BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Chateau, Fergusson. Also Barqui, _L’Architecture moderne en France_.--_Berlin und seine Bauten_ (and a series of similar works on the modern buildings of other German cities). Daly, _Architecture privée du XIXe siècle_. Garnier, _Le nouvel Opéra_. Gourlier, _Choix d’édifices publics_. Licht, _Architektur Deutschlands_. Lübke, _Denkmäler der Kunst_. Lützow und Tischler, _Wiener Neubauten_. Narjoux, _Monuments élevés par la ville de Paris, 1850-1880_. Rückwardt, _Façaden und Details modernen Bauten_.--_Sammelmappe hervorragenden Concurrenz-Entwurfen._ Sédille, _L’Architecture moderne_. Selfridge, _Modern French Architecture_. Statham, _Modern Architecture_. Villars, _England, Scotland, and Ireland_ (tr. Henry Frith). Consult also _Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, and the leading architectural journals of recent years. +MODERN CONDITIONS.+ The nineteenth century has been pre-eminently an age of industrial progress. Its most striking advances have been along mechanical, scientific, and commercial lines. As a result of this material progress the general conditions of mankind in civilized countries have undoubtedly been greatly bettered. Popular education and the printing-press have also raised the intellectual level of society, making learning the privilege of even the poorest. Intellectual, scientific, and commercial pursuits have thus largely absorbed those energies which in other ages found exercise in the creation of artistic forms and objects. The critical and sceptical spirit, the spirit of utilitarianism and realism, has checked the free and general development of the creative imagination, at least in the plastic arts. While in poetry and music there have been great and noble achievements, the plastic arts, including architecture, have only of late years attained a position at all worthy of the intellectual advancement of the times. Nevertheless the artistic spirit has never been wholly crushed out by the untoward pressure of realism and commercialism. Unfortunately it has repeatedly been directed in wrong channels. Modern archæology and the publication of the forms of historic art by books and photographs have too exclusively fastened attention upon the details of extinct styles as a source of inspiration in design. The whole range of historic art is brought within our survey, and while this has on the one hand tended toward the confusion and multiplication of styles in modern work, it has on the other led to a slavish adherence to historic precedent or a literal copying of historic forms. Modern architecture has thus oscillated between the extremes of archæological servitude and of an unreasoning eclecticism. In the hands of men of inferior training the results have been deplorable travesties of all styles, or meaningless aggregations of ill-assorted forms.