round the hem, the sleeves,
and the girdle. The use of plate armor gradually introduced more
fantastic types; the nobleness of the form was lost beneath the steel;
the gradually increasing luxury and vanity of the age strove for
continual excitement in more quaint and extravagant devices; and in the
fifteenth century, dress reached its point of utmost splendor and fancy,
being in many cases still exquisitely graceful, but now, in its morbid
magnificence, devoid of all wholesome influence on manners. From this
point, like architecture, it was rapidly degraded; and sank through the
buff coat, and lace collar, and jack-boot, to the bag-wig, tailed coat,
and high-heeled shoes; and so to what it is now.

Sec. XXXIII. Precisely analogous to this destruction of beauty in dress,
has been that of beauty in architecture; its color, and grace, and
fancy, being gradually sacrificed to the base forms of the Renaissance,
exactly as the splendor of chivalry has faded into the paltriness of
fashion. And observe the form in which the necessary reaction has taken
place; necessary, for it was not possible that one of the strongest
instincts of the human race could be deprived altogether of its natural
food. Exactly in the degree that the architect withdrew from his
buildings the sources of delight which in early days they had so richly
possessed, demanding, in accordance with the new principles of taste,
the banishment of all happy color and healthy invention, in that degree
the minds of men began to turn to landscape as their only resource. The
picturesque school of art rose up to address those capacities of
enjoyment for which, in sculpture, architecture, or the higher walks of
painting, there was employment no more; and the shadows of Rembrandt,
and savageness of Salvator, arrested the admiration which was no longer
permitted to be rendered to the gloom or the grotesqueness of the Gothic
aisle. And thus the English school of landscape, culminating in Turner,
is in reality nothing else than a healthy effort to fill the void which
the destruction of Gothic architecture has left.

Sec. XXXIV. But the void cannot thus be completely filled; no, nor filled
in any considerable degree. The art of landscape-painting will never
become thoroughly interesting or sufficing to the minds of men engaged
in active life, or concerned principally with practical subjects. The
sentiment and imagination necessary to enter fully into the romantic
forms of a