If stone work is well put together, it means that a
thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an honest man
cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that its carver was
too greedy of pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, or insensitive,
or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have learned how to spell
these most precious of all legends,--pictures and buildings,--you may
read the characters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a mirror;
nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a hundredfold; for the character
becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest
or meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as under a
scalpel, and in dissection; for a man may hide himself from you, or
misrepresent himself to you every other way; but he cannot in his work:
there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that
he sees,--all that he can do,--his imagination, his affections, his
perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is
there. If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a
honey-comb, by a bee; a wormcast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest
wreathed by a bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is
worthy, and ignobly if he is ignoble.
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