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which it is designed in the simplest and most direct way. Our works—like the 
highest creations in nature—should be beautiful and not beautified. ‘ Beautified ’ 
should be considered a vile phrase when applied to a work of construction, no 
less than when used to characterise a fair Ophelia.. Artists accept the human 
form, at its best, as the highest embodiment of grace and beauty, but there is 
not a curve in the figure that is not the contour of some structural detail that 
is there for a definite purpose. The practice of resorting to extraneous adorn- 
ments to minimise crudities of structural scheme had its rise—if I mistake not— 
in the comparatively recent times when culture and taste were at their lowest. 
It is specially characteristic not only of earlier times, but of the earlier stages 
of the design of any particular product. It has already disappeared in some 
cases and will continue to disappear from the practice of the arts of construction 
as skill and taste develop. I have already alluded to the abandonment of 
ornament in the design of machines, and I think there can be no one, with any 
sense of the fit and pleasing, who does not approve this change in practice. 
The stage coach and horses of former times were lavishly decorated—the 
carriage of to-day is more graceful and pleasing in virtue of the simple elegance 
of its lines. In the best domestic architecture of to-day we see the same ten- 
dency to trust for effect, more and more, to an artistic grouping of the lines 
and masses of essential parts and the gradual abandonment of purely decorative 
features, without and within. There was a time when the hulls and riggings and 
sails of ships were lavishly ornamented; now even the figurehead—the last 
remnant of barbaric taste—has disappeared ; and do we not find in a full-rigged 
ship of to-day (or yesterday, perhaps one should say) a grace and dignity that 
no extranecus embellishments would enhance? From the racing yacht the 
designer has been forced, by the demand for efficiency, to cast off every weight 
and the adornments that so beset the craft of earlier times, with the result 
that there is left only a beautifully modelled hull, plain masts, and broad sweeps 
of canvas, and we can hardly imagine any more beautiful or graceful product 
of the constructive arts. These examples will serve to illustrate the contention 
that the attainment of the highest. efficiency brings with it the greatest artistic 
merit. But in the development of the yacht of to-day, through many stages, 
the designer has been forced, from time to time, to strive to combine grace with 
efficiency. Selection on the part of clients must have eliminated ungraceful 
forms when more beautiful ones could be found, and therefore the advance has 
been rapid. I think I may appeal to this illustration to support the further 
contention that advance in efficiency may be helped and not hindered by keeping 
in view an esthetic as well as a utilitarian aim. Further illustrations will occur 
to anyone who has studied the development of design of structures or machines. 
It is a matter of constant remark, and with justice, that steel bridges, as a 
class, are much less pleasing to the eye than those of stone. The reasons for 
the contrast in artistic merit are not far to seek. The building of stone bridges 
is an ancient art, and survival of the fittest. and selection—even with little 
creative skill on the part of the designers—would have led to the development of 
types having, of recessity. at least the elegance of fitness. But, further, this art 
has come down through the times to which I have referred when artistic and 
utilitarian aims had not yet been divorced in the practice of the crafts; and, 
further still. the practice of building in stone has been in the hands of architects, 
as well as of engineers, and architects are expected to be artists, and are trained 
as such. On the other hand. construction in steel is a very modern art, and it 
has been in the hands of engineers, who usually neglect, if they do not despise, 
the study of the fine arts. But why have architects, with their artistic training, 
not succeeded in producing structures in steel as admirable as those they design 
in stone? Partly, no doubt, because they are hampered by tradition. They 
have not yet fully realised the difference in spirit that must characterise fit 
designs in the newer and the older materials. No one can be an artist in any 
material the possibilities and limitations of which he has not fully mastered. 
Again—if a common engineer may venture the criticism—the architect, as a rule, 
has not sufficiently mastered the science of construction, and has been too much 
addicted to taking the easy course of adopting a decorated treatment instead of 
striving to secure elegance of structural scheme as such: and decoration, at least 
on anything like traditional lines, is wholly incompatible with the best possi- 
hilities of steel as a structural material. Progress is being made in the art of 
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