em. Gravitation is less
quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sun
and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake
and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any
action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the
question "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably be
commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labour it
concentrates or whose interest it concerns.

This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art,
above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most
common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of
men, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations.
And, taking into account also what we have before so often observed of
Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life,
and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in
comparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might
beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action
dependent on far more severe laws than theirs: that the license which
they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by
her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with all
that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own
majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's social
happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of
experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except
when it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely
authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social
relations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both
capable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needing
more enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but
of the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks
more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in
watching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if,
amidst the counter-evidence of success attending opposite accidents of
character and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and
indisputably drawn, it is this; that the architecture of a nation is
great only when it is as universal and as established as its language;
and when provincial differences of style are nothing mo