that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly
visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about
the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating
about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it. I felt also assured
that this law must be universal if it were conclusive; that it must
enable us to reject all foolish and base work, and to accept all noble
and wise work, without reference to style or national feeling; that it
must sanction the design of all truly great nations and times, Gothic or
Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all
foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European: and
that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural
inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to establish such a
law, in full belief that men are intended, without excessive difficulty,
and by use of their general common sense, to know good things from bad;
and that it is only because they will not be at the pains required for
the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries
and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped; the
reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the
foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were
looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture,
the choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form,
as I came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask
the reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first,
and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might
together make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though
perhaps the dullest way; and in these first following pages I have
therefore endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which
I shall rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and
simple enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of
architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them