Not
so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, that
we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her
sculpture than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. And
if indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy
in the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strength
to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are two
duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is
impossible to overrate: the first, to render the architecture of the
day, historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of
inheritances, that of past ages.
It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly be
said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture; for it is in becoming
memorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil and
domestic buildings; and this partly as they are, with such a view,
built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations are
consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning.
As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a certain
limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the
hearts, of men; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people
when their houses are built to last for one generation only.
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