PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION H. 559 



the architect, are also of great importance to the community, and 

 it presents an equally strong case as that of the artistic side for 

 closing in the profession within safe and reasonable limits by regis- 

 tration under legal enactment. There are just as sound reasons 

 for so doing with our professions, as for those of the law, the Bar, 

 and medicine. 



It is gratifying to find the institutes alive to this necessity, and 

 to call to mind the steady, although slow, progress they are making 

 against passive indifference, as well as the active opposition of 

 parliamentarians. If the State Parliaments are too slow, perhaps 

 the Commonwealth Grovernment, with its cherished interference 

 with the States, might give us the status we ask for. If our aims 

 are in due course to be satisfied, it is only right we should take care 

 that our rising professional men, and our students, are efiiciently 

 prepared and educated to enable them to render efiicient service 

 for the protected advantages that registration will give them. 



Training and Education. 



In Australasia we labour under the signal disadvantage that our 

 students have no artistic traditions to mould them, and no access 

 to the monuments wrought by the masters of our profession in 

 Europe, the East, and, to some extent, in America. Illustrations, 

 which are, of course, available in unlimited quantities for study, 

 lack the one great essential, that of training the eye for propor- 

 tion — and from a drawing or a photograph we lose much of the 

 indescribable charm and dignity of the old masterpieces, whether 

 the breadth and vigour of the Norman-French, the classic grandeur 

 of the Italian Ren3.issance, the intricacy and grace of the Indian 

 Taj, or the marvellous and evidently Greek inspiration of the 

 Bhuddist Temple, as exemplified at Boroe Boedoer. These are out 

 of reach of the generality of students training in our technical 

 schools, universities, private offices, and Government Departments. 

 I fear too many aspiring young architects are turned out with a 

 superficial knowledge of style only, and, in some cases, with none 

 at all. 



In my younger days, in Loudon, we were taught that it was 

 essential, in mastering the subtle art of proportion, the disposition 

 of enrichment and ornament, the effect of light and shade, con- 

 struction, and analysis of the principles guiding a masterpiece of 

 design, that the student should take his measuring rod and rule, 

 and set out the whole or parts again on paper from his actual 

 observation, a method resulting in great advantage to his sub- 

 sequent drafting efforts. 



I can remember nothing more enjoyable than our -weekly 

 occupation, office all day, and long hours, academy or South Kens- 

 ington with lectures and classes in the evenings, with a bit of 

 original designing at odd moments, and week-end excursions to 



