re than any other subject of art, the work of man,
and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poem is
often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration of
something out of himself; but architecture approaches more to a creation
of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of his nature. It is
also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while the picture or
statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highly gifted than
his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first two elements of
good architecture should be expressive of some great truths commonly
belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood or felt by
them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observe what they
are: the confession of Imperfection and the confession of Desire of
Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not express anything
like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just because we are
something better than birds or bees, our building must confess that we
have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and cannot rest in the
condition we have attained. If we pretend to have reached either
perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work.
God's work only may express that; but ours may never have that sentence
written upon it,--"And behold, it was very good." And, observe again,
it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of various knowledge,
or a mine of precious thought, that variety is essential to its
nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of _Knowledge_, but the
love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_ of the Gothic spirit
that is its greatness; that restlessness of the dreaming mind, that
wanders hither and thither among the niches, and flickers feverishly
around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in labyrinthine knots and
shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not satisfied, nor shall be
satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph furrow, and be at peace;
but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork still, and it can neither
rest in, nor from, its labor, but must pass on, sleeplessly, until its
love of change shall be pacified for ever in the change that must come
alike on them that wake and them that sleep.

Sec. XLI. The third constituent element of the Gothic mind was stated to
be NATURALISM; that is to say, the love of natural objects for their own
sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, unconst