Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it
not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such
work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay
stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held
sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as
they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, "See! this our
fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is
not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in
that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious
sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls
that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in
their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the
transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through
the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties,
and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the
sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable,
connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half
constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations:
it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real
light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not
until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted
with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have
been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of
death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the
natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much
as these possess, of language and of life.
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