Those
ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the
deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests of
the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper
worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of
Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson.
It is as the centralization and protectress of this sacred influence,
that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious
thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we
cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all
imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the
uncorrupted marble bears!--how many pages of doubtful record might we
not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition
of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:[163] there
are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and
Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is
mightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men have
thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength
wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of
Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt.
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