The Greek had the subtlest of languages in which to speak of the good and the beautiful, while where the greatest Gothic churches were designed there was only a corrupt dead language and a partially developed living one; but the subtle poets of Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Bourges and Laon built strongly into their cathedrals the sweetest things they had to say. When the Parthenon was constructed Athens was so wealthy that it was one of the glories of Pericles that he was able to spend so much so well upon the greatest capital in the world. Rheims was simply, as the Middle Ages went, a rich see, and the Middle Ages were wretchedly poor, yet her cathedral is the more elaborate building of the two. To the end of time it is a monument of civic and religious enthusiasm; and, as we seek the human story, so elusively suggested through the marvelous pile, we realize at least how great a thing it is for each worker to give, in perfect self-effacement, of his best. The decorations of the mighty temple are so exquisitely subservient to the great whole that the handiwork of the gifted _imagier_, with that of his weaker brother, the one serving as a foil to the other, holds together like their prayers in the noble harmony of the great church. Gothic sculpture is for all sorts and conditions of men, but least of all for artists. It speaks its simple lesson distinctly. It is not sculpture for sculpture’s sake, but rather for decoration and lyric expression. Its emaciated saint betokens sacrifice; literally and figuratively he fills his place in the long, narrow niche, annihilating himself for the great church as a Catholic priest should. [Illustration: _The Sculptured Saint Upon a Gothic Cathedral Fills His Place in the Long, Narrow Niche, Annihilating Himself for the Great Church, as a Devotee Should._] Would you know how the Gothic affects a sculptor? Says August Rodin: “Life is made up of strength and grace; the Gothic gives us this; its influence has entered into my blood and grown into my being.” Nowadays, when all “the world travels,” schools of art do not grow up in little communities; intellectual boundaries are in no way geographic, and the moral effect of one man on another is hidden from view. But on the walls of the old mediæval churches a simpler people, as their work improved, show their direct obligations to one another.