by heart; had a little smattering of drawing
from Daub the painter, and then set up in business for himself. As for
Mr Triangle the architect, who built the grand town-hall here, the
other-day, in the newest style of Egyptian architecture, and copied two
mummies for door-posts, and who is now putting up the pretty little
Gothic church for the Diocesan Church-and-Chapel-Building and
Pew-Extension Society, with an east window from York, and a spire from
Salisbury, and a west front from Lincoln--why, he is the veriest stick
of a designer that ever applied a T-square to a stretching-board. He has
studied Wilkins's Vitruvius, it is true, and he has looked all through
Hunt's Tudor Architecture, but his imagination is as poor as when he
began them; he has never in his life seen one of the good buildings he
is pirating from, barring St Paul's and Westminster Abbey; he knows
nothing finer than Regent Street and Pall-Mall, and yet he pretends to
be a modern Palladio. It will not do, all this sham and parade of
knowledge; we want a new generation, both of architects and builders,
before we shall see any thing good arising in the way of houses--but as
this new progeny is not likely to spring up within a few days, nor even
years, we may as well buckle to the task of criticism at once, and find
out faults, which we shall leave others to mend.

And, to lay the foundation of criticism in such matters once more and
for ever, let us again assert that good common-sense, and a plain
straight-forward perception of what is really useful, and suited to the
wants of climate and locality, are worth all the other parts of any
architect's education. These are the great qualities, without which he
will take up his rulers and pencils in vain; without them, his ambitious
_facades_ and intricate plans will all come to nothing, except dust and
rubbish. He may draw and colour like Barry himself; but unless he has
some spark of the genius that animated old Inigo and Sir Christopher,
some little inkling of William of Wickham's spirit within him, some
sound knowledge of the fitness and the requirements of things, he had
better throw down his instruments, and give it up as a bad job; he'll
only "damn himself to lasting shame."

A moderate degree of science, an ordinarily correct eye, so as to tell
which is straightest, the letter I or the letter S, and a good share of
plain common-sense--these are the real qualifications of all architects,
builders, and c