Did time permit, I might follow up the _rationale_ of the style under consideration as evinced in the judicious employment, treatment of, and the mode of workmanship applied to, different materials as well as different branches of artistic decoration. The Mediæval architect adopted the material he could most readily obtain, and adapted his design to suit its peculiar qualities. If he used block-stone throughout his work, or united it with rough walling-stone or rubble, or if his building were of brick, or flint, or pebbles, he studied to use them so as to look well and to aid the effect by their variety; as instances of this I will refer to the exquisite stone and flint structures in the eastern counties, and the interstratification of block stone with the thinnest rubble in some of the oolitic districts; to the domestic brick architecture of Norfolk, or Northern Germany, and of Lombardy, to the timber structures of innumerable districts and cities; to the variously-coloured stones in the buildings in Auvergne; and last, but not least, to the magnificent marble structures, with their inlayings and mosaics, which delight us when in Italy. The great principle was how best to utilise the materials which Nature had provided: where Nature had been chary in her gifts, even external plaster was not despised, but truthfully made use of; where she had been lavish, even precious stones were used as building materials, as at Prague, where there is a chapel whose interior is faced with a kind of rubble-work of polished amethyst, the stones being cut through, but otherwise unshaped, the irregular jointings being covered with embossed gilding. In metal-work each metal was treated on its own merits and its own natural characteristics. In decoration--frescoes, mosaics, tapestry, needlework, embossed leather, metal-work, enamels, etc., were profusely used when funds permitted. Indeed, nothing was rejected, either on the score of homeliness or expense, provided it suited the work in hand and the means at command. But what, I may be asked, is the utility of tracing out evidences of a fact so probable on the face of it as that our forefathers acted upon reason when engaged on so practical a thing as architecture? I would reply that its utility is twofold. In the first place, we have too much lost sight of the _rationale_ of architecture, and of the necessity of acting upon it. I do not wish to rip open old sores, or to object against other errors of which we are all of us guilty. Let us each examine ourselves, and ask ourselves how far we act upon truth and reason in our designs; and if compelled to admit our derelictions, a review like that on which we have been engaged may not be otherwise than useful--quite apart from any question about what style we are working in.