This is all evident enough, and in principle generally admitted; but
we dodge the application of the principle, because we are not ready
to admit to ourselves, what history, apart from any reasoning, would
show us, that those importations are failures, and that not
accidentally in these particular cases, leaving the hope of better
success for the next trial, but necessarily, and because they are
importations.

All good architecture must be the gradual growth of its country and
its age,--the accumulation of men's experience, adding and leaving
out from generation to generation. The air of permanence and stability
that we admire in it must be gained by a slow and solid growth.
It is the product, not of any one man's skill, but of a nation's;
and its type, accordingly, must be gradually formed.

But in this, as in everything else, there must be an aim, and one
persisted in, else no experience is gained. A mere succession of
generations will do nothing, if for each of them the whole problem
is changed. The man of to-day cannot profit by his father's
experience in the building of his house, if his culture, his habits,
his associates, are different from his father's,--much less if they
have changed since his own youth, and are changing from year to year.
He will not imitate, he will not forbear to alter. On such shifting
sands no enduring structure is possible, but only a tent for the
night.

We talk of the laws of architecture; but the fundamental law of all,
and one that is sure to be obeyed, is, that the dwelling shall
typify man's appropriation of the earth and its products,--what we
call property. A man's house is naturally just as fixed a quantity