d be totally out of place and
contemptible beside the great temple-palace of Karnak. No less would the
granite works of Egypt be considered monuments of ill-directed labor if
placed in the palace of the gay and luxurious Arab fatalist, to whom the
present was everything, and with whom the enjoyment of the passing hour
was all in all.'

Still another idea, grander than any aspiration of Saracen or Egyptian,
we find, when Europe, slowly shaking off the lethargy of the Dark Ages,
was developing the idea of religion. It was material, however, as well
as spiritual. God was glorified, not only by repentance or holiness of
life, but also by the devotion of hand and heart and fortune to His
earthly temples and the jewelled shrines of His saints. All that impetus
which is now given to religion itself, was turned into the channels of
religious art. And yet, temporally speaking, how grand were the results!
Slowly but surely arose those vast and wonderful cathedrals, springing
lightly out of the quaintly gabled streets, with their richly wrought
transepts and their pinnacled spires. Not trailing along the ground like
the Greek temple or the Arab mosque--of the earth, earthy--but leading
the soul heavenward with their upward flow of harmony. Vast Bibles of
stone, bearing on lofty facade and on buttressed flank the sculptured
details of Holy Writ--silent lessons, but not lost upon the rude though
reverent men who dwelt within their shadow. It is sad to think that
there can never be any more cathedrals. For they _grew_ in those times:
now they would have to be built.

But we are following a tangent. Our idea is, that architecture, to be
good, must be appropriate--expressive of the spirit of the age. It
should be an epitome of the nation's progress, an abstract of its
guiding principles, condensed, as it were, and crystallized into an art.
Of what use would a garment be, though ever so elaborate, if it did not
fit? Just so our houses, which are but a broader kind of clothing,
should be fitted to their purpose, or they will never yield us any
pleasure.

Suppose that, in searching the ruins of ancient Greece, we found nothing
but pusillanimous, sham imitations of Egyptian art. Would we not despise
such a paltry method of making matter serve for mind--such a miserable
make-shift to save the labor of invention? And yet it is this same
servile imitation of classical and foreign models that is fettering the
progress of art in America. Ins