ts or functions of him. A Gothic cathedral is an attempt at
a universal expression of humanity, a stone image of society, in which
each particle, insignificant by itself, has its meaning in the
connection. It was the fresh interest in the attempt that gave birth to
that wonderful architecture. This is the interest it still has, but now
only historical, since the discovery was made that the particle is
greater than the mass,--that it is for the sake of the individual that
society and its institutions exist. Ever since, a process of
disintegration has been going on, resulting in a progressive reversal of
the previous relation. Not the private virtues of the structure, but its
uses, are now uppermost, and ever more and more developed. Even in our
own short annals something of this process may be traced. Old gentlemen
complain of the cost of our houses. The houses of their boyhood, they
say, were handsomer and better built, yet cost less. There is some truth
in this, for the race of architect-builders hardly reaches into this
century. But if the comparison be pushed into details, we soon come to
the conviction that the owners of these houses were persons whose habits
were, in many respects, uncouth and barbarous. It is easy to provide in
the lump; but with decency, privacy, independence,--in short, with a
high degree of respect on the part of the members of the household for
each other's individuality,--expense begins. Letarouilly says it is
difficult to discover in the Roman palaces of the Renaissance any
reference to special uses of the different apartments. It was to the
outside, the vestibule, courtyard, and staircase, that care and study
were given: the inside was intended only as a measure of the riches and
importance of the owner, not as his habitation. The part really
inhabited by him was the _mezzanino_,--a low, intermediate story, where
he and his family were kennelled out of the way. Has any admiring
traveller ever asked himself how he could establish himself, with wife
and children, in the Foscari or the Vendramin palace? To live in them,
it would be necessary to build a house inside.

Nor is there any ground for saying that the fault is in the
builders,--that the old builders met the demands of their time, and
would equally satisfy the demands of our time, without sacrifice of
their art. The first demand in the days of good architecture was, that
the building should have an independent artistic value beyond its