In my former lectures I endeavoured, first, to state the claims of Gothic architecture upon our special study and attention; I next, in a series of four lectures, traced out with some minuteness the history of its development from the earlier and ruder forms of Romanesque--through the various processes of refinement which brought that style to its highest state of perfection--and, through the great process of transition by which it became gradually and systematically changed into the Pointed style: not, as I showed, from a mere change of taste or fashion, but from strictly logical and practical causes, accompanied by an ardent unresting determination to raise the art to the highest perfection which the circumstances of the age would permit; and I then showed how the Pointed style--when once generated--developed itself into the perfected and glorious architecture of the middle of the thirteenth century. I did not follow out the history of Gothic architecture in its succeeding stages, as my object was rather _moral_ than merely _historical_, and I desired rather to exhibit the glorious earnestness of a people, who, while developing a new civilisation, pressed ardently forward, side by side with it, the generation of a new style of architecture, than to give a history of the successive changes through which that architecture passed. When, therefore, I had traced out the style to its culminating point, I quitted mere history, and closed with two lectures on the _rationale_ of the style, showing how every form which characterised it in its best days was dictated, not by fashion or caprice, but by _reason_. Being now, after a lengthened interval, called upon to add two lectures to my series, I take for my subjects the practical study of Gothic architecture, and its actual practice and adaptation to the requirements of our own day.