sfaction, we have degraded ourselves
and our work. God's work only may express that; but ours may never have
that sentence written upon it,--"And behold, it was very good." And,
observe again, it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of
various knowledge, or a mine of precious thought, that variety is
essential to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of
_Knowledge_, but the love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_
of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of the
dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and
flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in
labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not
satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph
furrow, and be at peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork
still, and it can neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must pass
on, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for ever in
the change that must come alike on them that wake and them that
sleep....

Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of this
noble school, was placed that of REDUNDANCE,--the uncalculating
bestowal of the wealth of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gothic,
and that of the best period, in which this element is hardly traceable,
and which depends for its effect almost exclusively on loveliness of
simple design and grace of uninvolved proportion; still, in the most
characteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends
upon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have most
influence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of this
attribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it is
possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better
contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole facade covered with
fretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to be
considered the best. For the very first requirement of Gothic
architecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid,
and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refined
minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement may
appear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as that
which is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a few
clear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to our
regards, that a