ds and leaves, but that the buds
and leaves are there carven before your eyes. I myself cannot look
at the tabernacle work of our stalls without being reminded of the
young pine forests which clothe the Hampshire moors. But if the
details are copied from vegetable forms, why not the whole? Is not a
spire like a growing tree, a tabernacle like a fir-tree, a compound
spire like a group of firs? And if we can see that, do you fancy
that the man who planned the spire did not see it as clearly as we
do; and perhaps more clearly still?

I am aware, of course, that Norman architecture had sometimes its
pinnacle, a mere conical or polygonal capping. I am aware that this
form, only more and more slender, lasted on in England during the
thirteenth and the early part of the fourteenth century; and on the
Continent under many modifications, one English kind whereof is
usually called a "broach," of which you have a beautiful specimen in
the new church at Hoole.

Now, no one will deny that that broach is beautiful. But it would be
difficult to prove that its form was taken from a North European
tree. The cypress was unknown, probably, to our northern architects.
The Lombardy poplar--which has wandered hither, I know not when, all
the way from Cashmere--had not wandered then, I believe, farther than
North Italy. The form is rather that of mere stone; of the obelisk
or of the mountain-peak; and they, in fact, may have at first
suggested the spire. The grandeur of an isolated mountain, even of a
dolmen or single upright stone, is evident to all.

But it is the grandeur not of aspiration, but of defiance; not of the
Christian, not even of the Stoic, but rather of the Epicurean. It
says--I cannot rise. I do not care to rise. I will be contentedly
and valiantly that which I am; and face circumstances, though I
cannot conquer them. But it is defiance under defeat. The mountain-
peak does not grow, but only decays. Fretted by rains, peeled by
frost, splintered by lightning, it must down at last; and crumble
into earth, were it as old, as hard, as lofty as the Matterhorn
itself. And while it stands, it wants not only aspiration, it wants
tenderness; it wants humility; it wants the unrest which tenderness
and humility must breed, and which Mr. Ruskin so clearly recognises
in the best Gothic art. And, meanwhile, it wants naturalness. The
mere smooth spire or broach--I had almost said, even the spire of
Salisbury--is like n