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III.]
Architecture—Theory.
75

anticipate, before he calls the creations of his fancy into permanent form, censure or approbation on the score of his measure of regard to the exigencies of Economy.

Such being, as I believe, a fair exposition of the classical subjective system, or elaboration of the theory in which by the exercise of qualities in which men inherently delighted perfect architecture was according to the ancients to be produced, let us now endeavour to trace the most comprehensive and best form in which the mediæval or objective system has been stated by various and sometimes conflicting authorities.

As most earnest and earliest amongst these we should unhesitatingly place the late Augustus Welby Pugin, to whose efforts it is mainly owing that Christian architecture no longer requires apologists amongst us. We are, I am happy to say, no less alive to its beauties than we can possibly be to those of Athenian art.

He has been succeeded by many great amplifiers and commentators; such as Ruskin, Viollet le Duc, Lassus, Willis, Parker, Scott, Brandon, Sharpe, Street, Otté Moller, Reichensperger, Selvatico, and others, who have grafted on to his original declaration of "True Principles" many valuable additions and corrections; but still he must ever stand forward with a just title to our respect, as the original and ablest vindicator, in our generation, of a set of principles too long neglected amongst us.

The theory of the mediævalists may be considered to rest upon the basis of utility, primarily. Stones of greater or less degree of hardness, wood of various kinds, metals with different properties demand, they allege, to be consistently used in definite scales of proportion, and to be used only in situations for which their qualities imperatively fit them. They look upon the necessities of every case as dictating almost absolutely the plan and leading parts of every structure. If any of those necessities demand symmetry the building may