She acknowledges the claims of
the future as well as of the present, and does not erect that which the
future, however it may advance in constructive power, will regard as
base, mean, or ugly. She recognizes the value to herself, as well as to
her sons, of all those associations which, through the power of her
adorned and munificent architecture, shall bind them to her in ties of
closer tenderness, and of strong, though most delicate feeling. Her
building is to have an aspect that shall correspond to the nobility of
its function,--that shall impress the student, as he walks along the
hard and dry paths of science, with some sense, faint though it be, of
the beauty of that learning which is furnished with so goodly an abode.
The influence of a fine building, complete in all its parts, is one
which cannot be estimated in money, cannot be investigated by any
practical process, but which is nevertheless as strong and precious as
it is secret, as constant as it is unobserved.
It would seem that there could be no country in the world where
buildings of the noblest kind would be more desired than in America,
for there is none in which they are so much needed.
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