nary street-architecture than anything which can be conceived; only let it be done quietly and artistically, not in the flaring, exaggerated manner which seems the only way in which an Englishman can do anything, if he once departs from his old humdrum routine.

For country houses in the chalk districts, flint is a very pleasing material, and capable of much variety. It may be used either in its rough form as it comes to hand, broken to a face, or actually squared; or different parts of the building may be done in each, or in two of these modes. It may be either dressed with stone or with brick;-either, if well done, has an excellent effect. If the former is used, it looks well, and is good construction, to have bands of stone at different heights in the walls; and much may be done in parapets, and other parts of a building, by inlaying flint into stone in patterns, or by bands of a kind of coarse mosaic of stone and flint. If brick be used for the dressings, banding-courses are equally advantageous, and the surface may in parts be quilted and reticulated by headers, which both strengthen and decorate the walls.

The use of plaster, legitimate and illegitimate, has already been touched upon while treating of ceilings. I have no great wish to see it developed for exteriors even in its most legitimate forms, but as cases occur in which it is necessary, it may be well to allude to it. In our old churches we find plastered exteriors of every date, and at Venice the plain wall-surface of the medieval houses was generally plastered and painted in diaper patterns. If plastering is in any cases necessary, the great thing to be observed is to avoid all pretence, and to treat it naturally. The impressed

pattern-work prevalent to this day in the plastered exteriors in Essex and Hertfordshire, is very suggestive; and there can be no doubt that an impressed diaper of simple lines is the best mode of decorating flat plastered surfaces.

As a general rule, however, external plastering has been so infamously abused, that it is somewhat dangerous to meddle with it.

Timber-building must, in these days, be reserved, for the most part, for fancy buildings in the country, such as lodges, &c.,, &c., or for some quite exceptional purposes. It is a most pleasing style of building, and one admits its comparative obsoleteness with sorrow. Still, however, it is not so far obsolete but that it is most desirable to study it carefully, and to preserve accurate records of the examples which remain to us; and in some neighbourhoods it may still be a natural mode of construction: and it may very often be used for parts of buildings,-as the spaces within gables, overhanging stories, porches, &c., &c. I may say a little more on this subject when speaking of rural structures.

NEW MATERIALS.

The above are the principal classes of architectural materials which belong to the present in common with all previous ages. The mechanical enterprise, however, which seems to be the peculiar characteristic of

a I had written this some months before I heard of my friend Mr. Ferrey's patent for the execution of impressed diapering upon plaster, an invention which, if kept to its legitimate uses, seems likely to be very advantageous.

our own period and race, has opened out to us the use of materials either unknown to our ancestors, or only by them used for subordinate purposes.

It is at present doubtful how far these modern inventions may eventually affect external architecture, but, internally, their influence has already been very great.

By far the most important of these new introductions is the enormous development attained in the uses both of wrought and cast iron; and it is in roofing that it exercises its most important influence.

The

The builders of former times rarely used cast iron, and then only for small objects, such as the back of a fireplace in wrought iron, on the contrary, they were pre-eminently skilled, though their works seldom extended beyond the dimensions of a screen. peculiarity of modern ironwork is that, whether cast or wrought, it is unlimited in the extent of its application,-not only forming roofs of a width unequalled in other material, but bridges spanning wide rivers, or even arms of the sea.

It is self-evident that this triumph of modern metallic construction opens out a perfectly new field for architectural development. Hitherto it has usually been treated as a mere matter of engineering, and comparatively little done to bring it within the province of art. It is true that some of these wonderful constructions have an inherent beauty of their own, which renders them architectural even in their normal forms. A simply and naturally constructed cast-iron bridge has almost always a certain degree of beauty; a suspension-bridge would puzzle the most ingenious bungler to render it unpleasing,-(the curve which the laws of nature dictate is too beautiful for him to spoil); and

a really good iron roof is, perhaps, as easily made pleasing as ugly. There are, however, some other pieces of metal construction which are always ugly, unless artistically treated; such, for instance, as beams of cast or wrought iron; girder bridges, and perhaps tubular bridges; though all of these are to be redeemed by the exercise of a little skill. Then, again, there is the use of iron for entire structures; not only, as at the Crystal Palace, (which I view as an exceptional expedient, well suited to its own purpose, but to few others,) but structures of a graver and more solid description.

Now, do these introductions of modern engineering belong to any one style of architecture more than another? People fancy that, because they have grown up during the prevalence of our modern classicism, they have something to do with it. I deny this in toto. Is not an iron bridge, or an iron roof, more allied to medieval timber construction, than to any works we know of classic antiquity? Has a suspension-bridge any nearer relationship to the Parthenon than to Westminster Hall? Is it not a work founded on natural laws, which belong as much to one period as another? It may be said that classic architecture, being (in modern phraseology) a "trabeated" style, it may lay claim to iron beams and girder bridges; but, in truth, Gothic architecture had as much to do with beams as that of Greece or Rome; and the only at all successful instance I have seen of architecturalizing cast-iron beams, is in Mr. Butterfield's Gothic buildings in Margaret-street.

Then, again, of the iron and glass structures so much in vogue,-are they especially Grecian, Roman, or Renaissance in their idea? What should we say, for instance, of their great type, the Crystal Palace ?

Is it more like a Grecian temple, or a Gothic cathedral?

The fact is, that all these iron constructions are, if anything, more suited to Gothic than classic architecture, though our opponents always seem to think that they have said a good thing when they pass jokes upon the Gothic revivalists, as if their very hair would stand on end at the introduction of modern inventions into their architecture, when the real state of the case is this,-that when our opponents make use of such inventions they appear ashamed of them, and use all kinds of petty contrivances to hide them, or make them look like something else; while, when we use them, we endeavour to do so honestly, modifying our design to suit them, and so make them form legitimate elements, instead of pieces of architectural legerdemain.

It is a curious fact, that in a recent competition for a public building, in which the prepossessions were decidedly in favour of the classic styles, and in which there were submitted classic designs of considerable merit, the final decision was in favour of a Gothic design, chiefly on the ground of its carrying out more successfully than the others the condition that the principal quadrangle should be covered by a glass and iron structure after the manner of the Crystal Palace. Yet so rapidly has the subject developed itself, that the design for this iron construction has since been almost entirely remodelled, and that now intended to be executed is a vast improvement upon the design which, a few months back, beat its classic competitors out of the field.

The subject of metal construction seems likely to assume great importance in the hands of those engaged