=Beaux Arts Training.=--The “Beaux Arts” training is based upon the study of Greek, Roman, and Renaissance Styles. The Greek, within a limited range of building types, exhibits the most perfected relation of plan to elevation, of form to function; the most harmonious combination of mind and feeling. The Roman represents a genius of constructive logic and practical inventiveness in applying principles to a wide variety of problems. The Renaissance replaced constructive logic by a logic of taste and rehandled Roman details with a finesse of skill that was as subtle as the Greek. Moreover, the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance are (to use a modern word) _standardised_ styles; in which proportions have been calculated and the principles reduced to certain recognised relations of harmonious agreement. Thus they lend themselves to a more exactly determined kind of study than is possible with the Gothic, which more nearly corresponds to the free growths of nature, involving all the principles of structure and the elements of beauty, but with a freedom of application that makes formulation difficult. Now the effects of this Beaux Arts training by no means always corresponds with its aim. The aim of the School, responding to the French aptitude for logical processes, is to teach the student to reason, to cultivate the habit of applying to every problem an independent and individual process of logic. He is taught to get down to the bone of any problem and discover its cleanest and simplest solution. The historic styles are treated not as models for imitation but rather as a grammar of principles and applications, by means of which the student may fit himself for original composition. The system, in a word, encourages originality and not imitation. =Effect of Beaux Arts Training.=--Meanwhile, among the many architects in America whose names are associated with the “Beaux Arts,” only a minority is composed of actual graduates of the school. The remainder have availed themselves more or less of the courtesies that the school extends to foreign students; but have not enjoyed the exhaustive training in the direction of independent reasoning that it is the school’s purpose to impart. The result is that many of them acquired the habit, not of approaching the solution of each problem independently, but of becoming more or less intelligent and tactful adapters of Roman and Renaissance characteristics. In consequence of thus misrepresenting the aim of the Beaux Arts, the latter has incurred in this country the unjust charge of promoting imitation--the precise antithesis of what the school actually stands for. Accordingly, there has arisen a reaction against what is supposed to be the “Beaux Arts” influence.