Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.

No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest.

But if anyone supposes that there was no commercial fraud in the Middle Ages, let him study the commercial legislation of England for that period, and his mind will be satisfied, if he has a mind to be satisfied and not only a fancy to run away with him.

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.

America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.

Canada is said to have got its name from the two Spanish words aca and nada, signifying 'there is nothing here.'