erhaps, the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of
architecture, that they thus receive the results of the labor of
inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying
that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and
unaccusable whole.

Sec. XI. But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of
the Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost
completion or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble
character in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to
forget the relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the
perfectness of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not
considering that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would
be preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind,
and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man,
those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those
which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For
the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness
of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be
seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and
strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the
greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And
therefore, while in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire
perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner
thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its
mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered
majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honorable defeat; not to lower
the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency
of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men,
we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow
caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, still
more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellences, because
they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature of every
man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labor, there are
some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid capacity
of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the worst;
and in most cases it is all our own fault that they _are_ tardy or
torpi