Expression in buildings cannot always be carried out to the extent of showing from their external appearance what they are, though some indication is possible under any circumstances. A general fitness may be shown, and that is enough. There is a costly bank in Montreal, where in a moment of inspiration the architect has conceived the idea of overturning cornucopias and allowing sovereigns of stone to appear as though they were falling into the street. If this is at all typical of the mode in which the business is conducted, a change of managers would be a rather palpable advantage to the shareholders. There is a bank at Altringham, built for Messrs. Cunliffe, Brooks, and Co., in the “post and petrel style” so common in Cheshire, and although there is no such demonstrative ornament about it as this, it is clearly a public building of some importance, and is certainly one of the best specimens of revival that have ever been produced in England. Vitruvius specifies seven qualities on which the Greeks insisted--solidity, convenience, order, disposition, proportion, decorum, economy; but Barry is able to reduce these to three--permanence, convenience, and beauty, as he stated in a very interesting lecture to the Royal Academy; and it is not too much to say that the requirements of Vitruvius will be found to arrange themselves under these three heads. Now, the typical architecture of the day, for example the Crystal Palace, can scarcely be called permanent. It may and probably will last for generations with very ordinary care, but “its root is ever in its grave.” Of course permanence is only a part of architecture. Dock gates or granite entrances to warehouses may easily possess all that, and show it too, but yet be sadly deficient in other qualities necessary for successful architecture. In engineering buildings there must be a nice calculation of strength. The materials, such as iron rods, and nuts, and screws, are costly, and if increased beyond necessity do not add to the strength of the fabric. A light iron truss spanning fifty feet might be able to bear enormous weights, while an iron scantling containing four times the amount of metal would break from its own weight; but in stone buildings there is no such reserve. The engineer who constructs a roof or shed too strongly, or he whose building is wanting in strength, are both deficient in skill. Stone, however, needs no such caution. It may be used so as to possess, and appear to possess, a surplussage of strength, and yet not seem excessive, and the same may fairly be claimed for brick and oak. The ends of beams that show their massive proportions to the street, and support an overhanging storey of some black-and-white building, proclaim their strength and sufficiency, and cannot appear excessive or overdone, from the nature of their material, which is so plentiful. Convenience more particularly applies to the interior of a building, and refers to the arrangement and size of the rooms. A