sp the hand of Joy!

HOUSE-BUILDING.

Because our architecture is bad, and because the architecture of our
forefathers in the Middle Ages was good, Mr. Ruskin and others seem to
think there is no salvation for us until we build in the same spirit as
they did. But that we should do so no more follows than that we should
envy those geological ages when the club-mosses were of the size of
forest-trees, and the frogs as big as oxen. There are many advantages to
be had in the forests of the Amazon and the interior of
Borneo,--inexhaustible fertility, endless water-power,--but no one
thinks of going there to live.

No age is without its attractions. There would be much to envy in the
Greek or the Roman life, if we could have them clear of drawbacks. Many
persons would be glad always to find Emerson in State Street, or
sauntering in the Mall, ready to talk with all comers,--or to hear the
latest words of Bancroft or Lowell from their own lips at the
cattle-show or the militia-muster. The Roman villas had some excellent
features,--the peristyle of statues, the cryptoporticus with its
midnight coolness and shade of a July noon, the mosaic floor, and the
glimmering frescoes of the ceiling. But we are content to get our poets
and historians in their books, and to take the pine-grove for our
noonday walk, or to wait till night has transformed the street into a
cryptoporticus nobler than Titus's. It is as history that these things
charm us; but the charm vanishes, when, even in fancy, we bring them
into contact with our actual lives. So it is with the medieval
architecture. It is true, in studying these wonderful fossils, a regret
for our present poverty, and a desire to appropriate something from the
ancient riches, will at times come over us. But this feeling, if it be
more than slight and transient, if it seriously influence our conduct,
is somewhat factitious or somewhat morbid. Let us be a little
disinterested in our admiration, and not, like children, cry for all we
see. We have our share: let us leave the dead theirs.

The fallacy lies in the supposition, that, besides all their advantages,
they had all ours too. It is with our mental as with our bodily
vision,--we see only what is remote; and the image to the mind depends,
not only upon seeing, but upon _not seeing_. In the distant star, all
foulness and gloom are lost, and only the pure splendor reaches us.
Inspired by Mr. Ruskin's eloquence, the neophyte sets forth