treet in which so
many of your excellent physicians live--Rutland Street. I do not know if
you have observed its architecture; but if you will look at it
to-morrow, you will see that a heavy and close balustrade is put all
along the eaves of the houses. Your physicians are not, I suppose, in
the habit of taking academic and meditative walks on the roofs of their
houses; and, if not, this balustrade is altogether useless,--nor merely
useless, for you will find it runs directly in front of all the garret
windows, thus interfering with their light, and blocking out their view
of the street. All that the parapet is meant to do, is to give some
finish to the facades, and the inhabitants have thus been made to pay a
large sum for a piece of mere decoration. Whether it _does_ finish the
facades satisfactorily, or whether the physicians resident in the
street, or their patients, are in anywise edified by the succession of
pear-shaped knobs of stone on their house-tops, I leave them to tell
you; only do not fancy that the design, whatever its success, is an
economical one.

[Footnote 16: For farther confirmation of this statement see the Addenda
at the end of this Lecture.]

35. But this is a very slight waste of money, compared to the constant
habit of putting careful sculpture at the tops of houses. A temple of
luxury has just been built in London for the Army and Navy Club. It cost
L40,000, exclusive of purchase of ground. It has upon it an enormous
quantity of sculpture, representing the gentlemen of the navy as little
boys riding upon dolphins, and the gentlemen of the army--I couldn't see
as what--nor can anybody; for all this sculpture is put up at the top of
the house, where the gutter should be, under the cornice. I know that
this was a Greek way of doing things. I can't help it; that does not
make it a wise one. Greeks might be willing to pay for what they
couldn't see, but Scotchmen and Englishmen shouldn't.

36. Not that the Greeks threw their work away as we do. As far as I know
Greek buildings, their ornamentation, though often bad, is always bold
enough and large enough to be visible in its place. It is not putting
ornament _high_ that is wrong; but it is cutting it too fine to be seen,
wherever it is. This is the great modern mistake: you are actually at
twice the cost which would produce an impressive ornament, to produce
a contemptible one; you increase the price of your buildings by
one-half, in order to mi