224 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron walls of Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson.¹

§ 2. It is as the centralisation and protectress of this sacred influence, that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her.² How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!-how many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:³ there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, that we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture than even⁴ from her sweet singers or soldier historians.⁵ And if indeed there be

¹ [The present Fort de Joux-erected in 1877 after the blowing up by dynamite of the old one-commands the pass of La Cluse, on the line from Pontarlier to Neuchâtel. The old fort was the prison (1803) of Toussaint l’Ouverture, when carried off from St. Domingo by command of Napoleon. For the Castle of Granson (Grandson)-now a cigar factory-and its interest for Ruskin, see his Poems, Vol. II. p. 433 of this edition.]

² [The MS. adds, “remember, that is to say, with the full revivifying sense of the past.”]

³ [Genesis xi. 4: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”]

⁴ [So in all the editions; but Ruskin may have written “ever.”]

⁵ [The MS. thus continues:-

“The desire for an individual, personal immortality in men’s memories is perhaps one of the most generally developed forms of human pride. Men sacrifice their lives to it continually. But the desire for a national immortality is with us as vague as the more selfish passion is distinct. Perhaps men doubt the liability of a nation to death, but if it have no architecture, it may be said to die daily. And if indeed...”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]