great odds with another who, with less application and perhaps a worse case, can arrange his facts--sometimes, alas! even his theories--in a pleasing form. This is well understood and successfully cultivated at the Bar, but in the Church it is sadly wanting, and so the most learned addresses from the pulpit are too often bald. In another essay read by the architect whose paper was quoted from, an essay also which appeared in the _Building News_ of the same year, that gentleman describes the picturesque as “anything which may be likened to a ‘pig with one ear’--an ancient similitude much admired by the scientific, and often used by them with great force and brilliancy. It is unfortunate, but none the less true, that a very large majority of those who follow after Gothic art, both as students and admirers, have somehow or other been led into the belief that the first principle, the essence of the soul of Gothic, is irregularity. These are the men who stick chimneys in odd corners where they are sure to smoke, put dormers on roofs where they are not wanted, throw out large oriels to small bath-rooms, and corbel out balconies to housemaids’ closets.” This is a heavy calendar indeed against the “very large majority” of the profession, but I rejoice to think it is not just. Nearly every one now understands that picturesqueness has nothing to do with irregularity, _i.e._ irregularity for itself; and as for an architect who could throw out a large oriel to a small bath-room, unless the proprietor spent a long time there, and especially ordered it, his occupation would soon go. So far from having an impression that picturesqueness and irregularity are synonymous, most architects admit the necessity of repose in their works. Take the nave of a Gothic church, with its row of windows; nobody now would say that it gained by having each window different. In the best examples regularity of form is observed; it is in such feeble late works as Merton College Chapel that the reverse prevails. In great Gothic buildings, especially on the Continent, the whole mass seems one mountain of confusion, and it is only when we examine it minutely, and carry down each feature to its starting-point, that we find the order which prevails. Just as in a peal of bells from a church-tower, the first impression they are apt to convey is that each ringer is pulling away promiscuously, the only condition being that they shall manage to pull only a single bell at a time; but they are, on the contrary, following a perfectly regular scale, contrived with profound order and symmetry.