e human body in the perfection of its grace and movement, we have no
business to take away its limbs, and terminate it with a bunch of
leaves. Or rather our doing so will imply that there is something wrong
with us; that, if we can consent to use our best powers for such base
and vain trifling, there must be something wanting in the powers
themselves; and that, however skilful we may be, or however learned, we
are wanting both in the earnestness which can apprehend a noble truth,
and in the thoughtfulness which can feel a noble fear. No Divine terror
will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength
in elaborating toys; for the first lesson which that terror is sent to
teach us, is the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal
time.

Sec. L. And are we never, then, it will be asked, to possess a refined or
perfect ornamentation? Must all decoration be the work of the ignorant
and the rude? Not so; but exactly in proportion as the ignorance and
rudeness diminish, must the ornamentation become rational, and the
grotesqueness disappear. The noblest lessons may be taught in
ornamentation, the most solemn truths compressed into it. The Book of
Genesis, in all the fulness of its incidents, in all the depth of its
meaning, is bound within the leaf-borders of the gates of Ghiberti. But
Raphael's arabesque is mere elaborate idleness. It has neither meaning
nor heart in it; it is an unnatural and monstrous abortion.

Sec. LI. Now, this passing of the grotesque into higher art, as the mind
of the workman becomes informed with better knowledge, and capable of
more earnest exertion, takes place in two ways. Either, as his power
increases, he devotes himself more and more to the beauty which he now
feels himself able to express, and so the grotesqueness expands, and
softens into the beautiful, as in the above-named instance of the gates
of Ghiberti; or else, if the mind of the workman be naturally inclined
to gloomy contemplation, the imperfection or apathy of his work rises
into nobler terribleness, until we reach the point of the grotesque of
Albert Durer, where, every now and then, the playfulness or apathy of
the painter passes into perfect sublime. Take the Adam and Eve, for
instance. When he gave Adam a bough to hold, with a parrot on it, and a
tablet hung to it, with "Albertus Durer Noricus faciebat, 1504,"
thereupon, his mind was not in Paradise. He was half in play, half
apathetic with resp