ll it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either by
the complexity of the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass our
investigation, or betray us into delight. That humility, which is the
very life of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection,
but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workman
is often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work;
and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart,
are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which
disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the
inattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the
Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: a
magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to
reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which
would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in
the market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and
wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whose
operation we have already endeavoured to define. The sculptor who
sought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly
and deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor
richness that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study of
the minute and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the
barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered
at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a
profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he
should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude
craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless
beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming
mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the few stones
that he had raised one upon another, for habitation or memorial. The
years of his life passed away before his task was accomplished; but
generation succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and the
cathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, like
a rock among the thickets and herbage of spring.
[157] The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which
the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor
portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as
grea
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