CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 43

it may not be necessarily the interest of religion to admit the service of the arts, the arts will never flourish until they have been primarily devoted to that service-devoted,¹ both by architect and employer; by the one in scrupulous, earnest, affectionate design; by the other in expenditure at least more frank, at least less calculating, than that which he would admit in the indulgence of his own private feelings. Let this principle be but once fairly acknowledged among us; and however it may be chilled and repressed in practice, however feeble may be its real influence, however the sacredness of it may be diminished by counter-workings of vanity and self-interest, yet its mere acknowledgment would bring a reward; and with our present accumulation of means and of intellect, there would be such an impulse and vitality given to art as it has not felt since the thirteenth century. And I do not assert this as other than a natural consequence: I should, indeed, expect a larger measure of every great and spiritual faculty to be always given where those faculties had been wisely and religiously employed; but the impulse to which I refer, would be, humanly speaking, certain; and would naturally result from obedience to the two great conditions enforced by the Spirit of Sacrifice, first, that we should in everything do our best; and, secondly, that we should consider increase of apparent labour as an increase of beauty in the building. A few practical deductions from these two conditions, and I have done.

§ 10. For the first: it is alone enough to secure success, and it is for want of observing it that we continually fail. We are none of us so good architects² as to be able to work habitually beneath our strength; and yet there is not a building that I know of, lately raised, wherein it is not sufficiently evident that neither architect nor builder has done his best.

¹ [The MS. reads thus :-

“Devoted, not merely directed, not purchased as if for any other purpose, and coldly set to labour with the mason and bricklayer, on the same terms; not offered at the lowest possible price, in the smallest possible quantity, not mercenarily dealt out on the one hand, or parsimoniously bargained for on the other; but devoted, both by architect...”]

² [The MS. inserts, “or sculptors either.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]