by comparing this statue from the west front of Chartres with that of
the Madonna, from the south transept door of Amiens. [Footnote: There
are many photographs of this door and of its central statue. Its
sculpture in the tympanum is farther described in the Fourth Lecture.]

This Madonna, with the sculpture round her, represents the culminating
power of Gothic art in the thirteenth century. Sculpture has been
gaining continually in the interval; gaining, simply because becoming
every day more truthful, more tender, and more suggestive. By the way,
the old Douglas motto, "Tender and true," may wisely be taken up again
by all of us, for our own, in art no less than in other things. Depend
upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is
Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every
day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of
all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of
disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and
arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people--quite
terrific to such, if they are capable of terror, and hateful to them,
if they are capable of nothing higher than hatred. Dante's is the great
type of this class of mind. I say the first inheritance is Tenderness--
the second Truth, because the Tenderness is in the make of the
creature, the Truth in his acquired habits and knowledge; besides, the
love comes first in dignity as well as in time, and that is always pure
and complete: the truth, at best, imperfect.

To come back to our statue. You will observe that the arrangement of
this sculpture is exactly the same as at Chartres--severe falling
drapery, set off by rich floral ornament at the side; but the statue is
now completely animated: it is no longer fixed as an upright pillar,
but bends aside out of its niche, and the floral ornament, instead of