It would not be satisfied
with the cold repetition of a written litany of architectural forms; but
its ardent piety, its thoughtful zeal, the _life_ of its love, demanded
an ever-varying expression in these visible prayers. Emerson himself
might find nought to censure there, in the way of undue conformities and
consistencies. Its language was written with the infinite alphabet of
Nature.
We are speaking now especially of England; and we, her children, may
well be proud that these divine enthusiasms of antiquity, which we
thought so quaint, so rare, so far away from us, nowhere else found
fairer demonstrations. The English spires bear especial witness to the
zeal and aspiration of their builders. They belted them with bands of
ornament, cut at first in imitation of tiles, and afterwards beautifully
panelled with foliations. Moulded ribs began to run up the angles of
the spires, and, when they met at the summit, would exultingly curl
themselves together in the most precious cruciforms. Quaint spire-lights
began to appear. Sometimes curious dormers would project from alternate
sides; and the very ribs, as if, in this spring-time of Art, they felt,
quickening along their lengths, the mysterious movements of a new life,
sprouted out here and there with knots of leafage, timidly at first, and
then with all the wealth and profusion of the harvest.
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