Note 345 — Chapter VI

“The soaring nave of a Gothic minster, in the clustered and banded stalks of its lofty pillars, the curling leaves of its capitals and cornices, the interlacing arches of its fretted vault, the interminable entwinings of its tracery, the countless hues that sparkle from roof, and chapiter, and wall, and window, recall no work of man, indeed—no tent, or hut, or cavern, but the sublimest temple of natural religion, the awful gloom of the deep forests of the north; the aspiring height of the slender pine, the spreading arms of the giant oak, rich with the varied tints of leaf and blossom, with the wild birds’ song for its anthem, or the rustle of the breeze in its waving branches, for the voices of the mighty multitude, or the deep notes of the solemn organ.”—Freeman’s History of Architecture, p. 15.