ious pleasure, trace such symbolic characters in the form; we may
now use it with such definite meaning; but we only prevent ourselves
from all right understanding of history, by attributing much influence
to these poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The
human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such silken cords;
and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose tiles in the roof,
have, unhappily, much more to do with the fashions of a man's house
building than his ideas of celestial happiness or angelic virtue.
Associations of affection have far higher power, and forms which can be
no otherwise accounted for may often be explained by reference to the
natural features of the country, or to anything which habit must have
rendered familiar, and therefore delightful; but the direct
symbolisation of a sentiment is a weak motive with all men, and far
more so in the practical minds of the north than among the early
Christians, who were assuredly quite as heavenly-minded, when they built
basilicas, or cut conchas out of the catacombs, as were ever the Norman
barons or monks.

Sec. VII. There is, however, in the north an animal activity which
materially aided the system of building begun in mere utility,--an
animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as the languor of the
south in reclining or level work. Imagine the difference between the
action of a man urging himself to his work in a snow storm, and the
inaction of one laid at his length on a sunny bank among cicadas and
fallen olives, and you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies
which were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remembering
always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the other death.

Sec. VIII. And to the force of this vital instinct we have farther to
add the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of the groups and
wildernesses of the tree which is to the German mind what the olive or
palm is to the southern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once been
habituated to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the
multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the
repetition of similar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of
flat or massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of the
poplar, more especially in the valleys of France; but think of the
spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling with which the
Northman would b