the career of the
architecture of Europe. They were the last evidences of any feeling
consistent with itself, and capable of directing the efforts of the
builder to the formation of anything worthy the name of a style or
school. From that time to this, no resuscitation of energy has taken
place, nor does any for the present appear possible. How long this
impossibility may last, and in what direction with regard to art in
general, as well as to our lifeless architecture, our immediate efforts
may most profitably be directed, are the questions I would endeavor
briefly to consider in the present chapter.

Sec. II. That modern science, with all its additions to the comforts
of life, and to the fields of rational contemplation, has placed the
existing races of mankind on a higher platform than any that preceded
them, none can doubt for an instant; and I believe the position in which
we find ourselves is somewhat analogous to that of thoughtful and
laborious youth succeeding a restless and heedless infancy. Not long
ago, it was said to me by one of the masters of modern science: "When
men invented the locomotive, the child was learning to go; when they
invented the telegraph, it was learning to speak." He looked forward to
the manhood of mankind, as assuredly the nobler in proportion to the
slowness of its developement. What might not be expected from the prime
and middle strength of the order of existence whose infancy had lasted
six thousand years? And, indeed, I think this the truest, as well as the
most cheering, view that we can take of the world's history. Little
progress has been made as yet. Base war, lying policy, thoughtless
cruelty, senseless improvidence,--all things which, in nations, are
analogous to the petulance, cunning, impatience, and carelessness of
infancy,--have been, up to this hour, as characteristic of mankind as
they were in the earliest periods; so that we must either be driven to
doubt of human progress at all, or look upon it as in its very earliest
stage. Whether the opportunity is to be permitted us to redeem the hours
that we have lost; whether He, in whose sight a thousand years are as
one day, has appointed us to be tried by the continued possession of the
strange powers with which He has lately endowed us; or whether the
periods of childhood and of probation are to cease together, and the
youth of mankind is to be one which shall prevail over death, and bloom
for ever in the midst of a new