all falsehood, defeats itself; the pains we take only serve to make the
failure more complete.

This is displayed most fully in the doings of "Building Committees."
Here we see what each member (perhaps it would be more just to say the
least judicious among them) would do in his own case, were he free from
the rude admonitions of necessity. He has at least to live in his own
house, and so cannot escape some attention to the substantial
requirements of it; though some houses, too, seem emancipated from such
considerations, and to have been built for any end rather than to live
in. But in catering for the public, it is the _outsiders_ alone that
seem to be consulted, the careless passer-by, who for once will pause a
moment to commend or to sneer at the facade,--not the persons whose
lives for years, perhaps, are to be affected by the internal
arrangement. It is doubtless from a suspicion, more or less obscure, of
the incoherency of their purpose, that such committees usually fall into
the hands of a "practical man,"--that is, a man impassive to principles,
of hardihood or bluntness of perception enough to carry into effect
their vague fancies, and spare them from coming face to face with their
inconsistencies. Thus fairly adrift and kept adrift from the main
purpose, there is no vagary impossible to them,--churches in which there
is no hearing, hospitals contrived to develop disease, museums of
tinder, libraries impossible to light or warm. And what gain comes to
beauty from these sacrifices, let our streets answer. Good architecture
requires before all things a definite aim, long persisted in. It never
was an invention, anywhere, but always a gradual growth. What chance of
that here?

The only chance clearly is to cut away till we come to the solid ground
of real, not fancied, requirement. As long as it is our whims, and not
our necessities, that build, it matters little how much pains we take,
how learned and assiduous we are. I have no hope of any considerable
advantage from the abundant exhortation to frankness and genuineness in
the use of materials, unless it lead first of all to a more frank and
genuine consideration of the occasion for using the materials at all. If
it lead only to open timber roofs and stone walls in place of the
Renaissance stucco, I think the gain very questionable. The stucco is
more comfortable, and at least we had got used to it. These are matters
of detail: suppose your details _are_ more