"Besides, after all that art can bestow, you must put your ruin at last into the hands of nature to adorn and perfect it. If the mosses and lichens grow unkindly on your walls – if the streaming weather stains have produced no variety of tints- if the ivy refuses to mantle over your buttress or to creep among the ornaments of your Gothic window- if the ash cannot be brought to hand from the cleft, or long, spiry grass to wave over the shattered battlement- your ruin will still be incomplete- you may as well write over the gate, “Built in the year 1772”"