The Architecture of Georgetown. 85 
and will not run in happy harness with the kinder say- 
ings of an eminent man of the last generation who in one 
of his lectures, boldly compared the popular taste to the 
vox-populi, allowing even the more solemn words of vox 
Dei, to follow as a crowning consequence. If public 
taste is the expression of that which pleases the public 
most, or gives universal satisfaction, then there must 
be at least some principal of good prevailing in it 5 
as in that which everybody naturally admires ; and 
on the contrary the element of some evils must 
necessarily exist in that which pleases nobody but 
disgusts everyone ; but all said and done and 
thought about, it is hard to test the public taste or 
teel the art pulse of the million, or to get at it in the 
light of the lecturer alluded to, except it may be only 
as a post factum demonstration ; — after all we must not 
forget that true art was never meant to please the 
many or gratify the multitude, but rather to teach them 
when to be honestly gratified and legitimately pleased ; 
we may bend a bit, to help, but in art we must not stoop 
to raise, the mob, but bid them lookup, learn and admire. 
However we must leave the wide and very vexed ques- 
tion about taste, and pass on to subjects of more general 
interest or at least of more local importance. 
There is a common practice, or at least a great tendency 
in these Western Colonies to exalt all engineer- 
ing skill and science at the expense of architectural 
taste and talent, and often the engineer is required 
to do what in professional etiquette he has no right to 
attempt, unless perchance he cannot help himself or rather 
cannot get anyone of artistic mind to help him. The 
engineer's business is to calculate, contrive, and construct, 
