provement may be considered as
proceeding almost so long as the design can be distinctly seen; with
painting, so long as the colors do not change or chip off.

Again, upon all forms of sculptural ornament, the effect of time is
such, that if the design be poor, it will enrich it; if overcharged,
simplify it; if harsh and violent, soften it; if smooth and obscure,
exhibit it; whatever faults it may have are rapidly disguised, whatever
virtue it has still shines and steals out in the mellow light; and this
to such an extent, that the artist is always liable to be tempted to the
drawing of details in old buildings as of extreme beauty, which look
cold and hard in their architectural lines; and I have never yet seen
any restoration or cleaned portion of a building whose effect was not
inferior to the weathered parts, even to those of which the design had
in some parts almost disappeared. On the front of the church of San
Michele at Lucca, the mosaics have fallen out of half the columns, and
lie in weedy ruin beneath; in many, the frost has torn large masses of
the entire coating away, leaving a scarred unsightly surface. Two of the
shafts of the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the sea wind,
the rest have lost their proportions, the edges of the arches are hacked
into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the weed-grown wall.
The process has gone too far, and yet I doubt not but that this building
is seen to greater advantage now than when first built, always with
exception of one circumstance, that the French shattered the lower wheel
window, and set up in front of it an escutcheon with "Libertas" upon it,
which abomination of desolation, the Lucchese have not yet had
human-heartedness enough to pull down.

Putting therefore the application of architecture as an accessory out of
the question, and supposing our object to be the exhibition of the most
impressive qualities of the building itself, it is evidently the duty of
the draughtsman to represent it under those conditions, and with that
amount of age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the
sources of its beauty: this is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is
true following out of the ideal character of the building; nay, far
greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for there
are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by
advanced dilapidation; but when the artist suffers the mere love of
ruinous