Central Gate of Rouen
Wednesday, February 19th
From John Ruskin’s commentary on a bit of ornamentation in the fourteenth-century central gate of Rouen:
All else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away all their living interests, and aims, and achievements.
We know not for what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of deep-wrought stone.
They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honours, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.