in which it is inconvenient to shew the main timbers.

Have we not, however, a fourth course open to us, or at least a legitimate variety upon the two last?

It is a natural reaction, when we find that a material, or mode of workmanship, has become debased by misuse, to treat it as an immedicabile vulnus, and to proscribe its use altogether; and I believe that in many cases it is by far the safest mode of dealing with those materials, &c., which have become the vernacular vehicles for sham and deception. The legitimate use of such sinning material too often serves as an excuse for its base misuse, so that it may be safest to expunge it for a time from our materia architectonica.

This has been, in some degree, the case with plaster. No material has either so sinned, or been so sinned against. It is the grand vehicle for the abominable and contemptible shamming which has degraded the architecture of our age, and it is natural that we should cast it off as an accursed thing. As, however, we are compelled to admit it for encrusting plain internal walls and for plain ceilings, it may be well that we should take the pains to define its proper use as distinguished from its misuse, rather than condemn the innocent with the guilty.

By using plaster for plain surfaces we at once admit that it has a legitimate use; the question is, whether that one form exhausts its honest claims. If we want to fresco a dome or a coved ceiling, we are again driven to its use, which shews that its province may fairly be extended; and when we find that it can readily be used for mouldings, and that ornamental work may be either cast in it or modelled by the

hand, it is difficult to find any very strong arguments against availing ourselves of these natural properties of lime and gypsum, excepting that experience proves them to be liable to abuse. If, then, they have a use and an abuse, let us try to investigate and distinguish them.

1st. The popular use of plaster in imitation of stone is an abuse so gross and manifest, as to need no discussion; it is a simple abomination.

2ndly. The use of plaster in imitation of wood in ceilings, roofs, panelling, &c., so common in sham Gothic work, is equally beneath contempt: no one who would take the trouble of reading these papers, would dream of such monstrosities.

3rdly. The use of plaster for mouldings so designed as to be evidently and especially suitable to either wood or stone, is almost equally illegitimate, though no means may be taken to complete the deception by imitating the colour or surface of those materials. We often see this in cornices to rooms, and also in panelled ceilings; the former being exactly what they would have been had stone been used, and the latter precisely the same in design as would be adopted for wood panelling. The most glaring instance of this, which I recollect, is the roof (if it may be called so) of the hall at King's College, Cambridge, which is a precise copy in plaster of that at Crosby Hall. It may be said, that all untruthfulness is in such cases avoided by leaving the plaster apparent and unmasked, but the misuse of the material remains the same. I have seen

it argued in one of the letters in defence of architectural shams, which so frequently appear in architectural periodicals, that to make material an element in our estimate of the merits of a building is lowering

architecture from the province of thought and design to that of mere building,—that if an architect has made a fine design intended to have been executed in stone, and circumstances afterwards cause it to be only done in cement, the artistic merit is the same, and the architect is equally deserving of honour. Had the design been so executed by another, and against the express protest of the designer, there would be some truth in this, but if the architect deliberately transfers to plaster the design he had intended for stone, or, as is usually the case, actually designs work to be executed in plaster without any change from what he would have made it if of stone, whatever may be the abstract merits of the design, he is clearly open to the severest censure; for in one case the material is essentially constructive, and the construction must be suggestive of the design, while in the other the material is essentially non-constructive; and though it is perfectly lawful to conceal, it is insulting architecture to give it a pseudo-constructive external design which belies the actual construction. Plaster may fairly encrust a wall, or an arch, or a ceiling, because it does but hide what we know to be there; but if we so plaster over a horizontal brick arch as to make it look like a massive stone lintel, or if we use corbels and brackets as if to carry weight, while in fact they are but stuck up against a wall, we demean our art into a mere pretence.

The same is the case with ceilings. If we bracket out with wood for a plaster cornice, and thereby make it look like one of stone,—or if we hang cradling from ceilings, which, when plastered, will make them mimic the noble coffered marble coverings of the Greeks,— or if we torture our plaster into the form of the

beautiful old Gothic oaken ceilings, it is manifest to all who are not besotted with the fallacies of modern building, that we are but degrading the art we pretend to practise, even though we may stop short of the final step of painting plaster in imitation of stone or wood.

In what way, then, may plaster be legitimately used?

So far as ceilings are concerned, we may answer that if we go beyond plain ceilings, and the plain panels enclosed by wood mouldings, we must design a new system of decoration evidently suited to plaster, and not trenching upon the province of wood or stone. Any system of surface decoration without bold relief or heavy projection, is perfectly legitimate in plaster, because it may evidently be worked in the material without extraneous aid. The Elizabethan builders were among the first to see this. Had the idea occurred at an earlier period, we should probably have had ceilings in the pointed styles diapered over in low relief. As it happened, this was not thought of till the change of style had commenced, and consequently we have abundance of very legitimately designed plaster ceilings in the Elizabethan style, but few or none of earlier periods. It is our place to supply the deficiency. Experience has, however, proved that though these ceilings are designed with correct intention, they are somewhat too heavy for the material; they trench too closely upon designs suitable to wood, and consequently we often find that their weight has caused them to break away from the lathing. This we shall do well to avoid, by limiting ourselves strictly to diaper, as distinguished from panelled designs.

In cornices we must strictly keep to such a degree

of relief as plaster will readily bear, without the aid of wooden bracketing and cradling; otherwise the design at once becomes inconsistent with our material.

In this respect our ordinary vernacular house-builders are more correct in their practice than our architects. They use cornices which project but slightly from the wall and ceiling, and with no bulk of material in the angle, so that they easily support themselves by their own strength; while architects seem to think this too humble an expedient, and, by the aid of an internal construction of wood, bring out their cornices to imitate the solidity of stone. For once the mere builder is in the right,-economy teaches him, for the nonce, to be truthful, and to adapt his design to his material; while the more ambitious architect at once abandons economy and truthfulness, by aiming at more than his material is fit for.

I have heard the plaster imitations of coffered ceilings defended on the plea that they are suggested by the actual timber construction which they encrust;-I do not believe a word of it. It is possible that the main beams may occasionally coincide with a leading architrave in the ceiling; but all the rest, to say the least, is sham; and to make the best of it, a beam encrusted in plaster is not very consistent: but the majority of these ceilings are elaborately constructed pieces of cradling, made expressly to receive the plaster coating, having no connection with the framing of the floor, and are utterly to be condemned as suggesting a construction which does not exist, and as representing it in a material in its very nature non-constructive.

By limiting plaster to uses for which its nature fits it, we may introduce a feature into our domestic