418 THE OPENING OF 



given many years, in many cities, to the study of Gothic archi- 

 tecture ; and of all that I know, or knew, the entrance to the 

 north transept of Rouen Cathedral was, on the whole, the most 

 beautiful beautiful, not only as an elaborate and faultless 

 work of the finest time of Gothic art, but yet more beautiful 

 in the partial, though not dangerous, decay which had touched 

 its pinnacles with pensive colouring, and softened its severer 

 lines with unexpected change, and delicate fracture, like sweet 

 breaks in a distant music. The upper part of it has been al- 

 ready restored to the white accuracies of novelty ; the lower 

 pinnacles, which flanked its approach, far more exquisite in 

 their partial ruin than the loveliest remains of our English 

 abbeys, have been entirely destroyed, and rebuilt in rough 

 blocks, now in process of sculpture. This restoration, so far 

 as it has gone, has been executed by peculiarly skilful work- 

 men ; it is an unusually favorable example of restoration, espe- 

 cially in the care which has been taken to preserve intact the 

 exquisite, and hitherto almost uninjured sculptures which fill 

 the quatrefoils of the tracery above the arch. But I happened 

 myself to have made, five years ago, detailed drawings of the 

 buttress decorations on the right and left of this tracery, 

 which are part of the work that has been completely restored. 

 And I found the restorations as inaccurate as they were un- 

 necessary. 



If this is the case in a most favourable instance, in that of a 

 well-known monument, highly esteemed by every antiquary in 

 France, what, during the progress of the now almost universal 

 repairs, is likely to become of architecture which is unwatched 

 and despised ? 



Despised ! and more than despised even hated ! It is a 

 sad truth, that there is something in the solemn aspect of an- 

 cient architecture which, in rebuking frivolity and chastening 

 gaiety, has become at this time literally repulsive to a large 

 majority of the population of Europe. Examine the direction 

 which is taken by all the influences of fortune and of fancy, 

 wherever they concern themselves with art, and it will be 

 found that the real, earnest effort of the upper classes of Eu- 

 ropean society is to make every place in the world as much 



