Of all the sins of the nineteenth century, the one which most militates against its attainment of excellence in art is its impatience. A work has been no sooner decided on, than there is a clamour for its completion. Our cathedrals were for the most part reared in far other times, and are therefore admirable. Growing with the stately, deliberate increase of the ponderous oak, they speak of days when art was original, sincere, patient, and therefore capable of great deeds; original, not in extravagance or eccentricity, but in the realization of the natural development of style, advancing from grace to grace, from the perfection of solidity to the perfection of adornment, by an unforced growth; sincere, in its confidence of its own capacity for fulfilling its appointed end, in its grasp of the possibilities in its materials, in its choice of the true, rather than the easy, method of working; and patient, finally, in its contentment to do in each age a little solidly and well, rather than a great deal indifferently, in its aim at artistic perfection in preference to material completeness. Thus it is that none of our cathedrals are the work of one age, save those of Salisbury and London, and even they have details which they owe to succeeding times. The above words are not intended to imply that our mediaeval builders made no mistakes. The brief review of some of their work will show us proof to the contrary; but the mistakes were rare exceptions. If, for instance, a captious critic turns to Peterborough, and points us to the defective foundations, which have recently required the rebuilding of the central tower, and the supposed necessity of reconstructing the west front, all that the case will prove is that our great monastic architects' work was not always absolutely eternal. "So there was jerry-building in those days too!" someone exclaims, with a note of triumph at the dragging down of the great ideals of the past to the level of the paltriness of the present. If such be the case, we reply, there were indeed giants in those days, the very "jerry building" of which rides out the storms of well-nigh seven centuries before revealing any fatal weaknesses.