As a climax to his inconsistency and his abnormal ways of thinking, he concludes his _Seven Lamps of Architecture_ with a most ominous paragraph, implying that the time is at hand when no architecture of any kind will be wanted: man and his works will be both swept away from the face of the earth. How, with this impression on his mind, could he have the heart to tell us to build for posterity? Will it be a commentary on the Apocalypse that we shall next receive from the pen of Mr Ruskin? PORTUGUESE POLITICS. The dramatic and singular revolution of which Portugal has recently been the theatre, the strange fluctuations and ultimate success of Marshal Saldanha's insurrection, the narrow escape of Donna Maria from at least a temporary expulsion from her dominions, have attracted in this country more attention than is usually bestowed upon the oft-recurring convulsions of the Peninsula. Busy as the present year has been, and abounding in events of exciting interest nearer home, the English public has yet found time to deplore the anarchy to which Portugal is a prey, and to marvel once more, as it many times before has marvelled, at the tardy realisation of those brilliant promises of order, prosperity, and good government, so long held out to the two Peninsular nations by the promoters of the Quadruple Alliance. The statesmen who, for nearly a score of years, have assiduously guided Portugal and Spain in the seductive paths of modern Liberalism, can hardly feel much gratification at the results of their well-intended but most unprosperous endeavours. It is difficult to imagine them contemplating with pride and exultation, or even without a certain degree of self-reproach, the fruits of their officious exertions. Repudiating partisan views of Peninsular politics, putting persons entirely out of the question, declaring our absolute indifference as to who occupies the thrones of Spain and Portugal, so long as those countries are well-governed, casting no imputations upon the motives of those foreign governments and statesmen who were chiefly instrumental in bringing about the present state of things south of the Pyrenees, we would look only to facts, and crave an honest answer to a plain question. The question is this: After the lapse of seventeen years, what is the condition of the two nations upon which have been conferred, at grievous expense of blood and treasure, the much vaunted blessings of rulers nominally Liberal, and professedly patriotic? For the present we will confine this inquiry to Portugal, for the reason that the War of Succession terminated in that country when it was but beginning in the neighbouring kingdom, since which time the vanquished party, unlike the Carlists in Spain, have uniformly abstained--with the single exception of the rising in 1846-7--from armed aggression, and have observed a patient and peaceful policy. So that the Portuguese Liberals have had seventeen years' fair trial of their governing