PEESIDEKTIAL ADDBESS — SECTION J. 425 



house with its projecting turret or oriel, to gain some space 

 within or afford a better outlook. Of building regulations as 

 we know them there appear to have been none, and every man 

 did what seemed right in his own eyes ; with a result that one 

 cannot but admire, but which it would be unwise to imitate. 

 Though the sense of vision is still charmed by the relics of the 

 past, the odours of the roughly-cobbled or unpaved street, with 

 its central gutter (the only drain), need not be recalled. For- 

 tunately for the visitor and inhabitant alike, they have been 

 replaced by w^ell-paved roadways and modern sewers, but not 

 before they had taken toll century by century of thousands of 

 valuable lives prematurely cut off by the scourge of ever- 

 present disease and periodical epidemics. 



Such is Nuremberg the ancient, and such was the type of 

 city prevalent all over northern and western Europe prior to 

 the Reformation. With the Eenaissance came a great change 

 in architectural treatment ; but the widening and straight- 

 ening of city streets, and the general improvement of the con- 

 ditions of healthy life, was a work of time, in which even yet in 

 many quarters little progress has been made. But the modern 

 spirit is permeating even the most backward communities, and 

 it is as impossible to return to the condition of the Nuremberg 

 of the past as to turn back the tide, or stop the earth in her 

 course. 



In the old cities of Europe congested quarters are being 

 opened up, narrow winding ways made straight, and sun and 

 light are beginning to penetrate even the most unwholesome of 

 the slums. At the best it is, however, a work of palliation, and 

 not of reconstruction. To new countries alone, like Australia 

 and America, is it permitted to form their own surroundings, 

 and embody therein the knowledge we now possess. Of air 

 and space in our streets we in ^Australasia lack but little ; but its 

 better disposal was the theme of my paper last year on " The 

 Laying-out of Towns." In that I advocated a new mode of 

 planning, based on the spider's web, and incidentallv pointed 

 out the opportunities thereby afforded for grouping, variety, 

 and picturesqueness in the architecture of the buildings, and on 

 these points I now propose somewhat to enlarge. 



But before doing so it is well to recall the conditions and 

 limitations, approved by experience, to which the architecture 

 of a modern city must conform, and thus prevent a useless chase 

 after a mere will-o'-the-wisj), such as some writers have ad- 

 vocated in seeking to revive the haphazard picturesqueness of 

 a mediaeval city. And in the first place the wide and straight 

 streets of modern towns demand the regulation of frontage- 

 lines ; and little by little old encroachments are being pared 

 away, and a uniform line of frontage enforced, to the benefit, no 

 doubt, of the general community, but to the detriment of 



