leave it to fall down,
rather than do anything to preserve it, I for one hereby declare that
I hold such fanatics to be heathen men and heretics of the worst kind.
I look upon such people much as I look upon those peculiar people who
denounce the whole medical profession as interferers with the laws of
Providence, and who forbid the members of their sect from ever setting
a broken bone or taking a prescription when sickness or infirmity
has attacked them. To talk of letting an ancient building take its
chance, and doing nothing to prolong its life, is to my mind to talk
pestiferous nonsense with which I have no manner of sympathy. But
unhappily there has been another view which has been put forward in a
very specious and ingenious and captivating manner by another set of
people, and which unhappily has met with immense favour at the hands of
the moneyed public, and which seems to me to find its exact parallel
in the proposal of a certain unfortunate lady who suffered martyrdom
for her faith, or at any rate her profession, some years ago. That
poor lady proclaimed to the world that she was so profoundly versed in
all the virtues of certain mysterious herbs and salves and potions and
mixtures, that she was prepared to guarantee the perfect restoration of
youth and loveliness to the most aged and most battered of her sex; in
fact, she asserted that she had discovered the grand secret of making
them “beautiful for ever.” She was, I take it, the high priestess and
prophetess of _restoration_.

Now between the criminal and indolent neglect of those who would sit
down with folded hands and never stretch out a finger to avert the
death of the stricken, and the pretentious puffery of quacks who assure
us that they have discovered the secret of rejuvenescence, there is a
whole world of difference, and between the stupid do-nothingism of the
one and the rash do-everythingism of the other there is--there must
be--a middle course. This is what we have to complain of, that when
well-meaning people have set themselves to �