Las ruinas nuevas no hay adquirido todavia la patina envejecida del tiempo, la corrosin verdadera de la guerra de los barones, o se han puesto aun la hiedra o se han equipado con el apropiado bestiario de lagartos, murcilagos, bho, serpientes, sapos y pequeos zorros que, como has sido frecuentemente observado por exploradores de ruinas, encuentran gran deleite en los recintos de las ruinas (tal deleite, aunque notado con placer, es rara vez descrito en detalle; posiblemente el chacal baila en vals con el sapo, la lagartija con el zorro, mientras el bho provee la msica y todos ellos se regodean entre las capitales cadas). Pero las ruinas nuevas estn por un tiempo desnudas e inhspitas, sin vegetacin ni criaturas; ennegrcidas y rasgadas, huelen a fuego y mortalidad.No ser por mucho tiempo. Muy pronto los rboles empujarn a travs de las ventanas vacas, la rosa y el hinojo floreciendo dentro de las paredes rotas, las zarzas se enredarn fuera de ellas. Muy pronto la ruina ser enujnglada, engullida, y las criaturas apropiadas se deleitarn. Incluso las ruinas en las calles urbanas, si se djan solas, van, tarde o temprano, correr con la misma suerte. Mesa mes se hace ms difcil trazar als calles que las rodean; aqu, vemos, es el camino de zarzarrosas enmaraadas que fue una calle de almacenes; all, en aquellas cavernas junglosa, estaba una gran tienda de sastrera; donde esos caminos cubiertos de hierba se cruzan, un cartel se balancea, indicando el nombre de una taberna. Nos topamos con fundaciones de piedra y fragmentos de paredes de stanos, entre los fantasmas de los mercantes y cantineros exiliados quienes llevaban ah sus lucrativos intercambios. Cascaras de iglesias admiran vacamente; sobre altares rotos dientes de len hacen su patrn. Todo esto estar presente; pero al principio hay solo ruina; una masa de libros de plegaria chamuscados, desgarrados, desparramados en el piso de piedra; las estatuas, tumbadas de sus nichos, tienen pedazos rotos, techumbres y escombros se apilan a la altura de la rodilla. Pero a menudo la ruina ha puesto, en su caos catastrfico y alegre, un nuevo encanto estrafalario. Lo que ayer fue una pequea casa apagada, se ha transformado en una empinada escalera culminando en el vaco entre paredes pintadas de colores alegres, lavatorios azulejados, interiores ntimos y luminosos como una pintura Holandesa o escenario; la escalera sube y sube, impertrrita, hacia la cima sin techo donde encuentra el cielo. La casa a ganado melodrama; la gente para a mirar; aqu hay una escena domstica abierta para que todos disfruten. Maana o esta noche, los observadores sienten, sus propias moradas pueden incluso estar como as. Anoche la casa era espectacular; flamas brincaban al cielo; hoy est esculida y taciturna, pero de su deterioro alardea la banderas de lo que ha quedado. NEW ruins have not yet acquired the weathered patina of age,the true rust of the barons' wars, not yet put on their ivy, norequipped themselves with the appropriate bestiary of lizards, bats,screech-owls, serpents, speckled toads and little foxes which, ashas been so frequently observed by ruin-explorers, hold high revelin the precincts of old ruins (such revelling, though noted withpleasure, is seldom described in detail; possibly the jackal waltzeswith the toad, the lizard with the fox, while the screech-owlsupplies the music and they all glory and drink deep among thetumbled capitals). But new ruins are for a time stark and bare,vegetationless and creatureless; blackened and torn, they smellof fire and mortality.It will not be for long. Very soon trees will be thrusting throughthe empty window sockets, the rose-bay and fennel blossomingwithin the broken walls, the brambles tangling outside them.Very soon the ruin will be enjungled, engulfed, and the appropriatecreatures will revel. Even ruins in city streets will, if theyare let alone, come, soon or late, to the same fate. Month bymonth it grows harder to trace the streets around them; here, wesee, is the kne of tangled briars that was a street of warehouses;there, in those jungled caverns, stood the large tailor's shop;where those grassy paths cross, a board swings, bearing the nameof a tavern. We stumble among stone foundations and fragmentsof cellar walls, among the ghosts of the exiled merchants andpublicans who there carried on their gainful trades. Shells ofchurches gape emptily; over broken altars the small yellowdandelions make their pattern. All this will presently be; but atfirst there is only the ruin; a mass of torn, charred prayer booksstrew the stone floor; the statues, tumbled from their niches, havebroken in pieces; rafters and rubble pile knee-deep. But often theruin has put on, in its catastrophic tipsy chaos, a bizarre newcharm* What was last week a drab little house has become a steepflight of stairs winding up in the open between gaily-colouredwalls, tiled lavatories, interiors bright and intimate like a Dutchpicture or a stage set; the stairway climbs up and up, undaunted,to the roofless summit where it meets the sky. The house has puton melodrama; people stop to stare; here is a domestic scenewide open for all to enjoy. To-morrow or to-night, the gazersfeel, their own dwelling may be even as this. Last night the housewas scenic; flames leaping to the sky; to-day it is squalid andmorne, but out of its dereliction it flaunts the flags ofwhat is left.The larger ruins are more sad; they have lost more. Nothingcan have been more melancholy than the first shattered aspect ofthe destroyed abbeys before they took on the long patience andendurance of time; they were murdered bodies, their woundsgaped and bled. Their tragedy was like the tragedy of the revolution-destroyed chateaux of France, or the burnt great houses ofIreland, or the cities razed of old by conquerors; the silencebrooded heavily round them, as the silence broods over thegarden and woods of uprooted Coole. Burnt Hafod crumbled onthe mountain like a staunchless grief; Appeldurcombe disintegratedbeautifully in all the morbid shades of a fading bruise;Seaton Delaval is sallowed and exquisite in death; HollandHouse a wrecked Whig dream among gardens. The bombedchurches and cathedrals ofEurope give us, on the whole, nothingbut resentful sadness, like the bombed cities. All the sameMonte Cassino put on with wreckage a new dignity, a beautyscarcely in the circumstances bearable; it looked finer than at anytime since its last restorations. Caen, Rouen, Coventry, the Citychurches, the German and Belgian cathedrals, brooded in starkgauntness redeemed only a little by pride: one reflects that withjust such pangs of anger and loss people in other centuries lookedon those ruins newly made which to-day have mellowed into ruinplus beau que la beaute.But "Rxinenlust has come full circle: we have had our fill. Ruinpleasure must be at one remove, softened by art, by Piranesi,Salvator Rosa, Poussin, Ckude, Monsti Desiderio, Pannini,Guardi, Robert, James Pryde, John Piper, the ruin-poets, orcenturies of time. Ruin must be a fantasy, veiled by the mind's dark imaginings: in the objects that we see before us, we get toagree with St Thomas Aquinas, that quat enim diminutae smt^ locIpso turpia swty and to feel that, in beauty, wholeness is allBut such wholesome hankerings are, it seems likely, merely aphase of our fearful and fragmented age.