all soon be rewarded by
finding many of our simple workmen become cunning ones: and, with the
help of modern wealth and science, we may do things like Giotto's
campanile, instead of like our own rude cathedrals; but better than
Giotto's campanile, insomuch as we may adopt the pure and perfect forms
of the Northern Gothic, and work them out with the Italian refinement.
It is hardly possible at present to imagine what may be the splendor of
buildings designed in the forms of English and French thirteenth century
_surface_ Gothic, and wrought out with the refinement of Italian art in
the details, and with a deliberate resolution, since we cannot have
figure sculpture, to display in them the beauty of every flower and herb
of the English fields, each by each; doing as much for every tree that
roots itself in our rocks, and every blossom that drinks our summer
rains, as our ancestors did for the oak, the ivy, and the rose. Let this
be the object of our ambition, and let us begin to approach it, not
ambitiously, but in all humility, accepting help from the feeblest
hands; and the London of the nineteenth century may yet become as Venice
without her despotism, and as Florence without her dispeace.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] In the works of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites.

[47] Observe, I speak of these various principles as self-evident,
only under the present circumstances of the world, not as if they
had always been so; and I call them now self-evident, not merely
because they seem so to myself, but because they are felt to be so
likewise by all the men in whom I place most trust. But granting
that they are not so, then their very disputability proves the state
of infancy above alleged, as characteristic of the world. For I do
not suppose that any Christian reader will doubt the first great
truth, that whatever facts or laws are important to mankind, God has
made ascertainable by mankind; and that as the decision of all these
questions is of vital importance to the race, that decision must
have been long ago arrived at, unless they were still in a state of
childhood.

[48] I intended to have given a sketch in this place (above referred
to) of the probable results of the daguerreotype and calotype within
the next few years, in modifying the application of the engraver's
art, but I have not had time to complete the experiments necessary
to enable me to speak wi