1840 to
make room for the new "Hotel St. Nicholas"); the Gothic turret had not
vanished from the angle of the Place de la Pucelle, the Palais de
Justice remained in its gray antiquity, and the Norman houses still
lifted their fantastic ridges of gable along the busy quay (now fronted
by as formal a range of hotels and offices as that of the West Cliff of
Brighton). All was at unity with itself, and the city lay under its
guarding hills, one labyrinth of delight, its gray and fretted towers,
misty in their magnificence of height, letting the sky like blue enamel
through the foiled spaces of their crowns of open work; the walls and
gates of its countless churches wardered by saintly groups of solemn
statuary, clasped about by wandering stems of sculptured leafage, and
crowned by fretted niche and fairy pediment--meshed like gossamer with
inextricable tracery: many a quaint monument of past times standing to
tell its far-off tale in the place from which it has since perished--in
the midst of the throng and murmur of those shadowy streets--all grim
with jutting props of ebon woodwork, lightened only here and there by a
sunbeam glancing down from the scaly backs, and points, and pyramids of
the Norman roofs, or carried out of its narrow range by the gay progress
of some snowy cap or scarlet camisole. The painter's vocation was fixed
from that hour. The first effect upon his mind was irrepressible
enthusiasm, with a strong feeling of a new-born attachment to Art, in a
new world of exceeding interest. Previous impressions were presently
obliterated, and the old embankments of fancy gave way to the force of
overwhelming anticipations, forming another and a wider channel for its
future course.

145. From this time excursions were continually made to the continent,
and every corner of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy
ransacked for its fragments of carved stone. The enthusiasm of the
painter was greater than his ambition, and the strict limitation of his
aim to the rendering of architectural character permitted him to adopt a
simple and consistent method of execution, from which he has rarely
departed. It was adapted in the first instance to the necessities of the
moldering and mystic character of Northern Gothic; and though
impressions received afterwards in Italy, more especially at Venice,
have retained as strong a hold upon the painter's mind as those of his
earlier excursions, his methods of drawing have always be