their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the
transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through
the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties,
and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the
sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable,
connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half
constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations:
it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real
light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not
until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted
with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have
been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of
death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the
natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much
as these possess, of language and of life.

For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, refusing to
ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to follow
such portions of character as may depend upon delicacy of execution to
the highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may
know that in the course of years such details must perish; but taking
care that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and
that the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anything
that is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of good composition
under any circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses being
always a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the
smaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which
is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the
probable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered)
there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else can
replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For
though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only,
there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as to
have become not unfrequently the subject of especial choice among
certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the
character usually and loosely expressed by the term "picturesque."....

Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, in
architect