I have further to confess that these lectures have been for the most part limited to the particular phase of our art in which I am myself most deeply interested; for I do not see much utility in artificially forcing myself to appear as a teacher in a phase which is not that which I view as my special mission. I trust, however, that on my own special subject I may have been useful; anyhow, I believe I have done more than has been done before, and I am sure that I have at least taken an infinity of pains. My lectures have been non-continuous, not only as to their periods of delivery, but as to their subjects. I think, however, they will be found to contain a fairly clear account of the rise and development of our Mediæval architecture, with some useful digressions extending somewhat beyond this range. I have not continued this history of Mediæval architecture beyond the period of its perfect development; because, beautiful though are its late phases, their history does not maintain the same interest with that of the noble enthusiasm which urged on its earlier growth. On now closing my lectures I think I may become, for once, rather more discursive, and may venture a little to the right and left, and in other directions, in search of matters bearing generally upon architectural art as viewed in reference to the past, the present, and the future, and (which concerns yourselves more nearly) in reference to your own individual studies. Our art, as has so often been remarked, differs from the sister arts of painting and sculpture in this, that whereas they arise directly from the artistic aspirations of our nature, apart from practical necessities and utility, ours arises first from these necessities, and then from the desire to clothe the results with beauty. It may be said that the yearning after abstract beauty unlinked with utility is the higher and more spiritual sentiment; but, on the other hand, if we look around us throughout the creations of nature, we are prompted to reply that, in linking beauty with utility, we are more directly imitating Him who made man in His own image, and in whose works this union of the useful and the beautiful is one of the most universal characteristics. Architecture, then, as distinguished from mere building, is the _decoration of construction_. If I were lecturing on architecture, in the broadest form of the expression, I must treat throughout of construction, and of its decoration, _pari passu_, as the latter has but little meaning if severed from the former, which is its groundwork. And, even in lectures from this chair, where architecture is viewed specially in its character as a Fine Art, it is still impossible--as indeed it would be undesirable--wholly to sever that higher characteristic from the more practical phase to which it owes its origin.