78 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

that I have said to you this evening. You must be prepared, therefore, to hear my opinions attacked with all the virulence of established interest, and all the pertinacity of confirmed prejudice; you will hear them made the subjects of every species of satire and invective; but one kind of opposition to them you will never hear; you will never hear them met by quiet, steady, rational argument; for that is the one way in which they cannot be met. You will constantly hear me accused-you yourselves may be the first to accuse me-of presumption in speaking thus confidently against the established authority of ages. Presumption! Yes, if I had spoken on my own authority; but I have appealed to two incontrovertible and irrefragable witnesses-to the nature that is around you-to the reason that is within you. And if you are willing in this matter to take the voice of authority against that of nature and of reason, take it in other things also. Take it in religion, as you do in architecture. It is not by a Scottish audience-not by the descendants of the Reformer and the Covenanter-that I expected to be met with a refusal to believe that the world might possibly have been wrong for three hundred years, in their ways of carving stones and setting up of pillars, when they know that they were wrong for twelve hundred years, in their marking how the roads divided, that led to Hell and Heaven.

55. You must expect at first that there will be difficulties and inconsistencies in carrying out the new style; but they will soon be conquered if you attempt not too much at once. Do not be afraid of incongruities-do not think of unities of effect. Introduce your Gothic line by line and stone by stone; never mind mixing it with your present architecture; your existing houses will be none the worse for having little bits of better work fitted to them; build a porch, or point a window, if you can do nothing else; and remember that it is the glory of Gothic architecture that it can do anything.¹ Whatever you really and

¹ [Compare Stones of Venice, Vol. XI. p. 228.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]