y begun like cancers on every
important piece of Gothic architecture in Christendom; the question is
only how much can yet be saved. All projects, all pursuits, having
reference to art, are at this moment of less importance than those which
are simply protective. There is time enough for everything else. Time
enough for teaching--time enough for criticising--time enough for
inventing. But time little enough for saving. Hereafter we can create,
but it is now only that we can preserve. By the exertion of great
national powers, and under the guidance of enlightened monarchs, we may
raise magnificent temples and gorgeous cities; we may furnish labor for
the idle, and interest for the ignorant. But the power neither of
emperors, nor queens, nor kingdoms, can ever print again upon the sands
of time the effaced footsteps of departed generations, or gather
together from the dust the stones which had been stamped with the spirit
of our ancestors.

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN OUR SCHOOLS.[57]

274. I suppose there is no man who, permitted to address, for the first
time, the Institute of British Architects, would not feel himself
abashed and restrained, doubtful of his claim to be heard by them, even
if he attempted only to describe what had come under his personal
observation, much more if on the occasion he thought it would be
expected of him to touch upon any of the general principles of the art
of architecture before its principal English masters.

But if any more than another should feel thus abashed, it is certainly
one who has first to ask their pardon for the petulance of boyish
expressions of partial thought; for ungraceful advocacy of principles
which needed no support from him, and discourteous blame of work of
which he had never felt the difficulty.

275. Yet, when I ask this pardon, gentlemen--and I do it sincerely and
in shame--it is not as desiring to retract anything in the general tenor
and scope of what I have hitherto tried to say. Permit me the pain, and
the apparent impertinence, of speaking for a moment of my own past work;
for it is necessary that what I am about to submit to you to-night
should be spoken in no disadvantageous connection with that; and yet
understood as spoken, in no discordance of purpose with that. Indeed
there is much in old work of mine which I could wish to put out of mind.
Reasonings, perhaps not in themselves false, but founded on
insufficient data and imperfect experience--eag