668 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION H. 
this class of work still remain in the towers of Earl’s 
Barton, Barton-upon-Humber, and Barnack, and are some- 
times spoken of as “‘ stone carpentry.” 
What convinced our forefathers of their constructive 
transgressions we cannot tell. Probably neither book 
learning, nor logical reasonings based on an analytical 
study of measured examples. Such helps we have. but 
we have not yet reached absolute perfection. Such helps 
they bad not, yet they amended their ways. 
Slowly, but surely, ovr forefathers advanced on the path 
of true progress, and only a few generations later, when the 
architectural development of the Middle Ages was at its 
best, it might with truth be said of its artists—that, when. 
they worked with stone, they showed us the legitimate 
possibilities of that material as no age had ever done before ; 
when they employed metal, they wrought us a dream of 
exquisite beauty, whose memory will not fade with the 
Japse of time; and when they used timber they produced 
a design of ornamental and constructional propriety which 
could not be executed in any other material without 
bordering on the grotesque. 
If architecture could thus, during the Middle Ages, be 
developed on such strictly scientific lines, how is it that — 
we, with our more perfect system of general education, fail 
to produce equal results ? 
Our race has not degenerated. No period of the world’s 
history shows a better record of individual scientific and 
artistic capacity; and architecture—along with its sister 
arts—now produces true artists, but they appear as in- 
dividuals, and their work does not seem to raise the whole 
tone of general buildings. 
If we are thus compelled to lament that the general 
artistic tone of buildings falls short of a standard which 
might reasonably be expected in this enlightened age, we 
are forced to the conclusion that the fault lies not with 
architects, but with the building public, who will not take 
the trouble to see that their commissions are placed in the 
hands of capable men. 
Au inventor may perfect and simplify an hitherto clumsy 
appliance, and then place his results before an apprecia- 
tive public; a manufacturer may produce a better finished 
and less costly article, and then push its sale in the 
open market; a painter, even, may place the results of his 
genius on canvas, and then offer the work for sale—but an: 
architect must wait for a commission before his ideas can 
assume practical form; for architectural drawings are not 
the end in themselves, but only the means to an end. 
