The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

moor, bordering with a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and

wood, and splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas,

beaten by storm, and chilled by ice drift, and tormented by furious pulses of

contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill

ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness;

and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth

against us out of the polar twilight. And, having once traversed in thought this

gradation of the zoned iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go

down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life: the

multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and sea, or

tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and spotted leopards,

glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and scarlet. Let us contrast

their delicacy and brilliancy of color, and swiftness of motion, with the frost-

cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and dusky plumage of the northern

tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard

with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with

the osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the

earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn,

but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in the statutes of the lands

that gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets side by side

the burning gems, and smooths with soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are

to reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less

reverence let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke,

4. Hot wind from the southern Mediterranean. 5. Ornamental, or embossed. "Chased": decorated.

 .

132 6 / JOHN RUSKIN

he smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from

among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the pile of

iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with6 work of an imagination as wild

and wayward as the northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb,

but full of wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the

clouds that shade them. There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but all dignity and

honorableness: and we should err grievously in refusing either to recognize as

an essential character of the existing architecture of the North, or to admit as

a desirable character in that which it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and

roughness of work; this look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral

and the Alp; this magnificence of sturdy power, put forth only the more ener

getically because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by the frosty wind,

and the eye dimmed by the moor mist, or blinded by the hail; this outspeaking

of the strong spirit of men who may not gather redundant fruitage from the

earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity of sunshine, but must break the rock for

bread, and cleave the forest for fire, and show, even in what they did for their

delight, some of the hard habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as

they swung the ax or pressed the plow. If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as an expression

of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in some sort, a noble

character, it possesses a higher nobility still, when considered as an index, not

of climate, but of religious principle.

In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXI of the first volume of this

work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament, properly so

called, might be divided into three: (1) Servile ornament, in which the exe

cution or power of the inferior workman is entirely subjected to the intellect

of the higher; (2) Constitutional ornament, in which the executive inferior

power is, to a certain point, emancipated and independent, having a will of its

own, yet confessing its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;

and (3) Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted

at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat greater

length. Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and

Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek master-workman

was far advanced in knowledge and power above the Assyrian or Egyptian.

Neither he nor those for whom he worked could endure the appearance of

imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what ornament he appointed to be

done by those beneath him was composed of mere geometrical forms�balls,

ridges, and perfectly symmetrical foliage�which could be executed with abso

lute precision by line and rule, and were as perfect in their way, when com

pleted, as his own figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the

contrary, less cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow