312 TOWERS AND TANKS FOR WATER-WORKS. 



streaks from innumerable seams, and toward its top the six-foot 

 letters of a real-estate dealer's advertisement. Compare the 

 Campanile, that peaceful home of hundreds of pigeons, and the 

 uncrested stand-pipe, a favorite roosting- place for flocks of buz- 

 zards ! 



The systematic design and appropriate ornamentation of 

 masonry structures belong to civil architecture, 'the art which 

 so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever 

 use that the sight of them contributes to his mental health, power, 

 and pleasure"; nevertheless, so insensibly do in many cases 

 the art and science of architecture and engineering blend, that 

 it is a desideratum if not a prerequisite for the professed engineer 

 to understand and appreciate the principles of correct architecture 

 and to be familiar with its fundamental truths. 



Ruskin says there is but one grand style in the treatment 

 of all subjects whatsoever, and that style is based upon the perfect 

 knowledge, and consists in the simple, unincumbered rendering 

 of the specific characteristic of the given object. 



Gerbme, the great modern painter and critic, announces, 

 "the fact is that truth is the one thing truly good and beautiful; 

 and to render it effectively, the surest means are those of mathe- 

 matical accuracy." 



Whatever the subject, material, or means, they must appeal 

 to the innate sense as appropriate to the object sought. Massive 

 weight must be so supported that equilibrium be implied; it 

 must be apparent without analytical investigation. An attempt 

 to trick the imagination through deceptive artifices is fatal. Prison 

 walls and fortress battlements should immediately convey their 

 purpose in grim and forceful character; the ornamentation of 

 such subjects by oriental minarets or fanciful friezes would 

 be at once characterized as extraneous, a departure from the 

 truth, and hence false to art. 



Discussing the design of so simple a thing as a doorway, a 

 recent writer emphasizes the true and false as follows: "Between 



