it been preserved, we should now have an invaluable addition to the architectural treasures of our country and an interesting commentary upon the work of one of the earliest architects known to have practised his profession in the Colonies. It is most important to remember that some considerable degree of architectural knowledge or, at the very least, some substantial cultivation of architectural taste and discrimination seems to have been considered an indispensable part of every gentleman’s education in the eighteenth century. Consequently it is not surprising to find that some of our native amateur architects possessed knowledge and ability by no means contemptible. Architectural appreciation was favoured by the fact that not a few of the sons of the wealthy and well-to-do were sent to England to complete their education and usually spent some time afterwards in travel on the Continent. Such broadening influences naturally tended to stimulate and aid the development of architectural taste and, as a certain amount of dexterity in drawing was highly esteemed and practised as a polite masculine accomplishment, a considerable number of men were fitted, to a far greater degree than the majority of so-called well educated people nowadays, to translate their architectural preferences into a form sufficiently intelligible for the master-carpenter to work from in putting an idea into a tangible shape. It is not to be inferred from the foregoing that a large number of men of substance and leisure for the cultivation of polite accomplishments were capable of producing a set of measured drawings, such as professional architects prepare, to turn over to a contractor for execution. They were not. But the division of functions was altogether different. The client, as he would now be termed, showed a more intelligent and constructive appreciation of architectural principles in a proportionately larger number of cases than he does at the present day. He formed a definite conception of what he wished and was capable of conveying his desires lucidly by means of drawings or rough sketches to the head workman charged with the actual task of construction. As the average client was better informed and thought more clearly upon matters architectural than the client of later times, so, on the other hand, the master-carpenter of the eighteenth century was infinitely more capable than the average artisan of like rank to-day. He was not only a skilled master-mechanic, competent to translate rough draughts and sketches into carefully prepared working drawings, but he was also a person of some architectural education and taste and endowed with a nice perception and valuation of architectural merits and proprieties. He was materially aided in his work by a number of valuable and explicit architectural books with measured drawings of whose assistance he did not hesitate freely to avail himself. Furthermore, he still retained a sympathetic