AN OCTOBER ABROAD 155 



of our commercial or political palaces, where every- 

 thing that smacks of life or nature is studiously ex- 

 cluded under the necessity of making the building 

 fire- proof. 



I was not less pleased with the higher ornamental 

 architecture, — the old churches and cathedrals, — 

 which appealed to me in a way architecture had 

 never before done. In fact, I found that I had 

 never seen architecture before, — a building with 

 genius and power in it, and that one could look at 

 with the eye of the imagination. Not mechanics 

 merely, but poets, had wrought and planned here, 

 and the granite was tender with human qualities. 

 The plants and weeds growing in the niches and 

 hollows of the walls, the rooks and martins and 

 jackdaws inhabiting the towers and breeding about 

 the eaves, are but types of the feelings and emotions 

 of the human heart that flit and hover over these old 

 piles, and find affectionate lodgment in them. 



Time, of course, has done a great deal for this 

 old architecture. Nature has taken it lovingly to 

 herself, has set her seal upon it, and adopted it into 

 her system. Just the foil which beauty — espe- 

 cially the crystallic beauty of architecture — needs 

 has been given by this hazy, mellowing atmosphere. 

 As the grace and suggestiveness of all objects are 

 enhanced by a fall of snow, — forest, fence, hive, 

 shed, knoll, rock, tree, all being laid under the 

 same white enchantment, — so time has wrought in 

 softening and toning down this old religious archi- 

 tecture, and bringing it into harmony with nature. 



