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and its other parts mean; if it gives the idea of splendour without, while poor within; or if externally it assumes the modest garb of a cottage, while within all is splendour and luxury; if its design belies its construction, &c., &c., it is open to the same charge, inasmuch as all these are means of deception. There are, however, border-cases which must be acquitted of the charge. Thus, in the Gothic church, the attached groining-shaft does not actually carry the vaulting, nor does the Grecian pilaster actually carry the entablature; in both cases they do but slightly aid the wall which does the real work; their actual use being merely to accentuate the line of bearing for the satisfaction of the eye. Again, in vaulting, in whatever style, the springers, though apparently part of the arch, are more correctly corbels carrying it, being often built in the solid of the wall, and even horizontally jointed. Artistically, they are part of the vault,-structurally, a portion of the wall, yet no deception is intended.

When stone lintels are used of a length incapable of self-support, the relieving arches placed over them should not be concealed. It is a kind of deception: which injures the beauty of the building, and might lead inexperienced observers to attribute undue strength to material. Where stone architraves cannot be obtained of due length, concealed arch-joints, as used by English architects, are vicious. The appearance of a ponderous stone with vertical joints, suspended you know not how, is most painful; but if you shew the arch-joints, as is usual in France, (however inconsistent with the principles of trabeated architecture,) you at least make your construction

truthful, and avoid an unpleasing anomaly. While features should never be introduced for mere effect where not suggested by any practical cause, it may in some cases be lawful to use them to hide an unavoidable inelegance, as the junction of two roofs whose natural intersection is uncouth. In all such cases we should apply our test.-If we are conscious of wishing to create a false impression, we must at once put on the curb; but if we only desire to avoid unsightliness without introducing a sham,-to screen an unpleasing part without putting forward a fallacy, the case is different; but in these frontier questions, we should always lean to the stricter side when any uncertainty exists.

Finally, it may be suggested by some one well disposed to our views, whether, though all this strictness is necessary in church-building, where any kind of frivolity is unworthy of the dignity of the subject, the same holds good in buildings of a secular, and perhaps undignified, character; whether, though

"We seek divine simplicity in him who handles things divine,"

in the things of ordinary life a little license and playfulness is not allowable.

I fully admit this within certain limits; but we may be playful without being vicious,-merry, jocose, and even frivolous, without being untruthful. To object to shamming in a church while we admit it in a house, is like punishing a child for telling lies on a Sunday. I would not even in churches press matters to the extent of purism, and possibly in merely domestic work a little more license may be admissible, but no building for any serious use admits of delibe

rate fallacy in material or design. All ages have had their gimcracks, in which nonsense is perhaps more truthful than reality; but as we do not wish our houses to rank with such structures, but with the residences of rational beings, for goodness' sake let us treat them as such, and not enshrine ourselves and our children in temples of falsehood on the plea that we are only in sport!

SH

CHAPTER XII.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE FUTURE.

HALL we ever have an architecture of our own day? This is a question to which much thought is being devoted, but to which no satisfactory answer has been, or perhaps can be, given.

The very question has been, I believe, the result of our Gothic Renaissance, which has, at least, set people thinking.

When the world had gone on for three centuries vegetating over the revived Roman till it was heartily tired of it, and after a not very successful attempt to purify it by reference to the original Greek, our architecture at length found itself brought to a dead lock.

Then came our grand effort for the revival of our own national style as the nucleus for future developments. The Classicists fought hard against it, buttheir own architecture being a Renaissance, and that of the style of a foreign land and of an old world— they failed to enunciate any philosophical argument against the revival of the native architecture of our own country and our own family of nations.

For a while they found themselves at fault,-when a new party came to their rescue, whose leading doctrine was that every Renaissance is wrong, and that a new style must be aimed at. After all, however, they appear in practice to be little other than our old

opponents in a new dress, and, under colour of advocating a style of the nineteenth century, have as yet done little more than attempt to obtain a new lease of the old state of things.

Many of this party are, however, I am convinced sincere, and though we differ as to means, we fully agree with them as to the object to be aimed at, and would rather hail them as fellow-labourers than view them as opponents. We are agreed that the architecture of the day has become powerless, that the Renaissance of the sixteenth century was a false move, and that our aim must be at a style of our own. We differ in this that while one thinks the false step must be retraced before we can get into the right groove, and that the indigenous style of our race must be our point de départ, the other views this as a repetition of the original error, and holds that the point from which the future is to start must be that (however false) at which we now find ourselves. The difference is unfortunate; but if we cannot convince one another, let us each press forward according to our own views, and possibly we may come together in the end.

The peculiar characteristic of the present day, as compared with all former periods, is this, that we are acquainted with the history of art. We know better whence each nation of antiquity derived its arts than they ever knew themselves, and can trace out with precision the progressions of which those who were their prime movers were almost unconscious. What, for instance, did the Greek know of his joint debt to Egypt and Assyria for the elements from which he developed his noble architecture? The Roman, it is true, was conscious of his copyism from the Greek, but was probably ignorant that he was

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