This gradual
completion, as happened to the mediaeval monuments of Europe, could be
extended through many generations, which would thus be linked with
one another in a common object of artistic and patriotic pride
gradually growing up among them, as a national monument, with its
foundations deeply laid in a unity of feeling and those desirable
associations of love and veneration which in older civilizations so
delightfully harmonize the past with the present. Each epoch of
artists would be instructed by the skill of its predecessor, and
stimulated to connect its name permanently with so glorious a shrine.
Wealth, as in the days of democratic Greece and Italy, would be
lavished upon the completion of a temple of art destined to endure as
long as material can defy time, a monument of the people's taste and
munificence. There would be born among them the spirit of those
Athenians who said to Phidias, when he asked if he should use ivory
or marble for the statue of their protecting goddess, "Use that
material which is most _worthy_ of our city."
Until recently, no attention has been paid, even in Europe, to
historical sequence and special motives in the arrangement of
galleries.
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