cathedrals of old
religion would have stood--it is we who have dashed down the carved work
with axes and hammers, and bid the mountain-grass bloom upon the
pavement, and the sea-winds chant in the galleries.

75. You will perhaps think all this was somehow necessary for the
development of the human race. I cannot stay now to dispute that, though
I would willingly; but do you think it is _still_ necessary for that
development? Do you think that in this nineteenth century it is still
necessary for the European nations to turn all the places where their
principal art-treasures are into battle-fields? For that is what they
are doing even while I speak; the great firm of the world is managing
its business at this moment, just as it has done in past time. Imagine
what would be the thriving circumstances of a manufacturer of some
delicate produce--suppose glass, or china--in whose workshop and
exhibition rooms all the workmen and clerks began fighting at least once
a day, first blowing off the steam, and breaking all the machinery they
could reach; and then making fortresses of all the cupboards, and
attacking and defending the show-tables, the victorious party finally
throwing everything they could get hold of out of the window, by way of
showing their triumph, and the poor manufacturer picking up and putting
away at last a cup here and a handle there. A fine prosperous business
that would be, would it not? and yet that is precisely the way the great
manufacturing firm of the world carries on its business.

76. It has so arranged its political squabbles for the last six or seven
hundred years, that not one of them could be fought out but in the midst
of its most precious art; and it so arranges them to this day. For
example, if I were asked to lay my finger, in a map of the world, on the
spot of the world's surface which contained at this moment the most
singular concentration of art-teaching and art-treasure, I should lay it
on the name of the town of Verona. Other cities, indeed, contain more
works of carriageable art, but none contain so much of the glorious
local art, and of the springs and sources of art, which can by no means
be made subjects of package or porterage, nor, I grieve to say, of
salvage. Verona possesses, in the first place, not the largest, but the
most perfect and intelligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, still
unbroken in circle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch:
it contains mi