become interested in the art which produced it; or that, if every window
in your streets were of some such form, with perpetual change in their
ornaments, you would pass up and down the street with as much
indifference as now, when your windows are of _this_ form (_fig._ 1).
Can you for an instant suppose that the architect was a greater or
wiser man who built this, than he who built that? or that in the
arrangement of these dull and monotonous stones there is more wit and
sense than you can penetrate? Believe me, the wrong is not in you; you
would all like the best things best, if you only saw them. What is wrong
in you is your temper, not your taste; your patient and trustful temper,
which lives in houses whose architecture it takes for granted, and
subscribes to public edifices from which it derives no enjoyment.

[Footnote 2: Oakham Castle. I have enlarged this illustration from Mr.
Hudson Turner's admirable work on the domestic architecture of England.]

5. "Well, but what are we to do?" you will say to me; "we cannot make
architects of ourselves." Pardon me, you can--and you ought.
Architecture is an art for all men to learn, because all are concerned
with it; and it is so simple, that there is no excuse for not being
acquainted with its primary rules, any more than for ignorance of
grammar or of spelling, which are both of them far more difficult
sciences. Far less trouble than is necessary to learn how to play chess,
or whist, or golf, tolerably,--far less than a school-boy takes to win
the meanest prize of the passing year, would acquaint you with all the
main principles of the construction of a Gothic cathedral, and I believe
you would hardly find the study less amusing. But be that as it may,
there are one or two broad principles which need only be stated to be
understood and accepted; and those I mean to lay before you, with your
permission, before you leave this room.

6. You must all, of course, have observed that the principal
distinctions between existing styles of architecture depend on their
methods of roofing any space, as a window or door for instance, or a
space between pillars; that is to say, that the character of Greek
architecture, and of all that is derived from it, depends on its roofing
a space with a single stone laid from side to side; the character of
Roman architecture, and of all derived from it, depends on its roofing
spaces with round arches; and the character of Gothic architecture