n enjoy; some concession to the simplicities of
humanity, some daily bread for the hunger of the multitude. Quaint fancy,
rich ornament, bright color, something that shows a sympathy with men of
ordinary minds and hearts; and this wrought out, at least in the Gothic,
with a rudeness showing that the workman did not mind exposing his own
ignorance if he could please others. But the Renaissance is exactly the
contrary of all this. It is rigid, cold, inhuman; incapable of glowing,
of stooping, of conceding for an instant. Whatever excellence it has is
refined, high-trained, and deeply erudite; a kind which the architect
well knows no common mind can taste. He proclaims it to us aloud. "You
cannot feel my work unless you study Vitruvius. I will give you no gay
color, no pleasant sculpture, nothing to make you happy; for I am a
learned man. All the pleasure you can have in anything I do is in its
proud breeding, its rigid formalism, its perfect finish, its cold
tranquillity. I do not work for the vulgar, only for the men of the
academy and the court."

Sec. XXXIX. And the instinct of the world felt this in a moment. In the
new precision and accurate law of the classical forms, they perceived
something peculiarly adapted to the setting forth of state in an
appalling manner: Princes delighted in it, and courtiers. The Gothic was
good for God's worship, but this was good for man's worship. The Gothic
had fellowship with all hearts, and was universal, like nature: it could
frame a temple for the prayer of nations, or shrink into the poor man's
winding stair. But here was an architecture that would not shrink, that
had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced
in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not
be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof
itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall
itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small
windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever
there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone;
it would have its windows and its doors, and its stairs and its pillars,
in lordly order, and of stately size; it would have its wings and its
corridors, and its halls and its gardens, as if all the earth were its
own. And the rugged cottages of the mountaineers, and the fantastic
streets of the laboring burgher were to be thrust out