That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict. Did
the cathedral of Avranches[167] belong to the mob who destroyed it, any
more than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its
foundation? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who
do violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always; it matters not
whether enraged, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sitting
in committees; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob,
and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building is
necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until
Central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex:
nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction. If
ever valid, certainly not now, when the place both of the past and
future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and
discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually
withdrawn from us; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged
travel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and
slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear
with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along the
iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the
fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour.
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