whose separate stones are like mountain foundations, and yet numberless.
II. Now, the difference between these two orders of build-ing is not
merely that which there is in nature between things beautiful and
sublime. It is, also, the difference between what is derivative and
original in man's work; for whatever is in architecture fair or
beautiful, is imitated from natural forms; and what is not so derived,
but depends for its dignity upon arrangement and government received
from human mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and
receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed. All
building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or governing: and the
secrets of his success are his knowing what to gather, and how to rule.
These are the two great intellectual Lamps of Architecture; the one
consisting in a just and humble veneration for the works of God upon the
earth, and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those
works which has been vested in man.
III. Besides this expression of living authority and power, there is,
however, a sympathy in the forms of noble building, with what is most
sublime in natural things; and it is the governing Power directed by
this sympathy, whose operation I shall at present endeavor to trace,
abandoning all inquiry into the more abstract fields of invention: for
this latter faculty, and the questions of proportion and arrangement
connected with its discussion, can only be rightly examined in a general
view of all arts; but its sympathy, in architecture, with the vast
controlling powers of Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be
considered; and that with the more advantage, that it has, of late, been
little felt or regarded by architects. I have seen, in recent efforts,
much contest between two schools, one affecting originality, and the
other legality--many attempts at beauty of design--many ingenious
adaptations of construction; but I have never seen any aim at the
expression of abstract power; never any appearance of a consciousness
that, in this primal art of man, there is room for the marking of his
relations with the mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God; and
that those works themselves have been permitted, by their Master and
his, to receive an added glory from their association with earnest
efforts of human thought. In the edifices of Man there should be found
reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the
pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue--which gives
veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse
that agitates animal organization,--but of that also which reproves the
pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the
coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple
into the pale arch of the sky; for these, and other glories more than
these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thoughts, with the work
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