troduced and made of account. Hence Gothic sculpture
and painting are not only full of valuable portraiture of the greatest
men, but copious records of all the domestic customs and inferior arts
of the ages in which it flourished.[66]

Sec. LXVIII. There is, however, one direction in which the Naturalism of
the Gothic workmen is peculiarly manifested; and this direction is even
more characteristic of the school than the Naturalism itself; I mean
their peculiar fondness for the forms of Vegetation. In rendering the
various circumstances of daily life, Egyptian and Ninevite sculpture is
as frank and as diffuse as the Gothic. From the highest pomps of state
or triumphs of battle, to the most trivial domestic arts and amusements,
all is taken advantage of to fill the field of granite with the
perpetual interest of a crowded drama; and the early Lombardic and
Romanesque sculpture is equally copious in its description of the
familiar circumstances of war and the chase. But in all the scenes
portrayed by the workmen of these nations, vegetation occurs only as an
explanatory accessory; the reed is introduced to mark the course of the
river, or the tree to mark the covert of the wild beast, or the ambush
of the enemy, but there is no especial interest in the forms of the
vegetation strong enough to induce them to make it a subject of separate
and accurate study. Again, among the nations who followed the arts of
design exclusively, the forms of foliage introduced were meagre and
general, and their real intricacy and life were neither admired nor
expressed. But to the Gothic workman the living foliage became a subject
of intense affection, and he struggled to render all its characters with
as much accuracy as was compatible with the laws of his design and the
nature of his material, not unfrequently tempted in his enthusiasm to
transgress the one and disguise the other.

Sec. LXIX. There is a peculiar significancy in this, indicative both of
higher civilization and gentler temperament, than had before been
manifested in architecture. Rudeness, and the love of change, which we
have insisted upon as the first elements of Gothic, are also elements
common to all healthy schools. But here is a softer element mingled with
them, peculiar to the Gothic itself. The rudeness or ignorance which
would have been painfully exposed in the treatment of the human form,
are still not so great as to prevent the successful rendering of the
wayside h