Page:Fineartasketchi01wyatgoog.djvu/80
Louis XIV.'s time was no bad reflection of the characteristics of Louis himself; at once pretentious, and incompetent to convey any other idea than that of inability to rise to the grandeur which he felt it his duty to aim at, even while unable to attain it.
In most of our modern architecture, up to within a comparatively recent period, men throughout Europe have seemed content to follow a sort of accidental system, based, not upon the study of principles, but upon the works of any fashionable of successful contemporary. A species of rule of thumb, varied only by the endeavour to do a little better than some immediate predecessor, seems to have ruled very generally, and it was not until periods of revolution had wakened men to a free assertion of their rights of intellectual judgment in all directions, that an effort was made to throw off the feeble shackles of an empty academic system.
With this free trade of thought sprang up a respect for many a long forgotten mind, whose existence beyond the pale of the academic curriculum had doomed his life and labours to all but oblivion. With new respect for such men came new respect for old systems, and with respect for old systems, for old monuments. The reaction from the destruction which took place in revolution was naturally increased care for all that revolution had spared.
More accurate ideas came to be current as to the ancient styles of architecture, as of all the other arts; and hence the materials for a widely extended and intelligent eclecticism were accumulated for the information of the student.
At present his only difficulty consists in finding his way over the vast tracts which the multiplicity of teachers, and the almost superabundance of teaching, spreads out before him. The only solution of the equation is to be sought in a long continued process of cancelment. Rival claims of styles and theories are only to be satisfactorily adjusted by a process of elimination which shall take from them all that is transient,