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faded from our valleys, the last streets, in which the dead have dwelt, been effaced from our cities, and regenerated society is left in luxurious possession of towns composed only of bright saloons, overlooking gay parterres? If this be indeed our end, yet why must it be so laboriously accomplished? Are there no new countries on the earth, as yet uncrowned by Thorns of cathedral spires, untenanted by the consciousness of a past? Must this little Europe-this corner of our globe, gilded with the blood of old battles, and grey with the temples of old pieties-this narrow piece of the world’s pavement, worn down by so many pilgrims’ feet, be utterly swept and garnished for the masque of the Future? Is America not wide enough for the elasticities of our humanity? Asia not rich enough for its pride? or among the quiet meadow-lands and solitary hills of the old land, is there not yet room enough for the spreadings of power, or the indulgences of magnificence, without founding all glory upon ruin, and prefacing all progress with obliteration?

17. We must answer these questions speedily, or we answer them in vain. The peculiar character of the evil which is being wrought by this age is its utter irreparableness. Its newly formed schools of art, its extending galleries, and well-ordered museums will assuredly bear some fruit in time, and give once more to the popular mind the power to discern what is great, and the disposition to protect what is precious. But it will be too late. We shall wander through our palaces of crystal, gazing sadly on copies of pictures torn by cannon-shot, and on casts of sculpture dashed to pieces long ago. We shall gradually learn to distinguish originality and sincerity from the decrepitudes of imitation and palsies of repetition; but it will be only in hopelessness to recognize the truth, that architecture and painting can be “restored” when the dead can be raised,-and not till then.

18. Something might yet be done, if it were but possible thoroughly to awaken and alarm the men whose studies of

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