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Lectures on Fine Art.
[Lect

and leave them all that is enduring. All that human art has ever produced constitutes as it were a crude ore which must be submitted to the process of "cupellation" before the pure and standard metal, the only menstruum for the future, can be satisfactorily evolved. "Faint with excess of light," and distracted by the claims of what will at first sight appear to be irreconcileable rivals, the student must stand upon the threshold of the art of architecture, as all but bewildered. His first effort will naturally be to recur to the confident statements of empirics, and those dogmatisers whose voices in the past have been most potential in directing the labours of the architect.

Let us for awhile see what they will offer to him.

Throwing aside altogether the views of many writers, who have either treated partially upon the subject, or mainly dealt with transient fashions instead of permanent principles, I believe we may arrive at two distinct forms of architectural creed,—the one advocated by the Classicists and the other by the Mediævalists. At first sight these would appear to be irreconcileable, but the opposition is more in appearance than reality, as, before I have concluded this lecture, I shall hope to be able to demonstrate to you.

I am somewhat averse to introduce into these lectures two much abused terms, common in art criticism, viz. subjective and objective; but they are still, rightly apprehended, so simple and expressive, that I am tempted to define their meaning at this stage of our inquiry, especially because the one of the theories I am about to explain to you is essentially subjective, and the other objective.

What I may call the classical theory of architecture is subjective; that is to say, an artificial constitution, constructed on what is believed to be principles consonant with man's nature, and only allowed existence as principles because they were presumed to be in harmony with the immutable principles of man's physical and intellectual condition. The things

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