n to the degree in which the force
of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color as a
means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that the
incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color
decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true
system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to
understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the
nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and
Southern nations.

Sec. XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has never
been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It has
often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I believe
it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art, that it
loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death in the
Renaissance schools, that they despised color.

Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are
better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone grey of Nature
and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but
that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the
builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they
could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe,
any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted
all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its
prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval
Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever
think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the
Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the
Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of
color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on
ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the
color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did,
in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It
is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern
builders, which we have finally to examine.

Sec. XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed that
the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the porch of
his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich