ity of intellect casting off all
established rules, the revival of the old Greek republics, democracy
asserting its claim against absolute power; nothing settled, nothing at
rest, but motion in every direction,--science combating faith, faith
spurning reason, humanity arrogating divinity, the confusion of races,
Babel towers of vanity and pride in the new projected enterprises,
Christian nations embroiled in constant wars, gold and silver set up as
idols, the rise of new powers in the shapes of new industries and new
inventions, commerce filling the world with wealth, armies contending
for rights as well as for the aggrandizement of monarchies: was there
ever such a simmering and boiling and fermenting period of activities
since the world began? In such a wild and tumultuous agitation of
passions and interests and ideas, how could Art reappear either in the
classic severity of Greek temples or the hoary grandeur of Mediaeval
cathedrals? In this jumble we look for new creations, but no creations
in art appear, only fantastic imitations. There is no creation except in
a new field, that of science and mechanical inventions,--where there is
the most extraordinary and astonishing development of human genius ever
seen on earth, but "of the earth earthy," aiming at material good.
Architecture itself is turned into great feats of engineering. It does
not span the apsis of a church; it spans rivers and valleys. The church,
indeed, passes out of mind, if not out of sight, in the new material
age, in the multiplication of bridges and gigantic reservoirs,--old Rome
brought back again in its luxuries.

And yet the exactness of science and the severity of criticism--begun
fifty years ago, in the verification of principles--produce a better
taste. Architects have sought to revive the purest forms of both Gothic
and Grecian. If they could not create a new style, they would imitate
the old: as in philosophy, they would go round in the old circles. As
science revives the atoms of Democritus, so art would reproduce the
ideas of Phidias and Vitruvius, and even the poetry and sanctity of the
Middle Ages. Within fifty years Christendom has been covered with Gothic
churches, some of which are as beautiful as those built by Freemasons.
The cathedrals have been copied rigidly, even for village churches. The
Parthenon reappears in the Madeleine. We no longer see, as in the
eighteenth century, Gothic spires on Roman basilicas, or Grecian
porticos