In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXL 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 execution 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 absolute precision by line and rule, and were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his own figure sculpture.  The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance of his falling beneath the standard appointed.  The Greek gave to the lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute.  The Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for his imperfection.  The workman was, in both systems, a slave.[157]

But in the mediaeval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul.  But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness.  That admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly contemplating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God’s greater glory.  Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, her exhortation is:  Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame.  And it is, perhaps, the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that they thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole.