No age is without its attractions. There would be much to envy in the
Greek or the Roman life, if we could have them clear of drawbacks. Many
persons would be glad always to find Emerson in State Street, or
sauntering in the Mall, ready to talk with all comers,--or to hear the
latest words of Bancroft or Lowell from their own lips at the
cattle-show or the militia-muster. The Roman villas had some excellent
features,--the peristyle of statues, the cryptoporticus with its
midnight coolness and shade of a July noon, the mosaic floor, and the
glimmering frescoes of the ceiling. But we are content to get our poets
and historians in their books, and to take the pine-grove for our
noonday walk, or to wait till night has transformed the street into a
cryptoporticus nobler than Titus's. It is as history that these things
charm us; but the charm vanishes, when, even in fancy, we bring them
into contact with our actual lives. So it is with the medieval
architecture. It is true, in studying these wonderful fossils, a regret
for our present poverty, and a desire to appropriate something from the
ancient riches, will at times come over us. But this feeling, if it be
more than slight and transient, if it seriously influence our conduct,
is somewhat factitious or somewhat morbid.
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