OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE 421

-in that very year, I say, the greatest pictures of the Venetian masters were rotting at Venice in the rain, for want of roof to cover them, with holes made by cannon shot through their canvass.¹

There is another fact, however, more curious than either of these, which will hereafter be connected with the history of the palace now in building; namely, that at the very period when Europe is congratulated on the invention of a new style of architecture, because fourteen acres of ground have been covered with glass, the greatest examples in existence of true and noble Christian architecture are being resolutely destroyed; and destroyed by the effects of the very interest which was beginning to be excited by them.

7. Under the firm and wise government of the third Napoleon,² France has entered on a new epoch of prosperity, one of the signs of which is a zealous care for the preservation of her noble public buildings. Under the influence of

of their examination of the contents of the former Exhibition. I say with surprise-not because those conclusions are in any wit false-but because, unless I had been told so, I should not have fancied them new. For instance, one of these important conclusions is said to be, that articles of foreign manufacture are in better taste than those of English. Did it verily need a Great Exhibition to assure us of this? Have we been a nation of travellers for the last forty years, and have we absolutely come to no conclusion respecting the manufactures of the Continent. When we land at Calais or Boulogne, and enter the chambers of an hotel, it requires no very acute intelligence to discover that the locks will not fasten, and the knives will not cut, that the curtains hang prettily, and the furniture is fashioned and arranged with an aim at agreeable effect, not found in the respectable but tasteless rooms of our English hostelries. And it might surely from these facts enter into the traveller’s mind, nor would his further inquiries fail to confirm the impression, that possibly Sheffield cutlery, and French embroidery might both be good of their kind; but that Bar Iron ought not in general to be purchased at Paris, nor the patterns of silks to be accepted from Yorkshire. Had, indeed, no such conclusion as this been arrived at before the year 1851?”]

¹ [See Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. pp. 40, 395).]

² [For other expressions of Ruskin’s admiration for Napoleon III., see above, Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 32, p. 55 n. He approved even of the coup d’ état of December 2, 1851, as appears from the following letter to his father:-

“VENICE, December 23 [1851].-... I quite agree with you in rejoicing at L. Napoleon’s piece of despotism, and am only sorry he let Thiers go-the greatest mischief-maker of the set. ... I am surprised to hear the Austrians here expressing fear of ‘war with France in three months.’ They seem to think Napoleon cannot keep his place except by war. I begin, however, to pay little attention to anybody’s anticipations, and never to expect anything that is expected.”]

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