our body in larger proportions than they have as yet been. These are the architects who, because the buildings which they construct are pre-eminently massive, because they are buildings mainly devoted to the developement of the grand material interests of the nation, because their measurement may be the furlong and not the yard, therefore abjure the name of architect to borrow the incongruous appellation of engineer. Do not mistake me, and imagine that one single thought derogatory to the grandeur of those constructions or to the genius of the men who planned them crosses my mind while I pen these sentences. The man would be unworthy of the name of Englishman who was not proud of them. All that I say is that I demur to the appellation under which their constructors have produced them. What is an engineer? I look to Johnson, and he tells me: "Engineer, (1) one who manages engines; (2) one who directs the artillery of an army," with a reference to Shakspeare's engineer hoisted on his own petard. I seek further help from Richardson, but he only provides me with an illustration borrowed from South: "In like manner, as skilful an engineer as the Devil is, he will never be able to play his engines to any purpose, unless he finds something to fasten them to." We all know and we all admire what our great civil engineers have done, and we lump all their grand works under one term, and call it "engineering." But it is surely just as incorrect to designate every thing that Stephenson or Brunel accomplished engineering, as it would be to call all the works of Michael Angelo architecture, or painting, or sculpture. Michael Angelo was great in all constructive and plastic arts, but the versatility of his greatness did not bring those arts nearer together in themselves than they were before. So the patriarchs of modern engineering have mapped the roadways, invented the rolling stock, and designed the buildings, all of which in different ways go to make up a working railroad, just as an old architect might have built, painted, and carved a cathedral or public hall. The old architect thus showed himself to be architect, painter, and sculptor. So the civil engineer proved himself to be a surveyor, in laying out the line; an engineer, properly so called, in constructing the engines; and an architect, in designing viaducts and stations. The name surveyor has no doubt gone out of fashion as applicable to the person who plans any very large works, and if the world prefers to substitute the designation engineer, I do not object. My immediate point is that the world should not continue to deceive itself with the belief that Stephenson and Brunel were not architects-self-made architects, it may be, just as the mathematician Wren and the physician Perrault were self-made architects, but, like those worthies of the seventeenth century, great architects. The notion that because to them architecture came without the usual training, therefore the engineer is for the future to dispense with the trained and learned architect for the construction of buildings whose monumental elevation gives its colour to our age, is a wrong on our whole craft of architecture, against which it is right to make an earnest protest. But you will ask, what is this protest worth, and what is the practical remedy with which you wish to follow it up? How will you mend the state of things by inducing a number, more or fewer, of our civil engineers to join this Institute? Be assured that I propose no such trivial palliative. I wish the world, eager enough as it is in general for subdivision of labour, to see that in its creation of the new profession of civil engineer it has been false to its own principles, by overweighting the responsibilities of a calling which, growing as it has done with the growth of modern science, may be almost called a new discovery, with those of the old time-honoured one of architect. The mischief of this course is only making itself evident :

"Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile."

The great engineers overwhelmed us with the rough grandeur of their huge style; able but less eminent successors may but stifle us under the weight of heavy disproportion and unscholarly nakedness of detail.

The question of architect or engineer is not a mere fight of words. There are engineers who will

build commendable structures, and architects whose works may be contemptible. But men's merits do not affect the value of principles. Architecture is the calling which, next to that of poet, dives deepest back into the young world's gulf of ages. As it moves on it spins out as part of itself that golden chain of association which ties together the ancient and the new, the foreign and the home-born, the beautiful and the useful. So an architect's education should be based on the broad foundation of history, science, and imagination. The liberal languages and the literature of other lands and times should be storehouses out of which he may bring the treasures with which he makes his handiwork loveable and true. Engineering repudiates the past, or uses it to point a self-exalting contrast. I do not say that engineers themselves do so, but this repudiation is the necessary price at which the constructive part of the engineer's business can any longer be formally divided from architecture.

Is it not, then, more necessary for us to dare to speak the truth, and to believe that our engineering friends will bear to hear that truth. We attack no vested interests, we depreciate no living man's work, when we say that the vast monumental structures of this glorious nineteenth century ought preeminently to be designed by men who have, as architects, learned how past great architects grappled with bigness, men who have studied Egyptian Thebes and the Colosseum, the Pont Du Gard, the Castle and Bridge of Avignon, Conway and Durham Minster. Let it be our office to revindicate for architecture all works of piled material, either containing chambers or else cast in architectural forms, whether they be of arched or trabeate construction. The engineer legitimately claims the level and the gradient, the earthwork, the roadway, the culvert, and the breakwater.

These considerations lead us to a topic which ought on its merits to be faced within the Institute, the relation of the society with the Royal Academy. It is one of the questions which it is the fashion to call delicate, but I see nothing delicate about it, if it be handled in candour and good temper. I approach it in the spirit of the utmost good will towards the Academy, although believing that I best show my good will by declaring myself a believer in the desirability of certain reforms within that distinguished body, which I desire to see always filling the exalted position to which it has the means of doing justice, so long as it continues to realize that rank and wealth involve responsibility with corporations no less than with men. The dualism involved in a Royal Institute of Architects such as I have forshadowed, alongside of a Royal Academy of Arts including architecture, is, I freely grant, at first sight, puzzling; but I flatter myself that I see the way of reconciling with advantage to each other, and to pure architecture, as well as to the mixed arts dependent on it, the continuous co-existence and the progressive developement of the two great societies. Consider the broad differences which respectively mark off the constitutions of the two bodies. Both are, speaking generally, elective; but the election at the Academy means the choice of one distinguished man from out of many; while with us it is little more than the safeguard against improper nomination. Otherwise the Institute is in theory the collective body of all architects; the Academy a selected council of artists, among whom architects only form a certain, and I venture to add, too small a portion. But then we may be told, let the number of architect Academicians and Associates be augmented, and then the Institute might be suppressed. Emphatically no. The Academy is a great advantage to architecture-what that advantage is I shall proceed to point out; but the Institute is a necessity. I have just been revindicating for architecture much which it is the fashion to call engineering; but this revindication strengthens the fact that, while architecture is an art, it is also what, for want of a better term, I must call a business or craft. It is this perpetual combination of the utile and the dulce, the perpetual necessity of adapting style, ornament, and proportion to construction, and of so manipulating construction that it shall not sin against beauty

* Profession applies to the person who professes, and not to the thing professed, and will not, therefore, serve my turn.

of detail or mass, which makes architecture the peculiarly complicated and scientific thing which it is— an art, and something more than an art. It is this which makes it so fascinating to those who are really embraced by its spirit; while, on the other hand, it deters so many amateurs, who find it very much easier to set up as connoisseurs of painting and sculpture than to risk being discovered as incapable of apprehending the mechanical exigencies of building. Again, the architect has also, as a member of the commonwealth, charged with care for the life, health, and convenience of its various members, to make himself at home with sundry legal matters of which an Academy of Arts could have no cognizance, but which are the legitimate function of an architectural corporation.

Of this mixed craft and art then the Institute can be the efficient regulator, as the Royal Academy, a purely artistic body, cannot be. On the other hand, something like the Academy is just what is wanted for painting and sculpture, and being so for these two arts it was seemly that it should also include architecture, otherwise the exclusion would have seemed like a denial of its claim to be a liberal art. Nay more, at the time when the Academy was founded and architectural art in this country was passing though a time of great depression, I have no doubt that the step was eminently salutary. I proceed further, and say that, even now, when architecture occupies in every way a very different position from what it did in the early times of George III, we are more likely to be the better than the worse for the Ephorship of the Academy. Still, it is well that we should know what the Academy can do, and what it cannot. It cannot handle the many professional matters which constantly come before us. It can give lectures on the theory of architecture; it can teach a school of students on the art side of architecture; it can give prizes. We can also do all this, and we do a great deal of it. We shall do more when our School of Technical Teaching, on behalf of which a mixed Committee was organized, gets fairly to work, as I trust it may do this session. Moreover, the Academy can and does specially do two things, neither of which we are so capable of carrying out. The first of them is not a part of its specially architectural functions, but it is of essential importance to the architect. The Academy possesses a life school, in which even the architectural student can acquire that power of drawing the live figure, which I am convinced ought for many reasons, direct and indirect, to form a portion of the curriculum of every one who desires to master architecture as an art and not as a business.

The next thing which the Academy can and does do, is to hold an Exhibition. No doubt if we had as large an income relatively as the Academy, we could hold our Exhibition, and no doubt if the gallery in which we held it were one of the public buildings of London, we could make it a much better exponent of architecture than the Royal Academicians have ever made theirs. It would be affectation not to say what we all feel, that the architectural portion of the great annual display fails in doing justice to architecture. The best evidence of the shortcomings of the Academy is to be found in the independent Architectural Exhibition, which has been carried on for several years with so much zeal, and has for a considerable time been held on the ground floor of the building which lodges us. Still we must all confess that this independent Exhibition does not in itself completely fulfil the requirements involved in an annual London display of architectural progress. The reason is not far to seek, and it is no fault of the promoters of that Exhibition. Imperfect as our representation in Trafalgar Square may be, it still stops the way; it has prestige and antiquity, and so, while defective in itself, it keeps the younger enterprize from filling the void. Accordingly we say, let the Royal Academy, while seeking a new habitation, bear in mind that it can win both honour and popularity by making its Architectural Exhibition each year a vigorous reality, alike for the general visitor and for the student. I am sure if it embarked on this course, it would find no heartier co-operators anywhere than within the walls of this Institute.

In the evidence which I gave before the Commission which sat in 1863, to enquire into the condition of the Royal Academy, I urged its aggregating to itself associates out of the ranks of working artists.

If it should take any such step, we, I am sure, in no spirit of rivalry, would also consider how we might enlarge our ranks, so as to admit the members of such professions into some regulated membership.

I have adduced instances of the peculiar work which we might wisely leave to the Academy. Let me now refer to two fields of labour of our own, in which we especially can do much good, but which would be quite beside the scope of the Academy Air and light have an importance at once legal, sanitary, and architectural. That the Institute should have had a Committee sitting on this question is a matter of unmixed congratulation. Only let me offer one caution-be not content with simply making a report, once for all, on a matter which must be continuously watched through its many ramifications.

The conservation of Ancient Monuments, on which also we have a Committee appointed, is happily a responsibility which is now universally recognized. But it is one thing to recognize and another to perform. A former generation destroyed without shame and without consciousness. Our present generation is too often in the habit of changing and spoiling and bedizening, and then of asserting with a complacent smile that it has only been restoring. Some of us have had our attention lately called to the painful fact that, with the very best intentions, the authorities of Lincoln Minster have lately been flaying alive the surface of that noble structure. Professor Willis, at the late Archæological Congress at Dorchester, laid down, in discoursing of Sherborne Minster, the true and exact law of treatment to which churches ought to be subjected-conservative alike of the fabric, and yet regardful of the solemnity and the exigences of their still living use. The paper put out by our Committee takes up the same position. Neither this paper nor the Professor handled the restoration of secular buildings; and so I hope we shall not pause midway, but instruct the Committee to give the possessor of every castle, every hall and manor house, and every grange, practical and straightforward advice how to live and let live, without damage either to his own health and comfort or to his archæological allegiance. No doubt this is a much more delicate problem than that of church conservation, where the fabric is either restored within its original unchanged walls, or else merely enlarged by aisle or transept, in accordance with the original motif, while house conservation is complicated by ever varying necessities of family, and social station, of ventilation, drainage and smoke, for which no law can be laid down which can systematize the amount of necessary alteration, and therefore it is all the more necessary that some code of general principles should, if possible, be provided. The necessity has become more apparent, since, in an ever increasing ratio, farm-houses situated in counties proximate to the capital, or to chief towns, are snapped up if near railroads and turned into villas. These houses are frequently interesting specimens of Mediæval or seventeenth century architecture, sometimes perfect and sometimes disguised, which the judicious restorer would preserve and enlarge, while in the hands of the ignorant builder they would be doomed to hopeless destruction.

This sketch of the relations of the Institute to external powers would not be complete if I did not comment upon that Ministry of Public Works which has gradually grown up out of the old office of Woods and Forests. It has from time to time been argued, that, in order to avoid the vacillations and inconsistencies seemingly inherent in a fluctuating change of chiefs, there ought to be a permanent head of the department of works. I am decidedly opposed to any such arrangement. Not only is a permanent head to a great department antagonistic to our political instincts and traditions, but I believe that in this case the innovation would defeat its own object. The man who is originally appointed must have some art-notions or other of his own, or else he is palpably unfit to get the place at all. These notions may be good or they may be bad. Anyhow, if he is irremovable they will be ineradicable, to the discomfiture of all opposing schools of thought. At best we should perpetuate sameness and tameness, at worst ever recurring clique and manoeuvring. Besides, those who argue for the permanent chief, forget that

in all public offices there is an element-often an overpowering one-of permanence in the irremovable second man. My own remedy would be based on the opposite principle, of exalting the attributes of the Minister of Works, treating his post as a necessary component, not merely of the administration, but of the cabinet, increasing his responsibilities, multiplying his inducements to do well, and withal hedging him round with such constitutional safeguards as a perpetual oversight by the Institute and the Academy, not to mention the still more severe and formal one of Parliament itself.

The Commissioner of Works is sometimes in the cabinet and sometimes not, and whether in or out of the cabinet he is in theory only a subordinate of the Treasury. This is plainly wrong, for it pulls down the importance of the office, and consequently checks young men who are going into public life from really studying art questions as a channel of political advancement, not much inferior, in its openings, to heavy statistics or colonial grievances. Then modern educational developements have accumulated a large amount of mutual responsibilities, more or less referable to architectural art and its cognate pursuits, between the State and the people, which, if imposed upon the Minister of Works, would fill the hands of the office and of himself, and justify the suggested increase of his dignity. But by some freak the wise men, who busied themselves a few years ago in re-arranging the public service, passed over the First Commissioner, and instead created an anomalous semi-minister, under the ambiguous name of Vice-President of the Committee of Council, to divide his time between high art at South Kensington, and parochial school squabbles in general over the remaining kingdom. I give nothing but praise to the noble collection at South Kensington, while, at the same time, I say that its wants have no relation to the department of state under which it is placed, and I claim that this museum, with the appendent art schools, would more congruously be made a function of the Ministers of Works than of the Vice-President of education. Let the departments be thus re-distributed, and the need for the latter never very well understood nor popular office falls to the ground. For the purpose of moving the really educational votes in the House of Commons, the Lord President himself, rid of his art responsibilities, would want, and ought to have, a Parliamentary under-secretary, but that official need not be of weightier calibre than the Secretary of the Poor Law Board. If the Minister of Works were expanded, as I propose he should be, into an undoubted and constant member of the cabinet, he should also have assigned to him a Parliamentary under-secretary, to move estimates and make explanations; and then the department of works might be filled by a peer, if the fitting man turned up in the House of Lords. We should know how we stood towards such a minister, as we do not with respect to the actual First Commissioner. It would then be our duty, in conjunction with the Royal Academy, to see that, in the remodelling of the office, a definite standing should be given to those great societies, as the perpetual Attorneys-General and referees of architecture at the bar of the administration. Thus the liability of the office holder to be changed would check clique, and the fixity of his standing council, would obviate fickleness and inexperience.

Let me now say a few words upon a detail of considerable importance to architecture,-the International Exhibition which it is proposed shall be held in Paris in 1867. Many here present -Light no doubt recollect the trouble that was taken in this Institute, and elsewhere, to secure an adequate recognition of architecture as the great material symbol of civilization at the London Exhibition of 1862. The result was not all that could have been wished for; nevertheless much was achieved on the British side, -the only side with which we had to do. Not only a highly interesting and overflowing gallery of architectural designs was furnished, but at various points of the ground floor, notably in three special courts, and all up the nave, such large fragments of buildings in progress as were noteworthy by reason of form or detail, and even smaller buildings-like drinking fountains-in their integrity, were exhibited. Compendiously architecture, as architecture, made itself felt on the British