II. ARCHITECTURE 55

the feelings of romance endure within us, they are unerring,-they are as true to what is right and lovely as the needle to the north; and all that you have to do is to add to the enthusiastic sentiment, the majestic judgment-to mingle prudence and foresight with imagination and admiration, and you have the perfect human soul. But the great evil of these days is that we try to destroy the romantic feeling, instead of bridling and directing it. Mark what Young says of the men of the world:-

“They, who think nought so strong of the romance,

So rank knight-errant, as a real friend.”¹

And they are right. True friendship is romantic, to the men of the world-true affection is romantic-true religion is romantic; and if you were to ask me who of all powerful and popular writers in the cause of error had wrought most harm to their race, I should hesitate in reply whether to name Voltaire, or Byron, or the last most ingenious and most venomous of the degraded philosophers of Germany,² or rather Cervantes, for he cast scorn upon the holiest principles of humanity-he, of all men, most helped forward the terrible change in the soldiers of Europe, from the spirit of Bayard to the spirit of Bonaparte,* helped to change

* I mean no scandal against the present Emperor of the French, whose truth has, I believe, been as conspicuous in the late political negotiations, as his decision and prudence have been throughout the whole course of his government.3

¹ [Night Thoughts, viii. 283. Young was a poet much read by Ruskin; see the passage quoted in his home letters from Venice, Vol. X. p. 405 n.; he quotes the Night Thoughts again in Vol. XI. p. 176.]

² [Schopenhauer had just been introduced to the British public (by John Oxenford in the Westminister Review, April 1853), as the leader of a reaction against transcendental and theological philosophy.]

³ [The reference is to the negotiations in 1853 which set in train the forces that resulted in the Crimean War. Then, as now, it was the opinion of some observers that “behind the decorous curtain of the European concert Napoleon III. was busily weaving scheme after scheme of his own to fix his unsteady diadem upon his brow.” Ruskin, who was to be a warm supporter of the Crimean War and the French Alliance, had at this time a strong admiration for Napoleon-“a great Emperor,” he calls him (Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xviii. ad finem), and see p. 421, below. For a later and different view of the Emperor, see Fors Clavigera, Letters 10 and 31.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]