perhaps be refreshing to you, after our work among the Pisan marbles and legends, if we have a lecture or two on moss. Meantime I need not tell you that it would not be a satisfactory natural arrangement if moss grew on marble, and that all fine workmanship in marble implies equal exquisiteness of surface and edge.
152. You will observe also that the importance of laying the stone in the building as it lay in its bed was from the first recognized by all good northern architects, to such extent that to lay stones 'en delit,' or in a position out of their bedding, is a recognized architectural term in France, where all structural building takes its rise; and in that form of 'delit' the word gets most curiously involved with the Latin delictum and deliquium. It would occupy the time of a whole lecture if I entered into the confused relations of the words derived from lectus, liquidus, delinquo, diliquo, and deliquesco; and of the still more confused, but beautifully confused, (and enriched by confusion,) forms of idea, whether respecting morality or marble, arising out of the meanings of these words: the notions of a bed gathered or strewn for the rest, whether of rocks or men; of the various
