Meynell, Alice: John Ruskin (Edinburgh , London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1901)

‘THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE.’ 1OI

have been importunate persuasion, as the thought has
crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain,
except that which is not made with hands. There is
something ominous in the light which has enabled us
to look back with disdain upon the ages among whose
lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile
when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new
reach of worldly science, and vigour of worldly effort—as
if we were again at the beginning of days. There is
thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The sun was
risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar.”
A reader with the world-pitying heart of the world of
our later day is dismayed at the severity and at the
calm of this universal threat. The visionary beauty of
the phrase has none of that grief which is heard in
the vaticination of another prophetic author, Coventry
Patmore, who yet menaced not the whole world but
one degenerate land, foretelling the day when-
“ A dim heroic nation, long since dead,
The foulness of her agony forgot ”—

England shall be remembered only by her then dead
language—“ the bird-voice and the blast of her omnilo-
quent tongue.”