After consideration, I do not think I shall be wrong in calling it reverence. I mean by it, that respect for what is good, or sacred, or historical, or beautiful in itself, or in its associations, which will consider these attributes worthy of being balanced against momentary convenience or material gain. There is certainly a character of brute force in the disposition to knock down every thing that stands in your way; while there is a graceful ingenuity, and a power of genius, manifested in attaining your aim without violating respected feelings, A man of taste, while he traces a path through his ancestral woods, avoids felling some trees, whether distinguished for their beauty or hallowed by some family reminiscence.
Now the lowest scale on which this want of reverence is shown, is in the total disregard for our Art itself. I fear our people are not as yet well educated respecting it. They know that a picture or a statue is "a work of art;" they hardly know that a building may be, and ought to be, equally so. They can estimate, no doubt, greatness in size and .height, but the graces and delicacies, the beauties of relative proportions, and the elegance of ornamentation, they do not yet appreciate. It would hardly be too much to say that many persons, if brought to the spot in the city which I have just now described, for the purpose of maturing some gigantic enterprise of a profitable character, would not take into consideration the artistic value of the buildings before them, or on that account decide they should be spared. They would weigh only their market price, and compute whether the intended
