BUILDING AND ARCHITECTURE. 871 



writings, have acknowledged the firm conviction that the 

 world would be sorry to lose what he has thereupon written. 



His writings have greatly caused in the past, and will even 

 by as much more in the future, lead the student or layman to 

 more properly estimate the true position of the art of archi- 

 tecture, will stimulate him to deeper thought, and even 

 impress upon the architect the seriousness and responsibility 

 of his life's work, and increase his enthusiasm. 



His failure to effect any technical influence upon the art is 

 manifestly explicable after a careful perusal of his published 

 notes, which show a total absence of any logical formulation 

 or concurrent sequence ; hence his teachings are open to 

 repeated attacks, encouraged by his frequent contradictions 

 of himself; and to such extremes has he permitted his 

 beautiful rhetoric to carry him, that he has perforce to state 

 that " Half he ever wrote he would be glad to destroy;" but, 

 notwithstanding this, the strongest and best of his teachings 

 are so evidently valuable, while his weaker conclusions of 

 themselves fail to gain any dangerous support, except from 

 the unthinking and sentimental. 



In considering matters artistically architectural, it has been 

 so frequently asked (when the layman has most deservedly 

 been accused of complete ignorance) by what means can 

 persons beyond the professional pale obtain the requisite 

 means of making honest and valued criticisms ? 



Now, every moderately educated person of the present day 

 has almost of necessity to I'ead in some part the more valued 

 literature of his own time, and but a few paragraphs of the 

 " Seven Lamps " or the " Stones of Venice " would stimulate 

 and assist the thoughtful layman to something like a just 

 appreciation of architectural art, and encourage him to 

 exercise but a small amount of common sense in formulating 

 his opinions of any design newly realised. 



It is one of those truisms most universally known and 

 almost as universally ignored, tliat building at its best is but 

 the expression of an architectural design, and that it is in no 

 wise any form of architecture itself. If building were 

 architecture, it would be essentially necessary for the artist 

 in architecture i.e., the architect, to work upon it with his 

 own hands. Such a necessity has never even occurred to 

 to anyone, and without debating this point further I think 

 we may safely assume that it is non-existent. 



On the other hand, building can tlirive and continue with- 

 out the most distant association with anything architectural 



