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



ones, who never did anything fit to be seen in their lives, and natu- 

 rally want to find somebody else to throw the blame upon, and expect 

 probably that no one will take the trouble to expose the trick. 



But as I am speaking of architectural literature, I will mention a 

 fact, from which some inferences will, no doubt, present themselves to 

 you without my lengthening this lecture to extract them : I mean the 

 singularly small proportion of books professing to teach any principles 

 of architecture, which are written by the present architects. There is 

 that Rudimentary Treatise of Mr. Garbett's, to which I have several 

 times referred, and which, I agree with Mr. Fergusson, contains " a 

 great deal of common sense criticism ;" though probably neither he 

 nor I should be inclined to endorse the whole of it ; and Mr. Pen- 

 rose's celebrated investigation of the principles of construction of the 

 Greek temples, of course, belongs to the class of scientific works on 

 architecture. But besides these, I do not know any book by a living 

 architect, which does. Mr. Scott's two books are written more for the 

 purpose of advocating particular opinions or views of architecture, 

 (with which for the most part I agree) than of teaching it ; and Mr. 

 Street's, on Italian architecture, belongs rather to the class of descrip- 

 tive books than of scientific. (By the bye I am glad to find that both 

 there and elsewhere he has disclaimed the idea of exalting Italian 

 Gothic above Northern ; as it seems Mr. Ruskin also has of late, 

 and says that he never had that intention, which was very naturally 

 imputed to him by probably every reader of the Stones of Venice.) It 

 is hardly worth while to enumerate as architectural works, the various 

 small decoctions of Rickman, and older writers on the Gothic Styles 

 and the Classical Orders : and on the whole it appears that the profes- 

 sional architects have a very small array of literature to set against such 

 books as the Seven Lamps or the Stones of Venice, Mr. Petit's several 

 books on Architecture, Mr. Freeman's History of Architecture, Mr. 

 Parker's Glossary, and other works edited by him. Professor Willis's 

 several treatises on Mediaeval buildings, and Dr. Whewell's on French 

 and German Churches. And if none of these had been written, that 

 truly wonderful "Handbook" of Mr. Fergusson's, would be alone 

 sufficient to turn the scale in favour of the amateurs against all the 

 professional literature of the present generation. 



It is no less remarkable, that of all these books, professional and 

 unprofessional, there is literally not one that is expressly devoted to 

 that style of architecture which some of our Parliamentary professors 

 of the fine arts assure us is the only style fit to be cultivated by a 

 civilised nation. For the Greek style is now almost as universally 

 abandoned or altered into something very different, as it was universally 

 believed in and talked about fifty years ago. Perhaps the time is not 

 so far off as some people imagine, when it will only be thought a few 

 degrees less absurd for the Northern nations to throw away their 

 own architecture, and import an older one from latitude 43°, than 

 it is already seen to be to set up the style of 36° as the only grand 

 style of building for the whole world, from Athens to Edinburgh and 

 Washington. 



