this department of the science, perhaps regarded by some who
have no ideas beyond stone and mortar as chimerical, and by others who
think nothing necessary but truth and proportion as useless, is at a
miserably low ebb in England. And what is the consequence? We have
Corinthian columns placed beside pilasters of no order at all,
surmounted by monstrosified pepper-boxes, Gothic in form and Grecian in
detail, in a building nominally and peculiarly "National"; we have Swiss
cottages, falsely and calumniously so entitled, dropped in the
brick-fields round the metropolis; and we have staring square-windowed,
flat-roofed gentlemen's seats, of the lath and plaster,
mock-magnificent, Regent's Park description, rising on the woody
promontories of Derwentwater.

4. How deeply is it to be regretted, how much is it to be wondered at,
that, in a country whose school of painting, though degraded by its
system of meretricious coloring, and disgraced by hosts of would-be
imitators of inimitable individuals, is yet raised by the distinguished
talent of those individuals to a place of well-deserved honor; and the
studios of whose sculptors are filled with designs of the most pure
simplicity, and most perfect animation; the school of architecture
should be so miserably debased!

5. There are, however, many reasons for a fact so lamentable. In the
first place, the patrons of architecture (I am speaking of all classes
of buildings, from the lowest to the highest), are a more numerous and
less capable class than those of painting. The general public, and I say
it with sorrow, because I know it from observation, have little to do
with the encouragement of the school of painting, beyond the power which
they unquestionably possess, and unmercifully use, of compelling our
artists to substitute glare for beauty. Observe the direction of public
taste at any of our exhibitions. We see visitors at that of the Society
of Painters in Water Colors, passing Tayler with anathemas and Lewis
with indifference, to remain in reverence and admiration before certain
amiable white lambs and water-lilies, whose artists shall be nameless.
We see them, in the Royal Academy, passing by Wilkie, Turner and
Callcott, with shrugs of doubt or of scorn, to fix in gazing and
enthusiastic crowds upon kettles-full of witches, and His Majesty's
ships so and so lying to in a gale, etc., etc. But these pictures attain
no celebrity because the public admire them, for it is no