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 forget. It is the greatest sign of defeat to submit ourselves to the dictation of nature, and not to assert ourselves to be nature's superior. The presence, therefore, of a great building is an unending source of study and of suggestiveness. There is no possibility—as any one who has attempted to study and become intimate with a great building knows—of ever getting to the end of the problems which it raises. Every time you go into it, it suggests a new question; your eye falls upon something which shows traces of man's activity, which suggests the working of another mind, and leads on to a variety of interesting problems. A great building is full of the traces of the activity of man's intelligence in the past; and to find out what were the primary ideas at the bottom of it, and see how men applied them and worked them out and extended them, and with what freedom their minds played round that particular structure, is one of the most stimulating studies which I could commend to anybody.

Begin with the church nearest to you and find out its history, who built it, why he built it, why it was changed. Almost all our old parish churches show signs, if we look closely enough, that they were originally built in Norman times. They underwent many changes; they received additions very often in the time when the decorative style prevailed, and subsequently they were remodelled during the prevalence of the perpendicular style. You can follow the record of the church itself. Ask yourself the question, "Who could have built this church? Some great lord I suppose in Norman times. Why were all these additions made?"