SHOULD A REPUBLIC ENCOURAGE THE ARTS. 



lie bodies, to aim at expressing in every act, great or small, public or private, which they 

 may essay to perform. 



Is architecture then suitable to public buildings? Is it necessary for the purpose of mak- 

 ing them " perfect" and " specially fit?" — that is the question, and the only question that 

 properly belongs to the case under consideration. To arrive at any right conclusion on 

 this point, it is clear that the meaning of the word architecture must be fairly understood 

 and allowed beforehand. The most simple and true definition of it, that seems to be at- 

 tainable, is that it is " the art of the beautiful in building." There seems no ground on 

 which an argument could rest, capable of proving this to be a false definition, and as it is 

 sufficiently intelligible, it seems needless to seek for any other. Taking then this definition 

 as granted to be correct, architecture is the whole art of giving to a building all the beau- 

 ties or perfections of which it is capable; perfection of plan and perfection of execution 

 (of which buildings are undoubtedly capable) being of course parts of this whole, the re- 

 mainder, whatever it is, being something beyond these. The first deduction that neces- 

 sarily follows, is that there is no such thing in existence, or capable of existing, as good 

 building exclusive of architecture; for every quality in a professedly unarchitectural build- 

 ing, that gives it a title to the name of good, is necessarily a perfection or beauty either 

 of convenience or construction; and "all" perfections and beauties in building, being 

 claimed to be the peculiar province of architecture; such a building would not be unarchi- 

 tectural, but partially architectural, and only good to the extent that it was architectural; 

 this seems to be the true state of the case, and therefore the line drawn just now, for the 

 convenience of argument, between the art of building and the art of architecture, appears 

 to have no real existence, and consequent!}'' government, in erecting commodious public 

 buildings, cannot ignore architecture entirely, and its claim to consideration becomes solely 

 a question of degree — a question of how many or how few architectural beauties or per- 

 fections are suitable to the building under its control. 



The thing then to determine, is, supposing perfection of plan and execution to be pro- 

 vided for in any public building, what is the next perfection of which it is capable? To 

 decide this intelligibly, it may be useful to prove the analogy, if there is any analogy, 

 between the art of the beautiful in building, and another art which may be more easily 

 agreed on, viz: the art of the beautiful in speaking, if there is in fact any practical 

 analogy between architecture and eloquence. In the first place then, they have each one 

 quality in common, that of being effete without being called into existence for a purpose; 

 a building without an object, or a speech without a motive, is simply impertinent. The 

 one, to be sure, has all the primitive quarries, mines, and forests of nature, for its materi- 

 al; the other has but one alphabet of a few letters, for its primary resource. 



The next process in the one, is to convert its material into shapes, proved by experience 

 to have single positive qualities suited for single specific purposes, and stones, nails, and 

 timbers are the result; a similar process takes place in the other, and we have words. 

 Combination then takes place in each, for the embodiment of more knowledge. Walls, 

 floors and roofs on the one hand; sentences, clauses, sections, on the other; the result in 

 one is a building, in the other a speech. The analogy seems perfect up to this point, and 

 only fails when attempted to be instituted between the object of the one and the motive 

 of the other. These are different; the object of a building is to embody working facts de- 

 duced from principles; the object of a speech, is from working facts already in existence, 

 to hew out principles that shall result in future action. It is in its essence progressive: it 

 the engineer who takes the level, and the pioneer who removes the obstacles in the 

 f improvement, while it is the mission of architecture to supply the paving stones 



