Note 101 — Chapter VII · THE NEW PALACE AT WESTMINSTER.

This tendency to alteration grew upon him perhaps to excess in his later years. His taste, always fastidious, became morbidly sensitive; he could not tolerate the slightest appearance of defect in proportion or detail. The inevitable effect was not only great waste of labour and money, but occasionally a danger of losing the original harmony of a design in the multiplicity of alterations. But it was only an exaggeration of the one true secret of success and perfection—“the capacity of taking infinite pains.”