in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to
admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious balance, its graceful
proportions.

It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give any
idea of the wonderful diversity of treatment these simple generic forms
received at the hands of the early builders. The changes of combination,
proportion, and ornamentation were endless. For the mediaeval spirit was
eminently earnest in its labor, and would not be content with copying an
old shape merely because it was a good shape. It would not be satisfied
with the cold repetition of a written litany of architectural forms; but
its ardent piety, its thoughtful zeal, the _life_ of its love, demanded
an ever-varying expression in these visible prayers. Emerson himself
might find nought to censure there, in the way of undue conformities and
consistencies. Its language was written with the infinite alphabet of
Nature.

We are speaking now especially of England; and we, her children, may
well be proud that these divine enthusiasms of antiquity, which we
thought so quaint, so rare, so far away from us, nowhere else found
fairer demonstrations. The English spires bear especial witness to the
zeal and aspiration of their builders. They belted them with bands of
ornament, cut at first in imitation of tiles, and afterwards beautifully
panelled with foliations. Moulded ribs began to run up the angles of
the spires, and, when they met at the summit, would exultingly curl
themselves together in the most precious cruciforms. Quaint spire-lights
began to appear. Sometimes curious dormers would project from alternate
sides; and the very ribs, as if, in this spring-time of Art, they felt,
quickening along their lengths, the mysterious movements of a new life,
sprouted out here and there with knots of leafage, timidly at first, and
then with all the wealth and profusion of the harvest. The same impulse
wreathed the crowning cross with a thousand midsummer fancies, till the
circle of Eternity, or the triangle of Trinity, which often mingled
with its arms, scarcely knew itself. The pinnacles, too, blossomed into
crockets and bud-like finials, and began to gather more thickly about
the roots of the spire, and from them often leaped flying-buttresses
against it. During this time the spire itself was growing more and more
acute, its lines becoming more and more eloquent. After the fourteenth
century, the tower began to be crowned w