Random Ruskin

"All the pleasure which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, sculpture, minor objects of virtue or medieval architecture, which we enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: here that peculiar love of landscape which is characteristic of the age."

"There is, however, a marked distinction between the imaginations of the Western and Eastern races, even when both are left free; the Western, or Gothic, delighting most in the representation of facts, and the Eastern (Arabian, Persian, and Chinese) in the harmony of colours and forms."
- John Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic (The Stones of Venice, Vol. II).

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