of which five examples are given in Fig. 179, are of exquisite beauty. The inspiration of nature has, in these designs, completely taken the place of traditional motives. No mere recasting of old types could ever result in the production of forms like these. The unfolding leaves of the field or forest could alone supply the elements.
But it required genius of a high order to lay hold of these elements without, at the same time, becoming entangled in a myriad of details that were unsuitable to the purposes of architectural sculpture. To simplify nature, and yet to retain what is most expressive, to bring out in sculpture the
FIG. 179.
full value of what nature suggests, and at the same time to preserve a strictly lithic and architectural expression, is something that has never been done, before nor since, so perfectly as it was done in the art of the French sculptors of this time, as we see it in the triforium of the nave of Paris, and in a few other monuments of the same class. The Gothic carver of this time never imagined that he was called to emulate with the imperfect means of art the infinite complexity of nature. To win applause by imitative dexterity was not his aim; but to catch a new grace from expanding bud or broad leaf-outline, his fancy and his eye were ever ready, and his hand ever skilful.
In this sculpture is always manifest the feeling with
