Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/110

 perhaps, rather effect than cause, but it was, at any rate, characteristic. He was distracted from the Modern Painters by the keen interest in architecture which produced the Stones of Venice and the Seven Lamps. The study gave prominence to a new point of view. In his early work he might pass for a believer in progress. The 'love of nature' is, in some sense, a product of the last century or two; and the modern painters of whom he wrote, with Turner at their head, were, he thought, incomparably superior to Claude or Salvator. But in architecture, he saw decay instead of progress. The ancient buildings, whose glory he set forth, were being recklessly destroyed or 'restored,' and the art of building itself was a thing of the past. Great architecture presupposes continuous traditions and a certain social harmony. The mediæval cathedrals were the product of a spontaneous instinct, in which each man took his part as naturally as the bee in the honeycomb, and thought as little of his separate interests. We have lost the power because society has been disintegrated; instead of a common ideal, we have a dozen conflicting fashions, and depend upon self-seeking architects, and greedy contractors and demoralised workmen. Whatever