hy of every heart,
are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which
disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the
inattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the
Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: a
magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to
reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which
would rather cast fruitless labor before the altar than stand idle in
the market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and
wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whose
operation we have already endeavored to define. The sculptor who sought
for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly and deeply
feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor richness
that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study of the minute
and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the barrenness
of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered at, that,
seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a profusion
which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he should think
that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude craftsmanship;
and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless beauty lavished on
measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming mountain, to grudge
his poor and imperfect labor to the few stones that he had raised one
upon another, for habitation or memorial. The years of his life passed
away before his task was accomplished; but generation succeeded
generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and the cathedral front was at
last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, like a rock among the
thickets and herbage of spring.

Sec. LXXIX. We have now, I believe, obtained a view approaching to
completeness of the various moral or imaginative elements which composed
the inner spirit of Gothic architecture. We have, in the second place,
to define its outward form.

Now, as the Gothic spirit is made up of several elements, some of which
may, in particular examples, be wanting, so the Gothic form is made up
of minor conditions of form, some of which may, in particular examples,
be imperfectly developed.

We cannot say, therefore, that a building is either Gothic or not Gothic
in form, any more than we can in spirit. We can only say that it is more
or less Gothic, in proportion to the number of