extreme emphasis,
but locally divided; a vast rough wall, for instance, represents the
one, and a profusion of mad ornament huddled around a central
door or window represents the other.

Gothic architecture offers us in the pinnacle and flying buttress a
striking example of the adoption of a mechanical feature, and its
transformation into an element of beauty. Nothing could at first
sight be more hopeless than the external half-arch propping the
side of a pier, or the chimney-like weight of stones pressing it
down from above; but a courageous acceptance of these necessities,
and a submissive study of their form, revealed a new and strange
effect: the bewildering and stimulating intricacy of masses
suspended in mid-air; the profusion of line, variety of surface, and
picturesqueness of light and shade. It needed but a little applied
ornament judiciously distributed; a moulding in the arches; a florid
canopy and statue amid the buttresses; a few grinning monsters
leaning out of unexpected nooks; a leafy budding of the topmost
pinnacles; a piercing here and there of some little gallery, parapet,
or turret into lacework against the sky -- and the building became a
poem, an inexhaustible emotion. Add some passing cloud casting
its moving shadow over the pile, add the circling of birds about the
towers, and you have an unforgettable type of beauty; not perhaps
the noblest, sanest, or most enduring, but one for the existence of
which the imagination is richer, and the world more interesting.

In this manner we accept the forms imposed upon us by utility, and
train ourselves to apperceive their potential beauty. Familiarity
breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention. When the mind is
absorbed and dominated by its perceptions, it incorporates into
them more and more of its own functional values, and makes them
ultimately beautiful and expressive. Thus no language can be ugly
to those who speak it well, no religion unmeaning to those who
have learned to pour their life into its moulds.

Of course these forms vary in intrinsic excellence; they are by their
specific character more or less fit and facile for the average mind.
But the man and the age are rare who can choose their own path;
we have generally only a choice between going ahead in the
direction already chosen, or halting and blocking the path for
others. The only kind of reform usually possible is reform from
within; a more intimate study and more intelligent use