son, who is the vitally important citizen of a progressive scientific
State, in a competitive relation. In most cases, whenever there is
something that both want, one against the other, the shareholder will
get it; in most cases, where it is a matter of calling the tune, the
shareholder will call the tune. For example, the young architect,
conscious of exceptional ability, will have more or less clearly before
him the alternatives of devoting himself to the novel, intricate, and
difficult business of designing cheap, simple, and mechanically
convenient homes for people who will certainly not be highly
remunerative, and will probably be rather acutely critical, or of
perfecting himself in some period of romantic architecture, or striking
out some startling and attractive novelty of manner or material which
will be certain, sooner or later, to meet its congenial shareholder.
Even if he hover for a time between these alternatives, he will need to
be a person not only of exceptional gifts, but what is by no means a
common accompaniment of exceptional gifts, exceptional strength of
character, to take the former line. Consequently, for many years yet,
most of the experimental buildings and novel designs, that initiate
discussion and develop the general taste, will be done primarily to
please the more originative shareholders and not to satisfy the demands
of our engineer or doctor; and the strictly commercial builders, who
will cater for all but the wealthiest engineers, scientific
investigators, and business men, being unable to afford specific
designs, will--amidst the disregarded curses of these more intelligent
customers--still simply reproduce in a cheaper and mutilated form such
examples as happen to be set. Practically, that is to say, the
shareholder will buy up almost all the available architectural talent.

This modifies our conception of the outer appearance of that little
house we imagined. Unless it happens to be the house of an exceptionally
prosperous member of the utilitarian professions, it will lack something
of the neat directness implicit in our description, something of that
inevitable beauty that arises out of the perfect attainment of ends--for
very many years, at any rate. It will almost certainly be tinted, it may
even be saturated, with the secondhand archaic. The owner may object,
but a busy man cannot stop his life work to teach architects what they
ought to know. It may be heated electrically, but