THE RT. HON. S. CAVE'S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 



Somerset House and Waterloo Bridge are almost the only civil 

 structures which excite the admiration of foreigners. Some 

 of the clubs are worthy of notice, especially for the excellence 

 of their arrangements, in all respects except ventilation, an 

 appliance yet to be discovered in northern latitudes. The 

 House of Parliament is a gigantic and most costly failure. 

 It seems to have been designed with little regard to the pur- 

 pose it was to serve. The arrangements for enabling even 

 members of the Government to transact that large part of the 

 business of the country w'hich is carried on by means of per- 

 sonal interviews are still far inferior to those of any House of 

 Assembly I have ever seen, though improvements have been 

 made by frequent alterations. In private houses there has 

 been a marked advance in convenience, and in sanitary ap- 

 pliances. In towns we no longer bury our basements in 

 Cimmerian darkness, nor erect dead walls before our attics. 

 In the country we do not so generally destroy the health and 

 light of our offices and stables by planting masses of shrubs 

 close to the windows. Common sense has banished spurious 

 taste. Genuineness and reality are at length driving out sham 

 and stucco. We are still, however, inclined to copy defects 

 which were caused by poverty of material in early styles ; to 

 narrow our windows, though we have glass in abundance; and 

 to give our roofs an excessive pitch, though no longer obliged 

 to load them with enormous weights. At the same time we 

 have ventured on daring innovations by land, as well as in 

 naval architecture, and the mode in which glass and iron were 

 employed in the Exhibition of 1851 has been widely copied. 



In arcliitecture, and still more in the tine arts, though there 

 are certain canons which have always been recognized, yet 

 taste has varied from age to age under the guidance generally 

 of some one who has either from his power of explaining and 

 enforcing his views, from his position, or some other cause, been 

 looked up to as an authority. Pnit whereas in science we boast 

 of our superiority to those who have preceded us, having the 

 advantage of their accunmlated stores of experience, the case 

 is different in regard to literature and the fine arts. In these 

 excellence springs forth, like ^linerva, full-grown, and espe- 

 cially during the youth of the world. Poetry is the earliest 

 language of a race, and we are, I think, justified in saying that 

 nations, like individuals, may write themselves out. Certainly 

 in the earlier authors we find more vigorous and condensed 

 thought, more expressions that have become, as it were, cur- 

 rent coin, than in those of later date. It must, however, be 

 admitted that stirring'-'events and organic changes, social or 



