In commencing a series of lectures in my capacity as the official occupant of this professorial chair, I feel in some degree shackled by the circumstance that, though the _office_ is new to me, its _duties_ (so far as the lectures go) are not so: inasmuch as, during the latter years of the tenure of this office by our venerated Professor Cockerell, I was, in conjunction with Mr. Smirke, called upon to occupy the place from which ill-health and infirmity compelled him to be absent; and at a later time I have done the same for my immediate predecessor, Mr. Smirke, when circumstances interfered, for one season, with his lectures. I have, consequently, already given nine lectures from this chair without being its rightful occupant; and, now that I commence officially, I find the novelty of anything I might have had to say in a great degree worn off by anticipation. I have consequently been puzzled whether to begin afresh or to go on from the point I had reached. The former would, perhaps, be the most correct course; but, after long uncertainty, I feel it to be too artificial to sever what I said out of office from what I have to say in office, and I have determined to link my future lectures on to those which have preceded them. I shall also for the present limit myself to Mediæval architecture as the subject on which I have been engaged. In my previous lectures I have given an outline of the development of Pointed architecture from the preceding round-arched style, and followed on with some practical suggestions as to the study of these phases of architecture. In them I have treated equally of foreign and English buildings, or have, perhaps, dwelt more at length on the former, and have carefully traced the connection of English with French architecture as they grew up, side by side, from the common germ, each to its glorious perfection. I purpose now to fall back upon the commencement of this series of developments, and, while I go more in detail into the varied features of the architecture of these periods, to limit myself, during the present session at least, very much to its English productions. My reason for this is, that we have of late been directing our attention too exclusively to foreign buildings, greatly to the neglect of our own,--so much so, that many of our architectural students seem to be as little acquainted with the Mediæval works of their own country as if they were brought up in Italy or France. I hold the study of the contemporary buildings of neighbouring countries, especially those of France, to be essential to the due understanding of our own, and of the style _as a whole_; but this affords no excuse for the neglect of English architecture, to which, beyond all question, we are bound, as English architects, to direct our primary attention, and which will repay our study by a series of special beauties of its own, which have of late years been almost wholly overlooked.