'When I walk through the enormous streets and
boulevards of new Paris,' says a well-known writer, 'I feel appalled by
the change, but unable to dispute with it mentally, for it bears the
imprint of an idea which is becoming dominant over Europe. For the
moment the individuality of man as expressed in his dwelling (as in the
house in our frontispiece) is gone--suppressed. The human creature no
longer builds for himself, decorates for himself; no longer lets loose
his fancy, his humour, his notions of the fitting and the comfortable.
Science and economy go hand in hand, and lay down his streets and erect
his houses.' Thus, although, from an artistic point of view, we shall
never be reconciled to the changes that have come over Normandy, we
cannot ignore the consequent social advantages. Mr. Ruskin, speaking of
the change in Switzerland during his memory of it (thirty-five years)
says:--'In that half of the permitted life of man I have seen strange
evil brought upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make
beloved by others. The light which once flushed those pale summits with
its rose at dawn and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air
which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure, is
now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than
volcanic fires; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows
fading, as if hell had breathed on them; the waters that once sunk at
their feet into crystalline rest, are now dimmed and foul, from deep to
deep, and shore to shore.
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