the sense in which I use the word Naturalism when I state it to be the
third most essential characteristic of Gothic architecture. I mean that
the Gothic builders belong to the central or greatest rank in _both_ the
classifications of artists which we have just made; that, considering
all artists as either men of design, men of facts, or men of both, the
Gothic builders were men of both; and that again, considering all
artists as either Purists, Naturalists, or Sensualists, the Gothic
builders were Naturalists.

Sec. LXIV. I say first, that the Gothic builders were of that central
class which unites fact with design; but that the part of the work which
was more especially their own was the truthfulness. Their power of
artistical invention or arrangement was not greater than that of
Romanesque and Byzantine workmen: by those workmen they were taught the
principles, and from them received their models, of design; but to the
ornamental feeling and rich fancy of the Byzantine the Gothic builder
added a love of _fact_ which is never found in the South. Both Greek and
Roman used conventional foliage in their ornament, passing into
something that was not foliage at all, knotting itself into strange
cup-like buds or clusters, and growing out of lifeless rods instead of
stems; the Gothic sculptor received these types, at first, as things
that ought to be, just as we have a second time received them; but he
could not rest in them. He saw there was no veracity in them, no
knowledge, no vitality. Do what he would, he could not help liking the
true leaves better; and cautiously, a little at a time, he put more of
nature into his work, until at last it was all true, retaining,
nevertheless, every valuable character of the original well-disciplined
and designed arrangement.[65]

Sec. LXV. Nor is it only in external and visible subject that the Gothic
workman wrought for truth: he is as firm in his rendering of imaginative
as of actual truth; that is to say, when an idea would have been by a
Roman, or Byzantine, symbolically represented, the Gothic mind realizes
it to the utmost. For instance, the purgatorial fire is represented in
the mosaic of Torcello (Romanesque) as a red stream, longitudinally
striped like a riband, descending out of the throne of Christ, and
gradually extending itself to envelope the wicked. When we are once
informed what this means, it is enough for its purpose; but the Gothic
inventor does not leave the sign