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[M.75L] [M.75] St Marks Place. 75
Chance. It is, I suppose, an architect’s chief sorrow that his best designs
Its influence must depend for their accomplishment upon accident and that
on Architects of his best skill and patience can be of little avail unless
they without the concurrence of national caprice: Happy, if
during his lifetime, he be permitted to see the completion
of his designs: and not be not compelled to depute their
execution on his death bed to ignorance or envy - he yet leaves a work dependent
for its effect and appreciation upon associations over which
he has no control: (The painter has nothing to dread but
the common foes of all greatness - neglect or misrepresentation)
and the changed humour of a generation may at any time
destroy by juxtaposition of incongruous edifices, what perhaps
it is only too indolent or too poor altogether to sweep away;
His sorrow should perhaps change into humiliation, when he
remembers that of the effects produced in this kind by the
works even of the greatest men, the noblest have commonly
been fortuitous: and that there are few very impressive
edifices whose greatest beauty has not been as unintentional
as the grace of a child’s motion; or the lustre of a passing wave
and that Men converse, commonly - to the best purpose - when
they converse little to their own knowledge, as the rain does in the rainbow - unconscious
alike of the light it reflects and the Sign it bears each
on his own path
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]