Of course, artistic restorations are often carried too far; a certain age may be arbitrarily assumed as the canon of perfection, and everything else destroyed to make way for it. There are few ages which can lay claim to such pre-eminence as the age of Pericles; yet even in this case, were the mediæval additions really beautiful, we should, of course, hesitate to disturb them. But the Venetian tower, though a picturesque addition to the rock when seen from a distance, so much so, that I felt its loss when I saw the Acropolis again, had no claim to architectural beauty; it was set up in a place sacred to greater associations, and besides there was every reasonable prospect that its removal would subserve historical ends of far more importance than the Venetian occupation of the Acropolis. A few inscriptions of the date of Pericles, containing treaties or other such public matter, would, in my opinion, have perfectly justified its removal, even though it did signify a victory of Christians over Turks. In any case, it seems to me unfair that if every generation is to express its knowledge by material results, we should not be permitted to record our conviction that old Greek art or old Greek history is far greater and nobler than either Turkish or Venetian history, and to testify this opinion by making their monuments give way to it. This is the mark of _our_ generation on the earth. Thus the eighteenth century was, no doubt, a most important time in the history even of art, but where noble thirteenth century churches have been dressed up and loaded with eighteenth century additions, I cannot think the historical value of these additions, as evidence of the taste or the history of their age, counterbalances their artistic mischievousness, and I sympathize with the nations who take them away. Of course, this principle may be overdriven, and has been often abused. Against such abuses the remarks of the great critic to whom I refer are a very salutary protest. But that any barbarous or unsightly deforming of great artistic monuments is to be protected on historical grounds—this is a principle of which neither his genius nor his sneers will convince me. As for the charge of pedantry, no charge is more easily made, but no charge is more easily retorted.