in musical and decorative relations; how
every detail unnecessary for his purpose is refused; how those
necessary for his purpose are insisted upon, or even exaggerated, or
represented by singular artifice, when literal representation is
impossible; and how all this is done under the instinct and passion of
an inner commanding spirit which it is indeed impossible to imitate, but
possible, perhaps, to share.

291. Perhaps! Pardon me that I speak despondingly. For my own part, I
feel the force of mechanism and the fury of avaricious commerce to be at
present so irresistible, that I have seceded from the study not only of
architecture, but nearly of all art; and have given myself, as I would
in a besieged city, to seek the best modes of getting bread and water
for its multitudes, there remaining no question, it seems, to me, of
other than such grave business for the time. But there is, at least,
this ground for courage, if not for hope: As the evil spirits of avarice
and luxury are directly contrary to art, so, also, art is directly
contrary to them; and according to its force, expulsive of them and
medicinal against them; so that the establishment of such schools as I
have ventured to describe--whatever their immediate success or ill
success in the teaching of art--would yet be the directest method of
resistance to those conditions of evil among which our youth are cast at
the most critical period of their lives. We may not be able to produce
architecture, but, at the least, we shall resist vice. I do not know if
it has been observed that while Dante rightly connects architecture, as
the most permanent expression of the pride of humanity, whether just or
unjust, with the first cornice of Purgatory, he indicates its noble
function by engraving upon it, in perfect sculpture, the stories which
rebuke the errors and purify the purposes of noblest souls. In the
fulfillment of such function, literally and practically, here among men,
is the only real use of pride of noble architecture, and on its
acceptance or surrender of that function it depends whether, in future,
the cities of England melt into a ruin more confused and ghastly than
ever storm wasted or wolf inhabited, or purge and exalt themselves into
true habitations of men, whose walls shall be Safety, and whose gates
shall be Praise.

NOTE.--In the course of the discussion which followed this paper the
meeting was addressed by Prof. Donaldson, who alluded to the
arch