56 Mr. E. B. Denison, [Feb. 11, 



these reasons I am convinced that both architecture and architects 

 would be great gainers, if there were, not fewer, but many more 

 people who had ability and power to interfere with buildings while 

 they are in progress, and with the designs beforehand, at least to the 

 extent of requiring alterations to be made where they see that the 

 thing will fail and be a blemish if it is not altered. At the same time 

 I am aware that architects have sometimes difficulty enough at present 

 in working down to the bad taste, capriciousness, ostentation, stingi- 

 ness, and vulgarity of their employers ; and that although competitions 

 have some advantages, they are very likely to increase the difficulty of 

 architects in designing what they know will look well ; as they will be 

 sure to speculate upon the probable prejudices, bad taste, and ignorance 

 of the majority of the judges, and their almost certain inexperience in 

 judging of architectural drawings, and will bait their designs accord- 

 iigly, or they might as well save the trouble of making them. 



I believe the progress of Gothic architecture, rapid as it has 

 been, would have been more rapid, and at any rate more complete as 

 it went on, but for the impatience which is one of the characteristics of 

 these times. 1 do not mean merely that kind of impatience which is 

 evinced by those who told the Gothic architects only eighteen years 

 ago, that they must ' be content to lay the foundations of an edifice 



* which future generations shall see completed, and to toil for the 

 ' recovery of hidden principles and lost harmonies which the master 



* spirit of a succeeding age may awaken into life ; ' and then, within 

 less than half the time of a single generation, turn round upon the 

 men who have been so toiling, and declare that they can wait no 

 longer ; and that they are now convinced that some unknown and 

 scarcely imagined compound of the Classical and Gothic styles is the 

 thing to toil after and harmonize. This particular phase of impatience 

 may not be common ; but when we think of the variety of architectural 

 fashions which have now flourished within less time than was occupied 

 by the shortest-lived of all the old Gothic styles, we must come to the 

 conclusion that our architects are either much cleverer than the old 

 ones, or else much more impatient. At one time Early English was 

 the style in vogue, for all cheap churches especially, the public or the 

 architects supposing that as there was no tracery to make for the win- 

 dows it must be the easiest and cheapest of all the pointed styles. By 

 degrees they found out that it is probably the hardest to do well, and 

 very far from the cheapest if it is to be done with anything like the 

 massiveness, and depth, and number of shafts, and mouldings of the 

 real Early English. So, instead of learning to do it properly, or pay- 

 ing for having it done well, there was next a run upon the latest style ; 

 and for a time everything was Perpendicular, varied occasionally with 

 the most distant extreme of Norman, which was supposed to be a 

 simple, easy, and neat style for small village churches ; and being 

 often executed in white brick, and the stone-work always done with 

 the precision of the modern Perpendicular, the result was certainly 

 such as to justify any degree of impatience in flying away from that 



