I. ARCHITECTURE 37

was certainly built in a species of aspiration; but I do not suppose that any one here will think it was a religious one. “Go to now. Let us build a tower whose top may reach unto heaven.”¹ From that day to this, whenever men have become skilful architects at all, there has been a tendency in them to build high; not in any religious feeling, but in mere exuberance of spirit and power-as they dance or sing-with a certain mingling of vanity-like the feeling in which a child builds a tower of cards; and, in nobler instances, with also a strong sense of, and delight in the majesty, height, and strength of the building itself, such as we have in that of a lofty tree or a peaked mountain. Add to this instinct the frequent necessity of points of elevation for watchtowers, or of points of offence, as in towers built on the ramparts of cities, and, finally, the need of elevations for the transmission of sound, as in the Turkish minaret and Christian belfry, and you have, I think, a sufficient explanation of the tower-building of the world in general. Look through your Bibles only, and collect the various expressions with reference to tower-building there, and you will have a very complete idea of the spirit in which it is for the most part undertaken. You begin with

¹ [Genesis xi. 4.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]