Doubtless the nearest approach to ideal abstractions to be found in Mediaeval Art is contained in that remarkable and very characteristic system of foliations and cuspidations in tracery, which were suggested by the leaf-forms in Nature.  In this adaptation, when first it was initiated in the earliest phases of Gothic, there is something like Greek Love.  The simple trefoil aperture seems a fair architectural version of the clover-leaves.  But the propriety of the use of these clover-lines was hinted by a constructive exigency, the pointed arch.  The inevitable assimilation of the natural forms of leaves with this feature was too evident not to be improved by such active and ardent worshippers as the Freemasons.  Thus originated Gothic tracery, which afterwards branched out into such sumptuous and unrestrained luxury as we find in the Decorated styles of England, the Flamboyant of France, the late Geometric of Germany.  Thus were the masons true to the zealous and passionate enthusiasm of their religion.  They used foliations, not on account of their subjective significance, as the Greek artists did, but on account of their objective and material applicability to the decoration of their architecture.  But no natural form was ever made use of by a Greek artist merely because suggested by a constructive exigency.  It was the inward life of the thing itself which he saw, and it was his love for it which made him adopt it.  This love refined and purified its object, and never would have permitted it to grow into any wild and licentious Flamboyant under the serene and quiet skies of the Aegean.

And so the Greek lines slept in patient marble through the long Dark Ages, and no one came to awaken them into beautiful life again.  No one, consecrated Prince by the chrism of Nature, wandered into the old land to kiss the Sleeping Beauty into life, and break the deep spell which was around her kingdom.

Then came the Renaissance in the fifteenth century.  But—­alas that we must say it!—­it was fundamentally a Renaissance of error rather than of truth.  It was a revival of Roman Art, and not of Greek.  The line which we call Hogarth’s, but which in reality is as old as human life and its passions, was the key-note of it all.  So wanton were the wreaths it curled in the sight of the great masters of that period, that they all yielded to its subtle fascinations and sinned,—­sinned, inasmuch as they devoted their vast powers to the revival and refinement of a sensuous academic formalism, instead of breathing into all the architectural forms and systems then known (a glorious material to work with) the pure life of the Ideal.  Had such men as Michel Angelo, San Gallo, Palladio, Scamozzi, Vignola, San Michele, Bernini, been inspired by the highest principles of Art, and known the thoughtful lines of Greece, so catholic to all human moods, and so wisely adapted to the true spirit of reform,—­had they known these, all subsequent Art would have felt the noble impulse, and been developed into that sphere of perfection which we see rendering illustrious the primitive posts and lintels of antiquity, and which we picture to ourselves in the imaginary future of Hope as glorifying a far wider scope of human knowledge and ingenuity.