According to the usual practice of our architects, a lad, after he has left school, where he has learned to read and write, arithmetic, a little geometry, and perhaps a very little drawing, together with some other things not applicable to architecture, is placed in an architect’s office, where his first employments are probably, to copy particulars of work, without understanding them, and to square dimensions from nine in the morning till seven or eight in the evening. After this, if he is studiously inclined, he may perhaps go to the academy at Somerset House, where in the course of a year, he may hear six lectures on architecture, provided that is, that the professor is neither sick, nor idle, nor too busy to give them; or he will employ himself at home in making designs, without at all knowing what are the requisites for any mode of design whatever. When thus, as it were almost in spite of his master, he has learned to draw a little, he may be employed in copying plans, and afterwards elevations and sections, or in measuring the works erected by his superior, not to make himself master of their beauties, but in order to furnish the materials for estimating their value. Perhaps the difficulty of improving himself under these disadvantages may give a stimulus to his exertions; and he does not come out of the office so ignorant as might be expected. Nor indeed, although his professed instructor will not teach, will he refuse him an opportunity of occasionally frequenting private schools of drawing and perspective, or of attending sometimes at the library of the Academy, or in the model-room. He may also perhaps have exercised himself in measuring and drawing the subjects proposed for annual premiums, but with all this it is impossible that he should be prepared to travel with advantage.