ot only a startling change in the treatment of window
lights, but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of the tracery
bars themselves. So that, while in all living Christian architecture the
love of variety exists, the Gothic schools exhibited that love in
culminating energy; and their influence, wherever it extended itself,
may be sooner and farther traced by this character than by any other;
the tendency to the adoption of Gothic types being always first shown by
greater irregularity and richer variation in the forms of the
architecture it is about to supersede, long before the appearance of the
pointed arch or of any other recognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic
mind.

Sec. XXXII. We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there
is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in
healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly
in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In
order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the
different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in
nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one
incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most
delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most
brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed.

Sec. XXXIII. I believe that the true relations of monotony and change
may be most simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein
notice, first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony which
there is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all
nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its
monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and
especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and
rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which
there is not in light.

Sec. XXXIV. Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain
degree, becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is
obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage
is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and
harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an
entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful
according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course,
uses both these