r mankind, as some counterbalance to that
wretched love of novelty which originates in selfishness, shallowness,
and conceit, and which especially characterizes all vulgar minds, there
is set in the deeper places of the heart such affection for the signs of
age that the eye is delighted even by injuries which are the work of
time; not but that there is also real and absolute beauty in the forms
and colors so obtained, for which the original lines of the
architecture, unless they have been very grand indeed, are well
exchanged, so that there is hardly any building so ugly but that it may
be made an agreeable object by such appearances. It would not be easy,
for instance, to find a less pleasing piece of architecture than the
portion of the front of Queen's College, Oxford, which has just been
restored; yet I believe that few persons could have looked with total
indifference on the mouldering and peeled surface of the oolite
limestone previous to its restoration. If, however, the character of the
building consist in minute detail or multitudinous lines, the evil or
good effect of age upon it must depend in great measure on the kind of
art, the material, and the climate. The Parthenon, for instance, would
be injured by any markings which interfered with the contours of its
sculptures; and any lines of extreme purity, or colors of original
harmony and perfection are liable to injury, and are ill exchanged for
mouldering edges or brown weatherstains.

But as all architecture is, or ought to be, meant to be durable, and to
derive part of its glory from its antiquity, all art that is liable to
mortal injury from effects of time is therein out of place, and this is
another reason for the principle I have asserted in the second part,
page 204. I do not at this instant recollect a single instance of any
very fine building which is not improved up to a certain period by all
its signs of age, after which period, like all other human works, it
necessarily declines, its decline being in almost all ages and countries
accelerated by neglect and abuse in its time of beauty, and alteration
or restoration in its time of age.

Thus I conceive that all buildings dependent on color, whether of mosaic
or painting, have their effect improved by the richness of the
subsequent tones of age; for there are few arrangements of color so
perfect but that they are capable of improvement by some softening and
blending of this kind: with mosaic, the im