germs of a new world of
ever new delight.

When this type in Greek Art was brought to bear on the interpretation of
natural forms into architectural language, we shall curiously discover
that the creative pride of the artist and his reverence for the
integrity of his Ideal were so great, that he not only subjected these
forms to a rigid subservience to the abstract line till Nature was
nearly lost in Art, but the immediate adoption of these forms under any
circumstances was limited to some three or four of the most ordinary
vegetable productions of Greece and to one sea-shell. This wise reserve
and self-restraint, among the boundless riches of a delicious climate
and a soil teeming with fertility, present to us the best proof of the
fastidious purity of artistic intentions. Nature poured out at the feet
of the Greek artist a most plenteous offering, and the lap of Flora
overflowed for him with tempting garlands of Beauty; but he did not
gather these up with any greedy and indiscriminate hand, he did not
intoxicate himself at the harvest of the vineyard. Full of the divinity
of high purpose, and intent upon the nobler aim of creating a pure work
of Art, he considered serenely what were his needs for decoration, took
lovingly a few of the most ordinary forms, and, studying the creative
sentiment of them, breathed a new and immortal life into them, and
tenderly and hesitatingly applied them to the work of illustrating his
grand Ideal. These leaves and flowers were selected not for their own
sake, though he felt them to be beautiful, but for the decorative motive
they suggested, the humanity there was in them, and the harmony they
had with the emergencies of his design. The design was not bent to
accommodate them, but they were translated and lifted up into the sphere
of Art.

A drawing of the Ionic capitals of the temple of Minerva Polias in the
Erechtheum is accessible to nearly everybody. It is well to turn to
it and see what use the Greeks, under such impulses, made of the Wild
Honeysuckle and of Sea-Shells. Perhaps this capital affords one of the
most instructive epitomes of Greek Art, inasmuch as in its composition
use is made of so much that Nature gave, and those gifts are so tenderly
modelled and wrought into such exquisite harmony and eloquent repose.
Examine the volute: this is the nearest approach to a mathematical
result that can be found in Grecian architecture; yet this very
approximation is one of the gre