28 DESIGN. 



as with the able and excellent gardener who has managed it for 

 many years, and who finds it impossible to grow plants within, 

 and has long since given up the case as utterly hopeless ; the 

 only result which could be expected. 



It may seem strange that ten or twelve thousand dollars 

 should be expended upon a plant-house, and, after all the 

 expense, the house be unfit for the growth of plants, and that 

 this fitness could be more extensively obtained at one twentieth 

 the cost. Such, however, is the case, and will continue to be 

 so, till the design be considered in relation to " fitness for the 

 end in view ;" and that this is far from being the case, we have 

 lately experienced sufficient proof. Buildings like that we have 

 just alluded to, may properly be called beautiful specimens of 

 architecture, but if the principles of design or beauty be regarded 

 on fitness for the end in view, as we believe it to be in works 

 of utility, then, as plant-conservatories, these structures ought 

 to be condemned. 



I have no doubt some of our architectural readers, and lovers 

 of dull, massive, gorgeous, and grotesque conservatories, will 

 pronounce against such a violation of the principles of architec- 

 ture, as would undoubtedly be perpetrated by building a mere 

 shell of glass to form a counterpart of the solid masonry of a 

 large mansion. Conversing on this point lately with a talented 

 architect, he said, " Conservatories can never be reconciled with 

 mansion architecture if they must be erected upon such princi- 

 ples ; the thing is utterly inconsistent with beauty in a building. 

 Such an appendage," said he, " would be as absurd as putting a 

 gauze covering over a buffalo robe to withstand a snow storm." 

 It would be useless here to reply to the injustice and inapplica- 

 bility of these observations, and we will let them go for what 

 they are worth. They serve, however, to convey a pretty accu- 

 rate idea of the estimation in which architects hold the principles 

 of plant culture, even when pointed out to them; or, as we might 

 term it, how little they care for the beauty expressed by " fitness 

 of purpose." Utility, however, is undoubtedly the basis of all 

 beauty in works of use, and, therefore, the taste of architects, so 

 applied, may safely be pronounced as radically wrong. 



