“There was yet in the old some life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had been, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentlelines which rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness of the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate 14, as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall ever restore them? The first step to restoration (,I have seen it, and that again and again - seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa d’Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,) is to dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all cases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a cold model of such parts as can be modelled, with conjectural supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or even attempted.”