It does not require us to go very deeply into the philosophy of the subject to find out why this should be the case; the fact simply being that no sham was ever permanently successful, either in morals or in art, and no falsehood ever remained long without being found out, or which, when detected, inevitably did not cease to please. It is literally impossible that we should reproduce either the circumstances or the feelings which gave rise to classical art and made it a reality; and though Gothic art was a thing of our country and of our own race, it belongs to a state of society so totally different from anything that now exists, that any attempt at reproduction now must at best be a masquerade, and never can be a real or earnest form of art. The designers of the Eglinton Tournament carried the system to a perfectly legitimate conclusion when they sought to reproduce the costumes and warlike exercises of our ancestors; and the pre-Raphaelite painters were equally justified in attempting to do in painting that which was done every day in architecture. Both attempts failed signally, because we had progressed in the arts of war and painting, and could easily detect the absurdity of these practices. It is in architecture alone of all the arts that the false system remains, and we do not yet perceive the impossibility of its leading to any satisfactory result. [Illustration: No. 2.] Bearing all this in mind, let us try if we can come to a clearer definition of what this art really is, and in what its merits consist. Let us suppose the Diagram (Woodcut No. 2) to represent an ordinary house, such as is found in many of our London streets. The first division, A, is the most prosaic form of building, no more thought being bestowed on it than if it were a garden wall. The second division, B, is better; the cornices and string-course indicate the levels of the several floors into which the building is divided; the quoins of the door and windows are emphasized by the use of a better or different coloured brick, and the arched forms given to door and window on ground floor suggest increased strength. In the third division, C, this has been carried still further; the rustication of the stonework on the lower storey gives an appearance of greater solidity, and the importance given to the cornices, the addition of architrave mouldings round windows, with pediments to those of the first floor, and the decoration of the parapet carry the house out of the domain of building into that of architecture. The fourth division carries this still farther; the whole design is here divided into three stages—the ground floor being treated as a podium or base to the two floors above, the whole being crowned by an attic storey; greater importance is given to the front by the slight projection of two wings; the entrance doorway is emphasized, and by means of cornices, quoins, and pilasters, a play of light and