present to us, even from their ruins, a wonderful and very evident Unity
of expression, pervading and governing every possible mood and manner of
thought. No phase of Art that ever existed gives us a line so very human
and simple in itself as this Greek type, and so pliable to all the uses
of monumental language. If this type were a mere mathematical type, its
applicability to the expression of human emotions would be limited to a
formalism absolutely fatal to the freedom of thought in Art. But because
it has its birth in intense Love, in refined appreciation of all the
movements of Life and all the utterances of Creation, because it is the
humanized essence of these motions and developments, it becomes thus an
inestimable Unity, containing within itself the germs of a new world of
ever new delight.

When this type in Greek Art was brought to bear on the interpretation of
natural forms into architectural language, we shall curiously discover
that the creative pride of the artist and his reverence for the
integrity of his Ideal were so great, that he not only subjected these
forms to a rigid subservience to the abstract line till Nature was
nearly lost in Art, but the immediate adoption of these forms under any
circumstances was limited to some three or four of the most ordinary
vegetable productions of Greece and to one sea-shell. This wise reserve
and self-restraint, among the boundless riches of a delicious climate
and a soil teeming with fertility, present to us the best proof of the
fastidious purity of artistic intentions. Nature poured out at the feet
of the Greek artist a most plenteous offering, and the lap of Flora
overflowed for him with tempting garlands of Beauty; but he did not
gather these up with any greedy and indiscriminate hand, he did not
intoxicate himself at the harvest of the vineyard. Full of the divinity
of high purpose, and intent upon the nobler aim of creating a pure work
of Art, he considered serenely what were his needs for decoration, took