420 THE OPENING OF 



msnts, in order to bring the interior of the town into soma 

 conformity with the " handsome fronts " of the hotels and 

 offices on the quay. 



Hotels and offices, and "handsome fronts" in general 

 they can be built in America or Australia built at any 

 moment, and in any height of splendour. But who shall give 

 us back, when once destroyed, the habitations of the French 

 chivalry and bourgeoisie, in the days of the Field of the Cloth 

 of Gold ? 



It is strange that no one seems to think of this ! What do 

 men travel for, in this Europe of ours ? Is it only to gamble 

 with French dies to drink coffee out of French porcelain 

 to dance to the beat of German drums, and sleep in the soft 

 air of Italy? Are the ball-room, the billiard -room, and the 

 Boulevard, the only attractions that win us into wandering, or 

 tempt us to repose ? And when the time is come, as come it 

 will, and that shortly, when the parsimony or lassitude 

 which, for the most part, are the only protectors of the rem- 

 nants of elder time, shall be scattered by the advance of 

 civilisation when all the monuments, preserved only because 

 it was too costly to destroy them, shall have been crushed by 

 the energies of the new world, will the proud nations of the 

 twentieth century, looking round on the plains of Europe, 

 disencumbered of their memorial marbles, will those nations 

 indeed stand up with no other feeling than one of triumph, 

 freed from the paralysis of precedent and the entanglement of 

 memory, to thank us, the fathers of progress, that no sadden- 

 ing shadows can any more trouble the enjoyments of the 

 future, no moments of reflection retard its activities ; and 

 that the new-born population of a world without a record and 

 without a ruin, may, in the fulness of ephemeral felicitj', dis- 

 pose itself to eat, and to drink, and to die ? 



Is this verily the end at which we aim, and will the mission 

 of the age have been then only accomplished, when the last 

 castle has fallen from our rocks, the last cloisters 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, 



