fluenced at once the heart of the people, and the form of the edifice.
The Gothic architecture arose in massy and mountainous strength,
axe-hewn, and iron-bound, block heaved upon block by the monk's
enthusiasm and the soldier's force; and cramped and stanchioned into
such weight of grisly wall, as might bury the anchoret in darkness, and
beat back the utmost storm of battle, suffering but by the same narrow
crosslet the passing of the sunbeam, or of the arrow. Gradually, as that
monkish enthusiasm became more thoughtful, and as the sound of war
became more and more intermittent beyond the gates of the convent or the
keep, the stony pillar grew slender and the vaulted roof grew light,
till they had wreathed themselves into the semblance of the summer woods
at their fairest, and of the dead field-flowers, long trodden down in
blood, sweet monumental statues were set to bloom for ever, beneath the
porch of the temple, or the canopy of the tomb.

Sec. LXXI. Nor is it only as a sign of greater gentleness or refinement of
mind, but as a proof of the best possible direction of this refinement,
that the tendency of the Gothic to the expression of vegetative life is
to be admired. That sentence of Genesis, "I have given thee every green
herb for meat," like all the rest of the book, has a profound symbolical
as well as a literal meaning. It is not merely the nourishment of the
body, but the food of the soul, that is intended. The green herb is, of
all nature, that which is most essential to the healthy spiritual life
of man. Most of us do not need fine scenery; the precipice and the
mountain peak are not intended to be seen by all men,--perhaps their
power is greatest over those who are unaccustomed to them. But trees,
and fields, and flowers were made for all, and are necessary for all.
God has connected the labor which is essential to the bodily sustenance,
with the pleasures which are healthiest for the heart; and while He made
the ground stubborn, He made its herbage fragrant, and its blossoms
fair. The proudest architecture that man can build has no higher honor
than to bear the image and recall the memory of that grass of the field
which is, at once, the type and the support of his existence; the goodly
building is then most glorious when it is sculptured into the likeness
of the leaves of Paradise; and the great Gothic spirit, as we showed it
to be noble in its disquietude, is also noble in its hold of nature; it
is, inde