=Need of Public Appreciation of the Art.=--Hence the need of an intelligent appreciation of architecture on the part of the public. It is requisite for their own sake as well as for that of the architect. One of the great difficulties with which the latter has to contend is the ignorance and indifference not only of the public but also of official authorities. They do not give the sincere architect the encouragement of intelligent praise; they exercise no restraint upon the insincere and inefficient. They dismiss all responsibility for the result by “putting it up” to the “expert.” Architecture, in consequence, is liable to be regarded not as an art but merely as a profession. Thus aid and encouragement are given to those architects who practise it mainly or solely as a “business proposition.” And in these days the responsibility of the public is more necessary than it ever was. For the problems of architecture are so infinitely more various and exacting, that they demand for their successful solution the co-operation of the layman. But, although people profess democratic ideas, they act in the matter of architecture as though they were living in aristocratic times, when respect was paid to birth, and not in times when we are trying to cultivate respect for common humanity. To-day, if we are true to our professed ideals, the tenement house of the worker is as important in the social scheme as the palace of the rich or the country house of the well-to-do. And it should be a subject of public concern. Or, to consider another of the many new types demanded by modern conditions--the factory. It must meet the need of the specific industry. That is its utilitarian necessity. But there is also the humanitarian necessity that it shall be a fit place for the men and women who spend in it one-half of their waking lives. And, again, there is what we may call the communal necessity, as it affects the outside lives of the community, that the factory shall not be a thing of ugliness or drear monotony, sordidly devastating the possible beauty of the locality. For we have advanced little in civilisation if we are content to substitute for the grim castle of the Middle Ages, surrounded by its huddle of retainers’ huts, a grim fortress of industry, entrenched amid the mean homes of men and women, not considered in their individual and collective capacity as human beings, but massed under the mechanical term--“operatives.”