r to what good purpose it was
said that the magnetism of iron was found not in bars, but in needles.
Together with this adversity of number comes the likelihood of many
among the more available intellects being held back and belated in the
crowd, or else prematurely outwearied; for it now needs both curious
fortune and vigorous effort to give to any, even the greatest, such
early positions of eminence and audience as may feed their force with
advantage; so that men spend their strength in opening circles, and
crying for place, and only come to speech of us with broken voices and
shortened time. Then follows the diminution of importance in peculiar
places and public edifices, as they engage national affection or vanity;
no single city can now take such queenly lead as that the pride of the
whole body of the people shall be involved in adorning her; the
buildings of London or Munich are not charged with the fullness of the
national heart as were the domes of Pisa and Florence:--their credit or
shame is metropolitan, not acropolitan; central at the best, not
dominant; and this is one of the chief modes in which the cessation of
superstition, so far as it has taken place, has been of evil consequence
to art, that the observance of local sanctities being abolished,
meanness and mistake are anywhere allowed of, and the thoughts and
wealth which were devoted and expended to good purpose in one place, are
now distracted and scattered to utter unavailableness.

20. In proportion to the increasing spirituality of religion, the
conception of worthiness in material offering ceases, and with it the
sense of beauty in the evidence of votive labor; machine-work is
substituted for handwork, as if the value of ornament consisted in the
mere multiplication of agreeable forms, instead of in the evidence of
human care and thought and love about the separate stones;
and--machine-work once tolerated--the eye itself soon loses its sense of
this very evidence, and no more perceives the difference between the
blind accuracy of the engine, and the bright, strange play of the living
stroke--a difference as great as between the form of a stone pillar and
a springing fountain. And on this blindness follow all errors and
abuses--hollowness and slightness of framework, speciousness of surface
ornament, concealed structure, imitated materials, and types of form
borrowed from things noble for things base; and all these abuses must be
resisted with the