures that are classical, or that will be valued 
 two hundred years hence, will, I believe, be a very small one ; and 
 it is more than probable that the best art on realistic lines has 
 already been done, and cannot be surpassed. The sun has set that 
 rose in Turner's Polyphemus, and Millet's "Angelus" has tolled the 
 knell of a day of toil. The tradition of pictures is moribund. We 
 know, to-day, that they do not and cannot give us the help we ask 
 from Art. Another sun has risen, and a new day dawned. 
 
 The body of the new Art is handicraft ; its soul, our sympathy 
 with all living things, and a keen belief in their significance to us. 
 The point of view from which it will set to work will be a sym- 
 bolical one, and every aspect of nature will be presented in a nobly 
 conventional manner. Thus, a diaper or a semd, being made up of 
 a number of objects, will give us the charm of a crowd of things, 
 especially of things associated with our industry or recreation. That 
 vineyard in Plate XXXIV., for instance, is a quite unreal picture 
 of a vineyard ; but you have in that conventional treatment of it 
 the most satisfactory symbol of a subject that no realistic rendering 
 could accomplish. And why ? Because in the dexterous arrangement 
 and equal consideration for each row, the deliberate placing of each 
 leaf, and counting of each bunch of grapes, you enter into the feelings 
 of the tillers of the vineyard, sharing their joys and sorrows ; because, 
 in short, it is full of human interest. If modern landscape art would 
 give us " truths " of this description, it is welcome to keep its other 
 traditions so long as it finds them useful ; and while it remains 
 sincere, its touch with the purifying soil saves it from the affectations, 
 the mediaevalisms, and the demi-monde fin-de-sikcle corruption that 
 make the town-bred Art loathsome in honest eyes. 
 
 For the love of homeliness and humble life, peace, and the 
 companionship of peaceful things, we look mainly for the renaissance
 
 166 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 that is coming ; and although the system we are elaborating is an 
 artificial one, as all systems must be, it is out of that indefinite 
 passion that loves to wrest poems from stocks and stones that we 
 shall carve the corner-stones of the palace of Art. We cannot always 
 expect an artist to forsake his habits and begin his education again ; 
 we can only remind him that the practice of every art is necessarily 
 a compromise with the Nature he has learnt to reverence, and that 
 his work at last will only be valuable if he has looked at her with 
 inward as well as outward eyes. 
 
 The character of a diaper is retained in a happy sense in this 
 vineyard by the repetition of the stakes and cross poles that support 
 the vines. Had the artist been a German of the Rhineland, and not 
 an Italian, he would have given us vines seme", because there they 
 grow on poles and not on trellises. But whether the vineyard is 
 north or south of the Alps the husbandman would plant his vines 
 in as orderly a manner as possible, and a diaper would consequently 
 be its most appropriate convention in Art. A seme\ on the other 
 hand, would best represent those phenomena in Nature whose charm 
 consists in a certain accidental disregard for formal arrangements 
 (Plate XXXV.). A flight of birds would present a strange and quite 
 uncanny appearance if it executed geometrical manoeuvres in the sky. 
 We are delighted at an occasional approximation to one, but should 
 be terrified if the rooks got arithmetic into their heads and flew 
 home in rank and file of numbered accuracy. That would be against 
 Nature : against, that is to say, what we have grown accustomed 
 to and think beautiful. If the sky were cut up into squares, and 
 pricked for a star in the middle of each, its wonder and worship 
 would vanish. If the fishing fleet went to sea in monotonous 
 regularity, we should believe the sea had lost the fascination of its 
 charm and fearfulness, and that the sailor's life was as adventureless 
 as a mill-hand's. And consequently we should aim at making our 
 seme's rather contradict than obey a formal arrangement, especially 
 when they represent things which Nature arranges informally. When, 
 however, the objects are conventionally heraldic, a formal mathe- 
 matical disposition of them is often preferable, and such arrangements
 
 g*^.... -^ ^je-^ptP^g 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Informal Semes,
 
 168 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 have always been called seme's, and I should be unwilling to change 
 the nomenclature or deny their effectiveness. There would be no 
 advantage gained by disturbing the regularity of a semd of hearts, 
 crowns, thistle- or poppy-heads, for example, because these are 
 long established and recognised conventions ; and also because you 
 would draw all your hearts very much alike, and all your crowns, 
 and all your poppy-heads. But even in these more formal semds I 
 think I may venture to say that you will get the best effects by 
 guessing the distances instead of measuring them. In the drawing 
 of the objects themselves, too, whether they are dynamic or static, 
 you should not try to make them too much like each other. You 
 should not think of your seme' as a ground stuck over with 
 impressions of one thing, an angel or a song-bird, for instance, but 
 rather imagine that a choir of angels or thrushes had come to sing 
 to you ; nor are any two hearts susceptible of exactly the same 
 emotions, nor two flowers ever turned out by Nature of exactly the 
 same pattern. The informal semds we must put in a higher category 
 than the formal ones. Their disorderly order marks a higher pitch 
 of artistic achievement, just because it is nobler, as it is more 
 difficult, to be our own masters and at the same time faithful servants 
 of society. The informality of a beautiful semd is, in fact, only 
 a more delicate statement of a harmonious balance. We must 
 recognise our passions and restrain them : be joyful, and not lose 
 our heads ; angry, and sin not ; so that the ultimate beauty of this, 
 as of every other form of Art, depends on our power of expressing 
 the best feelings we have.
 
 THE third method of decorating a space of indefinite extent is 
 by an arabesque. 
 
 This term covers a multitude of virtues, as well as the vices 
 for which it has become the excuse, and which in their extreme 
 licence afford a curious commentary on what is supposed to be the 
 original meaning of the word. According to the accepted tradition, 
 Arabesque at first implied Arabian or Mohammedan ornament conceived 
 or controlled by a dogmatism so severely monotheistic that it forbade 
 the representation of visible living forms, lest the delight we might 
 take in them should detract from the consequence of an invisible 
 deity. It was an impoverished form of idolatry which could conceive 
 the Creator jealous of His creatures. It would be wiser to read the 
 injunction against making graven images or likenesses of living 
 things, as directed against that excessive materialism which would 
 sacrifice the spirit to the body, and forgets the purpose of life and Art 
 in anxiety about ways and means. We cannot refrain from creating, 
 for our instinct is to create ; and we are happy, to-day, in the belief 
 that our instincts are right if they are rightly led. To try and suffocate 
 an instinct is only to warp it, and is sure to lead in time to 
 corresponding and greater abuses. And so this Arabian conventional 
 Art was destined before long to introduce vegetable forms as the 
 ones least objectionably idolatrous. Here, indeed, with the superficial 
 
 art-instincts of Eastern temperaments, the style stayed and flourished ; 
 
 169
 
 170 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 but its adoption by so-called Christian nations was a fatal step in 
 its career, and opened the door to all the nightmares of inverted 
 imaginations. The original fallacy, by insulting the art-instinct seems 
 to have poisoned the source of the style, and to twist its progress 
 all askew, and arabesque remains with us, for the most part, a 
 ghoulish ornament in spite of its liberty. Because its principles 
 forbade it to be honestly true to nature, it became dishonestly false 
 to sentiment; and in spite of its popularity and the opportunity it 
 gives to ingenious fingers, there is little in it which is capable of 
 betraying deep feelings, or convictions of any intensity. Indeed, its 
 popularity is mainly due to its evident preference for superficial 
 cleverness of technique to intentional design — a sufficient reason for 
 its remaining fashionable with flippant civilisations. And if we are 
 told that we ought to look for serious qualities in serious works of 
 art, such as pictures, and not expect to find them in the merely 
 ornamental accessories whose business it is to be the Cinderellas to 
 these masterpieces, we can only regret that distinctions exist which 
 pretend to appeal to our higher feelings in one form, and pander to our 
 frivolities in another. Such a distinction was perhaps inevitable, but 
 its continued acceptance means that we cannot distinguish between 
 the honest inventive spirit of fun, and the crude insincerity of a 
 practical joke. True Art cannot draw a line between the sacred and 
 the profane. What decorates the alehouse cannot dishonour the 
 church, for Art must be as much a matter of unity as life is. 
 
 To refuse a natural development is to accept an unnatural one ; 
 and decoration based on the refusal of natural forms becomes a home 
 for unnatural ones, for insincerities and shams, a resort for strong 
 but purposeless imaginations. It is always necessary to choose 
 between noble and ignoble imaginations, between true grotesque and 
 senseless parody. The former involves the creation of new types, the 
 latter is only the mutilation of old ones. Beyond the questionable 
 advantage of a mere display of technical facility, a review of historical 
 and contemporary specimens of arabesque ornamentation leaves little 
 impression on the mind but one of heartless degeneracy. Its popularity 
 culminates naturally enough in the later Renaissance. It is essentially
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— ARABESQUES. 171 
 
 the decoration of decadence. It is characterised throughout by a 
 mocking insincerity ; its pretensions are all hollow. Masks take the 
 place of faces, and stare insolently through blank gaps of eyes. 
 Everything is mutilated or mended. Nothing is finished as it ought 
 to be, but tails off into strings of slovenly festoon and hanks of 
 acanthus. Every clever designer knows how fascinating the mastery 
 over late and flamboyant forms of acanthus becomes, and what a 
 peculiarly sensuous pleasure accompanies the exercise of his power ; 
 but unless he can restrain the temptation to use these forms 
 indiscriminately, the facility with which they appear to settle every 
 difficulty of composition is apt to engender a sort of madness in the 
 artist, and blind him to the beauty of all else. 
 
 The incongruous collection of things combined in Renaissance 
 ornament, masks and helmets, torches and cuirasses, dolphins and 
 dragons, cranes and apes and satyrs, are nevertheless still festooned 
 and in some slack fashion fastened together with ribbons and 
 wreaths and ingenious twists and twirls of mock vegetation, in 
 which we may still recognise our spiral if only in its dying gasps. 
 This faint trace of conventional adherence is its sole claim to the 
 title of traditional ornament. For the rest, the higgledy-piggledy 
 introduction of furniture into design is a symptom of decay in 
 imaginative power. No art should trespass on the province of a sister 
 art. To carve a chest, to forge a steel blade and inlay it with gold 
 thread, to enrich the reliquary with scarlet and blue enamel, are the 
 functions of distinct handicrafts; but to make pictures of the chest, 
 the rapier, and the shrine, is to confess your deficiency in original 
 ideas ; and though I have given an instance of the insertion of vases 
 in the intervals of the spiral, and recognise that other things besides 
 natural ones have occasionally a similar claim, it is because they are 
 hallowed by constant human use, and because their representation is 
 consequently careful and symbolical. To design for each handicraft 
 is legitimate and necessary, but the craftsman is properly his own 
 designer, because he must understand best what sort of design is 
 most suitable to his particular craft. If the art of design is a distinct 
 one, it ought to know enough of handicrafts to be able to adapt
 
 I 7 2 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 itself to the peculiar demands of each. At the same time it is 
 impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line between what is true and 
 what is false in Art. The final test of all work is the spirit in 
 which it is done. If that is true, all is true. In the best times and 
 the best styles many atrocities are committed ; in the worst, some 
 incomprehensible exception gleams like a beryl in a setting of lead. 
 The great German illustrator, Ludwig Richter, is one of these 
 exceptions. He is tied to no tradition but that of love. He is 
 greatest when he is humblest, among puppies, birds, and babies ; in 
 the cottage, the shop, and the alehouse ; least when he tries to excel in 
 the classical, the religious, and the sublime. The delicate arabesques 
 of vine sprays with their tossing tendrils which weave his illustrations 
 into the letterpress, mark him as our last great missal painter, 
 illuminating the book of life with unerring instinct. His arabesque 
 Rhineland ornament hangs lightly on to the skirts of tradition by 
 virtue of its affectionate patriotism and confessedly decorative duty. 
 It is an innocent and light-hearted comment on an innocent and 
 light-hearted existence, when the apprentice shouldered his knapsack 
 and started with song and sunshine for his IVanderjahr ; or quaffed 
 the landlord's wine and wooed his daughter ; times when German 
 students vied in the length of their pipes and the preposterous- 
 ness of their adventures ; or launched a gay boat on the shining 
 river, to float, a merry crew, past castle, village, and vineyard, while 
 the laughter rose and the goblets clashed, and the song echoed from 
 bank to bank : — 
 
 " Am Rhein, am Rhein da wachsen unser Reben ; 
 Gesegnet sei des Rhein 1 " 
 
 I hope I have shown — perhaps in my jealousy for its nobler 
 purposes I have too severely condemned — the degeneracies of arabesque. 
 I do not wish to curtail liberty, but only licence ; not to restrain 
 fun, but only buffoonery. The true use of the style is based on 
 giving lines as much life as possible ; and as when you want to 
 make a seme* out of a diaper the first thing you have to do is to 
 leave out the lines and free the figures between them, so if you
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— ARABESQUES. 173 
 
 want an arabesque you must first of all ignore the figures and free 
 the lines. So that an arabesque may properly be defined as an 
 arrangement of spiral lines to fill a space in a pleasant fashion, and 
 we shall find it better and easier to make our first arabesques in 
 this way by placing spirals together side by side, or in some other 
 combination, than by trying to galvanise the dead lines of a diaper 
 into ruddier life ; for though such an alternative may often in 
 ingenious hands be successful, it is surely better for every distinct 
 traditional stage to have, as far as possible, its own special method. 
 The use of all artistic terms is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, 
 because it is impossible to prevent one style from sliding into 
 another or borrowing some of its characteristics, and the word 
 arabesque is often made to refer to the decoration of a border or 
 frieze more than a space ; but though we cannot always decide 
 whether the decoration we are looking at is best considered lineal 
 or superficial, I think it will be safer to keep the term arabesque 
 for one distinct method of decorating a broad space as opposed to a 
 narrow one. With this provision the treatment of arabesque ornament 
 should involve and remind us of its essentially imaginative and 
 symbolical basis ; and since it is so indelibly associated with the 
 universal elements of Art, and originally with the use of abstract more 
 than of organic forms, we ought to emphasise those qualities and 
 make them productive of pleasant instead of repulsive feelings, and 
 let them teach us not how to manufacture meaningless monsters 
 and tie their tails together, but how to cut spaces up into delicate 
 divisions and cover those divisions with misty charm of interlacing 
 lines. Perhaps its most distinctive feature is seen in the Spanish 
 and Persian potter's affection for thin and sensitively sinuous lines, 
 which contrast strangely enough with the obstinately thick ones of 
 our own more Gothic tradition. That this is significant of racial 
 difference no one can deny, nor is it likely that any nation should 
 excel in expressing the feelings of another, though each should learn 
 something of the other's charm. All modes of civilised thought must 
 in their origin be similar, and surely the happiest temperament 
 assimilates the greatest differences best : the more Southern and
 
 174 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 Eastern artist can draw lines thickly and carelessly enough where he 
 considers them necessary to his effect ; but in his actual patterning, 
 which is his betraying speech, his formal and circumlocutionary 
 manners find their more natural expression in slender and winding 
 lines. The straightest road is not always the quickest way, and 
 arabesque, dissimilar as it may be to much of our Northern sentiment, 
 has achieved in its own line unique triumphs. 
 
 Practical education, in Art as in other things, aims less at analysis 
 than adaptation ; so that, in spite of their fascination, we shall be 
 careless of exactly copying examples of arabesques taken from purely 
 Spanish or Mohammedan sources. It is our business as far as 
 possible to sympathise with the originals, and then to show how 
 they may be adapted for our own use. First of all, then, arabesque 
 is distinctly the scribes' art. It has the same influence on us, as 
 Phoenician and Egyptian Art had on Greece. It taught us how to 
 write. It is always radical and symbolical, an extension of our 
 alphabet to express those phases of our feelings which are beyond 
 the scope of our speech. Some of the most precious Persian tiles 
 are only raised inscriptions in blue on a background of mazy gold. 
 Persian letters are certainly decorative objects in themselves, but 
 here (fig. 23) are some inscriptions from Spanish dishes which we 
 can all read with pleasure, though the letters spell no sense. Even 
 if they did, it would make no difference to our entertainment, but 
 the fact is, they are not letters at all, but only admirable imitations 
 of them. 
 
 Faithful to its literary origin, the tide of Arabian influence has 
 had comparatively small effect of a direct kind on Western handicrafts. 
 Doubtless Moorish Toledo led the fashion for engraving steel blades, 
 before swords were turned, not into ploughshares but Maxim guns. 
 The patterns on Persian carpets and printed cotton have influenced 
 our own textiles. Italy, too, that middle-man of the Middle Ages, 
 that commercial Corinth between East and West, published her secrets 
 to the world after she had pilfered them from every workshop. It 
 is in the decoration of books, however, that Eastern influence has 
 made its more permanent mark on the arts of Europe, and " arabesque "
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— ARABESQUES. 175 
 
 is constantly used to describe the slender ornament round the pages 
 of mediaeval literature. The art of illumination should be a distinctly 
 clerical gift ; and the spirit of mediaeval Christianity, its love of 
 detail, its profuseness and exuberance, are amply illustrated in what 
 remains to us of its scriptures. The purely decorative portions of the 
 ornamental pages of these beautiful books, contain perhaps the best 
 specimens of traditional arabesque we possess, and mark, in spite 
 of its Christian dress, the outside Christian nature of its origin in 
 
 \ 
 
 mmmm. 
 
 mmm 
 
 m 
 
 Fig. 23. — Patterns derived from Letters. 
 
 the wiriness and sinuosity of its artificial foliage. The illumination 
 in missals is also consistently pure in the character of its grotesque, 
 in contrast to the debased irreligion of later Renaissance ornament. 
 On the other hand, its conservatism to a few traditional types is 
 rather severe, and we could wish that where infinite labour and 
 tenderness abound, greater variety might have been introduced. Such 
 a wish is perhaps greedy in the face of such luxury of beauty. Here 
 (fig. 24), however, are one or two little quotations which are 
 sufficiently typical of the Christian arabesque obtained from these 
 sources, to show its love of sinuous lines and spring-like tendrils
 
 176 
 
 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 contrasted with angular types of ivy-leaves and concentrated square- 
 ness of capital letters glowing with gold leaf and brilliant and solid 
 colour. The development of these capitals into pictorial illustrations 
 probably absorbed the artist's interest, and led him to neglect further 
 invention in the accessories, which in consequence he would be glad 
 to reduce to a few recognised conventional types, easily reproduced 
 as often and wherever it was necessary. At the same time it would 
 
 Fig. 24.— Christian Arabesques. 
 
 be wrong to complain of this practice, if it shows, as it probably 
 does, what great "results can be obtained from a few ideas thoroughly 
 understood, in thoroughly trained, if somewhat unimaginative, hands. 
 One of the greatest causes for fear that the success of the modern 
 movement of handicraft may not last, is exactly the want of received 
 types of this kind. The workers have no clue, no hold on a few 
 patterns which they can reproduce or vary at pleasure. Their education 
 has been one-sided, and if they were left to their own resources, their 
 lack of tradition would leave them at the mercy of those unmeaning
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— ARABESQUES. 177 
 
 patterns which, instead of helping people to understand the principles 
 of true design, make it more and more difficult for them to believe 
 that there are any principles at all. A lad I was once trying to teach 
 wood-carving to, and whose vigour, while I was present, gave me 
 great encouragement, began to copy in my absence a niggled wreath 
 of grasses and garden stuff which he had copied with great effort from 
 the tailpiece of an article in a weekly trade journal, and than which 
 he could have found nothing more unsuitable. The want of judgment 
 was pitiable, but shows that many pitfalls are close at hand, and 
 baited, too, to catch the unsuspecting amateur. 
 
 There has been a great fashion, recently, to revive a mediaeval 
 type of book decoration. The intention is praiseworthy, if the 
 
 ££lfo- Lk^LkJf MUilkwmiMl 
 
 4§tlfc t£3^ nwmm 
 
 £B$m *$m* www 
 
 ititmtwt 
 
 Fig. 25. — Types of Spanish Patterning. 
 
 author is as treasured for what he says as the book is for what 
 it costs. We must not forget, however, that books were once 
 precious because they were rare, and that Blake and Ludwig 
 Richter have carried tradition irretrievably out of the hands of the 
 ecclesiastical mediaevalist and made it, for better or worse, profane. 
 The decoration of books, as of everything else, will in the future 
 be based on wider experiences than penetrated the monastery ; and 
 it is only with a similar appreciation of their antiquated value, and 
 a consciousness of their modern uselessness except as illustrative of 
 principles, that I include here a few instances of arabesque ornament 
 (fig. 25) taken from Spanish sources, and consequently nearer to the 
 historical origin of the style than our mediaevalised ones. In these, 
 as in the first examples of diapers, it is often difficult to say to 
 
 12
 
 178 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 which of the three styles of filling a space the pattern properly 
 belongs ; but we must remember that if the Arabian imagination 
 has given us a name for one link in our traditional chain, we must 
 not, therefore, expect to find nothing but instances of that class of 
 ornament in Arabian Art and its derivatives. On the contrary, let 
 us hope to discover in the Art of every race which has made its 
 fancy distinctly felt, examples of every stage in the history of Art. 
 Some nations excel in one kind of decoration and some in another, 
 and each stamps its entire production with the features which are 
 most characteristic of its genius. In this way we shall find in 
 Spanish Art, spirals, friezes, semds, and isolated figures and com- 
 positions, all remarkable as evincing in greater or less degree the 
 character of an arabesque. This character consists, as we have said, 
 in a strong perception of the possibilities of line work, and the more 
 abstract qualities in ornament. Their animals are knock-kneed and 
 heraldic, and their flowers and foliage unreal in a high degree ; but 
 they instinctively love to see a surface conventionally broken up, 
 and its divisions filled with conventional frettings in which there 
 is no evidence at all of a desire to copy nature, though one can 
 discover perhaps some origin for them in the omnipresent vine, and 
 the sacred jots and tittles of the pages of the Koran. Spanish 
 spirals, too, are also very beautiful from a different point of view 
 than we are accustomed to ; but their instinct seldom allows them 
 to continue even a winding line for long in one direction. They 
 prefer two dimensions, invariably, to one ; and when they use the 
 spiral at all, they do so more as a means of covering a space with a 
 number of horizontal or vertical bands. The Greek had very often 
 the same feeling in the decoration of his archaic vases ; and like the 
 Greek artist our Spanish potter shows a marked inclination to break 
 his surfaces up into friezes or bands of disconnected ornaments, — 
 a method of decoration we drew attention to in the last chapter, and 
 of which fig. 23 may serve as an example. 
 
 The subject of Mohammedan tradition is by no means exhausted 
 in such a cursory review. We may have occasion at another time 
 to give some analysis of the extensive use of the pine ornament
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— ARABESQUES. 179 
 
 and all those orders of "the double and the single pinks" which 
 spring from it, and flourish so serenely on Persian and Rhodian 
 ware. These also have their secrets and their special joys, and also, 
 no doubt, their special application. The Spanish craftsman, however, 
 seldom attains much naturalistic skill ; his value lies mainly, as we 
 have said, in his mastery over abstract arrangements : he can only 
 draw lines and make blots ; and he often crosshatches, like an early 
 Greek artist, to gain the effect of solidity, — a method which becomes 
 very decorative in his hands. We should not, consequently, expect 
 
 Fig. 26. — First Arabesques. 
 
 him, any more than the Greek, to be much of a colourist, and so we 
 find his range of pigments very limited ; but the colours he uses 
 he blends with absolute taste, and his gold, and bronze, and blue on 
 white grounds, are exquisitely related. 
 
 Following, then, our Eastern guide, and adapting his manners 
 to ours — thinking, too, of every style, as we are first bound to think 
 of it, as an expression of the imagination, before it involves any 
 special application to particular handicrafts — we should naturally make 
 our first arabesques look like sinuous diapers, consisting of winding 
 and interlacing spiral lines, without, at present, any contrasting spots 
 or leaves or other objects, but with a very distinct idea of organic
 
 180 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 growth. Perhaps the simplest way of all is to draw parallel spirals 
 across the surface we wish to decorate, and to increase their intricacy 
 as we feel the charm of doing so (fig. 26). A later process would be 
 to cover the ground with delicate branching from one stem, taking care 
 to keep the lines of one thickness throughout (Plate XXXVI.). 
 
 This scheme is capable of an infinite number of variations ; and 
 in fact any arrangement of winding lines which displays the peculiar 
 features of an arabesque is one, and the danger of confusing them 
 with diapers is safely past as soon as we introduce leaves or figures 
 of any description to fill the intervals or break the flow of rampant 
 and slender stems. For in a diaper the lines are geometrically 
 structural. Their only connection with the subsidiary figures is to 
 lock them up in solitary confinement. In an arabesque, on the other 
 hand, the figures spring directly from the stems or have some other 
 intimate and friendly connection with them, or else freak the ground 
 in complete disregard of their control. We must be very careful, 
 too, how we introduce the acanthus into this form of arabesque ; our 
 use of it here at any rate must be a very restrained one. It is a 
 difficult weed to eradicate from the garden when once we have given 
 it a firm hold there. Its beautiful and plastic foliage recommends 
 it for the exigencies of an arabesque, and it thrives there like poppies 
 in a cornfield, parching the crop. Its tendency is to confuse the 
 tree with its fruit, the spiral with the filling of its interval. It is 
 the relaxation of the principles of design, and especially that one 
 which bids us keep stalks stalky and the filling of intervals corre- 
 spondingly round and bossy. All we have learnt in the earlier parts 
 of this book about the construction of spirals will apply equally well 
 when we turn them into arabesques, except in regard to the stems, 
 which we should keep quite thin to begin with. We can consequently 
 now design any number of arabesques by simply repeating, reversing, 
 or crossing a favourite spiral ; or by letting one spiral meander in 
 careless elegance over the whole ground we wish to cover. In this 
 field the conventionalised ivy has been an undoubted favourite, as we 
 saw in connection with missal painting, the accentuated points of its 
 leaves contrasting in untiring satisfaction with the rounded curves
 
 XXXVI. 
 Typical Akabisqubs.
 
 182 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 of the stem. These are naturally the most organic forms that an 
 arabesque can assume, and in drawing them we must be careful 
 to keep the design from becoming centralised and symmetrical. We 
 must not forget that the first condition of all these types of decoration 
 is that their ornament should be evenly dispersed over the whole 
 space they are to occupy. The arabesque fulfils this condition by 
 rambling over the ground in an unmethodical way, turning a corner 
 here and dropping a leaf there, as the lightness of a line or the 
 weight of a leaf is wanted. In this way a uniform width of stem 
 becomes a feature of the design, but if we drew it more symmetrically 
 we should feel bound to thicken it in the more radical parts, and 
 should soon find our wild creeper approximating more and more 
 to the traditional tree form, which constitutes a much later chapter in 
 our tradition, or tempting us to escape the restraint of boundary and 
 become diffuse. And this danger induces me to emphasise, not for 
 the first time, the necessity of keeping the edges of our decorated 
 spaces as severe as possible. We know now that ornament is 
 subordinate to construction. That is a glib statement, whose evident 
 truth may sometimes defeat its very object. So let me add this 
 corollary : That the best construction is the simplest, and that there- 
 fore the edges of the spaces we have to decorate, and consequently 
 the edges of our ornament itself, ought to be simple. Good arabesque, 
 however much it winds about inside its boundaries, keeps those 
 boundaries severe. Bad arabesque, on the other hand, is licentious 
 within and unrestrained without. Nature's arabesques have much 
 greater command over themselves. Look at a forest tree, and see the 
 single sweep of outline that gathers all it contains in one huge oval, 
 and says to the aspiring and final twig on every branch, " Thus far, 
 and no farther." If you will prune your arabesques in the same 
 gardener-like way, you will feel how necessary this severity is to bring 
 out the force and contrast of their essentially meandering character. 
 In curious contrast to the delicacy and unsubstantiality of the 
 majority of arabesque ornament derived from Eastern sources, is our 
 own native ironwork. It would indeed be difficult to imagine the 
 smith, with his proverbial honesty and sturdiness, easily influenced
 
 THE FULFILMENT OF SPACE— ARABESQUES. 183 
 
 by the airy vanities of the East ; and yet the very nature of his 
 material obliges him to obey the same aesthetic conditions. Severest 
 of all handicrafts, absolutely obedient to unflinching laws, we can 
 sympathise with the smith's proud motto, " By hammer and hand 
 all arts do stand," though we may fail, perhaps, to appreciate the 
 entire significance of his conceit, unless he would imply by it that 
 the training a smith must undergo, uniting, as it does, the extremes 
 of physical force and sensitiveness to accuracy of line and relief, 
 fits him to excel in any art, for where nothing can be added without 
 an exact proportion of labour, and labour of the most arduous kind, 
 we may be quite sure that unnecessary detail will be omitted, and 
 severity of execution maintained. Fate is kind in giving us the 
 traditions of wrought ironwork as an antidote and corrective to the 
 tempting dissipation of arabesque, for its initial difficulties and strict 
 application to use make it proudly retentive of the best conditions 
 of manufacture ; and I cannot illustrate this chapter of Art better 
 than by drawing your attention to the best possibilities of this noble 
 craft, and the educational importance of its revival. 
 
 The figures in Plate XXXVII. are traditional factors in arabesque 
 design taken mainly from the smithy. It has been my endeavour 
 to separate the patterns from the objects they decorate in order to 
 make their adaptation as easy as possible, especially to the amateur 
 craftsman, who may not have the ready pencil of a professional artist. 
 Illustrations often defeat their object by being drawn or photographed 
 from the solid, so that the chance of their being used is made more 
 difficult by the light-and-shade effect in which they appear, and com- 
 plicated by the interest of their surroundings. In regard to the 
 examples in this plate it must also be borne in mind that they are 
 decorative schemes which are capable of indefinite expansion, and not 
 pictures of completed things. An arabesque is a method of covering 
 an indefinitely-sized space with a particular sort of pattern ; and if 
 I had drawn for you instead the whole of the pages and plates, 
 grilles and gridirons from which I have borrowed here, you would 
 probably have seen these objects first, and wished to copy them 
 before you saw and admired the principle of their building up, which
 
 184 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 is what I want you to see in order that you may be able to apply 
 them to other purposes as well. And, finally, when we have plodded 
 through the preliminary stages of this tradition of winding lines, 
 and understand the feelings it gives rise to, we can extend it in 
 almost the same degree, and with the same freedom, as a semd. 
 The winding current of our lives is always turning incomprehensibly 
 on itself. We round a corner, or pass a crisis ; we touch the acme 
 of our hopes, or find ourselves apparently no nearer wisdom than 
 when we started. Life is a labyrinth of mysterious paths. If we 
 are wise we shall not calculate the cost of each experience, but learn 
 to adapt ourselves obligingly to every new experience as it comes. 
 
 I have already hinted at the difficulty of saying to which style 
 an elementary pattern belongs. A greater ambiguity surrounds the 
 more complicated examples. The analysis I have suggested by 
 distinguishing between diapers, semds, and arabesques may prove 
 of some makeshift value, but we must not forget that there are 
 combinations of these styles, especially of semd, with arabesque, 
 and of a large semd with a small one, which are often of great 
 convenience and beauty. 
 
 In the simpler and more archaic instances of these blended 
 patterns the Spanish potter with his Moorish tradition is again the 
 best master we can have. He is easy to learn from, because his 
 scope is a limited one, and his talent conservative and only cautiously 
 speculative within the limits of his tradition. In the combinations he 
 is fondest of, the seme" takes the more important part ; that is to 
 say, it is apparently imposed on the diaper or arabesque, which sinks 
 into the mere but decoratively appropriate fretting of the background. 
 From the abstract standpoint of the Moorish artist's mind, little or 
 no importance attaches to the question of relief which to our Western 
 and more practical understanding is so curiously important. The 
 Moorish artist paints his figures on the top of his background or 
 fills in the spaces between his figures without wishing to suggest 
 that the one is more remote from the spectator than the other. He 
 is consequently more capable of giving the whole of his attention to 
 the more purely aesthetic side of his ornament, and therefore I think
 
 ,/,J 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Traditional Factors in Arabesque Design.
 
 186 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 he is more worthy of imitation. Beautiful colour and delicate lines 
 are just as independent of the conditions of aerial perspective as is 
 the expression of strong feeling and vigorous action. 
 
 The Eastern artist is wilfully untrue to Nature. That is at once 
 the secret of his power and the reason of his limitations. He will 
 draw lines and put splashes of colour just where they are wanted 
 without caring much what they may mean or what they may be 
 mistaken for. This attitude of his represents a very essential quality 
 in the art of designing, but one that we must learn not to depend 
 on too much, for his power stops there, as his influence over us 
 should also. If our greater knowledge and keener, kinder sympathies 
 can change his inarticulate figures into living facts, we shall only 
 prize the lesson of his peculiar skill more and show ourselves his 
 worthier disciples. One of the greatest secrets of imaginative invention 
 in every branch of art is the power of realising a suggestion that 
 is no more than a shadow, and changing an accident into an 
 intention. In this way our mistakes often become our greatest 
 masters. " Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads 
 without improvement are the roads of genius."
 
 IT would be impossible to imagine a consistent scheme of decorative 
 art without subordinating natural things not only to conventional 
 shapes, but to artificial situations and arrangements as well. 
 The conventional shape of a thing that has been accepted as its 
 symbol for a long time becomes a type, as the Greek idea of a 
 dolphin became a type of fishes ; and the satisfactory arrangement 
 of things in a conventional manner becomes a pattern or a design. 
 To make an accurate copy of a daisy is one thing, to draw it in 
 decorative relation to other daisies or other objects is quite another, 
 and demands less a knowledge of the flower itself than an instinctive 
 and trained sense of the sort of company it ought to keep in the 
 fairyland of imaginative art. You cannot extract principles of design 
 out of daisies by pulling them to pieces and rearranging their bits 
 in symmetrical or unsymmetrical order. The feelings that daisies 
 give us are not expressed in this way any better than by copying 
 a bunch of them on a bank or in a glass of water. The sum of 
 feelings given us not only by daisies but by everything about us is, 
 as I have tried to show, the material out of which the principles 
 of art, its conventions and traditions, grow. By the evolution of 
 tradition, I mean the gradual change these artificial shapes and 
 arrangements undergo by being handed down from generation to 
 generation of artists, during the course of which they are bound 
 to alter, to improve or degenerate, while often their original meaning 
 
 187
 
 188 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 is forgotten because it has grown unimportant, or been varied to 
 express some more urgent idea. 
 
 A seme" of spots will represent the pleasure we take in spotted 
 things generally, a seme" of daisies the special enjoyment we have 
 in looking at a field full of flowers ; but because we see that the 
 field is full of flowers before we see what sort of flowers they are, 
 because, in other words, the field might have been full of milkmaids 
 or buttercups instead of daisies, we find it useful to make a con- 
 ventional daisy, which may stand at a pinch for other flowers as 
 well. Thus we shall find conventionalised forms of all sorts, such 
 as a fleiir-de-lys, which is more or less like a lily, but not too like 
 any lily in particular ; a conventionalised tree, which ought not to 
 be mistaken for anything else than a tree, but need not necessarily be 
 more like an ash than a beech or an elm ; a conventionalised bird, 
 conventionalised horses, dogs, lions, men, just as they came out of 
 the ark — types of animals and not portraits of them. 
 
 Such a conventionalised animal or thing is, or ought to be, 
 ornamental, not because it falls in with any theoretical law of beauty, 
 but because it expresses in the shortest possible way the feelings of 
 delight we have about the class of things it is supposed to stand 
 for. So that picture of a hare from a Greek vase in fig. 15 is not 
 only an artistically scientific type of hares, but is decorative or 
 beautiful as well, because it embodies the sleek attitude and marvel- 
 lously swift course of a hare's flight. To produce such important 
 types as this, so full of vigour and imaginative power, is naturally 
 the result of ages of endeavour; and designs which consist of only 
 one figure are not so easy as we should be at first inclined to think. 
 Indeed, the easier, as they are also the earlier forms of Art, make 
 pictures of lots of things instead of single ones, and represent 
 complicated states of mind rather than lucid ones, just as the 
 worship of many gods comes before that of a few, or of only one. 
 As a consequence the earliest traditions are those which teach us 
 how to arrange many things together. These are the traditions we 
 have so far been busy in investigating : the spiral, the semd, and the 
 frieze. In all of these a high standard of civilised thought can be
 
 FRAMES. 189 
 
 expressed, especially, perhaps, in the frieze, which tends more than 
 the others to give us an organic and consecutive view of matters we 
 are interested in. A scheme such as ours, which attempts to give 
 an impetus to handicrafts by bringing them more into touch with 
 our life and thoughts, does not pretend to be scientific or historical 
 from the ordinary point of view. Deductions from the past, however 
 true, cannot be infallible for the present or the future. What we 
 believe, or can be made to believe now, is far more actual for us than 
 what may really have happened. Christianity is the greatest fact 
 in the world, whether Christ existed or not; and the truest history, 
 after all, is the record of human imaginings. Nor is the history of 
 the traditions of Art merely the story of their gradual rise and 
 sudden fall, for that would be to condemn every period except a 
 hypothetical one, when we suppose a climax was reached. So far 
 is that from being the case, that I think almost every period will 
 give us examples of aspiring as well as debased Art, and we who 
 have such unequalled opportunities for learning what the world has 
 already achieved, ought surely to make the most of our opportunities, 
 and build at any rate some worthy foundations for the art of 
 the future. 
 
 When I speak of the traditions of Art I always do so from an 
 immediate and practical point of view, instead of from the historical 
 and antiquarian one. The history of artistic traditions is written in 
 defiance of dates. The pattern round a sun-dried bowl scratched by 
 the enlightened South-Sea Islander yesterday, or the civilised Greek 
 of twenty-five centuries ago, is very likely more modern in its 
 sentiment, more helpful to the craftsman who wishes to put his 
 feelings into his work, than all the pictures, and the statues, and 
 the drawings, in this year's art galleries and illustrated periodicals. 
 A real Art echoes universal feelings, and ought to be as intelligible 
 to the people who live in an English village to-day as it was five 
 centuries ago to the natives of Florence. The difference is only one 
 of dialect. Here, we have in reality representatives of every nation 
 and time : gentle men and rude men, Teutons and Celts, Greeks 
 and Goths, Jews and Philistines, very thinly disguised in the smocks
 
 190 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 and frocks of modern society, and ready, if we only knew how to 
 teach them, to create a great Art again. 
 
 The frieze was limited as we have seen to interjectional episodes, 
 or ideas which are suited to a characteristically processional shape. 
 Beyond such it can hardly be made to extend, and we are obliged 
 to return to the main current of tradition to discover what other 
 conventions are useful for telling us the thoughts and feelings of 
 humanity. These artistic conventions will generally be found to 
 centre round the square or circle, or at any rate tend to produce 
 more concentrated shapes than those we have been so far accustomed 
 to. For clearly, putting aside exceptional predilections for irregularities 
 which fancy or the needs of structure may suggest, we shall prefer 
 the sort of shapes which we can look at with the least amount of 
 inconvenience as a final form of Art. 
 
 When we first discovered that there were spaces to fill as well 
 as lines to draw, our instinct naturally led us to cover them with 
 spirals and friezes, the patterns we were most used to. The diaper 
 and the seme" were the result. But just as the spiral and the 
 frieze were in their origin supposed to be indefinitely long lines of 
 ornament, so in our last three chapters we were obliged to treat 
 of spaces of equally indefinite size, illustrating many stories without 
 an end. But the more dramatic the tale, the more definite the idea 
 or dogma, the more reason there is to tell it as pithily and concisely 
 as possible ; and so we shall have to trace the evolution of the 
 single design, the telling of the simple tale, out of the more involved 
 traditions that precede it. It will immediately occur to most of us, 
 and with some reason, that we can easily put an end to the indefinite 
 nature of a diaper or a seme" by drawing a line round it wherever 
 we like. So we can, but in doing so we must remember that we 
 are destroying the essential character of a seme" and its main charm, 
 which is the suggestion of an indefinite extension of its ornament, 
 just as the sky gives one an idea of infinity peopled with stars. 
 This suggestion of infinity is not materially injured when the seme* 
 ends abruptly with the edge of the thing it is decorating, but would 
 be as soon as you enclosed it with an arbitrary border. You can
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Enclosed Semes.
 
 192 ARBOR VITiE. 
 
 easily understand the paradox, that by adding to a thing you can 
 make it smaller. Infinity defined is infinity no longer. An unfinished 
 pattern suggests indefinite extension, for the same reason that the 
 most satisfactory way of finishing a spiral, when it means more than 
 it has space to say, is to cut it straight off and leave the continua- 
 tion of it to the imagination. But a semd with a border round 
 it would have to stand as a symbol for the pleasure we take in a 
 limited number of things instead of an unlimited number of them ; 
 as, for instance, in the planets in distinction to a whole heaven of 
 stars, or in a plate of apples in distinction to an apple-tree full of 
 them. The fewer the objects are, the more importance, of course, 
 is attached to each one of them, till their diminishing number will 
 not allow us to call the pattern a seme - any more. By some such 
 careful elimination, with increased emphasis on the remainder, we 
 may of course at last reach a design composed of only one individual 
 surrounded by a subordinate frame, and this would be a useful and 
 quite legitimate way of arriving at the goal we are aiming at ; but 
 the one we must adopt will be a little more circuitous, and will 
 take in some outlying traditions we might otherwise miss. 
 
 To begin with, however, here (Plate XXXVIII.) are two instances 
 of seme's which have had their infinity curtailed, and have quite 
 made up their minds to the change. In the former the seme is 
 unimportant from a purely decorative point of view, and is therefore 
 surrounded by a correspondingly important frame. We ought to 
 remember in respect to it that every printed page of a book is a 
 semd of letters surrounded as a rule by a white margin or frame, 
 and that therefore the first condition of beautiful printing lies in the 
 choice of beautiful type and relation of black to white. In the second 
 example the pictorial interest is reversed, the central portion is the 
 important one, and the frame is proportionally simple and unassuming. 
 This relation between the two parts of the design must be noticed. 
 To surround a rich design with an elaborate border is seldom effective, 
 and generally vulgar ; but when a simple semd is set in a plain 
 frame, the insignificance of the design is often balanced by richness 
 of material. A mere seme of spots may really consist of jewels
 
 FRAMES. 
 
 193 
 
 lying in a bed of gold, so that where precious materials are used 
 their actual or associative value will often take the place of elaboration 
 of design or finish of workmanship. 
 
 Ku;. 27. — A Self-Enclosing Diaper. 
 
 Arabesques are, on the whole, less suitable for framing than 
 seme's, and diapers least of all, because, of the three, they are the 
 most formal and geometrical ; and the act of framing a design has 
 a natural tendency to add some formality to it, while a diaper has 
 
 13
 
 194 
 
 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 a sufficiently formal character of its own. Being primarily a com- 
 position of lines, it is somewhat inappropriate to bind it with more 
 lines. A better way to edge a design of that sort is shown in 
 fig. 27. Such interlacing is a common trick among Celtic carvers ; 
 and you will constantly find it in grilles and gates of wrought and 
 twisted ironwork. In the latter case the addition of a plain frame 
 is often necessary, but the distinction between it and the rest of the 
 design is not often insisted on. 
 
 These examples of the use of a frame do not by any means 
 exhaust the subject of its functions. From its association with 
 pictures the frame has got a popular meaning which must not 
 mislead us here ; for while it would be impossible to forget its 
 restricted use in that connection, we must remember that it has 
 
 Fig. 28, a. 
 
 other meanings as well. We speak, for instance, of the framework 
 of a house, the bodily frame, and even of a frame of mind. I 
 use it here in the sense of a pattern enclosing a clearly defined
 
 FRAMES. 
 
 195 
 
 Fig. 28. b. — The Frame Alone as a Form of Ornament. 
 
 space, without regard to what it may be made of, or to what use 
 it may be put. That, of course, is an important question ; but, 
 first of all, let us see if a frame is not a possible form of ornament 
 by itself. 
 
 Long ago we led the spiral round corners, and were tempted 
 away to think of ornamenting the space so enclosed. If we return 
 to it now, we shall find that the spiral in its new character makes 
 a by no means despicable form of ornament, without any thought 
 of what it may be surrounding (fig. 28). Regarding it, too, from 
 a purely historical point of view, we should expect to find spirals 
 placed at all sorts of angles to each other, and even enclosing spaces,
 
 196 ARBOR VIT^E. 
 
 without laying any stress on the fact, other than that spirals could 
 be so drawn. This would happen for a long time, and even after 
 the space inside had been timidly occupied, the frame would remain 
 the most important factor of the picture. And this, indeed, was the 
 case in the Middle Ages, till the artist was gradually evolved from 
 the handicraftsman, and undertook the decoration of the inside of the 
 frame as his special province. 
 
 An empty frame has still, however, its distinct uses, if you won't 
 think of it as that part of a picture which a modern artist is not 
 responsible for. As a method of decorating a plate, or as the border 
 round a tablecloth, or even as the moulding round a window, it 
 answers its purpose very well. We cannot possibly lay down any 
 rule to govern its shape or size. Round, oval, square, oblong, and 
 polygonal frames are all right in their right places, and if I prefer 
 thick ones to thin ones it is only because I have a greater occasion 
 to use the former. 
 
 Among the uses to which the frame by itself is put, we may 
 mention such ornaments as brooches and rings. The ring has, of 
 course, numerous associations apart from personal decoration, and 
 other significations besides betrothal. It is always wise to refresh 
 our invention by the discovery of other connections than the most 
 familiar. 
 
 While many frames maintain a position as complete forms of 
 ornament, their value is not necessarily injured by the addition of 
 further decoration inside. We have already seen that the seme - is 
 quite an appropriate feature there, but in that case the frame was 
 added to complete an already conceived design. Generally, it is an 
 easier matter to make a suitable frame to fit your design, than to 
 invent a design to fit your frame ; and though in the process of 
 evolution the frame evidently precedes the conception of what 
 it afterwards encloses ; in practice, which so constantly reverses 
 tradition, the design precedes, and the frame becomes a subsequent 
 accessory. 
 
 I have no intention here of considering the question of what 
 sort of frames are suitable for pictures. From the picture-painter's
 
 FRAMES. 197 
 
 point of view, a frame is only an inferior, but unfortunately indis- 
 pensable, adjunct to his own production, and modern high-art criticism, 
 whose horizon is bounded by such narrow limits, ignores them with 
 contempt. The decorator, however, with his wider view of things, 
 cannot separate the one from the other. Of the two the frame is 
 the more traditional, and therefore perhaps the more important in 
 his eyes ; but then he does not necessarily regard it as gilt stucco 
 or carved oak. This "fine art" of ours, which has reduced 
 the frame to such a moribund convention, is a cul de sac, a blind 
 alley, in the history of traditional Art. There is no escape from 
 it, struggle as we may, but by frank confession and self-denying 
 retreat. 
 
 That absurd unconstructive construction, the picture-frame, is the 
 last hold of handicraft on Art ; a degraded thing, essential, indeed, 
 to complete the artist's labour, but in the making of which he scorns 
 to take any hand. Different in material, without any relation as 
 a rule between its design and the picture, its only mission is to 
 isolate what it protects from the surroundings its presence has made 
 incongruous. In spite of all this, it is still faithful to the first law 
 of all hierarchic tradition, " Ich dien" and does faithful service in a 
 somewhat forlorn cause. We know that the picture in its present 
 shape is ridiculously unornamental from an architectural point of 
 view. That point of view is finally the only correct one. You can 
 turn a room into a picture-gallery, but don't on that account imagine 
 that you have decorated its walls ; you have only prevented its walls 
 from being decorated. By all means engage an artist to paint your 
 walls, but see that he paints his picture there and not in his studio 
 A wall is a useful thing, and you are quite right in turning it into 
 a picture ; but hanging pictures on it is not at all the same thing. 
 You do not make a vase more beautiful by tying a ribbon round 
 its neck as if it were a cat : you must paint on the vase itself and 
 burn your colours into the clay. Then your picture and your wall 
 are one. If you can induce your artist to do this, he will learn two 
 things : firstly, that the frame or border is an integral part of the 
 design, and must not be left to inferior workmen to execute ; and,
 
 198 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 secondly, that all decoration should, as far as possible, be done on 
 the spot. 
 
 I am afraid many artists would hardly appreciate the inno- 
 vation ; they are conscious of being deeply compromised, and feel 
 that their pictures, which pass at present unquestioned, require the 
 conditions they are used to. And that is true ! A picture, with its 
 atmosphere, perspective, and chiaroscuro, is not decoration, whatever 
 it is. It wants a frame besides, and your whole patronage, if you 
 can give it. The question is how long you can. For the truth is 
 that a change of material and a change of motive would necessitate 
 a change of style as well, and it is hard to give up what we have 
 attained with difficulty, or to forsake ideas we may not yet have 
 suspected. Nevertheless, it will sooner or later be necessary to do 
 so, and we shall be fortunate if we escape having to lay bricks 
 instead of painting on them. While pictures are painted in the 
 artist's studio, the decorative arts, when it is possible to do so, 
 ought to be executed where they are meant to remain, for work 
 that is done on the spot cannot help taking into account the 
 architectural exigencies and eccentricities in its neighbourhood ; and, 
 if the artist is sensitive, he will be influenced by the feelings of 
 the people who live there, or touched by the uses the building 
 he is helping to complete is going to be put to. And the result 
 will be that his efforts, however humble, will harmonise with 
 their surroundings and become part and parcel of the life of 
 the place. 
 
 My criticisms on the tendency of current Art are unlikely to 
 make many converts. The influence of fashion is very strong ; nor 
 am I disposed to assert that pictorial art has achieved all it was 
 sent in the world to do. Let those who feel further possibilities in 
 that direction follow their bent, and may success and more light 
 wait on their patience. Let the young artist, if Nature really appeals 
 to him more than anything else, be as unaffectedly honest to his 
 aspirations as the times will allow. We live in an age of transition, 
 and are bound to follow originality wherever it comes to the surface. 
 But if the age is one of transition now, it will soon be one of stern
 
 FRAMES. 
 
 199 
 
 utilitarianism as well. That is an end, or rather a beginning of better 
 things, devoutly to be wished. At present, Art bids for popularity 
 by hook or by crook : by audacious advertisement, by indecencies, by 
 pandering to religious sentiment, by raking up every affectation that 
 will startle the public if it cannot interest or even amuse them. But 
 the strain of this competition for popular approval only destroys the 
 very possibility of Art. Its joy, for all who can give and all who 
 can receive it, must spring from a peaceful apprenticeship to simple 
 human wants and simple human feelings.
 
 •CHAPTER FOURTEEN- 
 THEF1LLINGOFFRAMES 
 
 THE main tendency of the more intellectual Art of the nineteenth 
 century has no doubt been in revolt against traditions that 
 have lost their power to please, and is also inspired by a 
 sudden perception of the beauties of natural scenery, a subject which, 
 except in certain aspects, does not appear to have appealed to artists 
 before recent times. The grass of the field, which to-day is, and 
 to-morrow is forgotten, its flowers, with their innocent forms and 
 luminous colours, were dear to the hearts of the mediaeval artists, 
 but do not appear to have appealed to the grey ages between their 
 days and our own. It was only the palpably romantic side of 
 nature, its rocks and castles, its lightnings and thunders, that 
 inspired the precursors of modern landscape Art, and even then 
 the feeling about it was theatrical and second-hand. The stereotyped 
 romantic was the only point of view. A larger conception of the 
 charm of natural scenery happily reigns to-day. We have learnt the 
 necessity and value of fresh air and country conditions, but the 
 fungus growth of city squalor has diminished our chance of enjoying 
 them, and made them precious. What is precious to-day is beautiful 
 to-morrow, and already homely weeds are hawked in town streets, 
 and we treasure the symbols of simplicity in the midst of the wealth 
 and waste and luxury of London. 
 
 This appreciation of nature was surely significant and welcome 
 after the long dearth of bloodless convention, and Art was not slow
 
 THE FILLING OF FRAMES. 201 
 
 to echo the public feeling in its own way, by making pictures of the 
 things we had learnt to love ; nor was it to be expected but that a 
 new theory of Art should supplant the old, and every one believe 
 that the greatest Art was that which displayed or, as it was called, 
 revealed nature most faithfully. Were such a standard possible, how 
 serenely we might sail on to approximate perfection ! But look at 
 this spear of summer grass : can any Art in the world do more than 
 libel it miserably? It is in such simple things as these that our 
 craft becomes so inadequate. With a sunset or a city we can take 
 liberties, but not with a blade of grass. If literal truth alone were 
 the standard of excellence we should all become photographers, and 
 when we had discovered the transmission of colour through the 
 negative, and had corrected a few vagaries in the lens, we might 
 reasonably hope to have attained the summit of our ambition. But 
 I do not think that photography will ever become a dangerous rival 
 to Art, because there is something in Art we give greater credit to 
 than even truth : something that photography cannot possibly give 
 us, because it lies in the artist and not in nature, and though we 
 can dissect a man's body and tell all his bones and his bumps, his 
 imagination will always escape the shackles of science. It is certainly 
 strange that in the face of this widely accepted theory of truth, and 
 side by side with it, the exact opposite should have been held, and, 
 however unconsciously, have directed our best judgment, that Art 
 is commendable not for the reality, but for the unreality of its 
 revelation. This is only another way of saying that we are all 
 idealists in spite of ourselves, and that though we can recognise the 
 delicacy of the grass, not even a miraculous counterfeit, much less 
 a laboured imitation of it, would enhance our estimate of the power 
 of Art. 
 
 What are we to do, then ? Give glory to God for creating 
 Nature, and giving us power to enjoy it, and show ourselves His 
 children by exercising our own faculties of invention. Then we shall 
 discover that the tools we thought so clumsy and inadequate are 
 marvellous fingers and hands, ready to help and direct our imagination. 
 And we shall find that the more we have loved Nature, the more
 
 202 ARBOR VIT/E. 
 
 equipped we are to add our share to hers, and the more capable of 
 revealing to others less, perhaps, the mask we think so fair, than the 
 love and intense feelings our contact with her brings. 
 
 I do not say we are not to copy Nature ; on the contrary, 
 so long as it does not become the end instead of the means, we 
 cannot study Nature in every way too much ; but we are to study 
 her in order to know her, not in order to make money out of her 
 nor to show how cleverly we can sketch. If we had perfect 
 memories we should never want, to take notes. We do so, then, 
 to increase the material we shall afterwards have to use ; to add 
 letters to our alphabet, notes to our keyboard. But the tune 
 must come out of our own hearts before the notes will take their 
 proper places. 
 
 So, when we assert that Art is bound by conventions which 
 appear to have little in common with Nature, it is not because we 
 are blind to her infinite beauties, but rather because we feel some- 
 thing of the same uplift in ourselves which bids us put forth leaves 
 of our own, and become ourselves an intimate part of the world we 
 were looking at before too much from the outside. 
 
 Art, then, is the artificial limitation and disposition of natural 
 forms ; an analysis of Nature, if you like, but based on analogies 
 between things where science sees none : analogies of intention and 
 soul, not of construction and body. It is a curious mixture of 
 opposites, of freedom and restraint, of truth and fiction, of the 
 impossible and the likely ; but while excess of either is dangerous, 
 it is better to keep the artificial or conventional factor prominent. 
 We can return to Nature when we please, but it takes centuries 
 to recover traditions. In practice, for example, if you have a 
 curtain you want to decorate, determine first whether a frieze or 
 a seme" would be the more suitable form of decoration for it 
 before making up your mind what objects the frieze or the seme" is 
 to consist of. 
 
 I think some such preface as this is necessary to keep us straight 
 on the road of tradition, and to account, as we proceed, for the 
 conventions that grow more and more marked as our horizon widens
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 The Origin of the Central Figure.
 
 204 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 and we enlist more acquaintances from the outside world. We have 
 already, in the last chapter, dealt with the frame, preparatory to 
 evolving other forms from it. If we review the subject we shall see 
 that frames may be roughly divided into spiral frames and frieze 
 frames. Without a central occupant, and often with one, the edge 
 of the frame is usually a broken one, however symmetrical its main 
 contour may be, and this will the more easily allow us to reduce the 
 frame to such small dimensions that it ceases to be a frame in any 
 sense of the term. Let us take the spiral frame first, and in its 
 simplest shape (Plate XXXIX., a). This, with its four chambers, 
 cavities, or caves, is not at first so easy to draw as it seems, but if 
 you look at it closely you will see that the basal line of it takes the 
 form of a dumbbell or an oval which has had its sides squeezed in. 
 There is very little central space left in this design, and what there 
 is is occupied by a stray bud or tendril, which I want you to notice 
 because it is the beginning of great things. The design as it stands 
 appears more like a scheme for decorating a tile or panel, or method 
 of treating the square in a solid fashion, than as in any way related to 
 a frame ; it is nevertheless from the traditional point of view the 
 simplest way in which a spiral (or line twisted first to the right and 
 then to the left) may enclose a space with the least possible cost of 
 material and energy, and this unimportant-looking bud in the middle 
 will grow to become the parent of those types of design which we 
 are accustomed to think the most important ones ; designs of definite 
 shape and definite meaning, opposed to the spiral and frieze because 
 they present a concentrated shape and often include a central figure 
 or subject. The origin and development of this kind of design is 
 our present business, and I have preferred to discover it in a way 
 that will not break the continuity of our tradition rather than to find 
 an independent origin for it. 
 
 Let us now follow the clue that this simple treatment suggests. 
 The next step will be a design with six chambers ; the next one 
 with eight (Plate XXXIX., b). These are either square or round 
 designs, according to whether the chambers are deep or shallow. 
 Beyond this point, however, the design takes a circular shape when
 
 THE FILLING OF FRAMES. 
 
 205 
 
 the number of interior chambers is uneven, and a rectangular shape 
 when it is even. The construction of this process is shown in 
 fig. 29 to better advantage than in the finished examples in the 
 plate. As the spiral increases the number of its chambers it gets 
 relatively thinner, and retires before the central figure it gave birth 
 to in its first form ; very soon they are too distinct to be any longer 
 united. The child must leave its mother and learn to live alone, 
 while the parent can only guard and cherish it at a distance. As 
 the spiral recedes before its offspring the latter becomes more and 
 more important as a central figure, and whether it absorbs it or not, 
 dominates the whole of the central space. So the series proceeds, 
 
 Fig. 29. — Frame Structures. 
 
 with a surrounding spiral of less and less calibre, till it becomes too 
 attenuated to retain the character of a spiral, and another tradition 
 must succeed. I have chosen to illustrate this tale with a vine spiral, 
 but we must not forget that any spiral of a simple nature is equally 
 suited to demonstrate the same results. 
 
 The normal spiral, as usual, gives us the best, because the most 
 gradual development ; but an adaptation of the chain-spiral, which 
 we dismissed rather unceremoniously in the second chapter, produces 
 singularly well, though in a somewhat different manner, the effect of 
 a central figure surrounded by a spiral border. The character of the 
 chain-spiral, when we first fell in with it, was unsuited to the insertion 
 of leaves ; and as our tradition took its course that way, we were 
 obliged to leave it till other objects, which did not require any
 
 206 ARBOR VIT-E. 
 
 attachment to the stem, could be introduced into its links. Then it 
 became a very vital form of ornament, and one that combines the 
 flow of a spiral with the stability of a frieze. As a frame pure and 
 simple it is also very effective. For our present purpose we will 
 reduce it as we did the spiral frame to the least possible number 
 of links with which it can still enclose a space, however small 
 (Plate XL., a). The frame is reduced here to just two interlacing 
 links, the underlying theme of many a Celtic labyrinth, and capable, 
 as we know, of rushing off into infinite subtleties of involution. 
 Here, however, it must learn to restrain itself to more Teutonic 
 purposes. We cannot go at length into the corresponding growth 
 of this tradition ; but Plate XL., b, will illustrate its second 
 condition, after which the frame can expand in lots of ways, and 
 give our ingenuity plenty of exercise. These designs, based on 
 the chain-spiral, are more suited to the introduction of animal 
 life than the more vegetable spirals ; and the markedly abstract 
 nature of their construction is eminently adapted to emphasise the 
 central chamber : so much so, in fact, that a circle with smaller 
 circles interlaced with and round it becomes the typical instance of 
 the tradition. 
 
 This use of the chain-spiral, with its character half-way between 
 the normal spiral and the frieze, leads us to the second method of 
 evolving the central design from the frieze-frame, or, as we saw 
 could be done in the last chapter, by the reduction of a seme' till 
 it consists of one central figure with the others ranged round it, 
 much in the same way as when a chairman is elected he takes the 
 place of honour in the centre of his former compeers. This tradition 
 is a very simple and obvious one ; but for that very reason difficult 
 to achieve in a satisfactory manner, because when we are no longer 
 told exactly what to do, we must trust more to our own instincts to 
 dispose the figures, and our process should consequently be as cautious 
 as it was with the frieze. We ought, consequently, to pay the 
 greatest attention possible to the disposition of main masses, the lines 
 of construction and the alternation of tones of subject and background, 
 whenever these occur. It is just because they are so unobtrusive that
 
 XL. 
 
 Adaptation of the Chain-Spiral.
 
 208 ARBOR V1T/E. 
 
 these most important things elude our notice. There are two 
 examples in Plate XLI., and a thousand others can be easily obtained 
 by a little pluck and careful regard to the fundamental necessities of 
 this species of decoration. 
 
 When two traditions tend to run together, as in this case, we 
 must draw an arbitrary line between them, or else we shall find 
 ourselves being carried round on the wheel instead of noting its 
 passage. Tradition is a revolving wheel, its divisions and degrees do 
 indeed coincide when the spokes are confused in rapid revolution ; 
 but in order to number them and discover their order and relation, we 
 must stop it and study it part by part. Or we can compare tradition 
 to a sea with ever-returning advance of tides, or to a pond we have 
 thrown a stone into, and from that impulse the ripples widen out in 
 circles till they touch the shore. Here we are at the extreme reach 
 of the wave, the tyre end of the spoke, the tip of a branch of the tree 
 of life ; and the farther we get from the central force the swifter the 
 action, the greater the variety, the more complex the relation. To 
 make one link in the chain of tradition inferior to another would 
 be to underrate the strength of the whole chain, whose greatest 
 strength is its weakest link, or to forget the presence of the central 
 spirit which inspires them all. 
 
 The confession of a predominant feature, a central figure, in these 
 designs, demands a moral as well as a purely aesthetic invention in 
 the artist. Don't let me frighten you by saying this. All I mean 
 is, that as soon as we make a prominent position, we must choose 
 the most suitable person to occupy it. Thus, to fill the chambers of 
 a frame with sheep-dogs, and put a wolf in the middle, is, unless 
 we imply that he has been caught there and is being kept out of 
 harm's way, not wholesome, but diabolic Art. The aim of all things 
 is to aspire from being wolves to becoming sheep-dogs, and if we 
 venture to put the small before the great, it would be in the spirit 
 of the wise men who came to reverence a mere child in its mother's 
 lap. We must look at it as a symbol, the emblem of an enviable 
 faculty we would be glad to attain, or a mystery we long to contemplate. 
 We cannot be artists without exercising some instinctive sense of this
 
 XLI. 
 
 Adaptation of Seme to Frames. 
 
 14
 
 210 
 
 ARBOR VIT,E. 
 
 hierarchy in all forms of Art which demand it, and in every kingdom 
 of Nature which supplies us with the materials of design. The 
 fruit is greater than the leaf, the vine than the weed. Her children 
 cling round their mother. The sun rules the planets. All animals 
 obey man. All men, except anarchists, recognise the superiority 
 of some of their number, and are willing to obey them. We place 
 Herakles in the midst of his labours, and Christ surrounded by His 
 disciples.
 
 THE modern picture is, of course, the inevitable outcome of past 
 tradition ; and in the face of such a confession it may appear 
 paradoxical to assert that the salvation of Art depends on 
 a return to handicraft. But not only does it appear impossible to 
 expect any structural alteration in so highly artificial a production 
 as a picture has come to be, but we seem to have reached one of 
 those historical climaxes when new ideals push aside, as effete, old 
 conventions of all kinds, to institute a new order of things. Art 
 is, after all, only the echo of the dominant feeling of its time ; and 
 its traditions can only follow the traditions of our social and political 
 life. If we believe that a new era is dawning, and few people will 
 be found to deny that greater changes have taken place in the present 
 century than during any similar length of period of which we have 
 record, it would be illogical to refuse our Art a corresponding change. 
 If we were advocating ideas which were entirely new, our proposals 
 might be stigmatised as nostrums ; but there is really nothing novel 
 or extraordinary about them. The picture was a true form of Art 
 while it still supplied unchallenged the chief demand for imaginative 
 expression, while its connection with previous forms of Art was still 
 palpable ; but the enormous increase in the numbers of a well-to-do 
 class, which is rather intelligent than educated, makes it impossible 
 for an Art to be popular which is becoming more and more difficult 
 to understand, except by an initiated few. The chief reason, however,
 
 212 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 why the old forms are approaching extinction as a popular expression 
 is that, owing to machinery and the spread of an unmitigated and 
 commercial intellectualism, the real demand of this large class is 
 not that it may be amused, but that it may be taught how to 
 amuse itself. 
 
 " Give us Art," is the dumb cry of the machine-slave, and that 
 huge and more pitiable section of the public which is rich and has 
 nothing to do. "Teach us to do something to relieve the dull 
 monotony of business or of ennui!" "Feast your eyes on this 
 impressionistic harmony and be thankful," is all the artist can reply. 
 And he adds, " If you don't understand it, I'm sorry to say I cannot 
 help you." 
 
 In all reactions, however drastic, the thread of a continuous 
 tradition should be preserved. In all reformations an apostolic succes- 
 sion must consecrate our new creed ; and a slight review of the 
 leading motives in the history of recent Art will reveal that they 
 point, almost inevitably, to some sort of return to fundamental 
 principles and that phase of imaginative industry which we have 
 associated with handicrafts. 
 
 Two great artistic forces have been at work during the last 
 century, — the influence of Turner and the influence of the pre- 
 Raphaelite movement. Both were revolutionary : the former in the 
 treatment of landscape, the latter in its treatment of the figure and 
 its immediate surroundings. The aesthetic school is the result of 
 the pre-Raphaelite movement ; the naturalistic school owes its origin 
 to Turner. The feelings they expressed and excited may be, 
 perhaps, defined as a feeling for something pretty and a feeling for 
 something true. 
 
 No one yet knows the extent of Turner's phenomenal genius. 
 Our admiration for him remains as yet an uncompleted epic. His 
 art was conceived and contained within pictorial limits. Those 
 were the conditions he was born into : necessary for the production 
 of a great artist at the beginning of this century. He found an old 
 tree throttled with ivy, but still alive ; he cleared it of the encum- 
 brance, and the tree rejoiced in exuberance of renewed foliage before
 
 THE BORDER. 213 
 
 it fell a prey to old age. He reconciled Nature again with Art, 
 and consciously or unconsciously coloured and composed it with his 
 own thoughts. He was a genius : that is to say, he was a man 
 who made other people see things as he wished them to. He antici- 
 pated and excelled all his successors. He began and ended an 
 era all by himself, but in spite of his transcendent qualifications 
 he was consistently reverent to the traditions he superseded, and 
 came to fulfil, not to destroy, the law and prophets of his craft. 
 
 On the other hand, the pre-Raphaelites, pretending to revert to 
 tradition, flung it to the winds, and in consequence a great deal of 
 their work is wilfully ignorant, and much of it amazingly ugly. There 
 can be no excuse for the arrogance of despising four centuries of 
 thought, especially when they immediately precede us, and the real 
 value of the pre- Raphael ite movement lies more in the change of feeling 
 it represents than in the change of style it adopted. The relics of 
 mediaeval Art appeared to the eyes of a few sensitive and creative 
 people replete with faith and vitality, and exerted a fascination which 
 nothing of modern manufacture possessed. They tried to realise 
 those feelings in the same way that Turner realised his ; in a way 
 they should have rejected, in order to be consistent to their principles. 
 They made pictures of them ; and because they found mediaeval Art 
 was sincere, declared that Art must be mediaevalised. No greater 
 mistake could have been made, for from rejecting tradition they 
 fell into the narrowest groove of it. They failed to revive the faith 
 of the past, and only galvanised its corpse. Their dreams have 
 nevertheless borne fruit where they were most sincere ; and the fair 
 externals in which they dressed their models, the clothes they wore, 
 the tables they sat at, the chairs they sat on, and the houses they 
 lived in, have had a far-reaching influence on our lives, and have 
 resulted in an extraordinary renaissance of such accessories, which, 
 if only the outside of the platter, has prepared the way for a more 
 intimate change in our ways of thinking. 
 
 In their application to handicraft, the combination of these two 
 schools of feeling ought to produce very important results. The 
 feeling for something true, if it is an earnest one, should transfer its
 
 214 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 sphere of work from useless pictures to useful objects ; and the 
 feeling for something pretty, which the pre-Raphaelites have left us 
 with, should, when inspired by a modern instead of a mediaevalised 
 faith, restore honour to ornament, and happiness to industry. 
 
 But though social conditions may necessitate a revival of handi- 
 craft in the manufacture of useful things, no ornamentation of them 
 is possible unless we have strong feelings that this ornamentation 
 will be the means of expressing. Beautiful shapes, beautiful colours, 
 beautiful patterns are neither accident nor science. They are the way 
 in which we say that life is a pleasure and not a burden, and that 
 what we see about us is full of mystery and " very good." Art is 
 a religion. Art is content and peace. Perhaps we shall have no Art 
 till we get these things. Certainly we shall get no Art till we get 
 strong feelings of some kind. The picture of a pretty woman will 
 not make a pretty picture if it is painted by a misanthrope, any 
 more than a knowledge of bones and muscles will enable a puritan 
 to carve a Greek statue. While pictures can minister to the finest 
 feelings of the time, — not the isolated feelings of hyper-sensitive 
 individuals, but the altruism that admires, pities, and loves, — they 
 will hold their own in our esteem ; but when they cease to do so, 
 either because artists have found other ideals, or because those 
 feelings are being expressed better in other ways, we shall cease to 
 be interested in them, or anxious to prolong a custom which has 
 lost its power to help us, though we shall always value specimens 
 that have become classical because they once fulfilled that mission. 
 
 The arbitrary choice of a medium for the expression of strong 
 national emotion is as marked as it is incomprehensible. It would 
 be difficult to explain why at one time music, at another painting, at 
 another verse, should monopolise the imaginative output. It may 
 be the result of accident, if there is such a thing as accident ; more 
 likely it is the consequence of huge laws whose effects we may some- 
 times be fortunate enough to observe and profit by, though their 
 causes and action are wider than our intellects can grasp. Certain 
 it is, that we are generally very late to notice when the spirit of Art 
 has left its temporary body, for a more suitable lodging somewhere
 
 THE BORDER. 215 
 
 else. No sooner has the custom of a few years deluded us into 
 thinking the habit is a permanent one, than we are left in the lurch 
 to worship a scarecrow instead of a god. I believe we are in such 
 a position now, or soon shall be. Our keenest feelings, those that 
 answer to our most crying needs, are not ones which pictures and 
 statues can easily gratify ; and Count Tolstoy, in his last trenchant 
 work on the nature of Art, is to a great extent justified in declaring 
 that our Art is not, as it should be, the expression of an universal 
 sentiment, but is devoted to the interests of only a special class of 
 people, and clothed in a language which is obscure to every one else. 
 
 Politics aside, the Art of the future must be a democratic one : 
 that is to say, things have come to a pass when, for civilisation's 
 sake, we must all have a common interest in the common welfare. 
 The redemption of labour is the keynote of the future. Labour ? 
 Yes, labour for all ! but labour that will employ hearts as well as 
 heads and hands to execute. 
 
 An uncompromising naturalism cannot tolerate the principles of 
 design. That is a great pity, for design is what makes it possible 
 to adapt Nature to our use. She supplies the material, we the 
 methods. The freedom of just order, the true relation of things, 
 the dignity of office and the equality of individuals, hierarchy and 
 democracy (which are not opposed but are really essential to each 
 other), these make up the laws of design, and cannot be disregarded 
 for long with impunity. 
 
 The main difficulty, as I have said, is to get artists to realise 
 that liberty is consistent with obedience, spontaneity with tradition. 
 That can only be proved by experience, but it is surely worth the 
 trial. Let any one adopt what tradition he pleases. I claim no 
 infallibility for my own ; its imperfections only prove the need for 
 deeper investigations and wider application. The study of tradition 
 is an intensely interesting one, especially in view of a practical issue ; 
 and the evolution of ideas these conventions record, has come to me 
 with so little effort that I have often been amazed at the facility 
 with which one form of ornament has glided into another. 
 
 I have felt it necessary to preface the present chapter in this
 
 216 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 way, because I am sometimes obliged to call that condition of design 
 we have reached a picture, but dare not do so in the face of its 
 usual representative for fear of being misunderstood. Nothing is 
 more curious than the contrast between the feverish waste of original 
 effort spent on the fine or useless arts, and the feeble residue of 
 imagination that lingers in the serviceable ones. A recent author 
 has discovered relics of spontaneous treatment in the decoration of 
 pie-crust ; I might, in all seriousness, instance others in the rough 
 hand-painted but conventional wreaths and foliage of common earthen- 
 ware, exported, since there is no demand for it here, to attract the 
 simple-minded, and possibly progressive savage ; in the manufacture 
 and decoration of Dutch dolls and painted toys ; and the ornamental 
 quilting of babies' bibs by East-end workgirls. Your fashionable 
 artist does not recognise such arts as these, but if he despises them he 
 is also partly responsible for their degradation, and will have to learn 
 that we want, aye, and will have, our meat and drink nicely served, 
 and our babies prettily dressed and amused, before we can listen to 
 what he can tell us. 
 
 The complete design or "picture" consists generally of two 
 parts : the outside or border, which is all that remains of the original 
 frame or spiral ; and the inside or central part, which the frame 
 in its condensed form gave birth to, and which we have watched 
 gradually expand and push the maternal spiral outwards as it grew. 
 A border is not always essential to a complete design. As the lineal 
 descendant of the spiral it supplies the conventional quality necessary 
 to all design, but if the central portion has strong conventional 
 characteristics of its own, a border will often be unnecessary (fig. 30). 
 The modern picture has a frame because it is never really conven- 
 tional. With its frame it passes for an ornament. A coat of arms, 
 on the other hand, is so admittedly conventional that it seldom 
 requires any frame or border at all. The simplest possible border 
 will evidently be a single line, thick or thin as may be required. 
 Architects have been at considerable pains, when more organic 
 mouldings were out of reach or fashion, in inventing combinations 
 of lines of different sizes and degrees of shadow, and it is well to
 
 THE BORDER. 
 
 217 
 
 realise the importance and effect of a few of them ; but as a mere 
 line can hardly be said to possess much emotional value, the student 
 of design would do wisely not to resort to its use more than is 
 necessary to give his whole work the conventional character it 
 requires (fig. 31). The absence of interest in a line, even a crooked 
 one, when used as a border, is evidence that the enclosed design is 
 itself formal enough. The most organic designs are consequently 
 often enclosed in this manner, since a more organic border calls for 
 some attention to itself and shares or completes the interest of what 
 it contains. Hence the more organic our borders become, the less 
 
 Fig. 30.— Types of Design not requiring a Border. 
 
 organic, and the more conventional, or perhaps suggestive, we may 
 expect the rest of the design to be. 
 
 Next to borders which consist of a line or lines only, comes the 
 addition, within or on the line, of a spiral or frieze of some kind 
 or another (figs. 32, 33). Borders of this kind necessarily retain the 
 severity of the first borders, but increase their interest. After this, 
 we may remove its enclosing lines from the spiral, or change the 
 plain line into a zigzag or spiral of increasing complexity (fig. 34 
 and Plate XLII.). Our process in this chapter is the reverse of 
 that in the last. Our object then was to evolve a central ornament 
 from the frame as an earlier form of decoration. As soon as we
 
 218 
 
 ARBOR VITVE. 
 
 had done so, the frame became subordinate to what it had created, 
 and here we are reviewing its functions in the light of its reduced 
 prestige. Its diminished fortunes are mitigated, however, by a 
 renewed intimacy with its former offspring, whose sentiment it has 
 to echo, complete or restrain. If, for instance, the subject of the 
 design is a boat, a wave-spiral would be a fitting border to it, or 
 a frieze or spiral of fishes, or some other object suggestive of the 
 perils or pleasures of the sea. Probably such a border, besides being 
 symbolically the most appropriate, would constructively be the best 
 
 Fig. 31. — A Design with Plain Border. 
 
 Fig. 32. — Plain Border enriched with Frieze. 
 
 as well, because it would repeat some of the curves and consequently 
 the thoughts of the picture inside it, and manifest in this way not 
 only the unity of the whole, but that analogy between different things 
 that I have already touched on. 
 
 I would the more willingly insist on this point because the 
 tendency is often to magnify the difference between picture and 
 border, rather than to insist on their dependence on each other. It 
 is true that the border supplies a conventional necessity often lacking 
 in the other part of the design, but the difference between a true
 
 XLII. 
 A Sun-God.
 
 220 
 
 ARBOR VIT/E. 
 
 and a false convention is that the true one means a great deal and 
 the false one nothing at all. The conventional form of tree in 
 fig. 35 is an example, and may stand as a type of this connection, 
 where the roots encircle the whole tree, making a frame for it, and 
 
 Fig. 33.— Insertion of the Spiral on a Plain Border. 
 
 creating an atmosphere for it to live in ; a myth not very difficult 
 to read. Such a close connection in intention as this involves 
 must of course not stand in the way of our spontaneity. Where 
 that can be ensured the deeper analogies of thought are pretty sure 
 to follow ; and where, as it generally must be, the sentiment is 
 incommunicable except by the artist's own faculty, we should make 
 a serious mistake if we interfered with what he instinctively felt 
 was right.
 
 THE BORDER. 
 
 221 
 
 An instance of some such instinctive evolution of borders it is, 
 however, not impossible to illustrate. We will imagine the design 
 we wish to surround and complete a more or less circular one. 
 Our first step will be to definitely mark this shape by drawing a line 
 round it ; and here we ought to notice that a border or frame is 
 pre-eminently necessary when the design is a light one on a dark 
 ground, or even when the ground has any value at all in colour 
 
 Kio. 34.— Outer Line of Border Removed. 
 
 or tone. Round this, at a suitable distance from it, describe one of 
 the elementary spiral lines, and fill in the space so enclosed with 
 colour (as in Plate XLII. and fig. 37). Here you have a border of 
 a sufficiently solid character, with not necessarily any more definite 
 symbolism or arbitrary connection with the meaning of the enclosed 
 picture than their common descent from the spiral gives it. This is, 
 indeed, a great deal, but it is generally one that is to be felt more 
 than expressed, while the variety of original spirals allows considerable
 
 222 
 
 ARBOR V1TJE. 
 
 choice and latitude to the artist. A very evident quality in many 
 of the borders obtained in this way, especially in the ones which 
 are derived from wave and fire spirals, is the sense of motion 
 they convey. Of course schemes of design that give a feeling of 
 rest or inactivity have their peculiar charm as well, but the feeling 
 of motion that one of these borders gives to the whole design is 
 
 Fig. 35.— The Relation of the Border to its Enclosed Design. 
 
 quite characteristic of our processes, and can be typically illustrated 
 in another way. 
 
 Here (fig. 36) is a star with rays. While these rays are equal 
 and straight, the star remains immovably ecclesiastical, a type of the 
 old rigid style of symbol. If you vary the length of the rays, you 
 get a twinkling or radiating star. Now give the rays a twist, and 
 your star moves and gyrates. Lastly, diminish the length of the
 
 THE BORDER. 223 
 
 rays and increase the size of the star, and it becomes a sun, and 
 in the fire and light of it the best possible standard of a border's 
 significance (Plate XLII.). "The sun is God." And as in Him we 
 all live and move and have our being, this form of the Sun in his 
 glory may remain the fundamental type of the completed design. 
 The sun is but a circumference in which we may insert any subject, 
 which will at once, unless we ourselves forget the meaning of the 
 myth, assume a solar or stellar dignity. The rays, too, without any 
 diminution of consequence, may descend, as rays do, to earth, and 
 breaking there into buds and leaves, blossom and fruit, become useful 
 borders to earthly things as well as heavenly ones (fig. 37). 
 
 So far we have limited the border, and the shape of the design 
 
 Fig. 36.— The Evolution of a Star. 
 
 it serves, mainly to circular or square forms ; but just because we do 
 not pay unnecessary attention to their mathematical accuracy, but draw 
 them with " careful carelessness," our squares and circles will often 
 be more like ovals and oblongs, and we shall discover the occasional 
 advantage of preferring definite shapes of this kind. Besides these, 
 there are triangles, crosses, diamonds, pentagons, and hexagons. 
 These must be drawn more or less in the same not too mathematical 
 way, and are often very useful for insertion in spaces of irregular 
 dimensions. Many of these undoubtedly have philosophical or 
 symbolical meanings attached to them, whose value is not weakened 
 but rather enhanced when drawn by the hand and eye alone ; for 
 where mathematical instruments are brought into play, there is 
 always the implied suggestion that the artist has no interest in the
 
 224 
 
 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 matter, while if he prefers to draw a more or less geometrical form 
 with his own hand, we must believe that he means something by 
 it, or at any rate that he feels that the rest of his design would be 
 injured by a too mathematical interference with it. 
 
 Ecclesiastical symbols seldom coincide with artistic ones, because 
 the priest is as seldom an artist as the artist is a priest. Ecclesiastical 
 
 Fig. 37 —Types of Borders. 
 
 symbols are rigid, artistic ones free. " What is full of life is a symbol 
 of Life," says Sir George Birdwood. That is the law of the true and 
 artistic symbol. Its business is to enlighten, not to enslave ; and it 
 is therefore distinct from the ecclesiastical symbol, which wilfully 
 conceals a mystery in order that the priest may benefit by a monopoly 
 of its meaning. It is consequently to the priest's advantage that 
 superstition should continue. But a true symbol reveals life to those 
 who have it, without need of interpretation. There is no intrinsic
 
 THE BORDER. 
 
 225 
 
 power in the sacred monogram because it spells a sacred name, or 
 in the form of a cross because Christ died on one, or in a Bible 
 because it contains valuable truths. We do not treasure the lawyer's 
 letter which tells us of the fortune we have come into so much as 
 the flowers a friend sends us as a symbol of his memory and love. 
 The end of Art is to translate noble ideas into living symbols. It 
 is valuable in exact proportion, not to the ideas it is supposed to 
 stand for, but to the ideas it actually transmits. You may be told 
 that a circle is a valuable symbol because it represents eternity. 
 Perhaps it does ; but generally, and most appropriately, it stands for 
 a symbol of nothing at all. If we turn the circle into a serpent, 
 and put its tail in its mouth, it begins to have some interest, but is 
 still theosophically stiff-backed. If it is coiled in sensitive repetition 
 of twist, and ingenious concealment of end and origin, nobody cares 
 what it is supposed to mean, because every one who feels it has 
 an impression conveyed to him of the charm of evolution, which 
 is at any rate a more tangible conception than Eternity. Abstract 
 ideas are quite useless, are indeed unthinkable, till they touch 
 the earth ; and so, before these geometrical figures can serve any 
 decorative purpose, we must draw something interesting inside 
 them. Then, if they mean anything, some impression of it may be 
 produced. 
 
 It would be outside our purpose to discuss the meaning these 
 traditional shapes possess. All I can do is to point out that, whether 
 they mean much or little, they are very valuable. Besides the circle, 
 square, and other geometrical figures, there are other traditionally 
 decorative shapes, in the form of things which have a more definite 
 meaning for us, as the cross, shield, almond, heart, vase, seed and 
 tree shapes. 
 
 We must not confine the use of these traditional shapes entirely 
 to what they are usually associated with. The cross, for instance, 
 need not invariably become a crucifix, but the feeling of self-sacrifice 
 will often pervade what we carve or paint on it. A heart will give 
 its own sentiment to all it embraces. A shield will carry our 
 pretensions in a defiant manner ; and so with the others, each will 
 
 is
 
 226 
 
 ARBOR VITVE. 
 
 surround its contents with special suggestions, into which we need 
 not fully enter here. They are world-wide symbols, whose significance 
 will widen every time they are thoughtfully used, and the artist 
 who uses them in the proper spirit must discover for himself new 
 meanings for the old forms, and new relations between things that 
 before were strange to each other.
 
 CHAPTER- SIXTEEN- 
 
 THE TREE- OF- LIFE 
 
 THERE is, perhaps, no severer clue to the temper of a popular 
 Art than the pictures it gives children to look at, because 
 every artist who draws for children feels that they are 
 naturally quite at home in the world of make-believe that he tries 
 to remember or pretends to realise. An inclination to the grotesque 
 or the unreal is indeed one of the first and strongest signs of a 
 progressive art, and the modern fashion for fantastic designs in 
 advertising posters and illustrations to books for children would be 
 full of promise if it was not generally as empty of real imagination 
 as true grotesque is full of it. 
 
 False grotesque, like the contents of a witch's caldron, "eye of 
 newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog," is a mere 
 muddle of horrible things, collected from the odd corners of creation 
 to startle us with their ugliness and shock us with their utter 
 absence of probability and meaning. A true grotesque, on the other 
 hand, is a symbol for a special set of ideas or feelings, for which 
 Nature has not yet found a name, deliberately and seriously con- 
 ceived as an organic whole. It marks the extreme type of the 
 imaginative as opposed to that imitative theory of Art on which our 
 modern system of teaching depends, and which not only hinders a 
 better method from being introduced, but prevents our recognising 
 the characteristics of imaginative work when we come across it. Let 
 
 us look at a real grotesque, a Greek centaur, for instance, from the 
 
 227
 
 228 ARBOR VIT/E. 
 
 British Museum. Here you have a true grotesque, because the 
 artist wanted to combine the natures of a man and a horse. Or 
 look at one of those wonderful designs among the Egyptian tapestries 
 that connect Greek tradition with Christian spirit, a formal and 
 grotesque arrangement of birds and beasts and flowers and men, 
 a design full of quite intentional suggestions about our relation 
 to the universe. We should all be naturally inclined to call such 
 a design as this "grotesque" because the drawing is often so 
 inaccurate, according to our received ideas, that it becomes quite 
 comical ; but it has all the same a real claim to the epithet in 
 its nobler sense, because it realises in a marvellous unity things 
 and thoughts that on earth we can only pray to see joined. Or, 
 as a specimen of more serious illustration to a fairy tale, look at 
 a typical Richter drawing. Not a line is there which does not 
 express a childlike pleasure and sympathy with what it represents. 
 From the rampant vine at our feet to the pigeon's cooing on the 
 highest and quaintest gable, all is vivid, vital, jaunty, Richteresque, 
 fresh with vigorous appreciation of all he draws. Modern to the 
 backbone, he at least does not believe it necessary to live in the 
 thirteenth century in order to produce good Art. He is quite content 
 with the times he lives in, and has conjured by the most wonderful 
 magic in the world an immortal classic, uncompromising and spon- 
 taneous, out of a dirty, poor, innocent, inaesthetic German village. 
 
 That is the right sort of illustration to a fairy-tale, and one 
 that will please all children, old and young alike. Indeed, I think 
 Art has no higher mission, for fairy-tales are the wisdom of the 
 world, epitomised by ages of experience into the shortest and most 
 forcible shape, and as important to the man of business and action 
 as to the poet and artist. 
 
 The first characteristic of a fairy-tale is its brevity. It has no 
 room to take account of any particular time or place ; and so it falls, 
 naturally, into the form of a fable or allegory; and the right sort 
 of illustration for it should be as concentrated, in its own way, as 
 the story is, and become an abbreviated statement of the most 
 important facts, with as few accessories and as little local colouring
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE. 229 
 
 as possible. But unless the artist first of all believes in the story 
 himself, he cannot illustrate it ; and no amount of academic skill and 
 conscious facility of technique can make up to him or us for the 
 loss of that essential faith. 
 
 Since children learn to read from pictures long before they learn 
 to read from print, it is veiy important that the pictures we give 
 them should be as concise as possible ; for unless they are so, they 
 will make no impression on that keenest critic, a child's instinct. 
 Our earliest and pleasantest memories are of stories which were 
 illustrated in an imaginative manner : that is to say, the artists 
 who drew the pictures were big children themselves, and more than 
 half believed that what they drew really did exist. Whether they 
 were drawn cleverly or not made little difference to us ; but we never 
 got tired of Richard Doyle's fairies, or Arthur Hughes' illustrations 
 to George Macdonald's entrancingest of stories, "At the Back of the 
 North Wind." Their place is taken to-day by a sort of mongrel Art 
 between the styles of Burne Jones and Du Maurier ; and can only 
 appeal to people who live under artificial conditions, and help to 
 make their children artificial too. Our old favourites were homely 
 and touching ; and as for Richter's pictures, every one of them is a 
 dozen stories in itself, — full of peace and pity and humour, tenderness 
 and honest kindly laughter. " Guck in die weite weite Welt," they 
 say: "There's a world for you!" 
 
 That's what we want ; and whatever views artists themselves 
 hold about their business, the fact remains that children, who we 
 know are so impressionable, cannot help taking a very emotional 
 view of Art : so that not even the skill of a Degas can add a 
 featherweight of interest if the moral intention is not involved. To 
 children (and must we not all become as children) every work of 
 Art is a drama, a moral tale, and is only interesting as it deals 
 with that important distinction between what is pretty and what 
 is ugly, what is good and what is bad. "Once upon a time" does 
 not mean never, but always ; and the story which begins in that 
 way, and ends in promise of prolonged joy, treats of our faiths 
 and hopes, loves and fears, among mountains of glassy difficulties,
 
 230 ARBOR VIT/E. 
 
 oceans of time, dark forests of brutal selfishness, kindly animals, 
 and royal wealth of fidelity in beggar guise. From its beginning 
 to its end the plot is laid in symbolical scenery and requires, 
 perhaps, considerable insight and a peculiar faculty to picture it 
 properly. 
 
 The odd, fantastic and unexpected, is not at all necessarily the 
 imaginative ; and the artist who concocts his monsters out of these 
 materials alone, seldom lifts us from time into eternity. His dragon 
 is never the powerful symbol a grotesque ought to be ; but only a 
 nursery bogie, with claws and a tail, — a thing to frighten children 
 with, not to please or instruct them. 
 
 Art, then, has a double mission. It has a material and a spiritual 
 duty to fulfil. Its material duty is, as we have seen, to make and 
 decorate useful things. Its spiritual business is to remind us that 
 man does not live by bread alone ; to bless our toil by perpetual 
 promise, and to make its exercise a pleasure instead of a pain. 
 This is its subject-matter : and I cannot think of a better way of 
 describing it than by the word "Fairy-tale"; but, as I have tried 
 to show throughout this book, a work of art is none the less a 
 fairy-tale because its meaning cannot be exactly described in words. 
 Fairy-tales are written in sounds and sights that go straight from 
 the eyes and ears to the heart. They appeal to our feelings ; and 
 we often say, rightly enough, that our feelings are too great for 
 words. And most of this book has been written in order to show 
 that the humbler paths of ornament are not wanting in meaning, 
 but are only ornamental so far as they are full of meaning; and 
 that the truths we can comprehend are not the only ones, but that 
 perhaps the greatest truths of all are the most incomprehensible. 
 
 The processes of Art are synthetic ; it classifies things according 
 to what it considers their intentions, and by their gestures. In a 
 classification of this kind the usual scientific distinctions are not 
 so much disregarded as surpassed, and things inanimate and animate 
 are compared together. There is only one kingdom in Nature — the 
 kingdom of living things, to which we belong equally with the 
 oak and the crystal. In this category the most important things
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE. 
 
 231 
 
 are not always the largest, the cleverest, or the most complicated, 
 but the ones which reveal life best. This disregard for their actual 
 differences in weight, size, distance and intelligence, together with 
 the habit of taking a part for the whole — a leaf, for instance, or a 
 flower instead of a plant — is a strong feature in all fairy-tales and 
 symbolical or decorative Art ; and contrasts in a marked manner 
 with realistic work, which depends on pointing out these differences 
 before anything else. 
 
 Thus we shall often recognise the justice of a custom which 
 reduces mountains to molehills, makes gnats as large as camels and 
 camels as insignificant as gnats, counts three trees in a forest and 
 six leaves on each tree, and in a hundred different ways casts down 
 the mighty from their seats and exalts the humble and meek. Such 
 inconsistencies as these are the result of neither innocence nor 
 ignorance, but the giving to each factor in the design that importance 
 which its meaning as a symbol assigns it. All the things that 
 surround us make up the words by which we try to express what 
 we think and feel about our origin and destinies ; and as on a 
 printed page all the letters occupy about the same space, and the 
 same letters help to spell one thing in this combination and another 
 thing in that, so we must try and print the history of man's thought, 
 the results of his experience, the flights of his imagination and his 
 hopes, with these capitals, italics, and lower-case letters from Nature's 
 fount in many a different combination. Besides his humbler brethren 
 in the fields and the sea and the air, man has surrounded himself 
 with implements and conventions which have become as much a part 
 of his life as its shell is to a snail. He wraps himself in clothes, 
 and lives in houses, and meets his kind in churches, workshops, and 
 parliaments. No sooner does he do so than these also become 
 elements of his speech, letters of his language. There are other 
 things, too, whose origin is lost in dearest myth, gifts of some god- 
 like or eponymous hero, objects which he cannot do without, so that 
 they become worshipped, idealised, humanised, and types of mediation 
 between an otherwise almost helpless man and the fruits of the 
 earth he is glad to gather, or the unseen powers he credits with his
 
 232 
 
 ARBOR VITJE. 
 
 successes and failures. Such are his plough, his boat, his net, his 
 bed, his chest, table, and altar. It is the infinity of his subject- 
 matter that should vex the artist more than the difficulty of finding 
 a worthy theme for his pencil or chisel. Think of all that a boat, 
 for instance, ought to mean to man. He fishes from it ; it is the 
 faithful charger he trusts himself to on the deceitful sea. It is 
 built like a swan or duck, as buoyant as they and, like them, as 
 simple in curve as the elements it contends with, sweeping wind 
 and crested wave (fig. 38). It is an argo, type of noble discovery 
 
 Fig. 38. — The Boat as a Motive of Decoration. 
 
 and venture, for which heroes leave their homes and embark to 
 face unknown seas, monsters of one-eyed prejudice, procrastinating 
 harpies, irresolute whirlpools, and scornful incredulity, to search for 
 fleeces of gold, balmy Americas, new kingdoms, or old truths. 
 
 One is anxious, in writing a book that pretends to be practical, 
 to avoid as far as possible an undue effervescence of sentiment ; but 
 unless we charge our cannon with powder as well as shot, unless 
 we back our motives with enthusiasm, our firing will have no effect. 
 These motives, of which I have taken the boat as an instance, are 
 the central ideas of world-wide myth, and the artist who wishes to 
 use them for purposes of decoration, ought to know and sympathise
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE. 233 
 
 with what they have always meant ; or rather, for few of us can as 
 yet be scholars as well as artists, he must try and give his pictures 
 the feelings of those who spend their lives in simple companionship 
 with them. If we can do that, we need no scholarship to help our 
 Art. But because I should lengthen this essay beyond all intention 
 if I were to attempt dealing with many of these motives of ornament, 
 I shall confine myself to the superficial discussion of only one, and 
 that of a kind which man has found to his hand and has not 
 manufactured. 
 
 The tree is a source of myth and decoration that has been 
 universally accepted, from its frequency and obvious analogy, not 
 only to our own life, but to every religion and institution in which 
 mankind has been interested, and by the success of which he has 
 considered himself civilised. The theme is such a great one, and 
 has been dealt with so often and at such length, that it would be 
 arrogant on my part to pretend to any detailed description of its 
 extent. All I shall do now is to point out a few of the most salient 
 features of the tree in its symbolical character, which are as serviceable 
 now as they ever were, and more useful to the student of decorative 
 Art than to the antiquarian. 
 
 We can never divorce the history and practice of Art from the 
 idea of the growth of some living thing, and it is the tree which has 
 been throughout this essay a type, in my mind, of the way in which 
 Art has grown and flourished, and of the way also in which every 
 one of us may cultivate the Art instincts in himself. Whether it is 
 regarded, then, as the symbol of our own or of other life and work, 
 or as a type of that inner existence which is just as real to us, 
 our faiths and our thoughts, the tree, if it is a stout one, is 
 rooted in the soil of solid facts, that is to say, material necessities, 
 popular demands, or, if you will have it so, the will of God or 
 the inevitableness of fate. Soon its fibres are welded together in 
 co-operative unity to lift its hope out of the dark and mysterious 
 chambers of its birth, to cope with storm and rain and sunshine, to 
 find its place above or below its fellows in the world, to struggle, 
 wound or be wounded, in the fierce competition round it, and all the
 
 234 ARBOR VITjE. 
 
 time putting out a branch here and a branch there to seize some 
 opportunity of growth, some coign of vantage it may occupy before 
 another. Then, when its prime is reached, its manhood certain, 
 it divides and subdivides its energy into many efforts, feeling and 
 pushing its way in every direction, like the agent of an active firm ; 
 spreading its leaves at length in unctuous breadth of satisfaction and 
 diffuse content. Rich in exuberance, the bounds of its ambition are 
 reached ; it seeks no further conquests, and turns to develop itself at 
 home, and obey instincts of self-perpetuation. In wealth of scent and 
 colour it crowns itself with bloom, and entertains busy ambassadors 
 from foreign courts, humming betrothal into flattered ears. This 
 is the heyday of its year. Through summer's heat it lifts a tent 
 to shelter all who seek protection in its shadow, and as autumn 
 approaches it is busy planning its children's fortunes, or storing 
 treasure in mysterious chambers of seed and fruit. Year after year 
 it acts the image of its whole life, is born, lives and dies, and the 
 long recurrent night of winter, as of each day, is only the reminder 
 of a still longer but not perpetual night through which all lives must 
 pass. Life and death, day and night, summer and winter, dark ages 
 and light ages : through what eons of opposites we revolve, marking 
 the seconds on that clock whose minute-hand measures a thousand 
 years before it returns ; taking life from the source of life, yielding it, 
 haply with dignity, before we take it again ! 
 
 In such a general view of its functions, the tree of decorative 
 Art is the briefest possible statement of a tree and of those parts 
 of it which we want emphasised ; and as it is generally the whole life 
 of the tree that is meant, we shall often find bud and flower and 
 fruit represented on the same trunk, regardless of their natural 
 sequence. The various forms of it, and of which fig. 39 is the 
 central or Egyptian type, necessarily depend on the number of its 
 branches, and how they are inserted in the main trunk, and also on 
 the relation of the trunk to the head. As merely a traditional shape, 
 that is to say, when its outline is used to give other things besides 
 trees, a sentiment of the tree, or a connection with its meaning, 
 the distinction we should usually make between the head and the
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE. 235 
 
 trunk is not taken much into account, and the whole effect is that 
 of a short-handled spoon or ladle (fig. 40, a). This form is repeated 
 in the shapes of many musical instruments, and in other things 
 which involve the idea of a bulbous or globular expansion, such as 
 the unopened calyx of a crocus, or the half-blown bubble in glass or 
 soapy water. The study of these analogies and their enumeration 
 would make a most interesting and useful branch of traditional 
 investigation. It is, in fact, the unexpected discovery of them, which 
 
 Fig. 39.— An Egyptian Tree. 
 
 gives the fillip to all imaginative work, and their spontaneous use 
 which perhaps more than anything else distinguishes poetry from 
 prose. 
 
 If we turn the tree, in this pear-shaped form of it, upside down, 
 we shall obtain a simple form of bottle or vase (fig. 40, 6), which is 
 itself the root of a vast family of traditionally decorative ideas, whose 
 chief significance is seen when flowers or a plant grow out of it. It 
 is then evidently the earth obedient to God's command on the third 
 day, bringing forth her verdant offspring, while the rest of that
 
 236 
 
 ARBOR VITAi. 
 
 week's toil may be typified by the actual painting on the vase itself 
 of every living thing, including man himself; in order to remind 
 us how all great work has to be done. "In the sweat of thy face 
 shalt thou eat bread " — the happiest of all conditions — " till thou 
 return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken : for dust 
 thou art and unto dust shalt thou return." 
 
 Into the more complicated tree myths, Eastern and Scandinavian, 
 I am not qualified to enter, nor do I particularly wish to do so here. 
 They are doubtless full of mysterious truths, but are, I think, encum- 
 bered with details more interesting to the antiquarian student than 
 
 Fig. 40.— Tree and Vase. 
 
 applicable to the religious and artistic requirements of the present 
 day. I should like a Renaissance of Art to be founded on the 
 deepest possible religious convictions, but I feel those convictions, 
 besides being instinctive and spontaneous, must be as simple as 
 possible, if they are to have an unaffected echo in our Art. On 
 details of dogma people will always disagree ; on the main facts of 
 life we cannot quarrel, because we must always submit to them. 
 We must take this as the first meaning of the tree symbol, but there 
 are of course many other ideas connected with it which possess 
 immense importance. While the leaves are falling, the tree is 
 maturing its fruit, and in the heart of the fruit the seeds lie. These
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE. 237 
 
 are such treasure-houses of suggestion and mystery that they have 
 always taken a prominent place among decorative shapes, especially 
 in Eastern art with its vegetable proclivities, where they are idealised 
 in a hundred graceful and exuberant ways. Our less contemplative and 
 more practical minds prefer to sow the seed or trace the development 
 of the bud, which is only another sort of seed that the parent stem 
 cannot make up its mind to part with. 
 
 We have already shown how closely connected the bud is with our 
 best traditions, what quaint shapes it takes on the spiral and what 
 services it performs there. Prominent among these its cruciform attitude 
 claims our attention, not only because that is the simplest and most 
 symmetrical method of vegetable growth, but also because its central 
 head and laterally uplifted arms suggest the figure most associated 
 in our minds with the Christian religion — the attitude of crucifixion, 
 or of supplication and submission to the All-Father's will. It is the 
 recognition of such accidents as this, not necessarily with strained 
 emphasis but with simple acceptance and recollection, that would 
 give our Art its universality, and bind the humblest things to the 
 most important. It is, as I have said, their gestures which make 
 things valuable to the artist ; their accidental imitation or suggestion 
 of other tricks and actions which in more organic life are full of 
 significance or meaning. The best instance I can think of at present 
 is in Richter's picture of the return of the prodigal son. The prodigal's 
 old father has been sitting at his house door, reading. When he 
 sees the spendthrift coming he gets up at once, in such haste that 
 his spectacles fall on to the ground, and he spreads out his trembling 
 hand to shelter, welcome, and forgive his son. The old man's gesture 
 is repeated in the large-hearted leaves of the creeper on the porch 
 above his head, which curl and bend and spread, rejoicing that the 
 dead one is, after all, alive, and the lost one found. This resemblance 
 of gesture is also at the root of those metamorphoses so popular in 
 Greek mythology, which mark a gentle innocence and a fellow-feeling 
 with Nature that our sterner and more introspective religion often 
 loses sight of. Who, with eyes to see, can refuse to credit trees 
 with personal life and feeling, or deny them souls with some half-
 
 238 ARBOR VITVE. 
 
 articulate message for us, or what harm can accrue from the innocent 
 idolatry of simple minds which cannot grasp ideas till they see them 
 translated into homely facts, if it makes them happy and kindly, 
 conscious that every life has its claim on our respect and care? 
 
 Another form of the tree will lead us to the caduceus, and 
 suggest many delightful kinds of staff and sceptre. The ivy, twisting 
 round the trunk, is the serpent, genius of the soil, earth spirit, 
 symbol of cunning craft, dividing spiral, promising us wisdom, 
 rewarding us with dust ; tempting us to taste, to be as gods, and 
 to suffer with them. 
 
 The Paradisaical tree introduces a new factor into the tradition 
 in the shape of its attendant "acolytes." Adam and Eve stand on 
 either side of the tree of knowledge, the thieves hang by Christ's 
 side. The lion and the unicorn support the royal arms. Instances 
 of these witnesses are everywhere to be found, but the reason of their 
 presence lies for us less in abstruse theology or savage custom and 
 instinct, than in a natural temptation to fill the empty spaces under 
 the tree, and on each side of the trunk, with figures that will have 
 some relation and dependence on the meaning we want to give it. 
 
 Into the decorative treatment of other things, which from their 
 constant use have become recognised subjects of design, this book 
 does not enter. To write about them, even superficially, so as to 
 be of any use to the student, would be an undertaking of great 
 labour and research ; nor would such a treatise be finally, I imagine, 
 of much help in reforming our ideas of ornamental design, unless 
 it could carefully discriminate between those types which are still 
 full of meaning and association, and those which, however beautiful 
 and suggestive in the past, are useless to-day because they no longer 
 represent our habits of work and thought. The simplicity of types 
 depends primarily on simplicity of lives. Our own artificial customs, 
 hidden under ugly conventions, are incapable of producing them. A 
 reformation in manners must precede a reformation in Art, and, till 
 we clear our lives from the thousand trivial things that baulk our 
 truer culture, our ideas on Art will remain anarchic. That group 
 of traditions, for instance, which cluster round the "Table" and
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE. 239 
 
 of which the Last Supper is the central type, can have no significance 
 for us till our meals become the punctual refreshment of a household 
 in its daily labour, hallowed by hunger, hospitality, spotlessness of 
 plate and linen, good cooking, and a suitable acknowledgment of the 
 sacredness and mystery of food. The pursuit of game is a noble 
 theme so long as the sportsman's dinner depends on his success, 
 and while the advantages of healthy out-door exercise and the 
 beauties and science of wood- and water-craft surmount the butcher's 
 trade. But all the beautiful accessories of the chase, and the strange 
 acquaintance with and appreciation of the wild animal life it dealt 
 with, which takes such a prominent position among artistic traditions, 
 has vanished before the gun, and its cruel sacrifice of life to the 
 size of the bag. And so it is with other traditions that were once 
 real and true because they were founded on the necessities of life, 
 and illustrated, as far as they could, its unity. To hint that decoration 
 could have any such meanings now is perhaps hopelessly out of date. 
 Nothing, apparently, is further from the thought of modern decorators 
 than that their efforts should, however indirectly, lead anybody to feel 
 and think. To the artist, Art has no higher mission than to earn 
 the praise of the public, as a mountebank does, by tickling it with 
 clever and unexpected surprises, legerdemain and optical delusions. 
 Art as a social force is dead, because it has no faith to preach, no 
 gospel to proclaim. The only Art that the public sees is the art 
 of the poster, the art of advertisement, a democratic art with a 
 vengeance, dedicated to the man in the street, mainly illustrative of his 
 sisters there, and most successful when it appeals to the vulgarest 
 mind in the cleverest way. I am no prophet. I would lay the 
 blame at no one's door or at every one's. Far from despairing, I 
 would hope and bid others hope. I would recognise the germs of 
 good in every effort so long as it was genuine. I would welcome 
 the exhibition of any feeling, if it was frankly confessed ; for vicious 
 Art is not the painting of vicious feelings because you like vice, but 
 because you deliberately paint what you believe to be wrong. 
 
 It would be far better to give up all idea of Art than to do 
 that, or to paint what we have no feeling for. It is not Art we
 
 240 ARBOR VIT.E. 
 
 want, it is faith ; not dogmas, but perception, and the power to 
 feel "God in everything without understanding Him in the least." 
 If we can get those feelings into ourselves, Art will follow easily- 
 enough, for it is nothing but our way of saying we possess them. 
 
 Therefore, before we lose or reject these old traditional symbols 
 which we inherit from our fathers, who meant much by them, let 
 us see if our hearts are so empty, or our heads so stolid, that we 
 cannot inspire them with new life, new thoughts, new feelings, from 
 a world that is, after all, still young. We cannot any longer separate 
 religion from Art. What we believe, what we love, what, even, we 
 should like to believe and love, we must put into some sort of 
 shape, make some sort of creed or confession of, however loosely 
 worded. And if we have nothing at first to say, let us waste no 
 time in vain regret, but try and throw ourselves open to every 
 natural influence we can — bird and beast and creeping thing, wind 
 and rain and sun, mountain, river and forest, and crown ourselves 
 laureates to Nature, Poets of the Poor. We cannot paint till we 
 can feel ; when we can feel, we can paint or sing with ease. 
 
 And do you think this is incompatible with imagination ? Do 
 you suppose God ever made man, and gave him a gift to separate 
 him from his fellows? That would be no blessing, but the direst 
 curse. Do you think your imagination hall-marked, precious, a 
 thing to be carefully kept and guarded ? Far from that, it is your 
 commission, as apostle, to prove the universal brotherhood of all 
 men and things. A precious gift indeed — none more so ; but the 
 greater it is, the less you will glory in its possession : for it is the 
 talent you must put out to usury — the life you must ever be losing 
 if you would gain a greater — the only key that will open every heart 
 and unlock the secrets of the world. 
 
 The End. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 

 
 D 000 014 695 1