ain monotony or similarity must be introduced among the most
changeful ornaments in order to enhance and exhibit their own changes.

The truth of this proposition is self-evident; for no art can be noble
which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of
expressing thought which does not change. To require of an artist that
he should always reproduce the same picture, would be not one whit more
base than to require of a carver that he should always reproduce the
same sculpture.

The principle is perfectly clear and altogether incontrovertible. Apply
it to modern Greek architecture, and that architecture must cease to
exist; for it depends absolutely on copyism.

74. The sixth proposition above stated, that _Gothic ornamentation is
nobler than Greek ornamentation_, etc., is therefore sufficiently proved
by the acceptance of this one principle, no less important than
unassailable. Of all that I have to bring forward respecting
architecture, this is the one I have most at heart; for on the
acceptance of this depends the determination whether the workman shall
be a living, progressive, and happy human being, or whether he shall be
a mere machine, with its valves smoothed by heart's blood instead of
oil,--the most pitiable form of slave.

And it is with especial reference to the denial of this principle in
modern and Renaissance architecture, that I speak of that architecture
with a bitterness which appears to many readers extreme, while in
reality, so far from exaggerating, I have not grasp enough of thought
to embrace, the evils which have resulted among all the orders of
European society from the introduction of the Renaissance schools of
building, in turning away the eyes of the beholder from natural beauty,
and reducing the workman to the level of a machine. In the Gothic times,
writing, painting, carving, casting,--it mattered not what,--were all
works done by thoughtful and happy men; and the illumination of the
volume, and the carving and casting of wall and gate, employed, not
thousands, but millions, of true and noble _artists_ over all Christian
lands. Men in the same position are now left utterly without
intellectual power or pursuit, and, being unhappy in their work, they
rebel against it: hence one of the worst forms of Unchristian Socialism.
So again, there being now no nature or variety in architecture, the
multitude are not interested in it; therefore, for the present, they
have lost thei