ery of Pisa, seen it on
the Casa d'Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,) is to
dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the
cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all
cases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a
cold model of such parts as _can_ be modelled, with conjectural
supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one
instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this,
the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or
even attempted.[166]

Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from
beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a
corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as
your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see
nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and
mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a
mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever
will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a
necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the
face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for
destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its
stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you
will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And
look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent
it. The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, at
least in France, to be _systematically acted on by the masons_, in
order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down
by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants,)
is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take proper
care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few
sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks
swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from
ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you
may, and at _any_ cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its
stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at
the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it
loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the