Morning journal and courier., 1885-05-19

The Ol0 StaGe E1OuSS VII AAAO NA
 Ruskin,s Opinion On The Removal
 or old Houses-The old South Church
 In Boston.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Permit me- in view of the differences of opinion in regard to the removal or repairing of the old State House, which is such 8 marked and interesting feature in the picture of our beautiful Green, and around which cluster so many historic associations, to quote for the perusal of your thoughtful readers the pertinent words of John Ruskin in his popular book, "Seven Lamps of Architec- ture" They are from the chapter called ''The Lamp of Memory" and follow para graph in which he gives the advice, 'sWatch it as best you may and at any cost from every influence of dilapidation.
 And then, 'sthe most eloquent and original of all writers upon art" Gas the Christian Cynosure calls Ruskin) went on to say: "It is no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past times or not. We have no right what They belong partly to those who built them and partly to the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their right in them; that which they labored for, the praise of achievement or the ex- pression of religious feeling or. whatsoever else it might be which in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built we are at liberty to throw down; but ufranrfh and wealth and life to accomplish their right over does not pass away with their death; still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in only. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be 8 subject of sorrow or 0 cause of injury to millions, that we have consulted our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to dispense with That sorrow, that loss we have no right to inflict. Did the cathedral of Avranches belong to the mob who destroyed
 it, any more than it did to us who walk in sorrow to and fro over it's foundationa Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who do violence to 1t. For 8 mob it is, and must be always, it matters not whether enraged, or in deliberate folly, whether countless, or sitting in committees, the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, and architecture is always de- stroyed causelessly. A fair building IS necessarily worth the ground it stands up on, and will be so until Central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex; nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for it's destruction. If ever val i'd. certainly not now when the place, both of the past and future, is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn from us; thousands -1,o0 int fhair necessarily Tr0I0nOad trav- ell were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and slumbering field, more eHec- tual than known or confessed, now bear with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertions, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is con centrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like green sea with narrow bridges and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the city gates. The only intiu- ence that can in anywise there take the place of the woods and fields is the power of an cient architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, or {. of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened quay. The pride of city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but remember that there will surely be some within the cir Cu1C or Gn6 ulSQulcLoA Wd1lS WA0 WOu1O dSA for some other spots than these wherein to walk, fer some other forms to meet their sight familiarly. Like him who sat so often where the sun struck from the west, to watch the lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his hosts, wEo could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of ths dark streets of Verona"
 Mr. Editor, if the people of New Haven share in Mr. Ruskin's reverence for edifces already erected and used, they will no more allow it to be removed than the Bostonians will permit the destruction of the historic Old South church. I well remember how many who dwelt in New Haven felt, at the time of the great Boston fife in reference to the safety of that edifce, and how grateful l was myself also that the waves of that awful confagration were stayed before that old landmark was destroyed. There are some who feel almost as strongly in refer ence to the taking away of our historic State House-the Parthenon eff our Green-hum- ble indeed beside the Athenian structure, but nevertheless an ediice of no mean ap- pearance as to architecture, needing only to be properly repaired that it may last to tell the children of another century that New Haven was once capital city in this com monwealth, an important fact which other wise they might be sloY to comprehend or remember Yours for restoration,
 PHEBE A. HANAFoRD,
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