order that
you may have some idea of the character of the sculpture. Here is the
enlargement of it (_fig._ 15). Now observe, this is _one_ of the angles
of the bottom of a pedestal, not two feet broad, on the outside of a
Gothic building; it contains only one of the four little figures which
form those angles; and it shows you the head only of one of the larger
figures in the center. Yet just observe how much design, how much
wonderful composition, there is in this mere fragment of a building of
the great times; a fragment, literally no larger than a school-boy could
strike off in wantonness with a stick: and yet I cannot tell you how
much care has been spent--not so much on the execution, for it does not
take much trouble to execute well on so small a scale--but on the
design, of this minute fragment. You see it is composed of a branch of
wild roses, which switches round at the angle, embracing the minute
figure of the bishop, and terminates in a spray reaching nearly to the
head of the large figure. You will observe how beautifully that figure
is thus _pointed to_ by the spray of rose, and how all the leaves around
it in the same manner are subservient to the grace of its action. Look,
if I hide one line, or one rosebud, how the whole is injured, and how
much there is to study in the detail of it. Look at this little diamond
crown, with a lock of the hair escaping from beneath it; and at the
beautiful way in which the tiny leaf at _a_, is set in the angle to
prevent its harshness; and having examined this well, consider what a
treasure of thought there is in a cathedral front, a hundred feet wide,
every inch of which is wrought with sculpture like this! And every front
of our thirteenth century cathedrals is inwrought with sculpture of this
quality! And yet you quietly allow yourselves to be told that the men
who thus wrought were barbarians, and that your architects are
wiser and better in covering your walls with sculpture of this kind
(_fig._ 14, Plate VIII.)

[Illustration: PLATE IX. (Fig. 15.)]

[Illustration: PLATE X. (Fig. 16.)]

38. Walk round your Edinburgh buildings, and look at the height of your
eye, what you will get from them. Nothing but square-cut
stone--square-cut stone--a wilderness of square-cut stone forever and
forever; so that your houses look like prisons, and truly are so; for
the worst feature of Greek architecture is, indeed, not its costliness,
but its tyranny. These square stones are not