222 SKETCHES BY A PRACTISING ARCHITECT. 



Suppose your design to have been approved, as at 

 once classical and picturesque : the accuracy of its 

 realization the only reward of your exercised taste 

 and earnest care. The plan is rigidly laid down, and 

 the body of your structure is suffered to grow un- 

 molested to the height of some four or five feet 

 above the plinth. Just now, for the first time, your 

 patron begins to see, that your designs and his ideas 

 have cultivated a very false intimacy. Your hori- 

 zontal disposition requires a proportional perpen- 

 dicular which his notions of necessity will not admit ; 

 and thus, with the like ill fate which attended the 

 dying word of Artaxominous^ and the projected 

 " eter-nity" of Whisker andos;\ your nine diametered 

 Corinthian columns are cut down into five diametered 

 stumps ; your arch is chopped off with a lintel ; and 

 your windows, designed to be correspondent with 

 those of the Erectheion, are compressed into a spe- 

 cies of port-holes, too low for three panes, and too 

 high for two. So much for your *' golden opportu- 

 nity." Your pleadings against alteration are, of 

 course, treated as the empty outpourings of scrupu- 

 lous pedantry : and the whole being completed in 

 accordance with your employer's whim, you are left 

 to bear all the brunt of critical severity. You are 

 patiently to hear the world condemn you as the de- 

 signer of the work, while your friendly employer 

 vindicates himself by declaring, that, if it be faulty, 

 he is himself blameless ; for he consulted a profess- 

 ional man. 



I fear my indignant young friend has here left me 

 little room for any advice beyond that of strenuously 

 cultivating a patiently enduring; spirit. To other 



* Art, O, my Bombastes, prithee step this way, 



O, O, my Bom (dies) 



Bom. bastes he would have said ; 



But, ere the word was out his breath was fled. 



t For all eter 



Beefeater. nity, he would have added. 



