sympathy, not to the accuracy of his
criticism, that it makes appeal; and no man can indeed be a lover of
what is best in the higher walks of art, who has not feeling and charity
enough to rejoice with the rude sportiveness of hearts that have escaped
out of prison, and to be thankful for the flowers which men have laid
their burdens down to sow by the wayside.

Sec. XXXIV. And consider what a vast amount of human work this right
understanding of its meaning will make fruitful and admirable to us,
which otherwise we could only have passed by with contempt. There is
very little architecture in the world which is, in the full sense of the
words, good and noble. A few pieces of Italian Gothic and Romanesque, a
few scattered fragments of Gothic cathedrals, and perhaps two or three
of Greek temples, are all that we possess approaching to an ideal of
perfection. All the rest--Egyptian, Norman, Arabian, and most Gothic,
and, which is very noticeable, for the most part all the strongest and
mightiest--depend for their power on some developement of the grotesque
spirit; but much more the inferior domestic architecture of the middle
ages, and what similar conditions remain to this day in countries from
which the life of art has not yet been banished by its laws. The
fantastic gables, built up in scroll-work and steps, of the Flemish
street; the pinnacled roofs set with their small humorist double
windows, as if with so many ears and eyes, of Northern France; the
blackened timbers, crossed and carved into every conceivable waywardness
of imagination, of Normandy and old England; the rude hewing of the pine
timbers of the Swiss cottage; the projecting turrets and bracketed
oriels of the German street; these, and a thousand other forms, not in
themselves reaching any high degree of excellence, are yet admirable,
and most precious, as the fruits of a rejoicing energy in uncultivated
minds. It is easier to take away the energy, than to add the
cultivation; and the only effect of the better knowledge which civilized
nations now possess, has been, as we have seen in a former chapter, to
forbid their being happy, without enabling them to be great.

Sec. XXXV. It is very necessary, however, with respect to this provincial
or rustic architecture, that we should carefully distinguish its truly
grotesque from its picturesque elements. In the "Seven Lamps" I defined
the picturesque to be "parasitical sublimity," or sublimity belonging to
the