through which it had passed in the morning light,
but it is now with wearied limbs, and under the gloomy shadows of
evening.

Sec. VI. It has just been said that the two principal causes of natural
decline in any school, are over-luxuriance and over-refinement. The
corrupt Gothic of Venice furnishes us with a curious instance of the
one, and the corrupt Byzantine of the other. We shall examine them in
succession.

Now, observe, first, I do not mean by _luxuriance_ of ornament,
_quantity_ of ornament. In the best Gothic in the world there is hardly
an inch of stone left unsculptured. But I mean that character of
extravagance in the ornament itself which shows that it was addressed to
jaded faculties; a violence and coarseness in curvature, a depth of
shadow, a lusciousness in arrangement of line, evidently arising out of
an incapability of feeling the true beauty of chaste form and restrained
power. I do not know any character of design which may be more easily
recognized at a glance than this over-lusciousness; and yet it seems to
me that at the present day there is nothing so little understood as the
essential difference between chasteness and extravagance, whether in
color, shade, or lines. We speak loosely and inaccurately of
"overcharged" ornament, with an obscure feeling that there is indeed
something in visible Form which is correspondent to Intemperance in
moral habits; but without any distinct detection of the character which
offends us, far less with any understanding of the most important lesson
which there can be no doubt was intended to be conveyed by the
universality of this ornamental law.

Sec. VII. In a word, then, the safeguard of highest beauty, in all visible
work, is exactly that which is also the safeguard of conduct in the
soul,--Temperance, in the broadest sense; the Temperance which we have
seen sitting on an equal throne with Justice amidst the Four Cardinal
Virtues, and, wanting which, there is not any other virtue which may not
lead us into desperate error. Now, observe: Temperance, in the nobler
sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a
stopping short in any good thing, as in Love or in Faith; but it means
the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting
in any way but as it ought. And with respect to things in which there
may be excess, it does not mean imperfect enjoyment of them; but the
regulation of their quantity, so that the enj