yet are erected chiefly by private benevolence, directed by private taste.
Returning for a moment to the more secular edifices of which I have spoken, I invite you once more to pass before them. You will find, indeed, much to admire, and to make you feel that England possesses many architects equal to any undertaking, and possessing great individual abilities and taste. But over their works no harmonizing principle seems to rule. Here you have a Norman, and beside it a Pointed building; in this the Byzantine, in the next the Venetian; in its neighbour the Renaissance prevails, through a miscellaneous combination. Some run into that style, which is steadily gaining ground, in the second class of semi-public buildings.
It is in these that we find general taste gravitating towards somewhat, which may be the germ of a national Art; though I must be pardoned if I express a hope that in its growth it may be purged and stripped of what as yet is rude and unwieldy.
In the large piles of building for religious, or charitable purposes, there seems to be a preference for mass, relieved only by strongly contrasting colours, often grimly disposed, unsuggestive, not seldom too horizontally directed. Symmetry,[1] which after all,
- ↑ Is there not au inclination to consider symmetry in the exterior of a building as a sacrifice of principle to appearance? We are told that the elevation should follow the ground-plan, and be carried up, guided by it, without attempting exteriorly symmetrical dispositions. Surely such a principle argues imperfection in art, by going in direct opposition to great principles in nature.
Though great mineral masses are unsymmetrical, crystallography shows the tendency, even in the lowest order of creation, to assume a symmetrical arrangement of particles. In plants this is more apparent. Not only
