The only chance clearly is to cut away till we come to the solid ground of real, not fancied, requirement. As long as it is our whims, and not our necessities, that build, it matters little how much pains we take, how learned and assiduous we are. I have no hope of any considerable advantage from the abundant exhortation to frankness and genuineness in the use of materials, unless it lead first of all to a more frank and genuine consideration of the occasion for using the materials at all. If it lead only to open timber roofs and stone walls in place of the Renaissance stucco, I think the gain very questionable. The stucco is more comfortable, and at least we had got used to it. These are matters of detail: suppose your details _are_ more genuine, if the whole design is a sham, if the aim be only to excite the admiration of bystanders, the thing is not altered, whether the bystanders are learned in such matters or ignorant. The more excellent the work is in its kind, the more insidious and virulent the falsity, if the whole occasion of it be a pretence. If it must be false, let it by all means be gross and glaring,--we shall be the sooner rid of it. It may be asked whether, then, I surrender the whole matter of appearance,--whether the building may as well be ugly as beautiful. By no means; what I have said is in the interest of beauty, as far as it is possible to us. Positive beauty it may be often necessary to forego, but bad taste is never necessary. Ugliness is not mere absence of beauty, but absence of it where it ought to be present. It comes always from a disappointed expectation,--as where the lineaments that do not disgust in the potato meet us in the human face, or even in the hippopotamus, whom accordingly Nature kindly puts out of sight. It is bad taste that we suffer from,--not plainness, not indifference to appearance, but features misplaced, shallow mimicry of "effects" where their causes do not exist, transparent pretences of all kinds, forcing attention to the absence of the reality, otherwise perhaps unnoticed. The first step toward seemly building is to rectify the relation between the appearance and the uses of the building,--to give to each the weight that it really has with us, not what we fancy or are told it ought to have. Mr. Ruskin too often seems to imply that fine architecture is like virtue or the kingdom of Heaven: that, if it be sought first, all other things will be added. A sounder basis for design, beyond what is necessary to use, seems to me that proposed by Mr. Garbett, (to whom we are indebted for the most useful hints upon architecture,) namely, politeness, a decent regard for the eyes of other people (and for one's own, for politeness regards one's self as well). Politeness, however, as Mr. Garbett admits, is chiefly a negative art, and consists in abstaining and not meddling. The main character of the building being settled by the most