In conclusion, let me urge you to study diligently the various problems affecting this subject, which, in your experience, are continually offered for solution. In so doing, look mainly to a practical solution of the questions which may arise, and free yourselves from all consideration of so-called rules of art, which might control you. The development of architectural design was no less affected by local and circumstantial conditions, with the ancients, than it is with us; but the conditions at the present time are essentially different from, and decidedly more various than those which controlled our ancestors, whether of the classic or mediæval period. Whatever may have been achieved by art in those times, was the result of, and co-ordinate with the practical solution of problems then offered. We have ignored the conditions which specially affect us, and the result is that our architecture, for whatever purpose, is without originality, and wholly irrational. As long as we allow ourselves to be governed by rules of art founded on the experience of the past, and precedents established by conditions which now do not exist, we need hope neither for good construction nor good art. The attempt to engraft the traditions of the past upon the practical work of this century has resulted in failures involving the waste of hundreds of millions of capital in this country alone; I might name from memory a score of buildings, many of them the most prominent, and all the most costly that have been erected, in proof of this assertion. I would commence with our national Capitol, in whose dome may be seen the most flagrant attempt in all modern time to perpetuate a traditionary style in a material entirely different from that in which the style was developed; so different that the foundations under it could not carry the superstructure, if it were erected of the material for which it would appear to have been designed; and for want of foundations of sufficient breadth, even to carry the iron work, it has been necessary to carry the whole exterior iron colonnade upon iron brackets, concealed beneath what appears to be the podium for the whole dome, but which is in reality a box of thin plates of cast-iron, secured to a light framework, built out over the roof of the building.