acceptable true architect, or that of the designer only, impotent in handicraft? To go back into history; for about a quarter of a century, from 1835 to 1859, a nobleman of great respectability, but of no ability at all in architecture, was the first President of the, not yet Royal, Institute of British Architects. Then came a gentleman of culture and of sympathetic power, bewitched, and almost paralysed, however, by the business-like Profession. His work, the drawing office, at the Bank of England, picturesque, refined, and able, although curiously inconvenient, and now mostly cleared away, was a reminiscence of the great hall at Padua. His adjacent Sun Fire Office, the finest building of its kind and size in England, is yet hardly noticed by our citizens. The Taylor Institute at Oxford, a most careful and admiring imitation of Greek work, was looked upon as beautiful when first designed; but, owing to the current inartistic method, it has no artistic life, and is but a most graceful composition, done in melancholy stone. The personal attention given by Cockerell to the details of his work would, had he been an artisan, have raised him to a very high position in the history of architecture. His unwearied assiduity in carrying out the young lamented Elmes's beautiful St. George's Hall at Liverpool, was no mere 'business' undertaking; but resulted from abundant generosity of mind. In true artistic feeling, in high character, in simple yet distinguished manners, and in generous self-devotion to his work, not one of his successors has approached the first professional President of the Institute; who, with his scenic drawings of Renaissance works, as well as by his own attractive personality, so charmed the Royal Academy students fifty years ago. At the same period a young man in the office of an 'architect of eminence' had practical advice. 'Don't trouble yourself about "art and all that nonsense, but contrive to get your finger into every City job, as I do; and you will succeed.' We have reduced the emphasis. The man was a surveyor, business-like and astute; and he became the third, and a peculiarly characteristic, President of the Institute of British Architects. He had not 'troubled about art'; he had, in fact, his salaried, clerkly source of inspiration, otherwise his ghost, well known and palpable. No one who knew the architect and anything of architecture, examining the new Royal Exchange, would be at all deceived by the reputed authorship of the design. The architect' could no more have done it than he could have wrought the masons' work. His real work' is the dull, dreary building at Mill Hill, where a huge portico and and columns serve to emphasize the misery of the place. For the Exchange design he chose the portico of the Pantheon as a front, without adhering to the depth that makes that portico so beautiful; and two hideous excrescences, of late removed, upon the ancient building, were remembered in the modern imitation. Tite never was an architect in any sense of art; but, like the rest, he adopted a delusive name, and was professional, merely; having no artistic hand for building work, or even any skill in general design. He was excellent, in his own money-making way, as a surveyor, who could furnish evidence and parry much cross-questioning; and as a man of 'business' his position at the Royal Institute of British Architects was thoroughly appropriate. After the designer of the wholly inartistic Library at University College, London, the fifth President was a leading connoisseur; himself particularly ductile in his architectural expenditure, and painfully protracted in his eloquence; which, notwithstanding, could not be neglected at the Institute, since possibly the speaker might become a valuable patron. Thus, triennial and biennial changes brought new men of absolute incompetence as real architects and building artisans into the chair. Among them were some able men in business' ways, and in the imitating trade; and more particularly men who could mislead the clergy in their schemes of restoration' and church building. These have made our country more contemptible and base in architecture even than the United States; since we have been degraded in the very presence of the art of ancient times, while they are half a hemisphere removed from medieval buildings. Passing over many recent Presidents, whose names recall no effort of original creative art, we light upon another City architect, whose work is of the very lowest and the most pretentious kind. The Leadenhall and Smithfield Market elevations and details are everything that they should never be, and nothing that can satisfy true architectural discernment. The worthless, dirt-encumbered decoration at the Smithfield Market-building, and the Gracechurch Street façade at Leadenhall, are at the very nadir of artistic architectural ability. The perpetrator of these multiplied offences was selected by the Royal Institute of British Architects to be their chief and President for two whole years. How great the decadence from Cockerell to Jones! And yet this Royal Institute pretends to dictate to the public whom they are to trust with building work, and whom they should refuse. The tables, here, have been entirely turned. The public, in their ignorance, had patronised a man of curious incapacity, even as a pseudo-architectural pattern-maker; therefore, as the man of business had become commercially successful, the admiring Royal Institute of British Architects, in its professional and business spirit, cordially adopted him as their distinguished representative; and made him still more obviously absurd by their peculiar preference. The primal and essential element of art is touch; by touch all art is gained, and by ideas art develops. The true artisan has learnt the manual alphabet of art; and thus can write his own artistic language, with abundant suitable expression, homely or poetic, in his work. The method of the Royal Institute excludes all this; it deals with imitations mostly; though at times a trash, that is mistaken for originality because it has no meaning, is the senseless substitute. On homely art, the practice of the people on their freeholds, without drawings other than their own, the noble building utterance of medieval times and of all time is founded. At the Renaissance building work became theatrical, not homely or vernacular; the designs were imitative, not spontaneous; ornamental, not expressive; they were all imputed and affixed, and never emanated from the work. To despair of a revived vernacular in architecture is absurd; since no true building art is other than vernacular. An imitation may be perfect in its way, which proves its error; it has limits. But true art is never perfect; it is always in development, and incomplete. Our modern imitators when they do their best can but despair; their end has come, their last attempt has failed, and they have not developed art. A whole city built with care in the scholastic, classic method of professional designs, the imitative outcome of examinations at the Royal Institute, would be, from endless repetition of its lifeless details, utterly revolting, and insufferably dull. But workmen practically trained in a vernacular, artistic mode, familiar to the public, would develop constant novelty and endless beauty by adapting their details and architectural combinations to the needs of each advancing epoch, and of every individual building. Thus stagnation, lifeless imitation, and monotony would be prevented; and no Royal Institute of drawing masters would be possible. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though architectural designs were formed on classic or Italian reminiscences, the workmen still had, in the details and direction of most buildings, much to say and do. Sir Christopher Wren was more indebted to his workmen than to drawing clerks for what is most enjoyable throughout his works; and many houses of that period, now old fashioned, fashioned, are yet so artistic that they are acknowledged architectural gems. The seventeenth-century doorways, still in Queen's Square, Westminster, though rude in execution, are of infinitely greater value than the entrance doorway of Buckingham Palace. They are unprofessional; the artist had been free and happy in his work; and work must always be of value in which the experienced artisan's delight has been secured. Thus, as in honesty, the chief reward in art is for the man that faithfully produces it; the secondary influence and result are for the world. If this test of character and value is applied to buildings throughout England, it will give to those not hitherto accustomed to appreciate architectural work a fair criterion, beyond their own unwarranted and superficial preference or objection, for the real merits or demerits of each building. Many suppose that, since they do not find elaborate and celebrated buildings beautiful, the cause must be their own deficiency and ignorance. This may be so; but since most modern work is bad, the chance is great that their own sympathetic although uninstructed architectural feeling is revolted; and that they are over-modest in their self-depreciation. Between humanity in art and in our human nature there is constant mutual recognition. Yet, in the main, Renaissance work is very different from this; its reference is mostly to the learned, the exotic, and the unfamiliar. It appeals especially to wonder for peculiar admiration; and it has its origin apart from homeliness. Even St. Paul's, save in the details that are evidently the design of those that wrought them, never claims our sympathy as do the Parthenon, the glorious front at Rheims, or the more simple Abbey Church at Romsey. Most Renaissance buildings are but feats, in various modes of composition; scenic architectural arrangements, not true art. The products of the Royal Institute of British Architects are artificial in this way; and though designed to be admired, as never is the case with art, the admiration either fails entirely, or is so fleeting that it hardly seems to have existed. Works like these are wholly destitute of that ideal workmanship which gains immediate sympathy, and so expands and elevates the soul of the intelligent and sensible beholder. Thus we are told that when the celebrated statesman, Daniel Webster, on first entering, beheld the Abbey Church at Westminster, he burst into tears. By many this would be attributed to the religious sentiment, to the weakness of ecclesiasticism; or, on the other hand, to the apparent age and venerable venerable aspect of the building. But there are religious buildings far beyond the age of our inspired mason's presbyterium that do not similarly touch the heart. St. Peter's great basilica at Rome is some two-thirds as old, and, with St. Paul's in London and St. Isaac's at St. Petersburg, is dedicated to religious uses; yet these buildings would be quite incapable of causing such emotion in the strong-nerved statesman's soul. The mistake is reasonable; since the public, finding little in their architectural surroundings, the productions of the Royal Institute, to excite spontaneous reverence, when they see the wondrous art of old, the creation of illiterate master-masons, in a church, imagine, without due consideration, that their admiration is ecclesiastical religious feeling. But what influenced Webster most was neither sanctity nor yet antiquity, but sympathy, although perhaps unrecognized, with the great working men who, wholly uncertificated, built the church; and as they built designed it. Their great work was a direct expression of their own poetic aptitude and artisan delight; and Webster felt its overpowering influence. · Though art is in its origin and sentiment the workman's joy, that helps to lighten his life's burden, and that lends a charm to the monotony of toil,' it will become, according to the worth and character of each beholder, a delight to all mankind. Some may admire with mere astonishment and wonder, but some also with discernment and intelligence; and in our day, as we so happily discover in the volume now before us, others can delight in art with human sympathy. These latter only can immediately appreciate true art; instinctively they feel it, ere deliberate discernment has its opportunity. Most men and women of our time are charmed with ornament and cleverness; their happiness, or rather their enjoyment, is of an inferior kind, not founded on a generous appreciation of humanity in its superior moods or noblest demonstrations, but on a mere display of opulence and sensual prettiness; as if a spangled and bejewelled ballerina should assume precedence of a Beatrice or Imogen. Most modern ornamental work is therefore inartistic, and is usedby Fellows of the Institute and others, quite commercially, as a sufficient and attractive substitute for art. On this base substitute, again, is founded the distinctly business-like profession of an architect.' Our modern buildings, consequently, are not art at all, but only artifice. They may contain some artist's work, as in the Gibbons' carvings at St. Paul's; but almost universally they are merely calculated to mislead the undiscerning. Throughout England the professional expenditure on country seats, and |