147. Again, a Norman peasant may throw up the top of her cap into a
peak, or a Bernese one put gauze wings at the side of it, and still be
dressed with propriety, so long as her hair is modestly confined, and
her ears healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real
construction. She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the
material becomes too flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the
flaunting pendants or ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or
ostentation. Similarly, an architect may deepen or enlarge, in
fantastic exaggeration, his original Westmoreland gable into Rouen
porch, and his original square roof into Coventry spire; but he must
not put within his splendid porch, a little door where two persons
cannot together get in, nor cut his spire away into hollow filigree,
and mere ornamental perviousness to wind and rain.
148. Returning to our door at Pisa, we shall find these general
questions as to the distribution of ornament much confused with others
as to its time and style. We are at once, for instance, brought to a
pause as to the degree in which the ornamentation was once carried out
in the doors themselves.
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