principled, national character of that Art, not an ephemeral, variable, still less a capricious style of building: having thus interrogated the past, and heard its oracular answer, we must now look at the present to arrive at our auguries about the future. For such is our theme.
Have we then as yet gained this supreme and vital point? Have we any pretensions to an architectural system which all of us recognise as belonging to our age and country, the child of its peculiar civilization, the offspring of our climate and soil, and of the special tastes inspired by our love of nature? Or have we forms and models that have sprung from our institutions, our own domestic and insular predilections? In fact, looking at our great public buildings of the day, will not a future age keep its judgment equally balanced on the question, whether we had decided between the classical style of the Treasury, or the mediaeval of the national palace, as best recording our tastes and feeling?
If this be so, must we not say, that looking at the past which has given us rules, and at the present which gives us data, our conclusion for the future of Architecture is not favourable, so far as public building is concerned? Each edifice may be good—thoroughly and even perfectly good of its kind—but together they give no whole, no type, no system. They will bear witness to our skill and prosperity, not to our consistency in Art.
It would be unfair to leave our subject here, and not glance at the splendid efforts made by private enterprise to redeem the architectural reputation of
