ucate either yourselves to the feeling, or your builders to the doing,
of what is truly great.

3. Well, but, you will answer, you cannot feel interested in
architecture: you do not care about it, and _cannot_ care about it. I
know you cannot. About such architecture as is built nowadays, no mortal
ever did or could care. You do not feel interested in _hearing_ the same
thing over and over again;--why do you suppose you can feel interested
in _seeing_ the same thing over and over again, were that thing even the
best and most beautiful in the world? Now, you all know the kind of
window which you usually build in Edinburgh: here is an example of the
head of one (_fig._ 1), a massy lintel of a single stone, laid across
from side to side, with bold square-cut jambs--in fact, the simplest
form it is possible to build. It is by no means a bad form; on the
contrary, it is very manly and vigorous, and has a certain dignity in
its utter refusal of ornament. But I cannot say it is entertaining. How
many windows precisely of this form do you suppose there are in the New
Town of Edinburgh? I have not counted them all through the town, but I
counted them this morning along this very Queen Street, in which your
Hall is; and on the one side of that street, there are of these windows,
absolutely similar to this example, and altogether devoid of any relief
by decoration, six hundred and seventy-eight.[1] And your decorations
are just as monotonous as your simplicities. How many Corinthian and
Doric columns do you think there are in your banks, and post-offices,
institutions, and I know not what else, one exactly like another?--and
yet you expect to be interested! Nay, but, you will answer me again, we
see sunrises and sunsets, and violets and roses, over and over again,
and we do not tire of _them_. What! did you ever see one sunrise like
another? does not God vary His clouds for you every morning and every
night? though, indeed, there is enough in the disappearing and appearing
of the great orb above the rolling of the world, to interest all of us,
one would think, for as many times as we shall see it; and yet the
aspect of it is changed for us daily. You see violets and roses often,
and are not tired of them. True! but you did not often see two roses
alike, or, if you did, you took care not to put them beside each other
in the same nosegay, for fear your nosegay should be uninteresting; and
yet you think you can put 150,000 square wind