er preferences, and
dislikes, dependent on chance circumstances of association, and
limitations of sphere of labor: but, while I would fain now, if I could,
modify the applications, and chasten the extravagance of my writings,
let me also say of them that they were the expression of a delight in
the art of architecture which was too intense to be vitally deceived,
and of an inquiry too honest and eager to be without some useful result;
and I only wish I had now time, and strength and power of mind, to carry
on, more worthily, the main endeavor of my early work. That main
endeavor has been throughout to set forth the life of the individual
human spirit as modifying the application of the formal laws of
architecture, no less than of all other arts; and to show that the power
and advance of this art, even in conditions of formal nobleness, were
dependent on its just association with sculpture as a means of
expressing the beauty of natural forms: and I the more boldly ask your
permission to insist somewhat on this main meaning of my past work,
because there are many buildings now rising in the streets of London, as
in other cities of England, which appear to be designed in accordance
with this principle, and which are, I believe, more offensive to all who
thoughtfully concur with me in accepting the principle of Naturalism
than they are to the classical architect to whose modes of design they
are visibly antagonistic. These buildings, in which the mere cast of a
flower, or the realization of a vulgar face, carved without pleasure by
a workman who is only endeavoring to attract attention by novelty, and
then fastened on, or appearing to be fastened, as chance may dictate, to
an arch, or a pillar, or a wall, hold such relation to nobly
naturalistic architecture as common sign-painter's furniture landscapes
do to painting, or commonest wax-work to Greek sculpture; and the
feelings with which true naturalists regard such buildings of this class
are, as nearly as might be, what a painter would experience, if, having
contended earnestly against conventional schools, and having asserted
that Greek vase-painting and Egyptian wall-painting, and Mediaeval
glass-painting, though beautiful, all, in their place and way, were yet
subordinate arts, and culminated only in perfectly naturalistic work
such as Raphael's in fresco, and Titian's on canvas;--if, I say, a
painter, fixed in such faith in an entire, intellectual and manly truth,
and