It is not my purpose to attempt, in a sketch like the present, a 

 detailed inquiry into the distinctive qualities and characteristics of the 

 various national or local styles extant throughout the world, nor even of 

 those more familiar ones in common use among ourselves, but briefly to 

 examine what is the real position of the art as practised at the present 

 day, and to consider the principles on which its productions should be 

 judged of, — this is a sufficiently ample scope for an hour's investigar 

 tion ; the wider field would afford matter for a volume. 



While Architecture has always, by a refined people, been ranked 

 among what are called pre-eminently the " fine arts," there are conditions 

 inseparable from the necessities of its uses, which ally it very closely 

 with the arts mechanical ; and, in consequence of this its ambiguous 

 position, there have always existed difficulties in applying to it those 

 rules of criticism or judgment wliich have been, for the most part, 

 recognised as applicable to the fine arts generally. 



The result has been, that widely different methods of criticism have 

 been adopted in writing on the subject; one large class of critics over- 

 looking entirely the practical considerations involved in the construction 

 of buildings, while others have almost as completely lost sight of the 

 intellectual, or what it is the fashion of the day to miscal the 

 " (esthetic " qualities of architecture. The true treatment of the sub- 

 ject, I think, consists in a due appreciation and intelligent scrutiny of 

 both these sources of architectural character, independently and rela- 

 tively, but more particularly in the latter point of view ; as it is by the 

 manner in which the architect meets the difficulties of design occasioned 

 by some necessity of construction, site, or material, and his solution 

 of the converse problem of preserving his construction sound while 

 adapting it to the demands of his style, that we can best form an 

 estimate of his attainments in the arduous pursuit which he professes. 



While I fully admit that an amateur's being such by no means 

 necessarily unfits him for the task I have defined, and that in some 

 respects his independence of professional conventionalism may on the 

 contrary rather be in his favour, still so many are the practical points 

 which interfere with full freedom of design, and so difficult is it for any 

 but those on whom the knowledge of their existence is forced by actual 

 experience, to feel the full weight of their influence, that I confess I 

 cannot but think that members of the architectural profession, if only 

 free from vain egotism and the petty jealousy disgraceful to a liberal 

 art, are, by their practical knowledge, generally best fitted to act as 

 censors on the merits of architectural works. 



Among those who claim to practise architecture, there are to be 

 found, as in the sister arts, some who, from a sense of their own iuconi- 

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