their
own imposts and tariffs like so many more or less dismantled fortresses,
but whose old feudal, municipal, or provincial walls still rose lofty
and thick on the soil comprehended within the national enclosure.

Nothing could be more irregular than this total aggregate thus formed;
it is not really an entire whole, but an agglomeration. No plan, good or
bad, has been followed out; the architecture is of ten different styles
and of ten different epochs. That of the dioceses is Roman and of
the fourth century; that of the seignories is Gothic and of the ninth
century; one structure dates from the Capetians, another from the
Valois, and each bears the character of its date. Because each has been
built for itself and with no regard to the others, adapted to an urgent
service according to the exigencies or requirements of time, place, and
circumstance; afterward, when circumstances changed, it had to adapt
itself to other services, and this constantly from century to century,
under Philippe le Bel, under Louis XI., under Francis I., under
Richelieu, under Louis XIV., through constant revision which never
consists of entire destruction, through a series of partial demolitions
and of partial reconstructions, in such a way as to maintain itself,
during the transformation, in conciliating, well or ill, new demands and
rooted habits, in reconciling the work of the passing generation with
the works of generations gone before.--The central seignory itself is
merely a donjon of the tenth century, a military tower of which the
enclosure has extended so as to embrace the entire territory, and of
which the other buildings, more or less incorporated with it, have
become prolongations.--A similar medley of constructions--disfigured by
such mutilations, adjuncts, and patches, a pell-mell so complicated
with such incongruous bits and fragments--can be comprehended only by
antiquaries and historians; ordinary spectators--the public--pronounce
it absurd; it finds no favor with that class of reasoners who, in social
architecture as in physical architecture, repudiate disorder, posit
theories, deduce consequences, and require that every work shall proceed
from the application of a simple idea.

And worse still, not only is good taste offended but, again, good
sense often murmurs. Practically, the edifice fails in its object, for,
erected for men to dwell in, it is in many places scarcely habitable.
Because it endures it is found superann