natural material. From the same reason many elaborately carved wooden buildings, notwithstanding the smallness of their parts and their perishable nature, are more to be admired than larger and more monumental buildings, and this merely in consequence of the evidence of labour and consequent cost that have been bestowed upon them.

Irrespective of these considerations, many building materials are invaluable from their own intrinsic merits. Granite is one of the best known from its hardness and durability, marble from the exquisite polish it takes, and also for its colour, which for internal decoration is a property that can hardly be over-estimated. Stone is valuable on account of the largeness of the blocks that can be obtained, and because it easily receives a polish sufficient for external purposes. Bricks are excellent for their cheapness and the facility with which they can be used, and they may also be moulded into forms of great elegance, but sublimity is nearly impossible in brickwork, without at least such dimensions as have rarely been attained by man; the smallness of the material is such a manifest incongruity with the largeness of the parts, that even the Romans could not overcome the difficulty.

Plaster is another artificial material. Except in monumental erections it is superior to stone for internal purposes, and always better than brick from the uniformity and smoothness of its surface, the facility with which it is moulded, and its capability of receiving painted or other decorations to any extent.

Wood should only be used externally on the smallest and least monumental class of buildings, and even internally is generally inferior to plaster. It is dark in colour, liable to warp and split, and combustible, which are all serious objections to its use, except for flooring, doors, and such purposes as it is now generally applied to.

Cast iron is another material rarely brought into use, though more precious than any of those above enumerated, and possessing more strength, though probably less durability. Where lightness combined with strength is required, it is invaluable, and may be moulded into any form of beauty that may be designed, but it has hardly yet ever been used so as to allow its architectural qualities to be appreciated.

All these materials are nearly equally good when used honestly each for the purpose for which it is best adapted; they all become bad either when used for a purpose for which they are not appropriate, or when one material is used either in the place of or to imitate another. Grandeur and sublimity can only be reached by the more durable and more massive class of materials, but beauty and elegance are attainable in all, and the range of architectural design is so extensive that it is absurd to limit it to one class either of natural or of artificial materials, or to attempt to proscribe the use of some, and to insist on that of others, for purposes to which they are manifestly inapplicable.

V.-CONSTRUCTION.

Construction has been shown to be the chief aim and object of the engineer; with him it is all in all, and to construct scientifically and at the same time economically is the beginning and end of his endeavours. It is far otherwise with the architect. Construction ought to be his handmaid, useful to assist him in carrying out his design, but never his mistress, controlling him as to the mode of executing what he would otherwise think expedient. An architect ought always to allow himself such a margin of strength that he may disregard or play with his construction, and in nine cases out of ten the money spent in obtaining this solidity will be more effective architecturally than twice the amount expended on ornament, however elegant or appropriate that may be.

So convinced were the Egyptians and Greeks of this principle that they never used any other constructive expedient than a perpendicular wall or prop, supporting a horizontal beam, and half the satisfactory effect of their buildings arises from their adhering to this simple though expensive mode of construction. They were perfectly acquainted with the use of the arch and its properties, but they knew that its employment would introduce complexity and confusion into their designs, and therefore they wisely rejected it. Even to the present day the Hindus refuse to use the arch, though it has long been employed in their country by the Mahometans. As they quaintly express it, "An arch never sleeps," and it is true that by its thrust and pressure it is always tending to tear a building to pieces; in spite of all counterpoises, whenever the smallest damage is done, it hastens the ruin of a building, which, if more simply constructed, might last for ages.

The Romans were the first who introduced a more complicated style. They wanted larger and more complex buildings than had been before required, and they also employed brick to a great extent even in their temples and most monumental buildings. They obtained both space and variety by these means, with comparatively little trouble or expense; but we miss in all their works that repose and harmony which is the great charm that pervades the buildings of their predecessors.

The Gothic architects went even beyond the Romans in this respect. They prided themselves on their constructive skill, and paraded it on all occasions, and often to an extent very destructive of true architectural design. The lower story of a French cathedral is generally very satisfactory; the walls are thick and solid, and the buttresses, when not choked up with chapels, just sufficient for shadow and relief; but the architects of that country were seized with a mania for clerestories of gigantic height, and which should appear internally mere walls of painted glass divided by mullions. This could only be effected either by encumbering the floor of the church with piers of inconvenient thickness or by a system of buttressing outside. The

latter was the expedient adopted; but notwithstanding the ingenuity with which it was carried out, and the elegance of many of the forms and ornaments used, it was singularly destructive of true architectural effect. It not only produces confusion of outline and a total want of repose, but it is eminently suggestive of weakness, and one cannot help feeling that if one of these props were removed, the whole would tumble down like a house of cards.

This was hardly ever the case in England: the less ambitious dimensions employed in this country enabled the architects to dispense in a great measure with these adjuncts, and when flying buttresses are used, they look more as if employed to suggest the idea of perfect security than as necessary to stability. Owing to this cause the French never were able to construct a satisfactory vault in consequence of the weakness of their supports; they were forced to stilt, twist, and dome their vaults to a most unpleasing extent, and to attend to constructive instead of artistic necessities. With the English architects this never was the case; they always were able to design their vaults in such forms as they thought would be most beautiful artistically, and, owing to the greater solidity of their supports, to carry them out as designed.'

It was left for the Germans to carry this system to its acme of absurdity. Half the merit of the old Round arched Gothic cathedrals on the Rhine consists in their solidity and the repose they display in every part. Their walls and other essential constructions are always in themselves sufficient to support the roofs and vaults, and no constructive contrivance is seen anywhere; but when the Germans adopted the pointed style, their builders-they cannot be called architects-seemed to think that the whole art consisted in supporting the widest possible vaults on the thinnest possible pillars, and in constructing the tallest windows with the most attenuated mullions. The consequence is, that though their constructive skill still excites the wonder of the mason or engineer, the artist or the architect turns from the cold vaults and lean piers of their later cathedrals with a painful feeling of unsatisfied expectation, and wonders how such dimensions and such details should produce so utterly unsatisfactory a result.

So many circumstances require to be taken into consideration that it is impossible to prescribe any general rules in such a subject as this, but the following table will explain to a certain extent the ratio of the area to the points of support in sixteen of the principal buildings of the world. As far as it goes, it tends to prove that the satisfactory architectural effect of a building is nearly in the inverse ratio to the mechanical cleverness displayed in its construction.

It may be suggested that the glory of a French clerestory filled with stained glass made up for all these defects, and it may be true that it did so; but in that case the architecture was sacrificed to the sister art of painting, and is not the less bad in itself

because it enabled that art to display its charms with so much brilliancy.

The numbers in the table must be taken only as approximative, except the last four, which are borrowed from Gwilt's Public Buildings of London.'

At the head of the list stands the Hypostyle Hall, and next to it practically is the Parthenon, which being the only wooden-roofed building in the list, its ratio of support in proportion to the work required is nearly as great as that of the temple at Karnac. Spires only wants better details to be one of the grandest edifices in Europe, and Bourges, Paris, Chartres, and Salisbury are among the most satisfactory Gothic cathedrals we possess. St. Ouen, notwithstanding all its beauty of detail and design, fails in this one point, and is certainly deficient in solidity. Cologne and Milan would both be very much improved by greater massiveness; at York the lightness of the supports is carried so far that it never can be completed with the vaulted roof originally designed for the nave at least; and the Temple of Peace is so clever a piece of engineering, that it must always have been a failure as an architectural design.

The last four buildings have quite sufficient strength for architectural effect, but the value of this is lost from concealed construction, and because the supports are generally grouped into a few great masses, the dimensions of which cannot be estimated by the eye. A Gothic architect would have divided these masses into twice or three times the number of the piers used in these churches, and by employing ornament designed to display and accentuate the construction, would have rendered these buildings far more satisfactory than they are.

In this respect the great art of the architect consists in obtaining the greatest possible amount of unencumbered space internally, consistent in the first place with the requisite amount of permanent mechanical stability, and next with such an appearance of superfluity of

d

strength as shall satisfy the mind that the building is calculated to last for ages.

VI.-FORMS.

It is extremely difficult to lay down any general rules as to the forms best adapted to architectural purposes, as the value of a form in architecture depends wholly on the position in which it is placed, and the use to which it is applied; and there is in consequence no prescribed form, however ugly it may appear at present, that may not one day be found to be the very best for a given purpose, and in like manner none of those most admired which may not become absolutely offensive when used in a manner for which it is unsuited. In itself no simple form seems to have any inherent value of its own, and it is only by their combination one with another that they become effective. If, for instance, we take a series of twenty or thirty figures, placing a cube at one end as the most solid of angular, and a sphere at the other as the most perfect of round shapes, it would be easy to cut off the angles of the cube in successive gradations till it became a polygon of so many sides as to be nearly curvilinear. On the other hand by modifying the sphere through all the gradations of conic sections, it might meet the other series in the centre without there being any abrupt distinction between them. Such a series might be compared to the notes of a piano. We cannot say that any of the base or treble notes is in itself more beautiful than the others. It is only by a combination of several notes that harmony is produced, and gentle or brilliant melodies by their fading into one another, or by strongly marked contrasts. So it is with forms: the square and angular are expressive of strength and power; curves of softness and elegance; and beauty is produced by effective combination of the right-lined with the curvilinear.' It is always thus in nature. Rocks and all the harder substances are rough and angular, and marked by strong contrasts and deep lines. Even among trees the oak is rugged, and its branches are at right angles to its stem, or to one another. The lines of the willow are rounded, and flowing. The forms of children and women are round and full, and free from violent contrasts; those of men are abrupt, hard, and angular in proportion to the vigour and strength of their frame.

In consequence of these properties, as a general rule the square parts ought always to be placed below, where strength is wanted, and the rounded above. If, for instance, a tower is to be built, the lower story should not only be square, but should be marked by buttresses or other strong lines, and the masonry rusticated, so as to convey even a greater appearance of strength. Above this, if the square form is still retained, it may be with more elegance and less

There are some admirable remarks on this subject in Mr. E. L. Garbett's Rudimentary Treatise on the Principles of Design in Architecture;' a work that contains more

information, and more common-sense criticism on the subject, than perhaps any other in our language.