1 76 Contemporary Evolution. 



to depreciate the object of admiration of the period 

 immediately preceding. We can view with more or less 

 admiration the costume of a century past, but the fashion 

 of some five or ten years ago seems to us more or less 

 absurd, as well as distasteful. Thus each past activity 

 has to wait for its due appreciation, until the period of 

 unjust depreciation which has followed it has passed by. 



The architectural glories of Northern Europe, those 

 mediaeval structures, at once (from their beauty and true 

 principles of construction) poems and scientific treatises 

 in stone, have only of late years ceased to be despised as 

 barbarous. Now, universally appreciated, fragments of 

 ruins which happy accident has saved from destruction, 

 are guarded with jealous care, and thoughtfully studied 

 as revelations of a skill and refinement which have passed 

 from amongst us. 



As it is now with the material constructions of the 

 Middle Ages, so, we may find reason to think, will it be 

 to a yet greater extent with the far more marvellous 

 intellectual fabrics those ages have bequeathed us. The 

 soaring lightness of such lofty arches as those of the choir 

 of Le Mans awake our admiration by reason of their 

 beauty; but our wonder is yet more exercised by the 

 solidity of those slender piers and towering buttresses, 

 which, arch over arch, hold securely poised so vast a 

 roof of stone at such an airy height. Similarly, the 

 wonderful acuteness, the delicacy and subtlety of dis- 



